New Music Reviews
Reissue CDs Weekly: JapanSunday, 26 August 2018![]()
In May 1981, Japan played two nights at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. Read more... |
h 100 Young Influencers of the Year: Lucie Wolfman vlogs at the BarbicanSaturday, 25 August 2018![]()
Watch Lucie Wolfman's vlog review of Carl Craig's Synthesiser Ensemble at the Barbican. Lucie Wolfman studies English at the University of Sussex, and covers arts for the National Student. She is a Barbican Young Reviewer, creating vlogs about productions.
Read more...
|
Reissue CDs Weekly: Teenage FanclubSunday, 19 August 2018![]()
The cover images of the four albums Teenage Fanclub issued on Creation Records suggest ambivalence. While Bandwagonesque’s title acknowledges the hopping onto trends endemic in pop, the graphic of a bag with a dollar sign recognises the related collateralisation of music. Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 42: Flaming Lips, Blacklab, Juno Reactor, U2, Ross From Friends and moreFriday, 17 August 2018![]()
Initially, this month’s theartsdesk on Vinyl began with the sentence after this one, but it's so dry readers might drowse off, so I started with this one instead and would advise moving through the next one, just picking up the gist quickly... Discogs, a key hub for global record sales in physical formats, recently presented its Midyear Marketplace Analysis and Database Highlights for 2018, which reckons vinyl sales are up another 15% over the last year. Read more... |
Jake Shears, Concorde 2, Brighton review - a blitz of glitzFriday, 17 August 2018![]()
One of the biggest crowd roars of the night comes right at the start when Jake Shears runs onstage. He is wearing a grey top hat, a white tail-jacket with glittered lapel-edging, silver glittery trousers, a tight black sequinned vest top, and a bow tie on his bare neck. The 600 capacity Concorde 2, right on Brighton's seafront, is sold out. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: A Kaleidoscope of SoundsSunday, 12 August 2018![]()
Once heard, Wimple Winch’s “Save my Soul” is never forgotten. The A-side of a flop single originally issued in June 1966, it is one of the most tightly coiled British records from the Sixties and has sudden explosions of tension suggesting the band are ready to punch anyone within reach. Late the previous year, The Who’s “My Generation” had taken pop music to new, hitherto unexplored, levels of aggression. Read more... |
BaianaSystem, Village Underground - the new Brazilian contendersMonday, 06 August 2018![]()
The post-modernists have taken over the asylum. At least, that's what I thought twice this week. Once when I saw Vlad Putin on YouTube doing karaoke to an adoring audience. The other was seeing Brazil’s latest contenders BaianaSystem, who played to a sweaty packed-out house at the Village Underground. Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Gary McFarlandSunday, 05 August 2018![]()
Although Gary McFarland’s 1965 album The In Sound had the Samba and Bossa Nova influences which were colouring the sound of American jazzers from around 1962, it was on the button for the year it was released. Read more... |
WOMAD 2, Charlton Park review - rainbows and rumbaThursday, 02 August 2018![]()
In the days around WOMAD there have been plenty of media about how the “hostile environment” towards migrants has created all sorts of problems for artists attempting to get here from around the world. Read more... |
WOMAD, Charlton Park review – drawing the world a little closerMonday, 30 July 2018![]()
Even seasoned veterans can suffer from programme amnesia over the four days and nights of rock, pop, dance and traditional music from around the world to be found at WOMAD, such is the array of choices across its 10 stages, ranging from the main arena through to the Ecotricity stage in Charlton Park’s leafy... Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...

Hinds don't believe in God. They declared this as they surveyed the converted church that is St Luke's, and given the past few years you can...

In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s by Davy Dean and the...

Longlegs’ trapdoor ending snapped tight on its clammy Lynchian mood, reconfiguring its Silence of the Lambs serial-killer yarn...

Screen stardom is generally anointed at the box office so it's a very real delight to find the fast-rising Jonathan Bailey taking time out from...

The theatre director Anna Mackmin has...

Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the...

With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative voices – though longtime...

If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or sample-book...