New music
graeme.thomson
If ever there was a classic case of artist and audience meeting on terribly comfortable ground, Karine Polwart's performance at last night’s fundraiser for the Green Party was it. Held in a beautiful converted church, there was more than a trace of the Vicar of Dibley lurking around the edge of the proceedings. Whatever your political affiliations, the Greens undeniably put on a good spread: it was organic beer, home bakes and Curious Colas all round, a repast matched only in its wholesomeness by a lot of thoroughly fine if sometimes overly polite musical manoeuvres.A gifted singer and Read more ...
david.cheal
It was Brian Wilson who started it. Eight years ago he toured Britain with a show that had at its heart a triumphant performance of his classic Beach Boys album, Pet Sounds, played – in a phrase that has become de rigueur when describing such events – in its entirety. Many more followed suit: David Bowie with Low, Sparks with Kimono My House, Lou Reed with Berlin (which in turn became a terrific Julian Schnabel film), while later this year Primal Scream will perform their epic Screamadelica album at the Olympia in London. And now John Cale is at it.Last year in Cardiff Cale mounted a show Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
I was promised a night of free jazz. This was more a threat than a promise, having spent some of the worst nights of my life listening to the stuff - the strange thing about this most liberating sounding form is how everyone sounds more or less the same. Anyway, this wasn’t a night of wibbly-wobbly squeaky-gate music, but a fully realised, if sometimes chilly, vision. It was spontaneous architecture and interesting structures and lyricism. It was original without being self-conscious about it.You can tell a lot about a jazzer by what they call the tunes. With no vocals there’s a lot of scope Read more ...
graeme.thomson
I am talking to Toumani Diabaté on a phone line into Bamako that, as he explains with an audible shrug, sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. He was due in London a couple of weeks ago to promote Ali & Toumani, his album of duets with the late, great Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, but was struck down with malaria at the eleventh hour. It rather puts the standard rock star bleating about "stress and exhaustion" to shame. “At the last minute I had packed my suitcase but I started to vomit and malaria came, it was really bad,” he says. “Thank God, thank God, today I’m getting better." Read more ...
howard.male
On a new CD compilation from Strut Records out this week, Next Stop... Soweto, we’re back in Soweto in the 1960s and 1970s and it's the dark, dark days of apartheid; an era in which it was actually against the law for a black South African to even be a musician, and live music was banned from most public places in black areas. There were also no cinemas, bars, hotels, shopping centres or electricity and death was an everyday fact of life. Yet only fifteen miles away, white Johannesburg’s skyscrapers glistened; an affront to the asbestos roofed, poverty-steeped insult to human dignity that was Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
When I last met Nitin Sawhney, I’d heard that he was a whizz at mental arithmetic. I asked him, perhaps impertinently, what was 91 times 94? “8,827,” he relied, quick as a flash. Several hours later, I worked out he was probably right. “Vedic mathematics,” he said. What I can say about last night’s performance was there was some interesting mathematics going on. Some time signatures rubbed friskily against others in certain scenes in ways a mathematician would love. The score had an enormous facility. But a question we have to confront is - imagine this said in the voice of Carrie from Sex Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Our ongoing series celebrating musicians’ birthdays. This week’s include Lou Reed, in action in a stupendous version of "Venus in Furs" with the Velvet Underground, Chopin played by the wonderful Martha Argerich, archive footage of Miriam Makeba, Brian Jones and bottle-neck blues maestro, Furry Lewis. Videos below.2 March 1942: Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, performing "Venus in Furs". Definitive proof that, contrary to speculation elsewhere on the site, you don't need more than three chords to make great music?
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Here' s Lou being contrary as ever, and Read more ...
theartsdesk
This month's CD selection is headed up by extraordinary albums from modern folkist Chris Wood, a startling come-back from Gil Scott-Heron and pretenders to the New Rave throne New Young Pony Club. Among the new releases we have the late Johnny Cash, Krystle Warren, Midlake, John Hiatt, Frightened Rabbit and ex-e.s.t bassist Dan Berglund. The compilation of the month is from Soweto and there's a fabulous tango soundtrack. A veritable audio feast. Our reviewers are Russ Coffey, Peter Culshaw, Thomas H Green, Howard Male, Marcus O'Dair, Neil Spencer, Sue Steward, Adam Sweeting and Graeme Thomson Read more ...
bruce.dessau
The past might be a foreign country but sometimes they don't do things so differently there. Two decades ago I found myself backstage at Wembley Arena discussing music with one of MC Hammer's rubber-limbed dancers, nicknamed No Bones. Who was his favourite band? A bunch of geeky white Brits called Depeche Mode, who, I discovered, were a huge influence on the Detroit Techno scene. Twenty years on it is payback time. Detroit Techno is now a huge influence on another group of geeky white Brits, Hot Chip.Their fourth album, One Life Stand, draws heavily on Derrick May's turbo-charged orchestrated Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The blogs are alive with the sound of Thom Yorke of Radiohead's new band, which he told us today had the name Atoms For Peace. "It seemed bleedin' obvious," said Yorke of the name on the Radiohead website Dead Air Space. Nerdy, pacifist, retro, ironical: the name ticks all the boxes. An antique phrase of "super-group", once used to describe bands like Blind Faith, has been dusted down to describe the band which includes Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Flea and percussionist Mauro Refesco. "Atoms For Peace" was also a song on Yorke's solo record, The Read more ...
joe.muggs
Two London clubs currently appear to be under threat. The Ministry of Sound, one of the most successful brands in club music's history, is kicking up a fuss because new housing block planned opposite it may make it vulnerable to noise complaints. Meanwhile, rumours have flown around over the last 48 hours that police are lobbying Hackney Council against Plastic People in Shoreditch whose licence is currently under review for reasons of “prevention of crime and disorder and public nuisance basis”.It's funny that these two have become news at the same time, as you could not find two more Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
A new report from Freemuse, the organisation which campaigns against music censorship, describes the oppression of heavy metal musicians in numerous countries. From the underground to the mainstream, heavy metal is a global phenomenon attracting millions of fans – but along the way it has gained many enemies too. “Long-haired music”, as it has been described in Malaysia and China, has been banned by both governments.In several Middle Eastern countries, both musicians and fans have been arrested and accused of devil worship. Heavy metal continues to be banned from radio and television in China Read more ...