disco
Album: Beyoncé - RenaissanceMonday, 01 August 2022There’s polarising discourse and there’s polarising discourse, and then there’s Beyoncé discourse. On the one hand, there’s “the Bey Hive”: the very model of a furious modern fandom who will boost her and monster her critics at a microsecond’s... Read more... |
Sister Act the Musical, Eventim Apollo review - the West End meets the WestwayThursday, 28 July 2022If jukebox shows occupy one end of the musical theatre spectrum and Stephen Sondheim's masterpieces the other, Sister Act The Musical is somewhere in-between.We get songs we know (Alan Menken's score, heard first on the West End and then, in 2011,... Read more... |
Glastonbury Festival 2022: an unexpurgated odyssey around the best party on the planetThursday, 30 June 2022Last days of June 2022, I sit in my writing hut. My liver is radioactive jelly, my nose reinforced concrete, my leg muscles marathon-cramped, and poisoned perspiration rolls down my forehead, stinging my eyeballs.You’ll already have seen a trillion... Read more... |
Album: Confidence Man - TiltSaturday, 02 April 2022Despite a five-year career and no breakout hits, Australian outfit Confidence Man has grabbed the attention of some heavyweights.Signed to Heavenly Records, a label which knows their Roscoff onions from the common-or-garden variety, their 2017... Read more... |
Saturday Night Fever, Peacock Theatre review - crowd-pleaser stays true to its rootsThursday, 17 February 2022Wind the clock back 45 years and the Big Apple was bankrupt, the lights had gone out and many native New Yorkers were packing their bags. Gangs controlled whole neighbourhoods, drugs were the currency of choice and, for a kid with no college,... Read more... |
Album: Jungle - Loving in StereoThursday, 12 August 2021The UK is currently in the middle of a jazz, funk and soul renaissance. Homegrown, grassroots talent is producing an abundance of glorious music both retro and forward facing, in a way not seen since the combined influence of Soul II Soul and the... Read more... |
Album: Jack Savoretti - EuropianaFriday, 25 June 2021“Dance like its ’76”, Jack Savoretti (born 1983) sings on “Too Much History”, one of many upbeat synth-driven tracks on his new album Europiana. 1976: a sweltering summer when the charts included “Happy to Be On an Island in the Sun”, a slice of... Read more... |
Glastonbury Festival: Live at Worthy Farm livestream review - glitched access upstages beautifully shot live footageTuesday, 25 May 2021INTERLUDE 1: INVALID CODE-AGEDDON6.45 PM on Saturday 22nd May and all is well. Like tens of thousands of others across the UK (or maybe even more?) my wall flatscreen is tuned to Glastonbury’s livestream. Prior to the event itself promos for Water... Read more... |
Album: Raf Rundell - O.M. DaysThursday, 08 April 2021The career of Raf Rundell has had one of the most satisfying trajectories of any in UK music – a steady process of self-realisation, from record label staff via DJing and artist management, through being a serial studio collaborator, to becoming a... Read more... |
Disc of the Day 10th Anniversary: the level playing fieldFriday, 19 February 2021Theartsdesk is a labour of love. Bloody-mindedly run as a co-operative of journalists from the beginning, our obsession with maintaining a daily-updated platform for good culture writing has caused a good few grey and lost hairs over the years. But... Read more... |
Disc of the Day Celebrates 10 Years of Album ReviewsMonday, 15 February 2021Ten years ago yesterday, on Monday 14th February 2011, one of theartsdesk’s writers, Joe Muggs, reviewed an album called Paranormale Aktivitat, by an outfit called Zwischenwelt. It was the first ever Disc of the Day, a new slot inserted into... Read more... |
Album: Bicep - IslesSaturday, 23 January 2021Bicep's second album fufills the promise of the first, released in 2017 to wide acclaim. Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar, friends since childhood from the city of Belfast, draw inspiration from Chicago house, Detroit techno, Italo disco and... Read more... |