New Music Buzz
Fac.Dance: Celebrating the Beat of Factory RecordsThursday, 27 October 2011
New Order’s “Blue Monday” might be the bestselling 12” single ever. It might not be. Either way, Factory Records released it on the 12” format only and it was given dry runs by club DJs. Although Factory had an overriding visual aesthetic, it was a wilful label with little musical coherence and no set way of doing things. Dance music, though, was central to Factory, and the new compilation Fac.Dance celebrates that in a way that was impossible in the scattershot Eighties. Read more... |
Camille speaks of Ilo Veyou, water, peace and intimacyThursday, 20 October 2011
“I am a lady of the sea, I’m a lady of the water,” declares French sonic auteur Camille. “Water is life and we forget too much about this.” Her new album, Ilo Veyou, is filled with water. There’s the “Bubble Lady”, the “Wet Boy” and the “Shower” that’s a refuge. Ilo Veyou is also about her voice – wordplay, the rhythms it makes, the farty sounds, the distracted humming, the tender melodies she sings. But it’s about a new phase in life, too: becoming a mother. Read more... |
Beyoncé stole my moves, says high priestess of modern danceTuesday, 11 October 2011
Has the great pop diva Beyoncé plagiarised the great modern dance diva Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker? This is the burning question that has today sent disco popsters and fans of austere contemporary dance in a feverish crush to YouTube, comparing Beyoncé’s new "Countdown" vid with De Keersmaeker’s art-house dance Rosas danst Rosas. Read more... |
Darondo and Disco Gold: Unearthed Funk and the Birth of DiscoMonday, 26 September 2011
By 1977, disco was a cliché to be mocked. But a few years earlier, before its ubiquity, disco was a liberating music uniting minorities on the dance floor. Funk, too, became a cliché, little more than a reductive musical cypher. Two new reissues celebrate these genres when both were still vital, still able to surprise. Read more... |
Go clubbing and running to support planting urban treesSunday, 11 September 2011
As artificial spaces, clubs struggle to embrace the organic environment. The music and arts collective Noise of Art are bridging the gap by working with the charity Trees for Cities, with DJs donating their time to raise funds for planting trees in London. On 17 September, Noise of Art is working with Trees for Cities at Battersea Park and taking over the Village Underground for a fundraising event. Read more... |
The Arts Desk Birthday Event - Join Us on 9/9!Sunday, 04 September 2011
On 9 September theartsdesk, Britain's first professional arts journalism site, will be two years old. To celebrate we’re holding a live debate with four leading performers during the Kings Place Festival. An actor, a singer, a dancer and an instrumentalist will share their different experiences of performance. Join us, live or online, for a stellar event. Read more... |
Boisdale Canary Wharf - City boys' jazz playgroundSunday, 04 September 2011
It’s the new(ish) big jazz venue, and it’s in, of all places, the wilds of Canary Wharf. It's curious, and encouraging, that anyone has the nerve to open a large new jazz venue anywhere, and in the midst of economic gloom, but they have. The venue for music is the size of Ronnie Scott’s but it is more than a mere music venue – it’s a good-quality restaurant with a cigar bar, a terrace (handy for smokers) and a huge whisky bar - an “amber wall of liquid gold” as they charmingly put it, from £... Read more... |
Competition: ELF CDs to be wonThursday, 01 September 2011
It’s competition time again. Last month we featured ELF’s Reflections, a new release on Nimbus showcasing the unusual and possibly even unique combination of horn, piano and flute. We have a number of copies of the CD to give away. All you need to do is answer the questions correctly and your name will go into the hat. Read more... |
Estonia celebrates 20 years of independence in songSunday, 21 August 2011
The former Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev was a ubiquitous presence in the British news last week, wheeled out for the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the USSR. The anniversary, though, is not just about what went on within what is now Russia or at the Berlin Wall. Last night saw 70,000 gather in the Estonian capital Tallinn for the Song of Freedom event, to mark the country's split from the USSR. Read more... |
Outlook: four days in the sunshine and two fingers to the bigotsTuesday, 16 August 2011
At the start of September, the fourth Outlook Festival takes place in a 19th-century fort on the Croatian coast. Already this festival has become a vital point in the calendar for those involved with dubstep, grime and other UK underground scenes – not only a jolly in the sun (“dubstep's Ibiza”), but the one time in the year when everyone involved takes a break from international touring and comes together in the same place, a time to compare notes and take stock of the progress. Read more... |
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