New music
Peter Culshaw
As Jude Kelly put it today, the Southbank Centre’s Festival Brazil this summer is about a country "living its future now" (link here for the initial programme). That is certainly exciting for a city like London trying to live down its last decade (writes Josh Spero).
Kelly, the Southbank Centre’s artistic director, was keen to talk about the "ardent escapism" Brazilian culture manifests in its desire to forget its often tough reality. To this end, the livelier muses have been invoked: Ernesto Neto’s vibrant, delicate and organic art at the Hayward Gallery (19 June-5 September); the Campana Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu is an unlikely star. A 39-year-old blind singer and multi-instrumentalist from Elcho Island, a remote indigenous community off the coast of Australia’s Northern Territory, Gurrumul’s eponymous solo album was Britain’s best selling world music album of 2009.Now, in what has become standard practice for million-selling pop monsters like Lady Gaga's The Fame and Amy Winehouse's Back to Black but is surely a first for a record of sparse Aboriginal spirituals, a year after its initial release the album is to be reissued in expanded ' Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
I meet Corinne Bailey Rae upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s in Soho – she wanders into the room and a couple of record company types intercept her. I hear phrases like “consumer segmentation”, “demographics”, “functionality of streaming” floating across the room – it sounds like someone has a new type of iPhone app they want her to sign up to. She looks polite, if a bit bemused. But in a depressed record business, Corinne Bailey Rae is a really big deal.Her self-titled 2006 debut album sold nearly four million copies, went straight in to the top of the British pop charts, spent 71 weeks in the Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This week's birthday musicians include Gene Vincent singing "Be Bop A Lula" in his first TV appearance, Sergio Mendes with "Mas Que Nada", soul balladry from Roberta Flack, Carole King and a couple of composers - Alban Berg and Leopold Godowsky. Some seriously groovy videos, below.11 February 1935: Gene Vincent in what is probably his first ever TV appearance on a programme called Town Hall Party.
11 February 1941: Sergio Mendes sings Jorge Ben's song "Mas Que Nada", 40 years before the Black Eyed Peas remade it as a huge hit.
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13 February 1870: Leopold Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Tickets go on sale today for this year's Teenage Cancer Trust benefit concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in March. The Who's Roger Daltrey, a patron of the Trust, has been the driving force behind the concerts since they began in 2000. Having failed to find any willing younger rockers willing to take on the job, he has assembled another stellar cast for this year.The Who will deliver the climax on March 30 with a performance of their 1973 Mod-themed rock opera Quadrophenia. They'll be preceded by Them Crooked Vultures (March 22), a reformed Suede (March 24), Arctic Monkeys (March 27), boyband Read more ...
howard.male
What’s in a band’s name? Usually very little, other than perhaps a banally surreal juxtaposition of a couple of words that don’t normally hang out together (see: Cold – Play, Joy – Division, Sex – Pistols) or the borrowed kudos from some other art form such as a novel or film (there’s a new folk band called Belleville Rendezvous, God help us.) But this North Carolina trio’s name made me gasp with admiration.“Chocolate drop” may well be one of the gentler terms of racial abuse from our recent past (if any racial abuse can be described as gentle) but to hear it resurrected by those who would Read more ...
joe.muggs
My abiding memory of The Foundry is being held aloft by my throat by the landlord, Falklands veteran and notorious band manager Alan "Gimpo" Goodrick, as he accused me of stealing a Shirley Bassey album. I had been DJing for a book reading by Mark "Zodiac Mindwarp" Manning, and there was a lot of absinthe being drunk thanks to some fellow from The Idler. I knew at that point I shouldn't have begun the evening by playing the line "there may be trouble ahead" from Bassey's version of "Let's Face the Music and Dance" over and over on a loop. It's a dreadful cliché to say knowingly of a bar "it Read more ...
joe.muggs
Original Cultures is an artistic collective with bases in the UK, Italy and Japan, dedicated to audiovisual collaborations inspired by street art, graffiti, hip hop and electronic music. It is staging its first London event over the course of a week from 27 February to 5 March this year, in which artists Ericailcane, DEM, Will Barras, Hiraki Sawa, Om Unit, Tatsuki and Tayone will be joining to create new works in a series of public events and workshops in and around the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London.The schedule of activities for Original Cultures London 2010 is as follows:
Original Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
On April 30 2010 award-winning folk artist Jim Moray will pre-release his new album exclusively through the June issue of Songlines magazine.Never a musician to stick to the prescribed routes, Moray’s world-exclusive partnership with Songlines will see him join only a handful of artists to pre-release albums in this way including Prince & McFly (the Mail on Sunday) and The Kinks’ frontman Ray Davies (The Sunday Times). From June 11 In Modern History will also be available to buy once Songlines is off-sale. Following three albums that have inspired controversy as well as critical Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Since releasing her first solo album in 2006 while still a member of the acclaimed Northumbrian group Rachel Unthank and the Winterset - who also garnered three Folk Award nominations for themselves this year – Oates has developed a unique repertoire of English balladry to which her clear, richly emotive voice is so suited.That repertoire largely comes not from books or records but from years of taking part in folk sessions in pubs, clubs and homes around Devon, where she has lived since 2000. The tragic, dark-hearted ballads that stud her three solo albums come directly from a remarkable Read more ...
peter.quinn
The cliché which gets trotted out most often when describing Jan Garbarek's saxophone playing is his supposedly "icy" tone (Google “Garbarek” and “icy” and you'll see what I mean). As Garbarek's long-standing bassist Eberhard Weber amusingly points out in Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM, “I challenge the ladies and gentlemen of the press to think what they would write if Jan Garbarek wasn't Norwegian but Greek and his name was Garabekoulos! Then his music would immediately turn into the smouldering, sun-drenched sound of the scorching South.” Fair point, Eberhard.Hearing the latest Read more ...
theartsdesk
January's most riveting CDs found by our critics includes those by Malian master-musicians Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté, an Italian surrealist, an Algerian rocker, British Big Band jazz, Northern chamber folk and some sparky veterans releasing their best stuff for decades including Sade, Massive Attack and Peter Gabriel. The CD of the month is by Vinicio Capossela. Stinker: the over-rated Vampire Weekend. Reviewers this month are Howard Male, Thomas H Green, Peter Quinn, Robert Sandall, Graeme Thomson, Sue Steward, Peter Culshaw, Russ Coffey and Joe Muggs.CD of the Month
Vinicio Read more ...