New music
Kieron Tyler
Dr. Feelgood: Taking No Prisoners (with Gypie 1977-1981)The departure of Wilko Johnson in April 1977 ought to have finished Dr. Feelgood. More than their guitarist and songwriter, he was vital to their stage persona and as much frontman as singer Lee Brilleaux. Yet after roping in temporary fill-ins for already scheduled live dates, by the end of April they had new guitarist John Cawthra on board. Quickly rechristened Gypie Mayo, he was on the road in May and soon forced to become a songwriter. This handsome box set is the full story on the Mayo-era Feelgoods.Spread across four CDs is Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Kveikur is really the first new album from Sigur Rós since 2008’s Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. Their last, 2012’s Valtari, only had two fresh tracks and was otherwise redone offcuts or previously shelved material. The creative process leading to the appearance of Kveikur further differs from its predecessor as the band are now a three-piece, after the departure of keyboard player Kjartan Sveinsson. Thankfully, they have not plugged the gap by using an outside producer, a choice which made Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust so unsatisfactory.By belatedly serving up entirely new Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“We’re Chelsea Light Moving, we’re from London.” Coming from Thurston Moore during the first UK outing of his post-Sonic Youth combo, that’s amusing. Not only are the rest of the quartet American, Moore himself remains the definition of New York cool. And Chelsea Light Moving sound as American as apple pie with his trademark slash-and-dive guitar and conversational vocals. “It’s Sonic Youth,” declared a voice to my left.With Sonic Youth on hiatus after the break-up of his marriage to band and life partner Kim Gordon, Moore’s new band adds another string to his already hard-working bow. Solo Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Blackmore’s Night was once described as “the most ridiculous real-life Spinal Tap situation ever”. It's easy to see why. The band play in medieval costumes, their musical style owes a debt to Clannad, and they came into existence as the result of guitar-god Ritchie Blackmore's romantic involvement with a blonde with a penchant for New Age. Yet, if Blackmore’s whimsy is a little ludicrous, it’s still surely more interesting than anything his former band mates in Deep Purple are currently doing.If you are not familiar with Blackmore’s Night’s oeuvre, it helps to start with what they’re not. The Read more ...
Russ Coffey
“The reason we’ve been away so long,” explained Fran Healy halfway through last night’s gig, “is we wanted to take time off to enjoy our kids.” Such non-rock’n’roll sentiments are, of course, the sort of thing you might expect from a band once dubbed the “nicest in the world”. What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was the amount of fire and passion that would surface during the night. Really.Travis have often been described as a sort of late-Britpop predecessor to Coldplay. Faint praise indeed. Chris Martin even calls himself a “poor man’s Fran Healy”, which hardly improves the compliment Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Katie Stelmanis of Austra has a voice that will send many listeners running to the hills. It is at once precocious and pretentious, running the gamut from quavering through a mouthful of marbles to operatic to cutesy, like the mutant offspring of La Roux, Paloma Faith and Knife/Fever Ray front woman Karin Dreijer Andersson. However, although it might take a moment or 10, once the ear has adjusted to her warbling theatrical style, there’s much to enjoy in Austra’s music.The Toronto six-piece is Stelmanis’s vehicle, and includes her longterm band-mate, percussionist Mary Postepski, as well as Read more ...
joe.muggs
If anyone in British music still deserves that rinsed-to-death term "maverick" it is Battersea-born "Dr" Alex Paterson. From roadie for postpunk industrialists Killing Joke in the early Eighties, he went on to work as an A&R then - originally collaborating with The KLF's Jimmy Cauty - formed The Orb in the heat of the acid house explosion to bring the world "ambient house". Inexplicably the loose collective, which has featured Berlin producer Thomas Fehlmann as a key member, became huge, their dub basslines and loony-tunes samples somehow encapsulating the psychedelic oddness of the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
News that Tunng were releasing a fifth album came as a bit of a surprise, given band founder and frontman Mike Lindsay’s recent relocation to Iceland (and subsequent reinvention as Cheek Mountain Thief). Of course nobody ever said that the band was splitting up, but in their decade together their work has remained so undeservedly underground the message may never have gotten out.It’s tempting to describe Turbines as Tunng’s most accessible album to date, given that its nine tracks see them dialling back some of the more obvious experimental flourishes which have set apart their sound even Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In a two-decade ripple effect typical of pop culture, there’s been a recent spate of interest in 1990s jungle. This was frantic bass-led breakbeat club music that led to the more media-friendly term “drum'n'bass” which, in turn, led indirectly to UK garage, grime and globe-conquering dubstep. DJs such as Shy FX and DJ Hype have maintained their careers and the spotlight is now creeping back towards them. Another player from those days is London’s Rebel MC, AKA Michael West, AKA Conquering Lion, AKA Congo Natty.The Rebel MC’s career was woven deep into Nineties rave, starting with a series of Read more ...
theartsdesk
Almost a decade on from their debut album, Tunng’s founding folktronic ethos no longer carries the shock of the new, but the sprawling and vaguely mystical collective continue to make ever more beautiful and interesting sounds. Turbines, their fifth album, is released on Full Time Hobby next Monday. To get in the mood, readers of theartsdesk can catch a world exclusive eyeful of the video for their new single “The Village”. Let us know what you think.
Tim Cumming
This is the third Songlines Encounters festival at Kings Place. Wednesday’s programme featured Balkans, Polish and Georgian music, Thursday had Egyptian Baladi Blues and Louisiana’s Sarah Savoy, and Friday featured West Africa, Spain and Palestine.Malick Pathé Sow opens with a short solo set on the Senegalese ngoni, the hoddu, singing in a high, clear, declaiming style, the big, deep ghimbri-like bass notes of the large hoddu punctuating and emphasising the verses. Then he is joined by Senegalese kora player Bao Sissoko, with touches of percussion on the calabash, for a song representing “the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Iain Banks, who has died at the age of 59 only two months after revealing that he was suffering from terminal cancer, was a leading purveyor of contemporary fiction. Iain M Banks was eminent in the field of science fiction. Iain "Spanks The Plank" Banks, however, was less well known as the composer of about 60 rock songs from the palaeolithic period, 1972-75.An explanation. Banks's Espedair Street is one of the better British novels about pop music. It chronicles the rise, not to mention the fall, of Frozen Gold, a Glaswegian student pub band who go global when budding writer Daniel "Weird" Read more ...