jazz
Album: Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes - What Kinda MusicFriday, 24 April 2020
We can all do with a dopamine hit right now, given the current lockdown, and those feel-good hormones kick in the instant you hear Yussef Dayes’ tight backbeat on the opening title track of What Kinda Music. A collaboration between drummer and... Read more... |
theartdesk on Vinyl Lockdown Special 2: Luke Haines, Finnish jazz, cosmic country, blues and moreFriday, 10 April 2020
Welcome to the second of our lockdown specials. It’s a small but vital dip into what’s new on plastic. Other than that, theartsdesk on Vinyl wishes you well in these strange times. Stay at home, play records, turn up the volume.Various Cadence... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl Lockdown Special 1: Napalm Death, Brazilian jazz-pop, 1980s indie and moreTuesday, 07 April 2020
For the duration of this C19 Lockdown, rather than the usual sprawling monthly epic, theartsdesk on Vinyl will be presented regularly in bite-sized editions, roving across the pile of releases we have already, since those incoming have been whittled... Read more... |
Album: Pokey LaFarge - Rock Bottom RhapsodySaturday, 04 April 2020
Talk about a great big melting pot! The eighth studio album by the man born 36 ago as Andrew Heissler in Bloomington, Indiana, and known to the world as Pokey LaFarge digs deep into the bubbling cauldron of Americana, in its very broadest sense. He... Read more... |
Rock ‘n’ Roll Island: Where Legends Were Born, BBC Four review - remembering rock's big bangSaturday, 28 March 2020
“Friday night is Amami night” – that was the ad that ran from the 1920s through to the 1950s for a brand of “setting lotion”, a delightfully old-fashioned term. Those were the days when young women stayed home and did their hair, in preparation for... Read more... |
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, BBC iPlayer - an intimate, insider's account of his life and musicFriday, 27 March 2020
Miles – where to begin? Some 21st century revisionists find his art fatally tainted by his personal life, and his violent behaviour in relationships. His rasping, epithet-scarred voice, the sound of a snake sloughing off its own skin, able to... Read more... |
Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All, Netflix review - epic two-parter on pop's first superstarThursday, 26 March 2020
Coming in at around four hours, in two parts, this 2015 documentary is ostensibly about Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, but really, via the prism of his existence, it’s as much about America’s journey through the first two thirds of the 20th century.... Read more... |
Album: Shabaka & the Ancestors - We are Sent Here by HistoryThursday, 12 March 2020
Londoner Shabaka Hutchings's other main groups, The Comet Is Coming and Sons Of Kemet, are pretty modernist. They incorporate dub, post-rock, post punk and rhythm patterns that recall London pirate radio sounds into the playing of his ensembles,... Read more... |
Max Raabe, Palast-Orchester, Cadogan Hall review - escapism with ironyThursday, 05 March 2020
Escapism sometimes feels not just useful but necessary. To be carried back, for an evening, to the world of the 1920s/1930s dance band, with foxtrots, pasodobles, crisp starched collars and secco endings, of slick hair and even slicker arrangements... Read more... |
Album: Sergio Mendes - In the Key of JoyWednesday, 26 February 2020
Released to coincide with a new documentary on his life by filmmaker John Scheinfeld, In the Key of Joy celebrates the multifaceted genius of Brazilian producer, composer, keyboardist and vocalist, Sergio Mendes.Recorded between Brazil and... Read more... |
Album: Pat Metheny – From This PlaceSaturday, 15 February 2020
From This Place (Nonesuch) is a complex, meticulously produced and many-layered album which demands concentrated and repeated listening. In many ways, it is all the better for it. Pat Metheny himself has written an essay or “Album Notes” of no... Read more... |
Album: Huey Lewis and the News - WeatherWednesday, 12 February 2020
Huey Lewis and the News were an unlikely mid-Eighties phenomenon. Their Sports album was a mega-success for a band already approaching early middle age. Their Fifties feel, given a contemporary polish and boosted by association with cinematic... Read more... |
