New music
garth.cartwright
The Barbican Centre’s Transcender Festival celebrated its fourth anniversary in 2012 and deserves to be recognised as one of the UK’s most culturally radical and engaging music events. Transcender grew out of the Barbican’s previous festival Ramadan Nights and aims to explore a similarly rich vein of music that is rooted both in Islamic trance music of Asia and the Middle East and Western improvised music that shares a similar sense of free exploration and wonder. Transcender 2012 – and, yes, the word "transcender" was invented by the Barbican to explain this bringing together of very Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After 65 years in music, over 55 of them as a solo artist and songwriter, it’s a tad surprising that Neil Sedaka has taken until now to declare he’s revealing the real Neil. Even when his former girlfriend and Brill Building colleague Carole King was baring it all in song, he kept it less personal. The Real Neil isn’t so much a window into his soul though, but a follow-on from recent tours where Sedaka has performed solo, accompanying himself on piano.The Real Neil, a mix of old songs and newly written material, opens with a speech from Sedaka: "Hi, this is Neil, welcome to my world of music Read more ...
theartsdesk
A.R. Kane: Complete Singles CollectionJoe MuggsIn my early teens, circa 1988, certain records would appear on The Chart Show indie chart countdown on a Saturday morning, records that hinted disquietingly at something far beyond the standard categories of rock, dance, indie and the rest. “Birthday” by The Sugarcubes, for example, or “You Made me Realise” by My Bloody Valentine. Perhaps the one that haunted me most, though, was “Baby Milk Snatcher” by A.R. Kane, a narcotic fog of blurred guitars, dub echoes and an insistent, insinuating vocal that obeyed only its own idiosyncratic rules of Read more ...
joe.muggs
Muse have spent their careers becoming Muse. With each album they have consolidated their most obvious influences – Radiohead, Queen, U2, various prog and metal, widescreen science fiction visions and paranoia on a global scale – more and more, until by the time of 2009's self-produced Resistance and its attendant sold-out stadium shows they stood completely alone as the world's most brilliantly preposterous band.But where to go from that culmination of all they'd worked towards? There was only one answer, and thankfully it's the one they've chosen: become MORE MUSE. If you're the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There they are! It's The Beach Boys! They're playing "Wouldn't It Be Nice", halfway through their second set of the evening and it blossoms with harmonic beauty, with pop's finest, most glorious ambition. Sure, in the shadows behind them there are a bunch of session musicians carrying them. Particularly in the first half those guys made damn sure there was such a wall of vocals it would be hard to detect any flaws in the ageing voices (mostly around 70) of the original Beach Boys.Now, however, they're in their stride. They may be relics from another era but it's hard to over-estimate the Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Now I think I've seen it all. After a storming two-hour set Ultravox returned to the stage for a celebratory twin-pronged past-meets-present encore of "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" and "Contact". At the very end, during a touching, soft-spoken moment, a female fan in an animal mask clambered onstage and appeared to drop a bowl of greeny-yellow gunk, possibly custard, on Midge Ure's head. The woman was bundled off and a towel cleaned up the dapper vocalist, but the crude incident was in breathtakingly stark contrast to the glistening gig that had preceded it.Ultravox was always an intriguing Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It’s been a fallow few years in the long recording life of Van Morrison. The last release was his highest charting release in the US, but that was four years ago. His 34th studio album finds him back on the Blue Note label, where he last recorded What’s Wrong With This Picture in 2003. Can you tell? The albums may come, the labels go, but in the end Van is Van and this set of a dozen songs confirms mostly to the sound Morrison has been turning out since the mysticism first got plush on the likes of Beautiful Vision and Poetic Champions Compose. His own breathy sax, the ambling bass, the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Sugaring season refers to the time of year when maple trees are "tapped", gallons of sap collected and boiled down to make the sweet syrup that goes so well with pancakes. The words trip off the tongue; conjure images of homeliness and those early autumnal sunsets that are by far the prettiest. As titles go it would have been hard to find one more apt for Beth Orton's first release since 2006's Comfort of Strangers; packed itself with pretty moments and the comforts of home.But before the sugar comes that sap, and the Norfolk-born songwriter's six years away have been as tumultuous. Single Read more ...
joe.muggs
John Cage is funny: this much we know. The deadpan prankster at the heart of 20th-century artistic experimentalism was always about the inadvertent punchline, the chuckle that comes from unexpected disjunction, the relief that comes from reminders of the absurdity of reality, as much as he was ever about any engagement with progress, technology, the transcendent. It's entirely natural, then, that Stewart Lee (pictured below), who has spent his whole career reaching outwards from the comedy circuit towards the avant-garde, should want to present his work.It was good to see Cage's work Read more ...
peter.quinn
Ivo Neame is not only one of the finest multi-instrumentalists, composers and arrangers of his generation. Given that the Royal Academy of Music graduate also performs with Phronesis, MOBO award winners Kairos 4tet, Fringe Magnetic and Marius Neset's Golden Xplosion, as well as lead his own regular quintet, his time-management skills are clearly nonpareil too.Neame's 2007 debut Swirls & Eddies, scored for the humble piano trio, was followed in 2009 by his quartet album Caught in the Light of Day. With Yatra, Neame really steps things up a gear, luxuriating in the possibilities offered by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In Beatles’ lore, the Prince of Wales Theatre is totemic. Here, on 4 November 1963, the cheeky quartet played the Royal Command Performance before the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. John Lennon quipped, “Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery”. Now, 50 years on from the release of their first single, a tribute of sorts is taking place on the same stage with the arrival of Let It Be in the West End.Let It Be tries to hide what it is – at the end of the show, the cast members are introduced for the first time as “on Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The past few years have seen the anniversary reissue, or concert tour in which classic albums are performed in their entirety, become something of a standard. Not so for Tori Amos, who this year is celebrating two decades since the US release of her debut solo album Little Earthquakes. To mark the occasion, she is instead collaborating with the Netherlands’ renowned Metropole Orchestra to rework and recreate some of her best-loved songs in an orchestral setting.The resulting album, Gold Dust, will be released next month and accompanied by a limited run of dates with the orchestra, including Read more ...