jazz
Album: Charles Lloyd & the Marvels - Tone PoemWednesday, 10 March 2021
Charles Lloyd is too graciously, fully alive to set in iconic aspic, his latest golden era still in mid-flow aged 82, when his surviving sax peers, Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter, can no longer blow. The worlds he’s passed through beyond jazz... Read more... |
Disc of the Day 10th Anniversary: the level playing fieldFriday, 19 February 2021
Theartsdesk 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... |
Albums of the Decade 2011-2021Tuesday, 16 February 2021
On Valentine’s Day 2011 Disc of the Day album reviews sprang into being, and has been solidly reviewing five albums a week ever since. Out of the many thousands, which ones did we rate the most? To mark 10 years since its inception, 12 of... Read more... |
Disc of the Day Celebrates 10 Years of Album ReviewsMonday, 15 February 2021
Ten 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: Elephant9 - Arrival Of The New EldersMonday, 01 February 2021
Arrival Of The New Elders is unlike anything Norwegian trio Elephant9 have done before. Previously, their jazz-prog mélange was as full-on as it could be. Attacking, hard and heavy. Now, a previously unfamiliar pensiveness has been revealed.While... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975Sunday, 10 January 2021
Two of the four CDs in this set are of a live performance taped on 16 April 1964. The other pair of discs were recorded on 9 July 1975. Each show issued on Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 was captured by the north German regional broadcaster... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Maria Schneider Orchestra - Data LordsWednesday, 06 January 2021
One of the great ironies of 2020 was that, in a year in which the importance of music – as escape, as release, as comforter – was amplified like no other, vast swathes of musicians saw their livelihoods disappear overnight.A far-reaching commentary... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Looking back at 2020Sunday, 27 December 2020
In 2020, one archive release exerted a more forceful presence than any other. Live At Goose Lake August 8th 1970 caught The Stooges as they promoted their second album Fun House. The source was a previously unknown, professionally recorded tape... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Marius Neset – TributesWednesday, 16 December 2020
This year of all years – surely – we need music which takes us to better, happier places. And the new album from Norwegian-born saxophonist/composer Marius Neset does that. It also gives us a bit more hindsight and context as to what his two... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2020: Melt Yourself Down - 100% YesWednesday, 16 December 2020
I’ll leave it to others, better placed, to unpack 2020’s gruelling impact on so many. But one of its side effects was the elevation, alongside food and television, of recorded music. It became a salve, a focus, a locus of social media blather about... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 61: Amy Winehouse, Krust, Motörhead, Extrawelt, Sade, Chase and Status and moreTuesday, 01 December 2020
Welcome to the penultimate 2020 edition of the world’s vastest, most musically wide-ranging, regularly posted, online vinyl reviews. This year vinyl boomed, especially in the wake of COVID-19, with gig-goers stuck at home but wanting new music. 2020... Read more... |
Album: Gary Barlow - Music Played By HumansThursday, 26 November 2020
Gary Barlow’s Music Played By Humans is, in all but name, a Christmas album. Mixing big-band jazz, Latin and pop, it’s an assortment box of bubbly, broad-based business bangers deployed by the Take That veteran with help from a host of showbiz pals... Read more... |
