wed 24/09/2025

New Music Reviews

Album: Night Tapes - portals//polarities

Kieron Tyler

“Helix” is the ninth track on portals//polarities. With this dramatic, acid house-leaning slab of shoegazing-infused electropop, Night Tapes make the case that they’re the real deal.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Sly and the Family Stone - The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967

Kieron Tyler

The remarkable The First Family: Live At Winchester Cathedral 1967 represents the first-ever release of a previously unheard recording of a 26 March 1967 Sly and the Family Stone live show. It is the earliest document of Sly and Co. to surface.

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Brìghde Chaimbeul, Round Chapel review - enchantment in East London

Kieron Tyler

Hackney’s Round Chapel is an appropriate venue. Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul opens her set with “Dùsgadh/Waking.” It has the spirit of a call to prayer: the directness, the insistence, the magnetic quality. All of which draws in anyone exposed to its power. It enchants.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Robyn - Robyn 20th-Anniversary Edition

Kieron Tyler

Sometimes, record labels don’t like what those on their roster have recorded. Such was the case with BMG Sweden and Robin Carlsson who, as Robyn, had made three albums with varying success and a raft of home-country hit singles for the label from the mid-Nineties to 2002.

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Album: Yasmine Hamdan - I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر

Kieron Tyler

A lot is going on during Yasmine Hamdan’s third solo album. Despite all ten songs of I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر drawing from the lyrics and music of Palestinian folklore, what is heard is avowedly non-traditional. Hamdan is sticking with the electronica she has been associated with since the late 1990s.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 92: Marianne Faithful, Crayola Lectern, UK Subs, Black Lips, Stax, Dennis Bovell and more

Thomas H Green

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Black Lips Season of the Peach (Fire)

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Blondshell, Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow review - woozy rock with an air of nonchalance

Jonathan Geddes

There is such nonchalance with Sabrina Teitelbaum that even her appeals to the crowd appeared laid-back. At points during her set the Los Angeles singer would slowly raise an arm, in the time-honoured tradition of a musician demanding noise, but in a way that suggested she wasn’t bothered if the call was actually heeded. Then again, perhaps it was just a sign that she knew the gesture would have the desired effect, given her evident popularity here.

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Ganavya, Barbican review - low-key spirituality

mark Kidel

At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before suggesting they sing along, she plunges straight in, a minute or so into chanting “a love supreme”, and gets everyone to join her in what can only be described as a communal act of devotion. This is a kind of high-wire daring, and it works, suggesting as well that she's assured of a large group of listeners for whom she can do no wrong.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM

Kieron Tyler

Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM is a triple album marking the 50th anniversary of the first release on the titular label. That record was a four-track, seven-inch EP by the rough, Rolling Stones-ish pub rockers The Count Bishops. It came out in November 1975.

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Edinburgh Psych Fest 2025 review - eclectic and experimental

Miranda Heggie

Now in its third year, Edinburgh Psych Fest returned to multiple venues in the old town and the city’s southside for 2025; namely Summerhall, Queen’s Hall, The Mash House and Sneaky Pete’s. Offering a day long feast of psych-tinged sounds, Manchester-based promoters Now Wave brought a mix of bigger names and lesser-known bands to these various stages.

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