New music
Kieron Tyler
“During 1975, 1976 and the first half of 1977 punk was the future but, after the highpoint of ‘God Save the Queen’, London punk already seemed spent. By the time that the Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ was tumbling out of the charts in early September, there had been two huge hits that changed the way I heard music. Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and ‘Magic Fly’ by Space made it clear: electronics were the future. And it didn’t matter whether it was post-punk or the despised disco.”So begins the titular writer’s essay accompanying Do You Have The Force? (Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Read more ...
Paul Bullock
Producing music programmes for TV with live performance during the past few months has not been without its challenges, but somehow doing so right now feels more important than ever – both for the pleasure it brings audiences and as support for the performing arts. As we entered the first national lockdown, we’d just completed filming the Category Finals of BBC Young Musician – the classical edition. Immediately we had to reconfigure our edit schedule to deliver the series remotely. Everyone agreed it was important to broadcast the programmes as planned in the spring. And that’s Read more ...
Liz Thomson
I really wanted to like this album – indeed, from a short sample, I thought I would love it. But while there are indeed some lovely moments, repeated listenings fail to persuade me of anything other than two good musicians with evident talents who have been too clever by half with a baker’s dozen of traditional and modern folk songs and fatally compromised the qualities that make such music unique – its glorious clarity and simplicity.Sylvia Schmidt has a lovely voice, gossamer-light, and James Kitchman plays a mean jazz guitar. But they are each too tricksy and the sum of their tricksiness Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s almost a truism in rock’n’roll that within every padded and bloated double album, there’s a fine single disc waiting to burst out. Among the plethora of tunes on Smashing Pumpkins’ first double album since 1995’s fine Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, however, there’s barely enough to fill a worthwhile EP. In fact, given the joyless musical Mogadon on offer on Cyr, even that might be something of a stretch.Flat and uninspiring tunes follow dreary and unmemorable dirges almost without pause for great swathes of the 70 minutes or so of Smashing Pumpkins’ latest effort. “The colour of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kali Uchis is a superstar in the making. But she’s seemed that way for a few years and, despite making waves in the US, has not crossed over on the scale her talent deserves. Emanating a presence that’s part Gaga, part Winehouse, part Megan Thee Stallion, and part Shakira, the 26 year old American-Columbian delivered one of 2018’s finest albums, Isolation, demonstrating that sexy, chart-friendly pop could also be wildly eclectic and inventive. Her second album is more singular in focus, a Spanish language affair deep-dipped in Uchis’ uniquely woozy brand of easy listening.Uchis has worked Read more ...
joe.muggs
Charles Webster is one of those connecting figures who make the idea of “the underground” seem quite convincing. Originally from the Peak District but coming of musical age in Nottingham, he was inspired by Chicago house and Detroit techno music from their very genesis in the mid 1980s, and went on to make some of the finest British house music ever. Along with Notts locals like the legendary DiY Soundsystem (prime movers of the week long Castlemorton Free Festival) and Martin “AtJazz” Iveson, he pioneered an ultra sophisticated and soulful sound that forged connections with odd Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Almost 30 years since Stephen Mallinder jumped ship from Cabaret Voltaire, it still seems strange to accept that the band is now the solo concern of Richard H Kirk, the final remaining original member of Sheffield’s path-beating electronica experimentalists. This isn’t to suggest, for one minute, that the quality of the Cabs’ work has taken a dip since Mal’s departure. It’s just become a totally instrumental concern with any vocals, such as they are, provided purely by mangled spoken word samples. In fact, if anything Shadow of Fear is a return to the proto-acid house magnificence of the band Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Manchester’s Slaughter and the Dogs were perfect for 1977. In May, their debut single “Cranked up Really High” sported bee-in-a-jar guitar, a hoarse vocal and an unstoppable forward motion. Its follow-up, September’s impeccable “Where Have All the Boot Boys Gone?”, was more muscular and prefigured the chart-bound terrace-chant punk of Sham 69. Next, in November, the brash “Dame to Blame” revealed a glam-rock undertone.All great and all essential, but not necessarily reviewed positively at the time by the weekly music papers. The first was Melody Maker’s “saddest single of the week.” The Read more ...
peter.quinn
Oh to have been in the beautiful surrounds of Cadogan Hall last night – not just to have experienced the gorgeous wall of sound, heartfelt artistry and musical camaraderie at first hand, but also to have been able to show our appreciation for a concert which takes months of preparation.Social distancing measures saw the EFG London Jazz Festival Ensemble reduced from its customary 40-plus musicians, but while the textural palette may not have been quite as luxuriant as usual, the slightly leaner charts provided their own rewards. This was a necessarily different Jazz Voice, but even a computer Read more ...
Russ Coffey
After all we've been through this year, thank God some things never seem to change. Like the music of metal monoliths, AC/DC. Forty-seven years after the boys started jamming together in a Melbourne suburb, they're still at it, pumping out their iconic amped-up, head-banging blues. Power Up, their 17th studio LP, is loud, ludicrous and, above all, uplifting. It's also a miracle it was made at all. After 2014's Rock or Bust, odds were the band would never play together again: the problems started when drummer Phil Rudd got busted for drugs and attempted homicide Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Singer/pianist/songwriter/entertainer Joe Stilgoe responded remarkably rapidly to the new circumstances of March 2020. Even before the first nationwide lockdown was declared, he had started doing a series of daily performances on YouTube: “Stilgoe In The Shed”. Back in July, 67 online shows later, gigs were starting to come in again. So to mark what felt like the end of that period, he spent just one day in producer James McMillan’s studio, and recorded an album of a selection of the songs he had performed in his online shows.SEBASTIAN SCOTNEY: What are your thoughts about the new lockdown? Read more ...
Katie Colombus
For her fifth studio album, Paloma Faith decided to boldly ctrl-alt-delete the first version, and re-do it in lockdown.The new-new one is a little bath bomb of an album – it fizzes with funky pop, 80s sheen and emotional nuance than speaks of her long term relationship and being a mother to teenies (she’s currently pregnant with no. 2).If you need any further explanation about her headspace in re-versioning Infinite Things and generally how it’s been going in lockdown, fast forward to “Me Time” which practically yells about “I need some me time, figuring out who I want to be time, saying what Read more ...