New music
alice.vincent
With ReAnimate, the National Portrait Gallery’s Late Shift team were aiming high. The event sought to bring a free sensory experience throughout the entire building, promising to enchant the hordes away from Trafalgar Square and into a visionary evening of stimulation – not just of sight and sound, but also taste and smell.It would do so through the combined curative powers of Karen Pearson and her award-winning radio production company, and Martyn Ware, electronic music pioneer famed for founding The Human League and Illustrious Company, the tech-savvy sound technology and collaborative Read more ...
ash.smyth
Some bloke called Jack mailed to say that he did indeed have two tickets to Iron Maiden (baby), and for the Friday ‘n’all. So I called shotgun, threw on my cleanest “I ♥ Justin Bieber” T-shirt,* and pitched along to Docklands to hang out with the other teenage dirtbags – only to discover that they are, on average, actually about 40 years old. A lot of them in chinos.We were gathered there to witness Iron Maiden, seemingly at the top of their 36-year game, finish yet another epic tour, in London, in front of a Martian space-trailer set (yeah, who knew the boundary marker for manifest rock Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sixties-style garage rock can really hit the spot. Snotty vocals, amped-up guitars and an attack that draws from The Kinks, Pretty Things and so on can be just the tonic when a sea of tougher-to-process stuff is drowning everything else out. But unless you’ve been at it a million years – cf Billy Childish – or have some spiffy new spin, it’s hard to stand out. Europe is littered with besuited combos with the right haircut. The tack that Les Bof! take is to do it in French. Les Bof! are actually Edinburgh based. Only singer Laurent Mombel is French, a Marseilles transplant. Guitarist Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas, usually comes to mind in association with hometown boy Bill Clinton. Soul and funk fans, however, aren’t fussed with the sax-playing former governor and president and fixate on the city’s True Soul label, the home of a raft of rare and sought-after sides. Two volumes compiling the imprint have just been issued and include previously unissued tracks. The harmony-driven soul, Southern grooves and tight funk make a case for True Soul being an essential component of soul USA.Musically, Bill C’s sax was in keeping with Little Rock’s limited musical Read more ...
howard.male
Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. So it’s something to both celebrate and ruminate upon, that on Tuesday night I was reviewing a gig at which the guitar was undisputed king, whereas last night I was standing before an 11-piece band that didn’t include a single guitar. But the Romanian big band Mahala Rai Banda produce such a brassily dense sound that it’s hard to imagine even the most cranked-up Strat being able to get a chord in edgeways.But first up we were treated to homegrown Balkan boogie merchants The Trans-Siberian March Band. You wouldn’t think that a band that raided the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Held each year at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, the Great British Beer Festival is the top-drawer event in any British beer enthusiast's diary. Organised by CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale), it’s a mind-boggling, discombobulating overload of more beer than it’s possible to imagine. Every non-corporate brewer is here, from the heard of (Fullers, Thwaites) to the local and barely heard of. Beer is central, but there’s food and games too. People are here too. Masses of them. And they’re all happy, friendly and full of good vibes. This event has a great atmosphere.The chaps above bought Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Seventies “Kosmische” music of Germany – the more spaced-out and synthesister-led counterpart to Krautrock that had its commercial apogee in Tangerine Dream – seems to be a gift that keeps on giving. Perhaps because the releases were for so many years mainly obscure and had to be hunted down by passionate and/or deranged followers, it has built a global network of followers who extend its principles into new music. From Gorillaz' Damon Albarn to techno legends like Carl Craig, its rippling synth patterns and sidereal twinkles can be heard woven into the fabric of popular culture. And Read more ...
howard.male
The Killer B’s have been heralded as a kind of alternative supergroup (their line-up consisting of ex-members of The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Chicken Legs Weaver and The Men They Couldn’t Hang) so my expectations last night were high. But a poor sound system, in conjunction with the band’s desire to play much too loud for that poor sound system, ended up making it very hard to judge whether I was hearing the future of rock’n’roll or just another pub rock band.The irony with full-on raucous rock‘n’roll is that it’s a fine art. You might think that it’s just about plugging a cheap guitar into a Read more ...
david.cheal
This is pretty weird stuff. Or at least, that’s the way it seems at first. If all you know, as I did to begin with, is that DJ Diamond is a 24-year-old DJ from the West Side of Chicago whose real name is Karlis Griffin, and that Flight Muzik is his debut album, then this will seem like music from another planet – one where notions such as melody, structure and listenability have little meaning; it’s music, but not as most of us know it.The rhythms are complex and multilayered – often there’s more than one going on at the same time: a hummingbird-fast heartbeat as the backdrop, with Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
WOMAD is in its 29th year, and ticket sales have gone up 29 per cent, we are told, with over 35,000 sold. World music, always rather beyond fashion, is thriving, at least in this live festival incarnation in Wiltshire. One criticism, according to The Independent among others (made by trendy middle-class people in a fit of self-loathing, generally), was that there were too many Cath Kidston tents and it has become too bourgeois. But there was enough strangeness and idiosyncrasy on display to undermine the idea that WOMAD has become complacent in its middle age.In fact, WOMAD has expanded Read more ...
sue.steward
Ten o'clock at night and the WOMAD air felt as hot as Dakar preparing for Baaba Maal. Sadly, given this year's hugely expanded audience, it was hard to see the stage unless you know how to glide to the front like a snake (which years of festival practice have taught me). Though I still missed close views of the opening three songs and the singer’s acoustic guitar accompaniment, it was impossible not to hear his voice, even adjusted to unusually soft and mellow soulful tones rather than the familiarly sharp, declamatory style that pierces the heart.A slow start and build-up was a plan Read more ...
mark.kidel
Late on Friday night at WOMAD, on the more intimate Charlie Gillett Stage in Charlton Park, there was an unusual cross-cultural treat. Ballaké Sissoko is one of Mali’s most accomplished kora players: not as well known as his Bamako next-door neighbour Toumani Diabaté and more firmly rooted in Manding musical tradition, but undoubtedly in the same class. Vincent Ségal is a brilliant French cellist who moves with consummate ease from the classical repertoire to free jazz. They are both technical virtuosi but neither of them plays to the gallery.
In a manner consonant with some of the most Read more ...