New music
CD: Dutch Uncles – Out of Touch in The WildSaturday, 12 January 2013
With David Bowie’s return prompting thoughts on British art rock, it’s apt that Dutch Uncles’ third album is hitting the streets now. A through-and-through example of smartly constructed pop, this would in another era have been called prog rock.From... Read more... |
Just in From Scandinavia: Nordic Music Round-Up 6Friday, 11 January 2013
Santa has returned home, but he wasn’t the season’s only visitor from the Nordic lands. The crop of recent music in from the region embraces genre-crossing jazz, vintage-style rock, the expected electropop, cross-border collaborations and a seven-... Read more... |
CD: Yo La Tengo - FadeThursday, 10 January 2013
Along with bands like Belle and Sebastian and The Beta Band, Yo La Tengo represent a kind of lo-fi vibe indie-aficionados can get a little smug about. To be found in the section marked “cult", they have been going forever, never broken into the... Read more... |
CD: Deep Forest - Deep AfricaWednesday, 09 January 2013
Deep Forest have sold in the region of 10 million albums. That’s a shocker, isn’t it? Then again we’ve probably all heard them at some point, burbling away in an incense-saturated shop selling mass-imported batiks, carvings, hammocks and knickknacks... Read more... |
David Bowie, 66, releases first new single in a decadeTuesday, 08 January 2013
Well, he was always ahead of the game. In a few years’ time 66 will become the new official pension age in his native United Kingdom, but David Bowie has chosen to celebrate his 66th birthday by coming out of what many perceived to be retirement. “... Read more... |
Art Rock: The best and worst songs about artistsTuesday, 08 January 2013
That ultimate art rocker David Bowie is 66 today. The Victoria & Albert Museum is opening with a major survey of Bowie the style icon this spring. What’s more, he’s just released a new single, with an album following in March. Fittingly, for an... Read more... |
Video Exclusive: BJ Smith covers Mos Def's Umi SaysMonday, 07 January 2013
We're extremely proud to be able to present this charming exclusive video by the London multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter (and animator) BJ Smith - a ray of sunshine in the winter greyness. It comes from the forthcoming Dedication to the... Read more... |
CD: Pantha du Prince & the Bell Laboratory - Elements of LightMonday, 07 January 2013
The carillon is the world’s heaviest musical instrument. It consists of a collection of bells, usually played via a keyboard. There’s one in Oslo’s town hall, many tons of bronze whose sound reverberates daily across the Norwegian capital. Hendrik... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Broadcast, João Gilberto, James, Here Comes the HurtSunday, 06 January 2013
Broadcast: Berberian Sound Studio Original SoundtrackMore than the soundtrack to one of last year's most impactful films, the release of the music for Berberian Sound Studio is a tribute to the memory of Trish Keenan. With her Broadcast... Read more... |
CD: Everything Everything – ArcSunday, 06 January 2013
Up to this point it’s all gone swimmingly for Manchester-based quartet Everything Everything. Their debut album Man Alive charted high in the summer of 2010, but follow-up Arc is the test of whether they’re in for the long haul. Although the answer... Read more... |
CD: Serafina Steer - The Moths Are RealSaturday, 05 January 2013
Thirty year old London harpist Serafina Steer goes admirably her own way. Her sound is often sparse and acoustic, but never predictably so, and lyrically she’s off-piste, gambolling carefree from the opaque galactic ruminations of “Alien Invasion”... Read more... |
Neither God nor Devil: The long dance between Technology and MusicThursday, 03 January 2013
David Byrne's new book How Music Works has once again brought to the fore the ever thorny debate about the relationship between technology and music. The dance between the two is being conducted at an ever more frenetic pace, and seems likely to... Read more... |
