New music
joe.muggs
“If you’re going to do it, do it well” goes a chanted refrain in the opening title track here. And it’s words Jessie Ware clearly lives by – she is not someone who has time to do anything rubbish. From featuring on the cream of post-dubstep electronic dance production circa 2010 (SBTRKT, Joker, Disclosure), through creating a gorgeously brooding Eighties flavoured hinterland on her Mercury Prize nominated debut album Devotion, all the way to creating one of the brightest rays of sunshine during the Covid weirdness of 2020 with a magical video for her Rotary Connection indebted single “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With the release this week of Blómi, her sixth studio album, Norway’s Susanne Sundfør discloses more about herself than she previously has through her music – but nothing is made obvious. As she says during this interview, the driving concept became complex.Fortunately, she’s open to discussing the album in depth. Rather than revisiting old territory, catching up with her at home via Google Meet brought the opportunity to dig into Blómi, the creative processes behind it and learn how she sees it and its personal context – as well as veering off into associated tangents. She’s analytical, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Damned could have been bigger contenders. As anyone who’s seen Wes Orshoski’s feature film biog, Don’t You Wish We Were Dead, will know, their career has been blighted by chaos, line-up changes, catastrophic business decisions and just plain bad luck. What they have never been short of is songs. From “Smash It Up” to “New Rose” to “Stranger on the Town”, their golden years were littered with corkers. Their new album, their 12th, assembles a dozen songs that, while not in the league of the aforementioned, showcase rock’n’roll songwriting chops intact, exuding melodic charm and lyrical Read more ...
mark.kidel
Four trombones, four trumpets and five saxophones, six percussionists – this Afro-Cuban inspired band packs an irresistible punch and it’s loud! This is a big band sound that revives the glory days of Tito Puente and Dizzy Gillespie, a 1940s fusion of Latin and jazz, as incendiary as it comes. A true wonder that London should produce music of this power and vibrancy, but the New Regency Orchestra (NRO) do just that, keeping the energy going for the full length of a 90-minute set.Deep in the heart of lively Hackney Wick, throbbing with the party excitement of a Saturday night, the NRO Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s 25 years since Lonnie Liston Smith last released an album. But this a man who earned his musical stripes with Miles Davis and Pharaoh Sanders, pretty much invented Jazz Funk with the Cosmic Echoes in the 1970s and then helped to reboot hip-hop with Guru and Digable Planets in the 1990s – and so, you pretty much take what you’re given and are thankful for it when dealing with such a musical titan.JID017, an album produced in collaboration with A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammed and film score composer Adrian Younge for their long-running label Jazz Is Dead, is a smooth mix of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
From Icelandic, blómi translates as “bloom” or “flower”. Other song titles from the new album by Norway's Susanne Sundfør also look Icelandic. Actually, it’s Old Norse, which informs modern Icelandic. Although one track is recited in German the lyrics elsewhere, as per her other albums, are in English. The linguist fluidity telegraphs Blómi is not necessarily straightforward.The personal nature of the follow-up to 2017’s Music for People in Trouble is declared by its cover, a vintage photo of Sundfør with her grandfather, the academic, linguist and theologian Kjell Aartun. Blómi is dedicated Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
March 1960’s I Hear A New World EP was British pop at its most extraordinary. As its liner notes put it, it was “a strange record”: one seeking to aurally reflect life on the moon and in outer space. Musique concrète, pop and studio-only sonic manipulation were rolled into one. Its creator was producer Joe Meek.However, barely anyone heard the EP. There was a low pressing run of maybe just 99 copies as fewer-than 100 avoided purchase tax. An album was planned and around 25 test pressings were made. It never came out. A second EP went no further than the printing of some sleeves. The EP which Read more ...
mark.kidel
The Orb’s story is rooted in the widescreen psychedelic explorations of Pink Floyd as much as the MDMA-fuelled musical adventures of acid house. This is music to get high to, laced with all the effects, from distortion to reverb, that play with the mind and take it on a trip.There was a time tripping for self-discovery or pure fun were not proscribed. With many drugs recognised today as beneficial, and increasingly used in therapy (as they were in the 1950s),The Orb’s music, although it’s in many ways stuck in a form of retro music that takes you on a voyage into inner space, is now part of a Read more ...
joe.muggs
You’ve got to hand it to New Yorkers Easy Star All Stars: their records do what they say on the tin. This starts with a simple reggae drum rhythm fading in, couple of echo effects, a nifty fill, then in comes David Hinds of Steel Pulse singing, beautifully, “pushing through the market square / so many mothers sighing”. It’s “Five Years,” delivered straightforwardly in dub reggae style, no messing about, job done. This has been ESAS’s for knocking on two decades now – Dub Side of the Moon, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band, Radiodread and Thrillah each Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
24 years since their last album, it’s pleasing to have Everything But The Girl back. That voice! They were conceived amidst post-post-punk “new pop” conceptualism, consistently made hit albums for 15 years, and only quit because they’d become bored of the naff entertainment industry circus. Happily, as only happens with a few bands who reappear after decades, Fuse does not disappoint.Also happily, it’s not the sound of a once-successful unit settling on their laurels. In the period since they were last Everything But The Girl, Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn have written compulsive books and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Record Store Day is nearly here. At theartsdesk on Vinyl we have a selection of goodies which are appearing exclusively in record shops. See anything you fancy?THEARTSDESK ON VINYL’S VINYL OF RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2023Suicide A Way of Life Rareties (BMG)With Suicide’s underrated 1988 album A Way of Life heading for reissue, this Record Store Day release amps the anticipation with a four-track 12” of associated odds’n’ends. It opens with a live version of, supposedly, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”, but it is, in fact, frontman Alan Vega vamping around songs including Fats Domino’s “ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There will be two theartsdesk on Vinyls this week. The first is here, an epic 11,000 words on a multitude of new releases in every genre, from reissues of classics to spanking new strangeness. There’s something for everyone. On Thursday we’ll have a special edition in honour of Record Store Day this coming Saturday, so watch out for that too. For now, though, dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHElsa Bergman Playon Crayon (B.Inspelningar)In the mid-1960s British composer and pal of Stockhausen, Cornelius Cardew, composed a piece called Treatise whose sheet music consisted of a series of symbolic Read more ...