wed 26/06/2024

New Music Reviews

Music Reissues Weekly: Joe Meek And The Blue Men - I Hear A New World Sessions

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.

Read more...

theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2023

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 2023

Suicide A Way of Life Rareties (BMG)

Read more...

theartsdesk on Vinyl 76: Elton John, Pharoah Sanders, Hellripper, Jah Wobble, T-Rex and 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 MONTH

Read more...

Goat, The Mill, Birmingham review - Scandinavian pagans see the weekend out in style

Guy Oddy

It might be nigh on six months since Scandinavian shamen (and women) Goat released their latest opus, Oh Death, but it has taken until now for them to finally bring their energetic live show back to the UK. On Sunday’s evidence, it is a wait that now feels like a small price to pay though, as Brummies young and old blew their minds and danced their socks off to intoxicating sounds that provoked a seriously ecstatic response.

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Pharoah Sanders Quartet - Live at Fabrik Hamburg 1980

Kieron Tyler

Promises attracted a lot of attention upon its 2020 release. The album brought together UK electronica artist Floating Points, The London Symphony Orchestra and storied US jazz individualist Pharoah Sanders, who died in September 2022. It became his last album. Promises – composed by Sam Sheperd in his Floating Points guise – cannot though have been conceived to be as high profile as it became.

Read more...

The Damned, Town Hall, Birmingham review - original punks bring some darkadelica to a full house

Guy Oddy

The last time I saw the Damned live in concert was in a big tent in Finsbury Park in 1986, to celebrate the band’s 10th anniversary. It remains, without any doubt, the most violent gig that I’ve found myself experiencing to this day.

Read more...

The Orielles, G2, Glasgow review - shoegaze trio keeping their eyes on the future

Jonathan Geddes

It is temping to wonder what path the Orielles would have gone down in a world where the coronavirus never occurred. The Halifax trio had just released their second album, Disco Volador when the pandemic struck, and wiped out any hope of touring the record. Instead they reworked material from the record for use scoring a film, and have now returned with last year’s Tableau album as a significantly different beast.

Read more...

Orbital, Brighton Centre review - a solid hands-in-the-air night out

Thomas H Green

Just before the encore, the crowd is finally warmed up and dancing. It took a while, but hands are now in the air, middle-aged bodies are shifting about, muscle memory of MDMA nights in the last century.

Read more...

Music Reissues Weekly: Too Much Sun Will Burn - The British Psychedelic Sounds Of 1967 Volume 2

Kieron Tyler

Together or separately, British psychedelia and 1967’s related music have been ceaselessly looked at. There cannot be an awful lot more to say. Nonetheless, the law of diminishing returns is there for ignoring so herewith the follow-up to the 2016 box set Let’s Go Down & Blow Our Minds.

Read more...

Mimi Webb, O2 Academy, Glasgow review - TikTok queen fails to fire with sparse set

Jonathan Geddes

Blake Rose clearly wasn’t leaving anything to chance. The support act bounded onstage draped in a Saltire, and soon brought up his days growing up in Aberdeen before moving to Australia. That Scottish upbringing helped inspire one of his songs, “Sweet Caledonia”, and going by the lively reaction he received from the youthful Glasgow crowd they were glad to take him as their own.

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

Taylor Swift, Wembley Stadium review - the Eras Tour lights...

Unless you were around when The Beatles toured America in the mid-1960s, it’s doubtful you've heard anything like this. In 40 years of extensive...

Album: Linda Thompson - Proxy Music

She has one of the most distinctive voices in folk and contemporary British music, impossible to forget once heard, and impossible to ignore. Even...

Bartlett, Fantasia Orchestra, Fetherstonhaugh, Proms at St J...

Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the...

My Father's Fable, Bush Theatre review - hilarious and...

Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the...

Blu-ray: Army of Shadows

One of those rare films that leaves you speechless after the closing credits, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (L'Armée des...

Giulio Cesare, Glyndebourne review - every number a winner f...

How much better can a classic get? Sebastian Scotney more or less asked the same question on theartsdesk the last time Giulio...

Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our Wor...

For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up,...

Album: Madeleine Peyroux - Let's Walk

Madeleine Peyroux made her name with her second album, 2004’s Careless Love. It consists almost completely of cover versions, delivered...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Cryin’ Shames - Please Stay, Do T...

Liverpool’s The Cryin’ Shames were responsible for two of mid-Sixties Britain’s most striking single’s tracks. The February 1966 top side “Please...

theartsdesk at Smetanova Litomyšl - three fascinating operas...

What did they put in the water of Czechia’s central Bohemia/Moravia borderlands? From south to north there's Mahler’s birthplace in Kali...