funk
Barney Harsent
If ever there were a year to cherish new music, 2021 was it. Lockdown v3.0 came with unwelcome updates (shit weather, structured home-schooling) and the only end in sight was of the nation’s collective tether.With passports rendered next to useless, the arts offered an escape like never before, and music was no exception. In March, Jane Weaver’s phenomenal album Flock arrived full of psychedelic swagger and propulsive momentum. Retaining the melodic sensibilities and esoteric influences that defined her previous records, most notably 2017’s Modern Kosmology and 2015’s The Silver Globe, Weaver Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Neo Jessica Joshua, better known as Nao, has been consistently putting out good – often excellent – music since 2014. Back then she was making off-kilter, funky R&B that felt both retro and futuristic. Since then she’s grown as an artist on both 2016’s For All We Know and 2018’s Saturn. And Then Life Was Beautiful is her third album and the emotional accumulation of the past few years. After burning out and struggling with writer's block, an eye-opening trip to South Africa and becoming a mother were catalysts for a renewed creativity. As a result, these songs feel Read more ...
joe.muggs
The UK is currently in the middle of a jazz, funk and soul renaissance. Homegrown, grassroots talent is producing an abundance of glorious music both retro and forward facing, in a way not seen since the combined influence of Soul II Soul and the acid jazz scene created a wave of groove in the early-mid Nineties. A lot of it has a powerful contemporary political edge too, taking cues from Black Lives Matter and incendiary Stateside releases by D’Angelo and Solange in the last decade – from SAULT to Shabaka Hutchings, Jorja Smith to Joel Culpepper, this is music with heart, brains and Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s kind of surprising Jimmy “Jam” Harris and Terry Lewis have never made an album as Jam & Lewis per se before now. The two have conquered the world, more or less: their band The Time was Prince’s regular support act in his breakthrough years, as a star production / songwriting duo they’ve written 41 US Top 10 hits over the years, and they have 27 Grammy nominations and five wins. Their most famous work was with Janet Jackson in her imperial phase, but they’ve provided a golden touch for everyone from Usher and Boys II Men to George Michael and The Human League.But now, at the ages of Read more ...
joe.muggs
Emma-Jean Thackray is not lacking in audaciousness. This is, after all, a white woman from Leeds barely into her thirties, raised on bassline house and indie rock, making music whose most obvious comparisons are with some of the most revered (in the most literal sense) black musicians in modern history: Fela Kuti, Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, J Dilla and more. And what’s more, she suggests this album will “simulate a life-changing psychedelic experience, an hour where we see behind the curtain to a hidden dimension”, packs it full of full-bore, third-eye-open omnitheistic Read more ...
peter.quinn
Album number three from Ivor Novello-winning singer-songwriter Laura Mvula sees her paying singularly personal homage to the music of the 1980s. Change, Chic, Michael Jackson and more are all called to mind at various points, with “Church Girl” seemingly nodding to the US songwriting and production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, with its textural palate of drum machine (a Roland TR-808, perhaps?), hand claps and shiny synths, plus a final fade to the unadorned beauty of the human voice, a stylistic trait which Mvula uses to exquisite effect here and elsewhere on the album.Whether it’s the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Things got out of hand at theartsdesk on Vinyl this month and these reviews run to 10,000 words. That's around a fifth of The Great Gatsby. It's because there's so much good music that deserves the words, from jazz to metal to pure electronic strangeness. That said, this is the last time theartsdesk on Vinyl will reach this kind of ludicrous length. So enjoy it. Dig deep. There's something for everyone. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Fratellis Half Drunk Under a Full Moon (Cooking Vinyl)Look, I’m the first one to gleefully, mercilessly dance on the grave of so-called landfill indie (the wave Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
From her indie roots to the Grammy-winning angular art-rock of her self-titled 2014 album and the new wave glam of MASSEDUCTION, St Vincent has refused to allow her work to be pigeonholed. Her latest pivot draws from the grit and glamour of early 1970s New York: pay phones and back-street movie theatres, smoking in bars, cheap vinyl records, never writing your screenplay, last night’s high heels in a dirty subway car.It works. It always works because, however radical the so-called reinvention, hers is a collection of interests and inspirations you can imagine in the same space: just behind Read more ...
joe.muggs
The career of Raf Rundell has had one of the most satisfying trajectories of any in UK music – a steady process of self-realisation, from record label staff via DJing and artist management, through being a serial studio collaborator, to becoming a fully fledged artist in his own right. For a musician to only now, in his late 40s, be releasing his second full album might seem odd, but there’s something very natural about the way it’s all happened, which is expressed in the confidence of his sound which only continues to mature like fine wine.At the heart of this record sits the single “Always Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Rumours keep swirling of pressing plants stumped by the effects of COVID-19 lockdown, and it’s true that vinyl editions of many albums have been delayed, yet still those records keep arriving. At theartsdesk on Vinyl, no-one cares if an album was streaming or out in virtual form months ago. Vinyl is the only game here and when those albums arrive, they are heard, and the best of them, from hip hop to Sixties pop to steel-tough electronic bangin’ to whatever else, makes it into 6000 words of detailed reviews. There’s no shortage of juice or opinion here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHSubp Yao Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Tune-Yards have been much-feted for bringing an original sound to pop. Quite rightly so. Over the last decade the Californian duo, led by singing percussionist Merrill Garbus, have fired out four albums (and a film soundtrack) that amalgamated global roots flavours, electronic freakery, prog rock weirdness, and post-punk attack, all the while remaining lively and engaging rather than pretentious and po. Their last two albums, by no means straight dance music, showed an increasing affection for clubland sensibilities. Their new one, however, is closer in tone to their angular, earliest work. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The debut album by Australian-Ghanaian artist Genesis Owusu is so musically restless it’s exhilarating. What’s clear is this guy doesn’t want to be placed in a box, marked hip hop or anything else. Over a wild variety of music, he adopts multiple vocal styles, reminding of beatbox genius Reggie Watts (most especially his recent Wajatta project with John Tejada). The album cover encapsulates the cinematic, occasionally garish persona that comes across during the 15 tracks. What’s clear is that Genesis Owusu is no wall flower.Running through Smiling With No Teeth is the theme of a “black dog”. Read more ...