1980s
Ryuichi Sakamoto: 'Ideally I'm recording all the time, 24 hours a day' - interviewSaturday, 26 May 2018
Ryuichi Sakamoto has conquered underground and mainstream with seeming ease over four decades, never dropping off in the quality of his releases. Indeed his most recent projects, following his return to public life after treatment for throat cancer... Read more... |
Hip Hop Evolution, Sky Arts review - foundations of a revolutionSaturday, 26 May 2018
Comprehensively charting hip hop’s rise from the underground to the mainstream is no mean feat, but that’s exactly what Canadian MC Shad aims to do over four hour-long episodes. Originally shown in the US in 2016, and available in full on Netflix,... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Yung WuSunday, 13 May 2018
When Crazy Rhythms, the ever-fabulous first album by New Jersey’s Feelies was issued in April 1980 it seemed to have little local context. Although the band’s fidgetiness suggested a kinship with Talking Heads and there were a clear nods to The... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Burning BritainSunday, 06 May 2018
In early March 1980, the weekly music paper Sounds dedicated their front cover to “the new face of punk” with a photograph of Stinky Turner, the singer of The Cockney Rejects. What had, in 1977, been widely interpreted as a challenge to musical... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Julian CopeSunday, 29 April 2018
In terms of chart statistics, Julian Cope’s period with Island Records looks pretty good. He issued four albums with the label and all of them charted. Saint Julian (issued in March 1987) peaked at 11, My Nation Underground (October 1988) stalled at... Read more... |
Boy George and Culture Club: From Karma to Calamity, BBC FourThursday, 12 April 2018
The title signalled what was coming so clearly, it may as well have been called When Bands End Badly: the two camps, the arguments and sniping and the eventual collapse of Culture Club’s US and UK tour to promote an album of new material. It’s... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Radka Toneff and Steve DobrogoszSunday, 08 April 2018
Fairytales is lovely. It opens with a subtle version of Jimmy Webb’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” which merges Radka Toneff’s emotive and intimate vocal with Steve Dobrogosz’s sparse piano lines. The ingredients are minimal, there is no... Read more... |
In the Long Run, Sky 1 review - bright start for multiracial comedyFriday, 30 March 2018
It’s quite bold to create a multiracial comedy set in Hackney in the early Eighties, a not especially amusing period of riots, the Falklands War and Thatcherism. Happily, Hackney boy Idris Elba has managed it with a wry eye and a light comic touch.... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Cocteau TwinsSunday, 18 March 2018
This column last encountered Cocteau Twins in 2015 when the compilation The Pink Opaque and the Tiny Dynamine/Echoes in a Shallow Bay album, which collected two EPs, were reissued on vinyl only. Now, it’s the turn of two albums-as-such: 1983's Head... Read more... |
CD: Kim Wilde - Here Come the AliensWednesday, 14 March 2018
It’s difficult to dislike Kim Wilde, whatever you think of her music. Even more so after her pissed Christmas sing-along on a tube train a few years back became a massive YouTube hit. Or how about her appearance at Download Festival in 2016 with... Read more... |
CD: Tracey Thorn - RecordSunday, 04 March 2018
Tracey Thorn’s solo career in the 21st century has veered between contemplative adult music and the pop dancefloor. With her latest, we’re definitely on the pop dancefloor, but, despite delicious synth-led production from Ewan Pearson, ignore the... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Television PersonalitiesSunday, 21 January 2018
How much of someone else’s despair is it possible to take? What are the limits on putting a sense of desolation or isolation into a song? Can such naked expression be mediated by a glossy production or crowded instrumental arrangements which... Read more... |
