New music
'We wanted to make a record we really love': The Rolling Stones at Hackney EmpireFriday, 08 September 2023
One day, someone will compile a full illustrated history of Rolling Stones press conferences, going right back to Mick and Keith in 1964 buying a couple of pints in a pub in Denmark Street for journalists from the NME and Melody Maker – both now in... Read more... |
Album: The Chemical Brothers - For That Beautiful FeelingFriday, 08 September 2023
The Chemical Brothers are unstoppable. Their live shows are a guaranteed monster good time, redolent of proper old-school rave-ups, but with visual tech from some freaky eye-boggling future. Their last album, 2019’s No Geography, was a total belter... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 79: Primal Scream, Girl Ray, Mort Garson, Barbie, Nina Simone, Dengue Fever and moreThursday, 07 September 2023
VINYL OF THE MONTHAfrican Head Charge A Trip to Bolgatanga (On-U Sound)The latest album from percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and On-U Sound producer-par-excellence Adrian Sherwood is stunning. 40-something years into their collaborative career,... Read more... |
Hardanger Musikkfest 2023 review - fertility, folk music and the supernatural unite along Norway’s fjordsThursday, 07 September 2023
The cows are scattered across the mountains. Without scrambling up the slopes, the only way to summon them is to call. Unni Løvlid is beckoning them. Instead of standing outdoors she is in the medieval Ullensvang Church, in the Norwegian village of... Read more... |
Album: James Blake - Playing Robots Into HeavenThursday, 07 September 2023
Today James Blake is perhaps more known as super-producer to the stars than post-dubstep innovator. His collaborations with Beyoncé and Travis Scott have perhaps overshadowed his EPs on R&S Records. His two previous albums, 2019’s Assume Form... Read more... |
Supersonic Festival 2023, Birmingham review - musical eccentrics battle the odds and come out on topWednesday, 06 September 2023
You’ve got to feel for Lisa Meyer and the team behind Birmingham’s magnificent Supersonic Festival. Just as the live music scene gets to a point where the Covid pandemic is no longer a malign influence on dancing and having fun in a room full of... Read more... |
Album: Kristin Hersh - Clear Pond RoadWednesday, 06 September 2023
Kristin Hersh’s voice, it transpires, is ageless. In the 80s when Throwing Muses broke through, she hit a particular combination of tones – blurring boundaries between harsh and smooth, melodic and discordant, trad and weird – that became vastly... Read more... |
Album: Róisín Murphy - Hit ParadeMonday, 04 September 2023
Here’s one woman "of a certain age" who definitely isn’t invisible. But she’s in the middle of a media furore on which we’d rather not dwell. Sadly it might be the very thing that gets her the publicity she surely deserves. Remember when there was... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: March of the Flower Children - The American Sounds of 1967Sunday, 03 September 2023
“March of the Flower Children” was a June 1967 B-side by Los Angeles psych-punks The Seeds. The track was extracted from their third album Future, a peculiar dive into psychedelia which was as tense as it was turned on. While the song’s lyrics... Read more... |
Album: Yussef Dayes - Black Classical MusicSaturday, 02 September 2023
Yussef Dayes brings a particular kind of collaborative energy to the band he leads. It is special, even life-giving. In this type of music, where jazz meets beats and EDM, it does tend to be the drummer who provides all the restless energy anyway,... Read more... |
Album: Burna Boy - I Told Them...Friday, 01 September 2023
There’s been a lot of flak flying around this album already. It’s mainly been triggered by Burna Boy’s public activities which have included disparaging the wider Afrobeats music scene of West Africa, and some somewhat overcooked expressions of his... Read more... |
Album: Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons - Kings of the AsylumThursday, 31 August 2023
Three albums in, Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons have proved themselves a proposition to be reckoned with. A solid live draw, they’ve supported Guns N’ Roses amongst others, and made the album charts in mainland Europe.They may initially have... Read more... |
