Roundhouse
mark.kidel
There is a freshness about a show by Youssou N’Dour that never seems to lose its glow. He still has one of the great voices of Africa, a versatile and richly-textured tenor that doesn’t show the sign (at 65) of growing old and tired.At the Roundhouse, he started the show with one of his most well-known songs, “Immigrés”. Youssou and the Super Étoile de Dakar bounced in with the kind of energy that usually emerges gradually through the simmering build-up of a set. Here, it’s the deep end from the get-go, the high-pitched sabar drums clattering away furiously at the back of the stage, djembe, Read more ...
Cheri Amour
For most people’s 40th birthday celebrations, they might get a few friends together, rustle up a cake, and toast to another turn around the sun. But when musician Lail Arad realised the stars had aligned with her beloved Joni Mitchell's own 80th birthday, she knew she had to mark the milestone moment with something special.Thus, The Songs of Joni Mitchell was born, an intimate evening celebrating the iconic singer-songwriter as part of this year’s In The Round festival. Mitchell was one of the first women in modern rock to achieve enviable longevity and critical recognition. Her works Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
This mixed reality concert is simultaneously a dimension juggling conundrum, a philosophical puzzle, and a fascinating insight into what the future might hold. Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto – whose influences included Bach, John Cage and David Bowie – died in March last year, but still lives on in this curiously moving virtual event in which his performance was captured by 48 cameras at 60 frames a second.The audience is warned at the outset that Kagami – which means mirror – was not motivated by technology but was created by Todd Eckert and his company Tin Drum so that we can connect with Read more ...
India Lewis
The folk band Lankum are (for want of a less cliched phrase) at the height of their power. Their gig at the Roundhouse, as they said themselves, was the biggest audience they had ever played for – and everyone was loving it. The Roundhouse, surely one of the most beautiful venues for gigs, felt completely packed by the end of the support act, Rachael Lavelle. Lavelle’s sound was entrancing in its own right, somewhere between Weyes Blood and Angel Olsen, ethereal but not without nods to the slightly absurd. A great cover of ABBA’s "Lay All Your Love on Me" was a particular highlight, Read more ...
Gary Naylor
A dystopian present. Sirens ring out across the city. Firefighters rush to the wrong locations. A man insists on entry to a big house. He’s not selling anything, so he can’t be an arsonist can he? His friend turns up and she’s pretty upfront about her intentions – and the barrels of petrol in the attic rather give the game away. But the wealthy homeowner, so ruthless at work, is so polite at home, the coming conflagration all but accepted as a matter of… manners, social convention, apathy?Max Frisch’s 1950s play started as a radio production that has moved to theatres around the world, Read more ...
mark.kidel
London’s Roundhouse is a very special venue. For decades the circular shed, with its elegant ironwork supporting structures has hosted a wonderful and varied series of performances. Like a great cathedral, the space has a hallowed feel about it. The culmination of a sold-out UK tour, PJ Harvey’s exquisitely paced and passionate set, as much pagan ritual as perfect entertainment, makes the most of this womb of a space.A womb, but also an alchemical vessel, in which this consummate artist works through a series of transformations, changes that reveal the many facets of her complex persona. She Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Malian kora master Ballake Sissoko is a griot steeped in the musical and cultural traditions of West Africa, whose duets with his cousin Toumani Diabate on the world music classic, 1999’s New Ancient Strings, are rightly celebrated.His duets with French cellist Vincent Segal first appeared in 2009, on the French No Format label; Chamber Music was hailed as a classic of world fusion, and their follow-up, 2015’s Musique de Nuit, extended and expanded that spirit of improvisation, recorded live in a studio in Bamako in Mali – and, more poetically, on Sissoko’s rooftop.That intimate sense of Read more ...
mark.kidel
Anaïs Mitchell should be a star: she sings like a dream, oozes presence and charisma, and writes songs of classic simplicity, poetry and depth. Her other outstanding quality is a natural modesty and a delight in just being herself on stage, and sharing the joys of music-making with her fellow-musicians and the audience.Throughout the scintillating evening of her Roundhouse show, she never posed, sought attention or relied on well-rehearsed patter. She acted as if she were in her own front-room: relaxed, at times endearingly hesitant, and at others fiercely engaged with the emotions of her Read more ...
mark.kidel
Fatoumata Diawara knows how to please: with a winning and innocent smile, she wins the audience over in a matter of seconds. She has a vocal style all of her own: in her first song, “Don Do”, a quiet and meditative prelude to the boisterous show that follows, she seduces with sensual textures and a slight rasp unique among West African women singers, and which owes as much to jazz and gospel as to the traditions of her musically-rich country.After the first of a number of slightly predictable but heartfelt intros, in which she promises to give us an Africa beyond the clichés of poverty and Read more ...
India Lewis
John Grant’s entry onto the stage was unobtrusive, appropriate for a set-up that consisted of just a grand piano and an electronic keyboard (with accompanying keyboardist). He began with similarly unadorned songs, the ballads that peppered the start and the end of his set. Despite it being a departure from his more orchestrated recorded sound, a strong hint of the space-opera remained, coaxed out by synths and allusive lyrics. His songs are deliciously naughty, a sophisticated, rich sound that is counterbalanced by swear words and a satisfying cynicism. There were times when this wasn’t Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
While bands such as The Birthday Party, Siouxsie and the Banshees and, especially, Bauhaus had a hand in inventing goth music at the start of the Eighties, it was The Sisters of Mercy who defined it. Their combination of black clad cowboy shtick, mirror shades and dry ice worked a treat. In recent years, there have been rumours that the band’s live shows are less than impressive, mentions of a tendency to focus on unreleased material while dressed in leisurewear. Happily, this was certainly not the case tonight.The Sisters’ output, especially their early records, has dated well; gritty, Read more ...
Katherine Waters
Emmanuel (Anthony Ofoegbu) runs Three Kings Barbers in London. His assistant, Samuel (Mohammed Mansaray), is the son of his erstwhile business partner, who is currently in jail. Emmanuel is boss, surrogate father and — occasionally — verbal punching bag: Sam is a whizz with the shears and just as cutting with his tongue. It's not just London in which Inua Ellam's riotous play Barber Shop Chronicles — newly transferred to the Roundhouse from the National Theatre — takes place. Scenes in barber shops in Lagos, Accra, Kampala, Harare and Johannesburg intercut the action in London, where Read more ...