jazz
Album: Susanna - Meditations on LoveWednesday, 21 August 2024
For a record whose subject matter involves unfaithfulness, ageing, loneliness, fear of death, darkness, sorrow, battles, haunting, sleeplessness and struggling to breathe, this is a lot of fun. But then Susanna Wallumrød has always leavened... Read more... |
Album: Rosie Lowe - Lover, OtherFriday, 16 August 2024
Trip hop is everywhere these days. From Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey on down, some of the biggest artists in the world channel a smoky, bluesy, late 90s mood – and in the UK something even more interesting is happening that taps into a longer,... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 85: Julian Cope, Art Brut, Heaven 17, The Mysterines, Sleaford Mods, The Wombles and moreSaturday, 10 August 2024
VINYL OF THE MONTHMike Lindsay Supershapes: Volume 1 (Moshi Moshi)Solo debut from Mike Lindsay, a founder member of tunng and also half of psychedelic duo LUMP. It’s a good thing when music is hard to describe. Opener “Lie Down” sets up the stall, a... Read more... |
Album: Mari Kvien Brunvoll & Stein Urheim with Moskus - Barefoot in BryophyteMonday, 05 August 2024
Barefoot in Bryophyte is a collaboration between musicians embedded in Norway’s jazz and experimental music scenes. Some of it, though, sounds nothing like what might be expected. Take the fourth track, “Paper Fox.” Figuratively, it lies at the... Read more... |
Album: Meshell Ndegeocello - No More Water: The Gospel of James BaldwinSaturday, 27 July 2024
Meshell Ndegeocello's groundbreaking new album No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin takes you on a musical journey which defies categorisation.Eight years in the making and set for release on 2 August – Baldwin's centennial – the album’s... Read more... |
Album: Isabell Gustafsson-Ny - RosenhagtornFriday, 26 July 2024
In a discussion recently a friend compared generative AI to self-driving cars back in 2017: the makers were convinced, perhaps rightly, that they had solved 99.9% of the problem, and therefore would have a viable product within the year. The problem... Read more... |
Album: 137 - Strangeness OscillationsThursday, 25 July 2024
Something of a jazz supergroup this one: with drum virtuoso, the ubiquitous Seb Rochford, Jim Bar of Get the Blessing, Adrian Utley – formerly of Portishead, a prolific collaborator and producer, but with a heart rooted in jazz, and sax and flute-... Read more... |
Madeleine Peyroux, Barbican review - a transport of delightTuesday, 23 July 2024
You can take the woman out of the Left Bank, but you can’t take the Left Bank out of the woman. Madeleine Peyroux would be perfectly at home in a boîte in the Latin Quarter, or perhaps Montparnasse. Alas, we were in the sadly unromantic surrounds of... Read more... |
Album: Slowly Moving Camera - Silver ShadowFriday, 19 July 2024
With a title track that sounds like the theme tune of the best TV series of your life – only it doesn’t exist yet – and some star guest jazz players joining the core trio of Dave Stapleton, Deri Roberts, and Elliot Bennett, Slowly Rolling... Read more... |
Album: Catherine Russell and Sean Mason - My IdealFriday, 12 July 2024
Voice and piano. The combination can have a simplicity, a conversational freedom, a rightness about it, as it does here. “My Ideal” (Dot Time), with its eleven songs from the early days of jazz up to the 1950s, is already being placed alongside... Read more... |
Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straightSaturday, 06 July 2024
It’s often said that nobody mythologised Billie Holiday like Billie Holiday. I’m not so sure.In this fine, clear-eyed biography, Paul Alexander documents Holiday’s propensity for feeding the media inaccuracies and tall tales, her enthusiastic... Read more... |
Album: Kiiōtō - As Dust we RiseSaturday, 06 July 2024
As Dust we Rise ends with “Quilt,” a percussion-driven lamentation bringing to mind the New Orleans stylings of Dr. John. The album begins with “Hem,” where stabbing piano and strings interweave with a pulsing, wordless chorale. After a while, a... Read more... |
