New music
bruce.dessau
I'm not quite sure why Anthony Kiedis bothered to put on his multicoloured frock coat. It certainly wasn't to keep warm. The atmosphere in Koko was positively volcanic even before the Red Hot Chili Peppers appeared on stage at this exclusive Radio 1 showcase. Highlights are due to be broadcast during Zane Lowe's show on 12 September from 7pm to 9pm, but a radio airing will convey only a miniscule fraction of the zip of this age-defying band.This gig was intended to promote the new album I'm With You, but they also did a pretty canny job of mixing old crowd-pleasers with new tracks. As soon as Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Here's the thing. Call me a rhinoceros-hided heathen but I find Bon Iver's music a bit of a bore. Then again, Justin Vernon - Bon Iver - used to be in this group called DeYarmond Edison somewhere in Wisconsin. They split in 2006 but where he went off on an emotional quest into his soul that struck a chord with so many, the other three members, Joe Westerlund and Philip and Bradley Cook - Megafaun - explored more curious sonic pastures, glubbing deep into earthy country music while fiddling about with computers. I did like that.Megafaun's last album, 2009's Gather, Form & Fly, emanated a Read more ...
theartsdesk
It’s competition time again. Last month we featured ELF’s Reflections, a new release on Nimbus showcasing the unusual and possibly even unique combination of horn, piano and flute. We have a number of copies of the CD to give away. All you need to do is answer the questions correctly and your name will go into the hat.Reflections was reviewed by Graham Rickson as part of his regular Classical CDs Weekly column, but it is stretching it to describe the music as classical. In their interview with Jasper Rees the component members of ELF – pianist Geoff Eales, horn player Dave Lee and flautist Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Brooklyn’s The Drums aren’t wasting time, but they’ve found it hard to keep up. The release of their second album, Portamento, comes just 15 months after their debut. In between the two, they toured relentlessly and lost guitarist Adam Kessler. Their drummer Connor Hanwick has stopped playing with them live. Earlier this summer, they admitted to almost splitting due to artistic differences. But whatever the turmoil, Portamento reveals that little has changed sonically in Drum land.They still sound in thrall to The Smiths, New Order and lower-tier Factory bands like Section 25 and The Wake. Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Saturnine means to be hard, impermeable, gloomy and dull. Thudding, even. The word quite literally means to be like lead. It is an odd choice of album title for a record which is none of those things. Jackie Oates’s fourth studio album is, in fact, a collection of songs forged in traditional foundries (if we’re going in for metallic analogies) - lyrics pinched from anthologies of ancient peasant ditties; tunes passed on orally or reclaimed by Oates and her confederate folkies with skills passed down through the generations. Lead might be more malleable than other metals, but the material this Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
An awful lot of people involved in producing electronic dance music find a niche and stick to it. Many do this with a very po face. Speak to them about it and they may play you a track they think is "poppy" to demonstrate their range. It usually isn't, it's just a teensy-weensy bit less purely dance-floor functional than the rest of their oeuvre. Because all they ever listen to is techno, dubstep, fill-in-the-blank, their ability to make a comparative judgment has eroded.In truth, this is also one of the great things about dance music, that zealot-like devotion to the conceptual core of a Read more ...
hilary.whitney
Pauline Black, the lead singer of 2-Tone band The Selecter, was born in 1953 to an Anglo-Jewish mother and Nigerian father and was adopted as a baby by a white working-class couple from Essex, who refused to acknowledge she was black. However, by adolescence she was determined to define herself as society saw her and changed her surname to Black by deed poll when she was in her twenties.During her early career with The Selecter, Black toured alongside fellow 2-Tone bands The Specials and Madness, determined to spread a multicultural musical message through the band's fusion of ska, reggae and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although sadness currently cloaks Norway, the release of Razika’s joyful debut album might raise a few spirits. From Bergen, this all-female four-piece are school friends jointly born in 1991, hence part of the album title. Program 91 is a ska-inflected romp that would’ve been a snug fit for Rough Trade in the early Eighties. Razika weren’t even born then. The other half of the album’s title is inspired by fellow Bergen band Program 81, a ska-inflected new wave outfit formed in 1981. Razika – coined as band-speak for a cute boy - clearly aren’t shy about revealing their inspirations, Read more ...
bruce.dessau
In a recent interview with theartsdesk Bombay Bicycle Club talked about jamming together in their kitchen in Covent Garden in central London, but listening to A Different Kind of Fix it sounds as if they had their sights set further afield at the time. Their third album boasts an epic ambition that was absent from their more intimate second album, Flaws. This is a set of tunes that is big but never overblown, confident but never boastful. There are some lovely, grand chunks of rhythm that should make Fix a fixture in halls of residence up and down the country this autumn and could even Read more ...
howard.male
While obviously not as seismic a Top of the Pops moment as Ziggy singing “Starman”, the almost contemporaneous appearance of the flat-capped Gilbert O’Sullivan hunched over his piano as if it were a dying coal fire certainly stuck in my memory as clearly as Bowie’s androgynous space-age carrot-top. Although the flat cap was quickly ditched in favour of casual knitwear and even a hairy chest phase (see pic below), today’s 64-year-old Mr O’Sullivan feels that his fate in the shape of his image was sealed all those decades ago, and he’s been fighting ever since to transcend it.Although a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In a black dress, Caro Emerald is playing her UK debut. Behind her, an eight-piece band is squeezed onto the Jazz Café’s small stage. Snappy and pin sharp, they’re in black suits, white shirts and black ties. Except the guitarist, who’s jacket-free. Three brass players are ranged behind music stands. Nothing is overstated. Emerald races through her jazz-grounded pop, the rumba-ish “A Night Like This” ending a set that filters filmic swing through a current pop sensibility.By this time last year - to the week - Caro Emerald’s Deleted Scenes From the Cutting Room Floor had been at the top of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Composer and music producer Nitin Sawhney (b 1964) is known for his variety of musical projects, reflecting his background fusing Indian and British heritage. He has written music for films, television, dance productions, studio albums and concert performance, and is increasingly developing the possibilities of video games.Born in Rochester, Kent, he took music lessons in Asian, classical and flamenco, and dropped out of law studies and an accountancy job, as his urge to become a musician took over. He made his first breakthrough teaming up with Sanjeev Bhaskar on what would become the BBC TV Read more ...