New music
mark.kidel
Concerts are not what they used to be: in an attempt to break the mould of conventional performance styles, promoters and artists are increasingly turning to explanatory introductions, visual aids and other means of drawing the audience in, as if music alone could not work the crowd. The Senegalese singing star Baaba Maal is touring with the journalist and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah, and their show combines relaxed but clearly scripted conversation with stunning songs from Maal’s Fulani repertoire.Advertised as Tales from the Sahel, and an exploration of “how such mythological tales Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Anyone expecting the 1977-style foghorn-voiced Poly Styrene from Generation Indigo is going to be disappointed. Instead, this album is sweetly delivered, melodic and driving modern pop with a Euro electro-dance sheen. She’s not bellowing “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” over bee-in-a-jar guitar and caterwauling sax, but embracing something much more friendly.Of course, this review is tempered by the recent news that Poly has been diagnosed with cancer. Produced by Youth, Generation Indigo isn’t for those sporting punk blinkers, although she’ll always be defined by having fronted X-Ray Spex between Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
We all know people who listen to their music from iTunes, aren’t fussed with CDs and use their computer as the sole source for their listening. They’re listening to MP3s, the file format developed for portable players. But MP3s are compressed files with less data than those on a CD. Why listen to this fast-food version of music at home? Do so and it’s a nail in the coffin of sound quality.This isn’t about the pros and cons of downloading or any of the surrounding issues. It’s not about streaming via Spotify – that’s just an advanced form of radio. This is about the creep which is leading to Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Sónar festival occupies a very special place in the New Music calendar – and is this year expanding outwards temporally and geographically, with new franchises in Tokyo and A Coruña, Galicia. Now into its 17th year, the parent festival in Barcelona serves as a vital meeting point for those of all stripes who refuse to acknowledge the polarisation of avant-garde and populism, or of club culture and the mainstream music industry. With 10 or more main stages and untold off-piste club events around the city, it would be impossible to condense even a single day and night of Sónar Barcelona Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Anyone remember Haddaway? Or Dr Alban? These were flash-in-the-pan early-Nineties pop stars who combined European dance music with tints of R&B and Afro-Caribbean pop. Who'd have thought their sound would be the template for mainstream American pop for the early 2010s. From Black Eyed Peas to Jennifer Lopez, everyone's into low-calory trance-house cheese with a side order of gutless electro.And now here's Chris Brown riding the tepid gravy train. The US R&B superstar's fourth album is overflowing with under-par rave leftovers, vocoders everywhere but flavour and bite duly neutered, as Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Jet Harris was one of the architects of British rock'n'roll. His death rams home just how distant that era now seems. A former skiffler, he joined The Shadows after a spell backing Terry Dene, British rock's first bad boy. In time, Harris became a bad boy too, setting the template for the self-destructive lifestyle that would become a cliché. But his moody image will survive too. His rumbling bass guitar will forever be synonymous with those evocative Shadows' hits.The Shadows' world-changing moment came in August 1960 when they topped the British charts with “Apache”. Everything in British Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Follow that. It's the inevitable two-word mantra after a band has released a defining debut. The Strokes delivered their seminal statement of intent with Is This It in 2001, proving that a decent leather jacket, attitude and a rock riff will never let you down. Well, a decade on and with their fourth album out on Monday, there is much muttering of rock letting you down. Can Angles do anything to stop the rock rot?The simple answer is no. The more complex answer is maybe, if only the New York quintet would pull their fingers out and deliver something more cohesive. The opening track, “Machu Read more ...
peter.quinn
It's not every night that an artist proposes locking the doors and having “one giant orgy of love”, but then Dee Dee Bridgewater has always had a singular take on things. This sold-out gig at Ronnie Scott's was one of those rare, did-that-really-happen-or-am-I-dreaming evenings where performer and audience reciprocally move into some kind of magical, harmonious alignment.The singer was performing material from Eleanora Fagan (1915-1959): To Billie With Love From Dee Dee Bridgewater, chosen as one of my Albums of the Year in theartsdesk's 2010 New Music Round-up and a worthy Grammy winner Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Arnaud Fleurent-Didier’s La Reproduction was one of the most striking albums of last year. The news that he and his band are playing the UK for the first time next week at the Institut Français is exciting as La Reproduction was more than great musically. It was also a cultural benchmark, putting the Mai 68 generation under the microscope and taking them to task for being inward-looking – they made great mayonnaise at the expense of paying attention to their kids.La Reproduction is Fleurent-Didier’s fourth album, his first for a major label. His songwriting draws on the classic romantic arc Read more ...
joe.muggs
Googling for academic articles about Britney Spears is one rabbit hole I've managed to avoid falling down thus far, but one imagines there are reams of the things. From demonically driven Disney child star via pigtailed Lolita and sex-droid air hostess to shaven-headed loon lunging aggressively towards her public through the paparazzo's lens, she's provided no end of provocative and iconic images, and stirred up all kinds of problematic issues around post-feminism, celebrity and voyeurism, while remaining an odd non-presence at the centre of it all.
Not an obvious provocateur like Madonna or Read more ...
howard.male
Why do bands still insist on dabbling in drum’n’bass? It was always an absurd, overwrought style, even when it first assaulted our eardrums in the mid-1990s. It’s more like a technological malfunction of the drum machine than a natural, felt groove, hurtling along, as it tends to, at a ridiculous 200 beats per minute. Ironically, Marseilles’s Watcha Clan probably think it’s one of their strengths that they throw a couple of tracks into their live set powered by this anachronistic rhythm, but they are much more effective when utilising less familiar grooves.Rich Mix is a relatively new north- Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Blancmange is a sweet pudding commonly made with milk or cream and sugar thickened with gelatin, cornstarch or Irish moss, and often flavored with almonds, says Wikipedia. Not sure about the Irish moss bit. Blancmange is also, as any fule no, a fabulous Eighties synth duo, playing on a tour for the first time in 25 years. I know there are a few of you out there who prefer your Pet Shop Boys. Personally, I find the PSBs too much. Every track rammed full of too much stuff, eventually they make you as sick as if you had stuffed your face with dessert all night.Despite their name (originally they Read more ...