New music
Music Reissues Weekly: Padang Moonrise - The Birth of the Modern Indonesian Recording IndustrySunday, 29 January 2023
“Ka Huma” by Ivo Nilakreshna sounds as if a jazz band was taking on rock ’n’ roll. There’s a swing and sway, busy rhythm guitar and a lead female voice singing a yearning melody. An instrument which seems to vibes is in there. But there’s more than... Read more... |
Album: Sebastian Rochford, Kit Downes - A Short DiarySaturday, 28 January 2023
A Short Diary, a duo album for piano and drums, contains music of astonishing directness, calm and concentration. The story of how it came into being is fascinating, but it also stands on its own as pure music of luminous quality, and is bound to be... Read more... |
Album: Deathprod - CompositionsThursday, 26 January 2023
Ambient is everywhere now. After a quiet (lol) 2000s, when it rather disappeared into the cracks, perhaps tarred with the sense that the more cosmic sides of the Nineties rave experience were passé, beatless music steadily rose in profile through... Read more... |
Celtic Connections: Juliette Lemoine, Orchestral Qawwali Project review - fusion of myriad musical traditionsWednesday, 25 January 2023
In full force again for 2023, Scotland’s premier folk music festival Celtic Connections is back with its signature strand of blending and sharing musical traditions. On Saturday, emerging Scottish folk cellist Juliette Lemoine gave a superb early... Read more... |
Album: Låpsley - Cautionary Tales of YouthWednesday, 25 January 2023
Let me start by being pretentious and self-referential, spending ages doing that rather than reviewing the album. My theory is that most male music journalists aged between 45-65, like me, don’t PROPERLY love the music of 21st century female pop... Read more... |
'Time Out of Mind' Revisited - a deep focus take on classic DylanTuesday, 24 January 2023
The 1997 release of Time Out of Mind was the resurrection of an artist who appeared to have wandered off the reservation some years before, lost in transit on his Never Ending Tour, trailed by an army of "Bobcats" who followed him for show after... Read more... |
Callum Au and Claire Martin, Cadogan Hall review - 'Songs and Stories' live at lastTuesday, 24 January 2023
Recorded in 2019, released in 2020, and winner of Album of the Year at the 2021 Parliamentary Jazz Awards, it was a delight to finally witness the launch of Callum Au and Claire Martin’s spectacular album of jazz standards and American Songbook... Read more... |
DVD: Oscar Peterson - Black + WhiteTuesday, 24 January 2023
I can’t help enjoying the continuing elevation of the jazz pianist Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) to national monument status in Canada. A park or a square here (Montreal), a boulevard there (Mississauga), a school, a concert hall, a statue, a... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Bob Stanley / Pete Wiggs Present Winter of DiscontentSunday, 22 January 2023
At some point in 1979 a duo called The Door and the Window are playing a London Musician’s Collective show in a large brick building along the road from Cecil Sharp House in Camden. One of them has a synthesiser, probably a WASP. The other has tape... Read more... |
First Person: Kings Place Artistic and Executive Director Helen Wallace on a year of 'Sound Unwrapped'Saturday, 21 January 2023
2023 is surely the year the performing arts reach peak "immersive", a word endangered by its own ubiquity. From Punchdrunk’s Burnt City to Danny Boyle’s The Matrix we are promised a swallowing-up by art. Kings Cross is the location for two visual... Read more... |
Album: Silverlake - Jim Rockford’s SmileSaturday, 21 January 2023
During the late Seventies and early Eighties, Robin Dallaway was one of the prime movers behind both dada punks the Cravats and art-pop weirdos the Very Things. His new outfit, Silverlake are ploughing a distinctly different furrow though – one that... Read more... |
Album: Måneskin - Rush!Friday, 20 January 2023
Rock'n'roll rejuvenators, Eurovision winners with more of their songs streamed online than there are people in the world, the glammy young Roman rockers have opened for The Stones in Las Vegas, delivered a city-stopping sold-out show at Rome’s... Read more... |
