New music
david.cheal
The Magnetic Fields were in London for a concert that could only have been, for them, a less frenetic affair than their last appearance in the capital a couple of years ago, when they arrived at the airport to find that their entire collection of musical instruments had failed to follow them. On that occasion they had only a few hours to find replacements - a tall order, given that their line-up features a cello, an autoharp and a ukulele, as well as a keyboard and an acoustic guitar; which gives the uninitiated a flavour of what they sound like. Add the lugubrious baritone of Merritt, plus Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé, Telephone (Polydor)Lady Gaga is gradually wending her way to the position Madonna held for 20 years, punching through pop into the wider cultural consciousness, a superpopstar for whom the sky's the limit. Gaga arrived from the same cultural milieu as Madonna, the performance arty New York club scene. However, whereas Madonna very much played up the disco end of things, Gaga, at least visually, screams art attack.Her latest single arrives with a Jonas Akerlund-directed video, a bizarre amalgam of prison exploitation flick and Thelma & Louise co-starring the Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
A bumper week for blues and soul artists including some staggeringly good vintage videos from Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin and Son House. Birthday composers are Stephen Sondheim, Michael Nyman and Bela Bartok. Then there’s Vivian Stanshall from the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band doing the “Intro and the Outro”. “Princess Anne on sousaphone. Adolf Hitler, looking very relaxed on vibes… Nice.”21 March 1943: Vivian Stanshall narrates “The Intro and the Outro” with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Featuring “the Count Basie Orchestra on triangle”. Simultaneously brilliant and stupid.
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joe.muggs
A little revolution is taking place at the top of the pop charts. UK artist Tinie Tempah's rap track “Pass Out” has had two weeks at number one, and at the time of writing looks very much like it may successfully fight off Lady Gaga & Beyonce's spectacularly-hyped “Telephone Thing” to make it a third week on top.Now this might not seem revolutionary in itself: over the last year or two it has become commonplace to see black British rappers from the formerly underground grime scene in the “proper” charts. However up until now, with the exception of Dizzee Rascal – who has always been a one Read more ...
joe.muggs
The protests around the Iranian presidential elections of 2009 brought home to many in the West not only how dominated by youth the pro-democracy movement in Iran is, but also how westernised the youth of that country are. Symbolised by Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death at the hands of security forces was caught on camera and beamed around the world, this was an Iran a world away from the glowering Ayatollahs and pepperpot women in black chadors we tended to see on news reports.No One Knows About Persian Cats is a timely reminder of the existence of this young, modern Iran Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
If music writers love to place artists in genres, it is a more-than-usually fruitless task with Magnetic Fields, the brainchild of “composer, multi-instrumentalist and bubblegum purist” Stephin Merritt. Many people discovered Magnetic Fields (named after the surrealist André Breton’s novel Les Champs Magnetiques) with their 3-CD box set 69 Songs, which was released in 1999. The titles themselves suggested some of his musical playgrounds, such as “Punk Love”, “Love is Like Jazz” or “World Love”. Others referred sometimes obliquely to Billie Holliday, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The music world is reeling from the death of Charlie Gillett. He was not just an influential DJ who was instrumental in widening the listening habits of millions of listeners on his World Service and other radio shows, a journalist, writer and a key figure in promoting global music. He was also a beacon of decency and rare integrity in the music world who affected so many people. Heartfelt tributes have been pouring into his site with postings from complete strangers the other side of the world, to members of his family and even his post-man.I found out the shocking news when Caspar Llewellyn Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In life Tom McRae is a cockeyed optimist. When his label, V2, dumped him, his response was to start up his own recording studio and to enthusiastically play every honky-tonk between LA and New York. It was the fans that kept McRae positive. An almost fanatically loyal crowd, they stuck with him through thick and thin and asked for little. Their demand was singular and a little perverse. All they wanted was to leave each concert feeling a little bit more depressed than when they went in.For, in music, McRae is a miserablist, out and proud. The Sixties had Leonard Cohen. The Eighties had the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Jonathan Mills has announced the programme for Edinburgh International Festival 2010, on a theme of modern culture in the New Worlds of the Americas and Australasia. Ranging from California to Canberra, New York to New Zealand, from Santiago to Samoa, the festival opens on Friday 13 August with John Adams' oratorio El Niño and closes on Sunday 5 September with the traditional fireworks concert.World premieres include political writer Alistair Beaton’s exploration of Scotland’s futile attempt at establishing a colony in Panama, Caledonia, directed by Anthony Neilson and co-produced by the Read more ...
bruce.dessau
I had been trying to secure a ticket for Mumford & Sons’ sold-out-yonks-ago tour for most of last week. Ten minutes before they were due to go onstage for their final gig, I'd given up hope. It was a case of go home and console myself with YouTube tribute band Sonford & Mums or succumb to the touts, and who wants to give them money? Luckily a kind-hearted Samaritan with a spare pass took pity on me. Which was a huge relief, even if from my late-arrival vantage point the band was so obscured by the packed crowd that Lady Gaga might have been on banjo for all I could see.Yet better the Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This week's birthdays include the impeccably funky Sly Stone and Wilson Pickett, manic Chopin played by the great pianist Sviatoslav Richter, lush orientalism from Rimsky-Korsakov, classic jazz from Bix Beiderbecke, and annoying pop from Clare Grogan.
15 March 1944: One of the funkiest beings ever to strut his stuff, Sly Stone (born Sylvester Stewart) and the Family Stone perform “Dance to the Music”. For the last 20 years he has been a virtual recluse, there are persistent rumours of a new album for 2010.18 March 1941: Wilson Pickett performs “Mustang Sally” in a classic clip from the Read more ...
howard.male
What do you imagine a Swiss Cajun/Zydeco trio would sound like? It’s not a question that’s easy to navigate without slipping into the politically incorrect quicksand of racial or cultural stereotyping. So it gives me great pleasure to report that any narrow-minded assumptions I may have had in that department were instantly confounded by the reality of the life-affirming racket made by these three young men from Geneva as they rocked the basement bar of the St Moritz Club in Wardour Street.The first clue that this was my kind of band was the cover of their second and most recent album, Brule Read more ...