New music
Guy Oddy
Those with long memories will remember Sean Dickson (as Hi FI Sean is known to his Mum) as the vocalist and driving force of 80s indie guitar types the Soup Dragons, and David McAlmont from his Brit Pop era hit with Bernard Buttler, “Yes”. That all happened a long time ago but, unlike many of their contemporaries, neither of these two can be accused of being stuck in a creative rut since their glory days.Daylight is actually the duo’s second album and it couldn’t feel more different to the sounds that first brought them to public prominence. In fact, 90s house music, synth pop, gospel and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An Electric Storm opens with “Love Without Sound.” Once heard, it’s unforgettable. A disembodied voice which could be either female or male sings about making love without sound. There are female-sounding squawks and yelps. Revolving percussion sounds like drain pipes being hit by toffee hammers. The other instrumentation is clearly electronically generated. And, it has a tune.It also sounds remarkably similar to what US musical experimentalists The United States of America had come up with on their self-titled March 1968 album. An Electric Storm, credited to White Noise, was British, and was Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHMike Lindsay Supershapes: Volume 1 (Moshi Moshi)Solo debut from Mike Lindsay, a founder member of tunng and also half of psychedelic duo LUMP. It’s a good thing when music is hard to describe. Opener “Lie Down” sets up the stall, a catchy but weird slice of poet-pop, wherein wonky dance rhythms, abstract jazz, lyrics about mundanity and shouts of the title phrase, including contributions from singer-songwriter Anna B Savage, add up to a wild frolic. With plenty of woodwind, lyrics about toast and Sunday roast, an inability to musically settle down anywhere “normal”, the Read more ...
joe.muggs
Beatrice “beabadoobee” Laus provides strong backup for the common argument that, particularly in the mainstream, genre is no longer particularly important. From the outset, she has consistently dissolved the mainstream/indie binary, and pulled from a grab-bag of big time and obscure influences across decades while maintaining a distinct songwriting personality of her own.In this regard she resembles The 1975 (whose label she is signed to, and who have previously lent songwriting and production to her work) and Taylor Swift (who she has supported on tour), although one might argue that she’s Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Whether or not the lyrics Stuart Stawman writes and sings are autobiographical, the persona he’s created for himself as the leader of his neo-prog project SJS is that of a dutiful lover thwarted by the pressing of the self-destruct button no affair is without. That love is a game is a recurrent theme in Stawman’s songs and, of course, it means someone has to lose. Stawman’s plaintive English voice, sometimes a husky warble, sometimes a falsetto cry, is the ideal medium for the romantic disillusion he expresses on the Australia-based combo’s third album. But here’s a thought – Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Brighton’s Preston Park came alive this weekend in the most magnificently colourful, sparkling and diverse celebration of love in all its forms for the UK's most famous LGBTQ+ community fundraiser.Saturday was the more hedonistic affair, seeing the finest (and smallest) costumes, rainbow paint and general indulgence, with all the glamour and glitter to rival a spectacular line up including The House Gospel Choir and disco Queen Sophie Ellis Bextor. American actor and singer Billy Porter showcased some fabulous moves and music, including hit “Children” and debuting “Black Mona Lisa”, a funky Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Ryuichi Sakamoto can be heard here, on Opus, surrounded by silence, shuffling at the keyboard, off-mic rustles and tells, recorded in the last year of his life, in September 2022 – he died early in the following year – as he sat to make his final performances.Not in public – there's not even the ghost of an audience here – but at Tokyo's NHK Broadcast Center's 509 Studio, in a solo performance filmed by his son Neo Sora, for which this is the soundtrack. Five decades of film and Yellow Magic music are spread between the two hands of one performer across 88 keys, and it feels like he's playing Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Barefoot in Bryophyte is a collaboration between musicians embedded in Norway’s jazz and experimental music scenes. Some of it, though, sounds nothing like what might be expected. Take the fourth track, “Paper Fox.” Figuratively, it lies at the centre of a Venn Diagram bringing together Mazzy Star, 4AD’s 1984 This Mortal Coil album It'll End in Tears and the more minimal aspects of Baltimore’s Beach House. It’s quite something.Then there’s the shoegazing-adjacent “So Low” which does, indeed, bear a familial resemblance to Low were they stripped of their tendency towards embracing noise. The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After Sex Pistols have played “New York,” the fourth song in their set, someone from the audience shouts “Anarchy in the U.K.” "We've already played it, you fucking idiot" responds Sid Vicious. They have. It was the first song they did at Kristinehamn’s Club Zebra.The request begs the question of whether the person calling out knew what “Anarchy in the U.K.” sounded like. They may have known of “Anarchy in the U.K.” but not actually heard it. Considering where the particular show was, the information gap is possible.Kristinehamn is a small town about 250km north-west of Sweden’s capital Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Whatever esperanza wants, it would seem, esperanza gets. From over-riding normal conventions of using capital letters in her name, to an imposing A-List of guests on Milton + esperanza (Concord): Paul Simon, Lianne La Havas, Guinga, Dianne Reeves, Shabaka Hutchings…But what esperanza really wanted, as she explains in the album notes, was to make an album with – and to honour – Brazilian music legend Milton Nascimento. As she says: “Your heart, your music, your seeing, your spirit means to me what the sun and moon mean to the earth. You are the inspiration for so much of what I do, so Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
Attending an outdoor event anywhere in the UK – especially given the summer we’ve not been having this year – is always a bit of a gamble. And it’s fair to say Glasgow’s in a bit of a high risk category, but fortunately Tuesday’s weather was glorious for American synth-pop band Future Islands as they played at Kelvingrove Bandstand and Amphitheatre as part of this year’s Summer Nights series. Opening with the first track from their newest album, People who Aren’t There Anymore, King of Sweden was delivered with the visceral soulfulness juxtaposed with upbeat rhythms the band’s Read more ...
joe.muggs
It seems like Yoni Wolf and his band WHY? may have settled into a cycle of five-year crafting of albums. The last WHY? album was 2019’s AOKOHIO and it was an extraordinary collection of abstracted miniatures locked together with each other and with the accompanying films with Swiss watch intricacy. This one is every bit as ambitious in its execution – perhaps more so as it’s super grand in its scope, expanding out in all directions from the hodge-podge of leftfield and psychedelic influences that have always informed WHY? into the more wide open spaces of the collective American imagination. Read more ...