New music
A Tribute to Abram WilsonThursday, 14 November 2013
A little more than a year after the death of acclaimed jazz trumpeter and composer Abram Wilson, his former manager and widow Jennie Cashman Wilson has teamed up with EFG London Jazz Festival producers Serious to stage the only London tribute... Read more... |
CD: Dave Edmunds - AgainThursday, 14 November 2013
Dave Edmunds is one of a generation of rockers who came of age in the 1970s and excelled in channeling decades of American popular music: cue the pub rock bands, think Nick Lowe or Elvis Costello. There is a mixture of total knowingness and a... Read more... |
CD: Blood Orange - Cupid DeluxeWednesday, 13 November 2013
Dev Hynes's path of artistic development is one of the most pleasing in 21st century music. The flamboyant black indie-kid risking life and limb to ride the local buses growing up in Hackney, who channeled his frustration at the lack of a place for... Read more... |
Analogue - Rock Portraits by Tom Sheehan, Lomography Gallery Store EastWednesday, 13 November 2013
I've known rock photographer Tom Sheehan since we worked together at the Melody Maker in the 1980s, but even I didn't know that his stellar career stretches back "almost 40 years", or so it says in the programme notes for his new exhibition,... Read more... |
Philip Glass/Steve Reich, Royal Festival HallMonday, 11 November 2013
The Southbank’s artistic director Jude Kelly was out in force at this penultimate weekend of The Rest is Noise festival, delivering little triumphalist, Ryan Air-like fanfares, reminding us how pioneering they had been to programme composers... Read more... |
Volcano Choir, O2 Academy BristolMonday, 11 November 2013
It’s surprising how a singer with as little obvious presence or charisma as Justin Vernon can carry a live show, but he does. The power is in the otherworldly voice, and haunting songs with mysterious lyrics, carried on a wall of sound in the... Read more... |
CD: Sébastien Tellier – ConfectionMonday, 11 November 2013
Although Confection is sonic ear-candy of a most seductive type, it’s hard to grasp what the point is. The album is lush, orchestrated and enfolding, but it does nothing new and says little beyond being the product of meticulous craftsmanship.... Read more... |
Scenes in the City, CBSO Centre, BirminghamSunday, 10 November 2013
This year 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of two landmark albums, both of which were composed and recorded by bassist, pianist and all-round jazz colossus, Charles Mingus. Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus is a reimagining of some of Mingus’s... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Reykjavík: Iceland Airwaves 2013Sunday, 10 November 2013
Kraftwerk closing a festival is a big deal. It’s an even bigger honour when the seminal German outfit reconfigure their set to acknowledge where they’re playing. Last Sunday, Kraftwerk performed the rarely heard “Airwaves”, from 1975’s Radioactivity... Read more... |
CD: Psapp - What Makes us GlowSunday, 10 November 2013
This need to classify music with all sorts of made-up words might be irritating, but "toytronica" - a label frequently given to Psapp - is as succinct a description as any of the next 40 minutes after you hit "play" on their fourth album, What Makes... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Brenda Holloway, Era Records Northern Soul, DamonSunday, 10 November 2013
Brenda Holloway: The Artistry of Brenda Holloway / Various Artists: ERA Records Northern SoulAs the home of the Motown empire, Detroit dominated American soul music in the Sixties. Yet the label’s boss Berry Gordy bowed to the inevitable and opened... Read more... |
The Radiophonic Workshop, Shoreditch Electric Light StationSunday, 10 November 2013
No preparation is sufficient for hearing the theme to Doctor Who live. It’s obviously going to be on the menu, yet as the familiar “dung-a, dung-a, dung-a” refrain kicks off something deep and unexpected stirs within. The emotional bond with this... Read more... |
