New Music Reviews
Robbie Thomson XFRMR, Brighton Festival review - lightning strikes outSunday, 20 May 2018
The welcome to Glasgow audio-visual artist Robbie Thomson’s performance engenders a hefty sense of anticipation. It’s almost nervousness-inducing as we’re handed ear-plugs and warned about how very loud it’s going to be. Then, walking into the main hall from the bar, all is gloom. Read more... |
An Audience with Dame Cleo Laine, RFH review - a phenomenon at 90Saturday, 19 May 2018
Yes, she sang, with her trademark artistry from the very first notes – four numbers, including a duet with daughter Jacqui Dankworth, and all in close partnership with her consummate players, including son Alec on double bass. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 39: Pink Floyd, Liines, Black Sabbath, Daniel Avery, Elvis and moreThursday, 17 May 2018
There have been reports that as many as 50% of vinyl-buyers don’t actually listen to it. They keep records as a token of affection for the artist in question. This seems curious but, then again, most young people don’t own turntables and the idea is anathema to the way they consume music. Read more... |
The Last Poets, Brighton Festival review - black power sets the night alightWednesday, 16 May 2018
The venom with which Abiodun Oyewole spits “America is a terrorist”, the key repeated line to “Rain of Terror”, has startling power. The piece is an unashamed diatribe against his nation. Beside him his partner Umar Bin Hassan rhythmically hisses the word “terrorist” again and again while, behind, percussionist Donn Babatunde provides minimal backing on a set of three congas. Read more... |
Hailey Tuck, Rich Mix review - delightful but wobblyWednesday, 16 May 2018
At the age of 18, Texan jazz singer Hailey Tuck cashed in her college fund for a one-way plane ticket. leaving a military boarding school in Texas for the Voltaire district of Paris, to immerse herself in jazz clubs and vintage markets. Nearly a decade on, which she’s divided between the performance spaces of Paris, France, and Austin, Texas, her old-school approach to learning her craft has paid off... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Yung WuSunday, 13 May 2018
When Crazy Rhythms, the ever-fabulous first album by New Jersey’s Feelies was issued in April 1980 it seemed to have little local context. Although the band’s fidgetiness suggested a kinship with Talking Heads and there were a clear nods to The Velvet Underground, it felt more of a piece with contemporary British post-punk bands Josef K and The Monochrome Set than anything American. Fittingly, Eno's first two solo offerings also fed into the album. Read more... |
Problem in Brighton, Brighton Festival review - comic but patchy rock showFriday, 11 May 2018
Problem is Brighton is down in the Festival programme as an “alt-rock/pop pantomime”, with actors involved and the inference it’s some sort of musical featuring “instruments specially created by David Shrigley for the performance”. This turns out to be seriously over-selling it. In fact, Problem in Brighton is a... Read more... |
Pinkshinyultrablast, Band on the Wall, Manchester - glitch-pop madness from Russia’s finestMonday, 07 May 2018
Pinkshinyultrablast might be a long way from their hometown of St Petersburg, but in recent years they’ve built themselves up in England as one of the more bizarre and original bands in today’s psych/shoegaze revival, and on the day their third album Miserable Miracles is released, they hit the north for a night... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Burning BritainSunday, 06 May 2018
In early March 1980, the weekly music paper Sounds dedicated their front cover to “the new face of punk” with a photograph of Stinky Turner, the singer of The Cockney Rejects. What had, in 1977, been widely interpreted as a challenge to musical orthodoxy and as a new broom which was sweeping clean had, in turn, become a default style for new waves of bands. Read more... |
Anna Meredith, Southbank Sinfonia, QEH review - triumphant genre-busting treatMonday, 30 April 2018
I’m not sure what exactly this event was – orchestral concert, electronic dance music gig or multimedia extravaganza – but however you define it, I loved every mad minute. Read more... |
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