Scotland
Kieron Tyler
Choosing such a loaded name is wilful. Scottish trio Haight-Ashbury are going to be identified with psychedelic-era San Francisco whatever they do. Should they wish to extend their musical wings, diversions into drum and bass or metal aren’t going to be easily accommodated. It's just as well then that Haight-Ashbury are top-drawer practitioners of a terrifically attractive dark psychedelia.Their second album (released under the name Haight-Ashbury 2, but they still trade as Haight-Ashbury too) opens with hand percussion, a jangling sitar and a keening, modal vocal line. Rhythm is Mo Tucker Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Wicker Man is a great British film, one of the top horror films of all time. Since its release in 1973, its curious combination of queasily jolly folkloric ritual and sinister paganism has only grown to seem more discomfiting, reeking of the uncanny, and flavouring new films as recently as the extraordinary Kill List. I propose, then, to assume The Wicker Man is 5/5 smash - if you haven’t seen it, you should do so at once - but this review will deal with the other film in a new DVD set, Wicker Man director Robin Hardy’s 2010 sequel, the far less well-known The Wicker Tree.The plot has a Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire carries with it an enormous loading from its past, the associations with those iconic performers on stage and screen Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh not the least of them. For a narrative dance, that hothouse close-up combat between the hapless Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski, her sister’s boorish husband, needed a fresh revising and some bravely independent performing. Much kudos to Scottish Ballet for creating and pulling off a genuinely involving new dance-drama which looks as stylish as it feels emotionally substantiated.Director Nancy Read more ...
theartsdesk
Carole King: The Legendary DemosLisa-Marie Ferla For one whose appreciation of Carole King, the songwriter, has never truly been distinguishable from her appreciation of Carole King, the performer, a listen to the treasure trove that is The Legendary Demos is a curious exercise indeed. Perhaps it’s the presence on this collection of early cuts of six tracks that would later appear on Tapestry, King’s 1971 breakthrough in her own right, but even with the knowledge that many of these recordings were put together as showcases to be pitched to other artists, it is hard to dissociate them from a Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Relentlessly energetic, opinionated, and never less than passionate about music-making, Ilan Volkov is a close as you get to a prodigy in the world of conducting. Appointed as Young Conductor in association with the Northern Sinfonia at just 19, at 28 Volkov became the youngest ever chief conductor of a BBC orchestra, and almost 10 years later still continues his relationship with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra as their Principal Guest Conductor. Most recently appointed as Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and with a growing schedule of international Read more ...
Russ Coffey
This may be the Thick as a Brick 2 tour, but it’s also the 44th year of Ian Anderson’s performing career, mainly as Jethro Tull's front man. In that role he's variously been a bluesman, a rocker and a folkie.1972's Thick as a Brick was dubbed a "progressive rock satire". Tongue-in-cheek as it might have been, it was also 100 percent prog. Yet, like much of Tull’s back catalogue, it continues to influence a new generation. The question the crowd at Hammersmith were asking last night was this: at 64, could Anderson still pull it off?The answer in part is given by the new album. Here Anderson Read more ...
theartsdesk
T Rex: Electric Warrior 40th Anniversary Special EditionHoward MaleThe most blinkered and subjective music fan is the teenager. But is it my teenage self (barely mediated by my adult self) informing you that this T Rex album from 1972 is the most perfect collection of fey cosmic ballads and sexy pop/rock that there has ever, ever been? I’d like to think not. You see the thing is, even today, as soon as the earthy unearthly “Mambo Sun” fills the room with its sultry, ineffable presence, I’m thinking what I always think when I play Electric Warrior: this sinuous, fey, funky, majestic, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
As probably befits the title, when the words “human, don’t be angry” are spoken for the first time on the Chemikal Underground release of the same name the voice they emerge in is anything but. Repeated over a dreamy guitar riff rendered otherworldly under a synthesised beat, ostensibly male and female robotic voices sound conciliatory, confused, commanding.The final voice, as the track ends, slows and fades out as if dependent on a flattened AA battery or, more poignantly, recognising the central theme as a lesson in futility.Better known for a more straightforward style of arch, acoustic Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Queen's given everyone an extra bank holiday, so while you rest up over the Easter holidays, start planning your next downtime with theartsdesk's definitive clickable festival guide for the summer. We have headline listings and links for all the UK festivals this year, from rock by the lochs to DJs in London parks, and catching classical and opera on the way. Due to the London Olympics' snatch on Britain's stocks of portable toilets and police, as well as the economic downturn, some festivals have been suspended this year, including Sonisphere Knebworth and Glastonbury (but registration Read more ...