funk
Joe Muggs
It’s hard to think of an album that’s simultaneously as dramatic and as restrained as this. But then Dave Okumu has always put his music and ideas out into the world in the subtlest of ways.As a guitarist he’s been omnipresent for many years, playing with Jane Birkin, Adele, King Sunny Adé, Grace Jones, Theo Parrish, 4 Hero, Matthew Herbert, Amy Winehouse, Tony Allen, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and many others, and as a writer/producer he’s quietly sculpted a highly influential sophisticated pop sound for the likes of VV Brown, Nilüfer Yanya, Jessie Ware and Rosie Lowe as well as his own band The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An original pressing of 1979’s Thrust fetches at least £1000. Its 1980 follow-up Thrust Too can be a relative bargain at around £400. The prices are partly explained by J Dilla having sampled Thrust Too’s “Survival of the Funkiest” and Thrust’s “Summer Fun” being sampled by Daphni. Both funk-soul albums – the first credited to McNeal and Niles, the second to Wilbur Niles and Thrust – were barely circulated and barely sold. Text-book collector’s items.But without the music, potential buyers’ wallets would stay in their pockets (though the attraction rarity brings can, of course, sometimes Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis knocked it out of the park with the vibrant, eclectic global pop of debut Isolation, one of the best albums of 2018.Since then, she's gained career traction via guest appearances with Gorillaz, Little Dragon, Mac Miller, and others, and consolidated things with a new, determinedly downtempo direction on the Spanish-language album Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios), and its breakout tune, “Telepatía” (nigh-on-800 million streams on Spotify). Her third album continues the trajectory, but mostly in English, a stoned bedroom affair of warm, squidgy, modern Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the first theartsdesk on Vinyl of 2023 and it’s another whopper, over 8000 words and a range of musical styles that defies genre or categorization, from the most cutting edge sounds to boxsets of golden vintage pop. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHJimmy Edgar Liquids Heaven (Innovative Leisure)Detroit technoid art maverick Jimmy Edgar’s latest indulges in pure, welcome electronic ear-fritzing, a place where R&B has it out with Aphex Twin or Sam Gellaitry’s most twisted constructions, and, most entertainingly, more than half an ear on pop. Edgar's latest album is mostly a series of Read more ...
Gary Naylor
For many years, I would ask groups of students to vote in elections because “it’s important to honour those who gave up so much to ensure that the likes of us can”. Some would nod, others would shrug, a few might have inwardly scoffed – too cool for school, innit? Kate Prince’s long-aborning musical Sylvia illustrates how our (near) universal franchise was won and the emotional and physical cost levied on the pioneers who won the argument in Parliament and on the streets.Ben Stones’ set doesn’t give us much to work with – the dark greys on even darker greys suggesting the bleak Read more ...
Barney Harsent
It’s always hard to choose one album to spotlight come the annual Best Ofs, and 2022 has given us an extraordinary embarrassment of riches to choose from – the bountiful bastard…January brought with it a small but perfectly formed under-the-radar gem in Bed Wetter’s A Life in the Day. A deeply personal piece, it saw producer Geoff Kirkwood removing his Man Power mask and letting us in to his world of gorgeous, atmospheric sound sculptures.Andy Bell’s Flicker followed. A double album of wide-eyed eclecticism, Bell’s second solo outing felt simultaneously new and nostalgic. It was, without Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s Friday night and I’ve finally arrived at 43-year-old French music festival institution Trans Musicales. Due to some dreadful nonsense, it’s taken a 12-hour train journey, two baguettes, one short Stephen King novel, six large beers, a tumbler of Bourbon, and one shuttlebus to place me at the Parc Expo, a series of giant airport hangars that house the majority of musical activity (although there’s a smattering of earlier events in Rennes itself).The music runs from 9.00 pm-ish through to shortly before dawn and Trans Musicales is renowned for ensuring that the nearly 60,000 attendees are Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Any younger Sugababes fans might have felt a little neglected here. “Who’s a 90s child?” yelled out enthusiastic DJ Shosh as she warmed up the crowd, followed soon after by a cry of “Who’s an 80s child?”, which received an even louder roar in response. This was an audience seeking a nostalgic party all right, albeit a rowdier one than anything by the girl group during their chart-topping days, with even a pint glass sailing through the air during a lively opener of “Push the Button” that felt more like a rave than a pop gig.The good spirits lay not just in the tunes, of which there was a Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s retro and there’s retro. Some music – what you might call the Oasis tendency – simply reproduces the obvious signifiers of the past as signposts of cool. But there’s other stuff that shows deep understanding of both the technique and the spirit of what came before, that really taps into the same wellsprings that created the sound it’s replicating in the first place.Exec producer Gilles Peterson and bandleader Jean-Paul “Bluey” Maunick’s STR4TA project is well and truly in the second camp, and its beauty is in its absolute adherence to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” principle. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Does the world need to hear more from Red Hot Chili Peppers? Outside the bouncin’ bro’ fanbase, a regular consensus is that, despite being one of the biggest bands in the world, doing their global stadium rock thing – with free added funk! – achieving the highest level of commercial success, they're not of actual interest.Then they release two very long albums within six months of each other, Return of the Dream Canteen being the second. Who the hell needs that? Turns out that anyone with an ear for joyously executed West Coast-flavoured pop-rock just might.The twofold keys to its Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The journey of Ross “Hudson Mohawke” Birchard has been truly one of the most extraordinary in modern music. From teenage scratch DJ champion and happy hardcore raver in some of Glasgow’s more feral club environments, in the late Noughties he quickly moved through making rhythmically fractured hip hop.Just as quickly he leapt into huge trap beats that made him a trailblazer in the explosion of the arena-packing US EDM scene, and from there to being studio collaborator of choice for Kanye West, making significant contributions to 2013’s Yeezus and 2016’s Life of Pablo. Now LA based, he is Read more ...
Katie Colombus
By day three of any festival things are usually winding down. But there was a sense that Love Supreme have saved the best for last this year with a strong offering of funk and soul, R&B and experimental jazz.Crowds of Londoners hitching a tractor ride to Glynde rubbed shoulders with campers and glampers – there’s a definite demographic here of people whose kids have flown the nest and they’re living life to the fullest.Georgia Cecile (pictured left) in peach satin with fur cuffs kicked off the party on the South Downs stage with a touch of old school jazz glamour and a nod to the Great Read more ...