club music
Joe Muggs
Today is World Mental Health Day and of course that means an awful lot of hugs and homilies, thoughts and prayers, deep-breathing exercises and it’s-good-to-talk platitudes from people speaking from positions of immense privilege – ranging from the well-meaning to outright grifters.All too rarely does any of this speak to people’s lived experience of mental suffering, and that goes double in the music world, where perpetual insecurity has increased exponentially with the collapse of the live performance industry and the future looks particularly bleak right now. One new book, however, is Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Alongside Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada were one of the last big acts to blossom from the 1990s boom in clubland and DJ culture. They are responsible for bona fide classics in “Superstylin’”, “At the River” and “I See You Baby”, and also founded the Lovebox Festival, which was named after their fourth album. Their last albums, the Black Light/White Light pairing, arrived a decade ago, and mined Eighties electronics to decent effect. Such biographical positivity is included to counterpoint the fact their latest album is a yacht rock horror story, possibly seeking the ears of Balearic ironists Read more ...
Joe Muggs
This is a musical homecoming for Róisín Murphy, both geographically and figuratively. She may have been raised in Dublin and spent her gig-going adolescence in Manchester, but Sheffield is where she began her life as a clubber and performer – and it’s with Sheffield scene mainstay of almost four decades, and Murphy’s friend of quarter of a century, Richard “Parrot” Barratt that she’s collaborated here. And Murphy may have explored all kinds of experimental and pop styles, but the place where she’s always been at her most confident (not that she lacks confidence anywhere) is on the dancefloor Read more ...
Joe Muggs
A new and very strange kind of pop music has bubbled up over the past half-decade plus. It’s internationalist, rooted in both underground electronics and the most populist styles, bound up with playful but sometimes terrifying ultra high definition psychedelic aesthetics, and dominated by female and non-binary musicians. It’s given a platform to some of the most vivid and fascinating characters in music today, from Beijing’s 33EMYBW to Margate’s BABii, Washington DC’s Swan Meat to Montevideo’s Lila Tirando a Violeta, and most prominently Glaswegian SOPHIE and Caracas-via-Barcelona Arca. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When Disclosure appeared a decade ago, they were a necessary antidote to the rank gorgonzola of EDM, which was turning club music into a garish mire of musical infantilism. These two deliberately faceless Surrey brothers, Guy and Howard Lawrence, doffed their caps to the classic house sound but updated it to the 21st century, splashed it with garage and R&B, and never wandered too far from the party. Their third album, with assistance from impressively well-chosen collaborators, attempts the same but is too often trapped by its own tastefulness.The short of it is that the first half of Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Some of the greatest acts of all time are the ones which find a sound and never need to alter it. Motörhead, Dinosaur Jr, Status Quo... and in the electronic world, Switzerland’s finest, Yello. It’s over 40 years since they first set millionaire playboy and conceptual artist Dieter Meier’s maniacal cackle to music, and 36 since he and former truck driver Boris Blank settled into their status as a duo, codifying their formula of Meier’s dada scatting over zippy electropop with their first hit “Bostich”. Their louche and high tech style would become a foundational influence on global club music Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’ve been plenty of global breakout successes from Nigeria in the past decade; D’banj, Davido, Wizkid and more – but by far the most recognisable to the international audience is Damini Ogulu aka Burna Boy. And doesn’t he know it. His last album was called African Giant, and this one – his sixth – plays on that, depicting him on the cover in cartoon form as a titan, striding over modern roads and ancient monuments. Everything about it radiates confidence before you’ve even hit play – and that includes the tracklist, which very notably doesn’t include any US megastars, unlike most of his Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Although Metallica are screening a freshly recorded concert across America’s drive-in cinemas at the end of the month, we’re no nearer to actual gigs anywhere, especially the UK. Hold tight. We’ll get there. In the meantime, here are three events worth taking a look at.AIM Music AwardsTonight (Wednesday 12th August), the annual AIM Music Awards will occur online here from 7.00 PM. The event features performances by two leading names in UK hip hop, Little Simz and AJ Tracey, as well as a tribute to the late great Afro-beat drumming legend Tony Allen by Femi Koleoso from UK jazz unit the Ezra Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Given the collaborator list on this album, it should be a bit of a mess. Brit punks IDLES, Aussie woozy pop auteur Tame Impala, pumping bassline house producer Chris Lorenzo turning his hand to drum’n’bass, as well as Ms Banks, Dapz On The Map, Oscar #Worldpeace and a host of other UK rap talents all add their distinct musical personalities to the mix. Yet somehow, what Mike Skinner drolly called “really just a rap duets album”, put together while waiting for a film to accompany The Streets’s comeback album proper, is some of his most coherent work ever.It is sonically diverse, mind. In Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
With festival season upon us but rendered null and void by COVID-19, green field events are looking for ways to present themselves and, this week, in different ways, a couple are doing just that. Also there’s new material from Gorillaz and a virtual electronic music extravaganza. Dive in!Download TVOf all music genres, metal has perhaps been worst served by the current crisis. It’s a cathartic music, best enjoyed in the moshpit, played loud by bands working tight together via stacked amps. Not, then, ideal for at-home acoustic shows on basic kit. Britain’s premier metal-fest, Download, which Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lady Gaga proclaimed by Tweet that her sixth album represents her “absolute love of electronic music”. Chromatica features EDM names such as Axwell from Swedish House Mafia, French DJ-producers Tchami and Madeon, bro’step superstar Skillex, as well as a good few more. It is a step away from the likeable pop experimentalism of her last album, Joanne, yet does not, unfortunately, have the sheer dancefloor heft of her albums Artpop and, especially, the bangin’ Born This Way.The contradictory aspect of Chromatica is that while the music is often generic Euro-cheese, it regularly plays off Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
From the biggest man band of all time to a rising Doncaster DJ, from the lofts of New York to the garage studios rooms of Scotland, the best of current musical lockdown life is here. Dive in!Take That/Robbie Williams: Meerkat Music ConcertThe big news this week is that the classic Take That line-up, minus Jason Orange, who left for good in 2012, will be reuniting for an at-home concert at 8.00 PM this Friday (29th May) via the Youtube channel of the price comparison website-related Compare the Meerkat. Supporting music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins and Crew Nation, a relief fund for workers Read more ...