psychedelia
Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful SymmetryThursday, 10 July 2025
I met Mark Stewart once. It was on a platform at Clapham Junction, I wouldn’t normally approach a famous person like that, but I felt I had to pay my respects. It turned out he was getting on my train – going down to Dorset to “visit his old Ma” –... Read more... |
Glastonbury Festival 2025: Five Somerset summer days of music, controversy and beautiful mayhemFriday, 04 July 2025
MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by dark brown rings. He looks peaky.“Why?” I enquire. Sweat nodules down my face, my body, everywhere. So saline-intense it leaves powdery... Read more... |
Album: Mocky - Music Will Explain (Choir Music Vol. 1)Wednesday, 02 July 2025
Dominic “Mocky” Salole has had a long career in which the tension between authenticity and pastiche has been a constant. Toronto-born, of English and Yemeni heritage, he came of musical age in the Bohemian hotbed of 1990s Berlin with a close-knit... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Rupert’s People - Dream In My MindSunday, 29 June 2025
Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was an instant phenomenon. Recorded in April 1967 and issued as a single on 12 May after pre-release play on pirate station Radio London, it topped the UK charts four weeks later. Globally, it hit big on most... Read more... |
Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons, Dulwich Picture Gallery review - teeth with a real biteSaturday, 14 June 2025
I first came across Rachel Jones in 2021 at the Hayward Gallery’s painting show Mixing it Up: Painting Today. I was blown away by the beauty of her huge oil pastels; rivulets of bright colour shimmied round one another in what seemed like a joyous... Read more... |
Album: Miley Cyrus - Something BeautifulFriday, 30 May 2025
A couple of months ago, I wrote here that Lady Gaga was the godmother of the new generation of ostentatiously “theatre kid” pop stars – but actually, perhaps I was wrong and Miley Cyrus deserves that title. Ever since her teens, she has consistently... Read more... |
Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal FilmWednesday, 21 May 2025
Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points – French, German and Brazilian psychedelia, Radiophonic Workshop sound effects, 1960s library music – which... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Chapterhouse - White House DemosSunday, 18 May 2025
Quoted in an early music press article on his band Chapterhouse, singer-guitarist Stephen Patman said their ambition was “to have our records on sale in 20 years’ time. To leave something behind when we die." That was September 1990, in a piece tied... Read more... |
Album: Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - Tall TalesThursday, 08 May 2025
I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and songwriting, and that a lot of people find his anguish cathartic, but the more he goes for it the more I... Read more... |
Album: Dr Robert & Matt Deighton - The Instant GardenSaturday, 26 April 2025
There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher; then the electronically groovy 1990s arrive; Acid Jazz Records; boss mod Eddie Piller; his collection of... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Motor City Is Burning - A Michigan Anthology 1965-1972Sunday, 13 April 2025
In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken place in his Michigan home city of Detroit that July. “Oh, the motor city's burnin',” sang Hooker. “My home... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 89: Wilco, Decius, Hot 8 Brass Band, Henge, Dub Syndicate, Motörhead and moreWednesday, 09 April 2025
VINYL OF THE MONTHRattle Encircle (Upset! The Rhythm)Rattle are an unusual band. Consisting of Nottingham duo Katharine Eira Brown and Theresa Wrigley, their set-up is two drum kits, with which they build simple hypnotic patterns then add repetitive... Read more... |
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