New music
Album: Kokoko! - ButuFriday, 05 July 2024
Kokoko! hail from the Democratic Republic of Congo (formely Zaire), and specifically from Kinshasa, a source over the years of a great deal of irresistible dance music. On their second album, more electronic than the last (Fongola -2019), traces of... Read more... |
Glastonbury Festival 2024: A Sunlit Epic of Music, Madness, Chaos and CultureThursday, 04 July 2024
SUNDAY 30th June 2024It’s late. But not really. Not by the standards of this place. Photographer Finetime and I are in Block9 in the South-East Corner. The so-called “naughty corner”. We take turns juggernauting quomble off a pinecone. Finetime’s... Read more... |
Album: Enter Shikari - Dancing on the FrontlineThursday, 04 July 2024
For a band as creative as St Albans’ own electronic-hardcore-rock fusion pioneers, Enter Shikari, the last thing you would expect them to do is sit on their hands.And that’s exactly what’s come to pass, as only a year after achieving their first UK... Read more... |
Album: Kasabian - HappeningsWednesday, 03 July 2024
Great bands’ output can, famously, be predicated by the intense interaction between members, often between a central creative pairing. This can be a harmonious mutuality but, more often, music is built from tension, from difference, from the frisson... Read more... |
Sza, BST Hyde Park review - R&B superstar gives apocalyptic bug vibesMonday, 01 July 2024
If the holiday season has been lacking in sun so far in the UK, Sza bought the heat to the first Saturday of the iconic London summerfest in Hyde Park, set up by a strong afternoon of support acts from Sampha, Snoh Aalegra, Elmiene and No Guidnce.On... Read more... |
P!nk, Hampden Park, Glasgow review - a high-wire act with bravado and bombastMonday, 01 July 2024
There was a point in this stadium spectacular when P!nk gave her fans two choices. They could either “make out with their partners or go queue for a beer” she suggested, prior to one of the first slow-paced numbers of the evening, but the latter... Read more... |
Album: Jeff Mills - The EyewitnessMonday, 01 July 2024
Jeff Mills has always been a musical sophisticate. Even in the early 90s when he was best known for derangedly pummelling techno DJ sets in the most insalubrious of sweat-pits, and even though his minimalist production style back then was used as a... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Cluster - ZuckerzeitSunday, 30 June 2024
In 1974, two albums by German kosmiche musicians working with electronics became the first from the seedbed of what’d been dubbed Krautrock to explicitly embrace – and merge – melody and rhythmic structure. One was Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. The other... Read more... |
Album: Imagine Dragons - LoomSaturday, 29 June 2024
Having propelled to stardom with their debut album Night Visions back in 2012, the Nevada pop-rock giants Imagine Dragons have reigned supreme on charts and airwaves.Their blending of elements from a wide range of genres into one melting pot, from... Read more... |
Album: Camila Cabello - C,XOXOFriday, 28 June 2024
Oh this is sad. Up until this point Camilla Cabello has been a good pop star. Her biggest songs were loaded with familiar-to-the-point-of-cheesiness retro Latin samples, or angsty mini-dramas loaded with the musical theatre-style chops that had made... Read more... |
Album: Johnny Cash - SongwriterThursday, 27 June 2024
Wow, this is a trip back in time. A visit from "The Man in Black" 21 years after he passed away, just a few months after his beloved wife, June Carter Cash, who stood by him through thick and thin as together they made such beautiful music.I saw him... Read more... |
Taylor Swift, Wembley Stadium review - the Eras Tour lights up LondonWednesday, 26 June 2024
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 gig-going, I have not. Taylor Swift has just performed “Champagne Problems” at the piano (pictured... Read more... |
