electropop
Thomas H. Green
“It’s never been about the success to me,” says Marc Almond, “It’s always been about the adventure.” It’s a great attitude that’s writ large over the band’s uncompromising flame-out of an early Eighties pop career. Soft Cell: Say Hello, Wave Goodbye was a welcome celebration of this electronic duo, often under-appreciated as 24 carat songwriters, although it sometimes failed to encapsulate the band’s obtuse hedonic outsider dynamic.The pivot on which the hour-long documentary turned was Soft Cell’s one-off, sold-out reunion concert at the O2 last autumn. There was enjoyable footage of Almond Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although In the Dark comprises 11 tracks of outward-facing contemporary North European electronica-infused, dance-edged pop along the lines of “Faded”, the 2015 international hit helmed by Norwegian DJ/producer Alan Walker, an undercurrent implies a fondness for the Eighties.The evidence racks up. “Scarcity” sports a vocoder-like vocal effect. The title track and album opener suggests a familiarity with the keyboard saturation of Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes”. The stuttering effects on “Erase You” and “Round Two” are akin to what cropped up when sampling keyboards became endemic. And a fair Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When Ladytron appeared in 1999, at a time when electronic music was glutted with pop-trance, Mitsubishis and superclubs, they drew instead directly on the post-punk synth-pop explosion of 20 years before, The Human League and the like. While all about revelled in warmth, hedonism and groove, Ladytron embraced the android: crisp in appearance, dry and enigmatic of lyric, symmetrically stylish. Coming back now from a five-year break, it’s their own music of 20 years before they may be defined against, a striking back catalogue they often match.When I first heard Ladytron all that time ago, I Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Monzen Nakacho is an old and distinguished part of Tokyo that’s renowned for its nightlife. It’s also the moniker that Worthing musician Gary Short has given himself for his 21st century keyboard wizard persona. Short’s output has been called “giallo synthwave” because it owes a certain something to the music of 1970s Italian horror films, most especially prog band Goblin’s synth-driven soundtracks to the movies of Dario Argento. With his second album, however, he has upped the ante and moved well beyond his influences.Almost entirely instrumental, except for light vocoder vocals layered into Read more ...
Owen Richards
Janelle Monáe had already established herself as pop’s next great innovator with The ArchAndroid and Electric Ladyland, two albums full of earworms, high production and retro-futuristic lyrics. This all-too-brief musical career seemed in jeopardy when Monáe successfully made the jump to film, with her debut features Hidden Figures and Moonlight winning heavily at the Oscars. After all, her act was as much reliant on theatre as it was songwriting, perhaps this was always the endgame. But with the joint release of singles “Django Jane” and “Make Me Feel” in early 2018, it appeared that if Read more ...
Barney Harsent
As befits an album preceded by lofty claims and vaulting ambition, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships is long. Very, very long. Last year, Matt Healy stated that the next album The 1975 produced had to be an OK Computer or The Queen Is Dead for our times, and gave journalists up and down the country a convenient strapline in waiting. The truth is that it’s more like their Sandinista! (The Clash's triple album), by which I mean it’s great in places, but in dire need of editing. The band fidget throughout, flitting between musical styles with the kind of abandon that perfectly Read more ...
Chris Harvey
There was barely a black-clothed, white-faced Numanoid in sight in the packed auditorium of the Royal Albert Hall as Gary Numan made his first ever appearance at the Victorian concert hall. His fans appear to have left that kohl-eyed look behind them as they’ve aged over the four decades since he first broke into the charts with Tubeway Army, but their love for him seems undimmed.Black might have looked a little out of place anyway as the electronic pop pioneer and his band loped on stage looking like a cross between extras from Mad Max: Fury Road and refugees from the desert planet of Read more ...
theartsdesk
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why. Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brillianceBob Dylan - More Blood, More Tracks ★★★★★ The fourteenth volume in the Bootleg Series is a keeperBrad Mehldau Trio - Seymour Reads the Constitution! ★★★★★ Prolific improvising pianist creates the apotheosis of the piano trioThe Breeders - All Nerve ★★★★★ Kim and Kelly Deal - plus Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Eight long years, Robyn fans have been waiting. Crazed tweets screamed #releasehoneydammit into the ether for weeks as the Swedish songwriter teased her new music.Comeback single and certified summer earworm “Missing You” was the first song Robyn wrote for the album, but there was a time when she didn’t know if she’d ever make another record. What began as a breakup song soon took on feelings of bereavement after Christian Falk, her friend, collaborator and La Bagatelle Magique bandmate, died, after a short period of illness.So Robyn isolated herself in the studio for a year, making lo-fi Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s been a tough few years for Sŵn Festival. Once a genuine rival to fellow urban festivals Great Escape and Sound City, recent events have fluctuated between one-dayers and a string of ticketed gigs. 2018 marked the biggest change yet, but also a return to the multi-day, multi-venue format. Founders Huw Stephens and John Rostron announced they were handing over the reigns to Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff’s leading music venue. This fresh injection of enthusiasm and experience was just what the festival needed. This year, Sŵn was spread over four days: large single gigs on Wednesday and Read more ...
Joe Muggs
“Caustic motherfucker”. There it is, right up in the first few lines of Baxter Dury's spoken narration over the sleazy, spanky electro beats of Etienne de Crecy. There it is: a statement of intent, a phrase to relish in the mouth, that show's he's going to make full use of the English language. Of course, it's a descendent of his dad's “arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks” – Baxter has never hidden his musical and lyrical lineage – but it's also entirely his own, coming from a place that delights in the physicality of those consonants, and in the mechanics of storytelling and Read more ...
Katie Colombus
The first release from Jess Glynne’s new album, “I’ll Be There” confirmed the North London singer as the first ever British female artist to have seven no.1 singles in the UK Chart.She’s been winning MOBOs, Grammys, Brit, Ivor Novello and MTV Awards for the last four years, and while some of the above successes have come from collaborations (major hits with Clean Bandit’s "Rather Be" and Route 94’s "My Love", for example) Jess has become a household name in her own right, with a distinctive sound of big vowels, mad vibrato, gospel underlay and a housey beat. Which is clearly a reliable Read more ...