New music
joe.muggs
For underground music producers, there almost always comes a phase in life when they accept they're no longer young guns and embrace either massively complicated synthesisers, floaty new age music, or both. For Bristol-based Jake Martin aka Hodge it's the latter. This, his debut album after a decade releasing a couple of dozen EPs on connoisseurs' favourite labels and DJing around the world, has all the signifiers. Rainfall, tropical bird sounds, breathy synth tones in rising patterns, huge reverbs on tiny sounds... yes, even things that sound like panpipes: it's all there. From the hippie Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the second of our lockdown specials. It’s a small but vital dip into what’s new on plastic. Other than that, theartsdesk on Vinyl wishes you well in these strange times. Stay at home, play records, turn up the volume.Various Cadence Revolution 1973-1981: Disques International Vol. 2 (Strut)Welcome second volume of Strut Records’ carefully collated history of Guadeloupe’s Disques Debs International, “the longest-running and most prolific label to have come out of the Francophone Caribbean”. It follows An Island Story: Biguine, Afro-Latin & Musique Antillaise 1960-1972 which Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Given the times, theartsdesk’s New Music section is starting weekly round-ups of new streaming fare to liven the spirits and entertainingly pass the time during this lockdown. Here are our first five suggestions. Dive in!Light In The Attic ShowcaseThe archival/reissue label Light In The Attic put together an impressive continent-hopping set of live-from-home performances, running the gamut from veteran Brazilian musician Marcos Valle to Alex Mass of Texan fuzz-rockers The Black Angels. Mostly cover versions, the biggest name is probably Jarvis Cocker who, psychedelically shadowed, offers a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Laura Marling has always loved to weave the textures of Seventies Laurel Canyon folk-rock into her music. Never before, though, has she evoked the spirit of David Crosby and Joni Mitchell quite like on her new record. From the opening strummed chords to the last hummed notes Song for our Daughter is full of Californian haze, making for a gorgeously contemplative experience. Of course, Marling hasn't actually lived in LA for some years now, having returned to London in 2014. But her experiences living near the Hollywood Hills – and the life-lessons learned – Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
ZZ Top always seemed like a Texan version of Status Quo. It turns out, from watching this entertaining but hardly revelatory documentary, that is kind of what they are. Directed by Canadian Sam Dunn, best known for his 2005 documentary, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, the film follows Dusty Hill, Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard as they go from Hicksville also-rans to global megastars, while hardly changing their bar room blues boogie a jot.The hour-and-a-half documentary is good on their convoluted beginnings, clearly laying out their stints in various wannabe-Beatles/Stones 1960s outfits, with Read more ...
Liz Thomson
This is the perfect album for these dark and dislocating times, a delicious slice of folk-Americana, 10 beautifully crafted songs (plus a bonus online) that envelop you in the gentle winds and fogs of California’s Monterey peninsula, and the waves on its flotsam-dotted sands.It is in fact the fourth album by Nels Andrews, who now lives in Santa Cruz but who discovered his song-writing talent while in Taos, New Mexico, a landscape that has inspired many. Released in the US last fall, its UK and European appearance was originally timed to coincide with a tour. That must wait, leaving us to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
John Prine, who has died at the age of 73 from a Covid 19-related illness, was one of the great American folk poets. Having spent his early adulthood pounding the sidewalks as a mailman in Chicago, he never quite shucked that blue-collar aura of the working man's minstrel. His best songs - "Paradise", "Angel from Montgomery", "Speed of the Sound of Loneliness", "Souvenirs" - are gritty and unpretentious snapshots of ordinary American lives, but inflected by Prine's quirky worldview and way with words.He was no overnight sensation. He had been making a good living in folk clubs when one night Read more ...
Joe Boyd
When it comes to making records, I love deadlines. Embarking on an open-ended project, particularly with the infinite number of overdubs made possible by ProTools, is my idea of hell. Back in the Nineties, I once spent an afternoon combining vocal takes line-by-line into a master track for one song. That’s when I started to think writing books might be a better way to make a living.But, having just four days in a studio with a quartet of world-class musicians, an engineer who loves moving microphones around in a single space to achieve the perfect sonic blend (Jerry Boys, with whom I’ve been Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Their debut’s title was a disillusioned shrug, and for most of the 19 years since Is This It, The Strokes have continued with seeming reluctance, releasing new albums fitfully. But here they are, still riding the afterglow of Manhattan’s decadent energy in the season before 9/11 and Giuliani’s clampdown, and with producer Rick Rubin, career resurrection a speciality, on hand to tease out growth beyond the Television tribute act they once resembled.The New Abnormal is a diverse and mature sixth album, exuding worldly confidence as it dismisses the detractors, rivals and lovers of a time less Read more ...
joe.muggs
The Colors studio in Berlin has quietly created one of the biggest new brands in music from filming back-to-basics performances with laser-focused branding. From international megastars (Billie Eilish, Mac DeMarco) to up-and-comers, singers and occasionally rappers are filmed alone in a simple cube-shaped stage with distinctive colour-cycling lighting. In one sense, it's an incredibly slick marketing operation: for all the international diversity of the performer, they're photogenic one and all, and the consistency of the visuals gives an eerie, slightly cult-like air to things.But at the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
For the duration of this C19 Lockdown, rather than the usual sprawling monthly epic, theartsdesk on Vinyl will be presented regularly in bite-sized editions, roving across the pile of releases we have already, since those incoming have been whittled down a trickle. Welcome, then, to a cross edition of plastic ranging from the beautiful to the bizarre. Dive in!Napalm Death Logic Ravaged by Brute Force/White Kross (Century Media)Great title. You don’t get titles like that with Dua Lipa! Five years after their last album, Apex Predator – Easy Meat, the Midlands’ perennial politico noise-riff Read more ...
Guy Oddy
The perfect introduction to Newcastle’s mighty Pigsx7 is undoubtedly to be made in the live arena, for it’s here they seriously let sparks fly with monolithic slabs of sound and an exuberance that is truly infectious. That isn’t to say that their studio output isn’t worth serious attention and Viscerals is a sonic treat with plenty to offer. For while the band’s sound remains firmly rooted in the legacy of Black Sabbath and Hawkwind’s peak moments, their new disc is sharper than both Feed the Rats and King of Cowards, while losing none of the intensity of either.“Reducer” hits the ground Read more ...