dance music
Joe Muggs
This month sees an audacious attempt to showcase British dancehall music, when the Cargo venue in Shoreditch hosts the multi-artist revue Showtime!. The Heatwave collective have brought together vocalists from various UK underground scenes, linked by a strong influence from the high-energy Jamaican sounds of the past 30 or so years. While many of the artists involved have found success in crossover scenes like rave, jungle, grime and garage, the appeal of dancehall itself (also known by the overlapping terms bashment and ragga) has traditionally been restricted to predominantly black Read more ...
david.cheal
What is it with synthesisers and sadness? There’s something inherently melancholic about this instrument, a quality that’s been accentuated by its use in the soundtracks to dystopian movies such as Blade Runner. Moby is a man who has exploited this quality to the full during his 20-year recording career, and he does so more than ever on this, his 10th album: Destroyed is really sad. Not bleak, or dark, or bitter; just really sad.Written in hotel rooms in the course of a world tour, it reflects the rootless, shifting and lonely existence of a man who finds himself in a string of strange Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As well as a new album, Destroyed, Moby is putting out a book of photographic prints under the same title. The idea of the book is to capture the essence of being on a global tour, from the mundanity of waiting in airports to the majesty of landscapes and cities, from the explosive excitement of stadium-sized crowds to the solitude of hotel rooms at night. The images will also be on display in the Proud Gallery in Camden Town, north London. theartsdesk showcases a selection below.
Read theartsdesk's Q&A with Moby
Moby, Destroyed at the Proud Camden, London NW1 from 18 May to 19 June Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There's no doubt about it, Hayden Thorpe has the most manly falsetto in modern music. It's not the wheedling whine of the post-Radiohead generation of indie sadsacks, nor the haunted and haunting quaver of an Anthony Hegarty, nor yet the introspective musing of a James Blake. Rather it's a completely assured and controlled instrument, comparable only to the intense wail of the late Billy McKenzie (The Associates). And it's just one of the entirely distinctive features of the sound of Wild Beasts – a band who seemingly operate unbound by scene or genre dictates and are, ironically, all the Read more ...
howard.male
The downside of this job is that because new CDs are dropping through the letterbox every day, a lot of stuff inevitably gets consigned to the archives and forgotten about, when it really shouldn’t be. So when I heard that The Mexican Institute of Sound (aka Mexico City’s Camilo Lara) was rather belatedly playing live in London for the first time (his last album was released two years ago), it was an excuse to reacquaint myself with his recorded works to see if they were as good as they seemed at the time. The good news is that they are, but the less good news is that this concert didn’t Read more ...
david.cheal
Frothier than a zero-gravity cappuccino, camper than a gay pride march through Brighton, cheesier than all the fromageries in France, and with almost as many beats per minute as a hummingbird’s heart: Kylie is back with a brand new show, and it’s quite something. Others will doubtless have rolled out the statistics – that it cost £530 million to stage, is built and staffed by a crew of 7,000, and requires a fleet of trucks that would stretch from London to Luton to keep it on the road. Or something. Whatever: it’s big, it’s spectacular, it’s silly, it’s kinky, it’s utterly inconsequential, Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Googling for academic articles about Britney Spears is one rabbit hole I've managed to avoid falling down thus far, but one imagines there are reams of the things. From demonically driven Disney child star via pigtailed Lolita and sex-droid air hostess to shaven-headed loon lunging aggressively towards her public through the paparazzo's lens, she's provided no end of provocative and iconic images, and stirred up all kinds of problematic issues around post-feminism, celebrity and voyeurism, while remaining an odd non-presence at the centre of it all.
Not an obvious provocateur like Madonna or Read more ...
david.cheal
Bouncy: if there is one word that sums up this hot young Northern Irish band, that would be the one; there is a Tiggerish enthusiasm to their music that encourages bouncing, clapping, arm-waving and generally having a good time, which is exactly what happened at last night's gig: a festive atmosphere prevailed, Two Door Cinema Club played a short, sharp set that lasted for little more than an hour, and they sent the crowd out into the early spring night buzzing.A year ago Two Door Cinema Club were, as their choochy-faced singer Alex Trimble noted during this show, playing the Hoxton Bar and Read more ...
Joe Muggs
On paper Jessie J is an amazing pop star. Great looking but not willing to play the eager-to-please dollybird, full of cheeky Essex girl vim and verve, clearly musically multitalented, thoroughly immersed in soul and funk, and with a healthy pair of lungs to boot – as her early solo YouTube appearances (see below) amply demonstrated.And there are bits of this album where she shows what she's capable of, in particular the high-kicking cabaret blues with dubstep bass of “Mamma Knows Best” in which she hollers her heart out like Christina Aguilera at her belting best. “Casualty of Love” is Read more ...
hilary.whitney
In 1970, Annie Nightingale became Radio 1’s first female DJ. The appointment was made somewhat grudgingly - DJs, believe it or not (and we’re talking about the likes of Ed “Stewpot” Stewart and Tony Blackburn here), were perceived to be “husband substitutes” and it was generally accepted that a female voice would alienate the listeners. And yet 40 years later, Nightingale is the only DJ left from the original line-up.She has always been passionate about discovering and sharing underground and new music – quite a heady mix over the past four decades - and thanks to her championing of Read more ...
Joe Muggs
2010 saw some major shifts stirring up the UK club music ecosystem and unleashing some fascinating hybrids and variants of existing sounds out into the wild. As the hefty bass of dubstep muscled its way firmly into the heart of the mainstream, everything else was forced to rearrange its position, with some surprising results. The most aggressive sounds proved to have a sensitive or celebratory side, the hoariest old rhythms were given a new lease of life and – despite the supposed globalisation of the weird wired world – highly localised club scenes were once more at the forefront of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Over the last 25 years I've done a lot of DJing, or at least playing records in public that, occasionally, people have been refreshed enough to dance to. I've done sets in all manner of scenarios, from nightclubs to house parties, to gallery events, to a Finnish festival in front of thousands, to a Balham comedy club. The last used to pay me £300 a night to play the same cheese and predictability week after week, but one evening when I put on "Fools Gold" by The Stone Roses and my heart sank with boredom, I knew it was time to get out, £300 or no £300.So what is an "unexpected party Read more ...