electronica
Kieron Tyler
Two things are certain with music coming from the north: there will be some wonderful surprises and some of it will sound like nothing else on earth. It’s even more enticing when the two merge. Making the peculiar accessible is a uniquely Scandinavian knack. There are more than a few examples of that – the creation of new micro-genres – in this round-up of current and new releases, but some straightforward albums are equally striking. First, however, we head for the offbeat end of the spectrum.After my first encounter with Denmark’s Sleep Party People, I remarked they were “a peculiar Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There was time when “trance” was not a dirty word amongst connoisseurs of electronic music. It became, eventually, regarded as an aberration in the hip techno universe. Gentlemen of a certain age still make statements such as “I only like real trance music, like Brian Eno and David Byrne.” They speak of pre-acid house music that is mantric, tribal, original and brilliant but “trance” came to mean something else, a Nineties style that was created by two German DJs, Sven Vath and Paul van Dyk, a bangin’ club soundtrack that combined the pulse of techno with the great melodic flourishes of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Martin Schmidt of the US electronic experimental outfit Matmos once said, “If you make a living from your art, that starts to poison it. You can’t help thinking, how can I change this art to make a better living. The obvious answer is that you make it more palatable to more people.” It’s a statement that sums up the conundrum facing any creative person, excepting rich dilettantes, which is why it’s always a pleasure to be confronted by an album such as Black is Beautiful, the third from the duo of Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, who also record as Hype Williams.The pair have left a trail of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In 2009 Orbital returned too soon. Dance music icons Paul and Phil Hartnoll only called it a day a little over four years previously so it was hardly a magnificent comeback. The resulting live shows smelt more of tax bills than art. Fair enough, we all have to live, but it was a shame to see such a great creative pairing fizzle rather than shine.Orbital ruled dance music throughout the Nineties. Their self-titled “brown” album remains an all-time great and the decade’s other four albums were also astonishing, even beautiful - lush listening music that turned into a driven foot-moving sonic Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Welcome to theartsdesk's first radio show with Peter Culshaw and Joe Muggs, recorded with the extremely able help of Brendon Harding at Red Bull Studio London.In the course of this show, Peter and Joe take a look at the depth and breadth of music covered by theartsdesk, playing some delicious tracks just out or about to be released (see below), and discussing the meaning of musical genre in a globalised world and asking whether it is still a useful way of bracketing artists. In amongst this you can hear an interview with the young Soweto-born musician Spoek Mathambo, now mainly residing Read more ...
bruce.dessau
I decided to listen to the new album by former Ultravox frontman John Foxx on a trip to buy some louvre doors at a branch of Homebase. I thought the journey to the city's edge industrial estate via flyovers and concrete spur roads would provide the appropriate scenery for this master of Ballardian urban alienation. I was not disappointed. Well, I was actually. They didn't have louvre doors in the right size. The Shape of Things, on the other hand, was a perfect fit.From the opening track “Spirus”, in which an almost funky riff morphs into a synthesiser lament, Foxx has skilfully tracked back Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The word “grimes” conjures up images of a Dickensian London underworld, or of tough modern urban music, but Grimes is far, far from these reference points. For starters, she’s from Canada. She also makes music that defies easy categorisation. Visions is her third album but it is a lot less niche than her first two, as if she has finally bloomed sonically. In the broadest sense it’s electro-pop but Claire Boucher – Grimes – spices her computer sounds with a swooping multi-tracked vocal style that recalls Kate Bush, Enya and the Cocteau Twins rather than Lily Allen.Some songs, such as “ Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s 11pm on a Thursday night. The kind of weather that makes balloon animals of umbrellas, that raises a tsunami in a bird-bath, is raging outside. Inside the Harpa concert hall some 300 people are gathered in attentive silence while five musicians, each sat at a brightly-coloured piano barely two feet tall, play hairdryers, flippers, and drop small change from boxes onto the floor, in a solemn performance of John Cage’s Music for Amplified Toy Pianos. Only in Reykjavik; only under Ilan Volkov; only as part of the Tectonics festival.When youthful maverick Volkov was appointed Music Director Read more ...
Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs
After a nine-month absence, during which Joe Muggs explored the world's largest natural bassbin in the Amazonian rain forest and Thomas H Green waited to receive his passport back from the Bolivian government, Singles & Downloads returns to celebrate the best in new music. From the ambient to the danceable, the glorious to the outright embarassing, we present the juiciest possible representative cross section of modern popular music.Rebecca Ferguson, Too Good to Lose (Simco/Sony)X Factor runner-up and fabulously husky purrer Rebecca Ferguson's album is based on the sort of wholesome Adele Read more ...