New music
Guy Oddy
It’s seven years since Portugal’s muscular psychedelicists, 10.000 Russos got together and five since they released their barnstorming, self-titled EP. In that time, they’ve put out numerous other EPs, singles, appearances on compilation discs and three albums, including a collaboration with Dutch industrialists, RMFTM. However, their latest long-player, Kompromat could just end up being their defining piece of work. Comprising just five tracks, only one of which comes to an end in less than seven minutes, it is a glorious mix of thumping, trancey grooves, reverb, distortion and half-heard Read more ...
joe.muggs
There couldn't be much that's more techno than for a musician to have had a quarter-century career, only just be releasing his second solo album, and making it a quadruple. David Sumner aka Function is a true scene trouper: starting out in New York in the mid-90s, moving – inevitably – to Berlin in the 2000s, releasing dozens of 12”s, collaborating successfully with other key names like Dominick “Vatican Shadow” Fernow and, for quite some time, with Karl “Regis” O'Connor, and DJing for more nights than the imagination can comfortably encompass in various dark caverns and catacombs.These 17 Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ever since rock’n’roll began, the orchestral cover version has played a contentious role in popular music. It has sometimes signified a revision of raw musical styles for those who prefer being spoon-fed; it has sometimes represented aspirations to high culture and the concert halls of yore; in more recent years, it’s often been a gambit to persuade those growing older to re-listen to a defanged version of their youth. And it’s almost always a cash-in.The rave generation is now ageing and, just as inevitably, bland orchestral versions of their prime have started appearing. Whole nights have Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Grimes, the Canadian art pop performer, made headlines last week when she predicted the end of musical performance as we know it on a podcast interview with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. Live music, she said, would be “obsolete soon”, while she gave a window of a couple of decades in which artificial intelligence would become “so much better at making art” than human creatives.I suspect that Björk, who has been incorporating cutting edge technology into her music since before Grimes was born, would have a few opinions on live music’s purported obsolescence. Her Cornucopia tour, which Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
If this is what Sam Fender can provoke on a Monday night, then Lord knows the reaction he generates at a weekend. A chart topping album and sold out tour may mean the Geordie is firmly at pop’s top table now, but it was still impressive the sheer delirium his arrival onstage appeared to generate, a status that lasted throughout the brisk hour or so that followed.Although a youthful crowd, there were older generations in attendance too, perhaps a reflection of the fact that Fender’s influences tap into a cross-generational appeal. There is little point in pretending the 25 year old is re- Read more ...
graham.rickson
I was hooked after perusing Thought Porridge’s track listing; who wouldn’t want to hear songs with titles like “The British Cactus & Succulent Society” or “Mournful Colouring Book”? The latter is laugh-out-loud funny, its downbeat list of subjects including “a graph showing a downward trend in life expectancy/A tonsillectomy”, jauntily intoned by lead vocalist Dean Murray against a parping brass backdrop. “A dropped ice cream, a forgotten dream,” goes another line. Murray’s crisp delivery recalls Vivian Stanshall’s late Sixties stint with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, and like the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A 55-minute set without an encore. Songs bleeding into each other. No announcements, no talking from the stage. A constantly moving frontman seemingly channelling a yen to merge Merce Cunningham moves and tai-chi. A band who, barring the odd grin from one of the guitarists, focus on what they are doing without expression. An absence of “please-like-me” posturing.Then there’s the music. In high gear from the moment the stage is taken, it’s a motorik-bedded onslaught systematically augmented with crescendos and mounting power. Beyond the Krautrock influence, other nods are made: New Order when Read more ...
peter.quinn
Whether performing with the ground-breaking Jazz Warriors big band (which he co-founded in the 1980s) or Marque Gilmore and DJ Le Rouge in Project 23, taking the lead roles in Julian Joseph’s jazz operas Bridgetower and Shadowball, or emceeing one of the legendary Metalheadz nights at Blue Note, Hoxton Square, Cleveland Watkiss has been one of the most unfailingly creative, daringly protean artists on the UK jazz scene. For his 60th birthday celebration as part of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival, the award-winning vocalist, actor, composer, broadcaster and educator performed Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This edition of Peter Culshaw’s global music radio show has a great guest – the hugely talented Brazilian singer, writer and producer Arthur Nogueira who just played his first-ever concert in London. Arthur plays several of his pellucid, lyrical songs live in the studio. He comes from Belem in the state of Pará in North Brazil on the edge of the Amazon and the show concentrates on music from that region. Pará is the size of France, but its amazing music scene remains a closely-guarded secret. One of the local specialities is the retro Dick Dale-style surf music developed by the likes of Read more ...
Asya Draganova
Do you remember Jack Peñate? His name may have been forgotten by some, or not heard yet by others. But his new album After You, following from Matinée (2007) and Everything is New (2009), is worth the listen for the fans of smart, intricate pop music that is true to the independent vibe. Jack has very audibly moved away from his original playful, naïve indie rock sound which led to his early success, to pursue a much more mature take on making music. But will his original audience follow?Well, they might, and Peñate is likely to gain some new listeners too, because After You is a clear Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If the prices fetched by original pressings are a guide, Mighty Baby are notable. Their eponymous first album, issued by the fittingly named Head label in November 1969, sells for at least £150 and has changed hands for over £500. A Blue Horizon edition of A Jug of Love, their second and last album (October 1971), tops out at £600.Mighty Baby and A Jug of Love are rare, totemic British underground albums. The first is a glistening fusion of psychedelia and John Coltrane-inspired textures with overt nods to American west coast rock. Traffic were on a similar path. For the second album, Mighty Read more ...
Liz Thomson
It’s always good to be among friends and it’s safe to say that everyone gathered at Islington Assembly Hall on Saturday for the third and final North London gig of Billy Bragg’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Tour was left of centre. The tour began in July on the south coast, planned long before Borrissey, as Bragg calls the PM, conned the country in going to the polls but events have certainly given it a new urgency.The gigs have been organised in groups of three – the first night ranging across Bragg’s 35-year career; the second songs from his first three albums; and the third from his Read more ...