hip hop
Thomas H. Green
Ah, the Duke of York’s Picture House, the oldest consistently operating purpose-built cinema in the country. It’s a beautiful venue, just over a century old, and almost too comfortable. It’s been jazzed up a few times over the decades and, tonight, bathed in red light, wears its history with lazy insouciance, merging it with the current interior design’s burlesque Art Deco spin. My seat is at the back of the balcony, plush and comfortable, with a little shelf where I place my salted popcorn and horrible pear cider (the latter, a mistake). Mostly the Duke of York’s is still a cinema but they Read more ...
joe.muggs
This is a strangely kaleidoscopic approach to documentary. A selection of recently unearthed footage and interviews which shows the Black Power movement in the USA through the eyes of idealistic Swedish film-makers, now re-edited and framed with the voices and music of both modern and veteran black radical cultural figures, it provides a disorienting, shifting set of superimposed viewpoints of a period in which in any case change seemed to be the only certainty.The footage itself is gripping and often truly eye-opening, particularly when it's at its most ordinary. The stories of dramatic Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
First off Spank Rock, has nailed the second best album title of the year. It’s sweary, bleeds punk attitude and nails a point - rather than the usual focus-grouped opaquely resonant crap bands come up with (best album title of 2011, by the way: Mogwai’s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will – brilliant!).Secondly Baltimore MC Naem Juwan once again lives up to the hype, not easy to do when Tweet-trending futuroid numpties have been frothing over him non-stop for the five years since his debut album made them cream their jeans. Spank Rock brought a broken computer to the hip hop party in 2006 Read more ...
peter.quinn
Rooted in the New Orleans brass band tradition, but updating it for the 21st century with elements of funk, R&B, hip hop, reggae and half-sung, half-rapped lyrics, this disc will blow clean out of the water any preconceptions you might have of what a brass band sounds like.Through a combination of utterly seductive grooves, powerful soloing and über-catchy melodies, the eight-piece Soul Rebels Brass Band possess an unbridled energy that enables Unlock Your Mind to achieve dramatic lift-off from the get-go. Featured in the Season One finale of the acclaimed HBO TV series Treme, the band's Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Better him than Black Eyed Peas, eh? Will.I.Am never came up with a line like, "Just sittin' here chillin' in the Batcave/ Whilst listening to Nick Cave/ Last night was a sick rave". In fact, that lively sliver of channel-hopping doggerel pretty much sums up Example. His lyricism has both cheese and cheek but is undeniably compulsive, laced with bubblegum hedonism. As for the music backing him, it's 21st-century electronic homogeny run riot - bangin' Euro-trance, dubstep, drum and bass, a dash of hip hop, soft-rock tropes, no shortage of melodies and big breakdowns.Half-listened to, Playing Read more ...
joe.muggs
At the start of September, the fourth Outlook Festival takes place in a 19th-century fort on the Croatian coast. Already this festival has become a vital point in the calendar for those involved with dubstep, grime and other UK underground scenes – not only a jolly in the sun (“dubstep's Ibiza”), but the one time in the year when everyone involved takes a break from international touring and comes together in the same place, a time to compare notes and take stock of the progress. Its British organisers make even bigger claims for it, though: they see it as drawing together decades' worth of “ Read more ...
joe.muggs
I'm not claiming some major prescience or insight here. I am as guilty as anyone of dipping into the music of the sink estates for a small dose of frisson then returning to art and music that confirm my own worldview. But maybe, just maybe, if we had all paid more attention to what was being said by young British men and women from those estates over the last decade, the events of the past few days might not have come as such a horrific surprise. After all, French rappers had been explicitly predicting the riots that took place there in 2005 for a decade beforehand, as I noted (with, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The musical identity of Midlands town Stourbridge is largely defined by Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wonder Stuff, a trio that charted with varying degrees of wackiness in the late Eighties to mid-Nineties. The Voluntary Butler Scheme, the recording identity of fellow Stourbridgian Rob Jones, shares their leaning towards wackiness, but it’s more surreal, less surface. He’s also way more interesting musically. Second album The Grandad Galaxy is a musical rummage through a jumble-sale mind.Jones is closer to Davyhulme absurdist Jim Noir than any of his local predecessors. Read more ...
peter.quinn
Bassist, vocalist and composer, Esperanza Spalding is one of the most exciting things to happen to jazz in recent memory. Born and raised on what she has called “the other side of the tracks” in Portland, Oregon, Spalding grew up in a single-parent home. Encouraged by her mother, she began playing violin at the age of five and gained a place in the Chamber Music Society of Oregon. By the time she left, 10 years later, she had risen to the position of concertmaster. By then, she had also discovered the bass, and all of the non-classical avenues that the instrument opened up for her: funk, hip- Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's not often you can call pop music revolutionary, but this record is - in more ways than one. Bringing together techniques of engagement that have been honed by Radiohead, Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne and... um... Justin Bieber, the 21-year-old Berkley, California rapper Lil B appears to be on the verge of becoming the first bona fide internet-birthed superstar. I'm Gay (I'm Happy) appeared on iTunes yesterday, announced with a single tweet, with no prior warning whatsoever bar an announcement of its provocative title a couple of months back. It has seemingly no standard record company support Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
New Orleans, that most musical city, is back, back, back, everyone told me. The tourist board said that visitor numbers are over eight million again, back to levels before “The Storm” as they refer to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina here. The hippest new TV series Treme is a gritty epic set in the Big Easy, created by David Simon of The Wire fame, and the city’s music has been riding high in the pop charts by the unlikely means of Bertie Wooster (or Hugh Laurie as he is in real life, also, apparently the best-paid actor on American TV as the grumpy medic in House). And there’s an Read more ...
joe.muggs
Well, there's a nice surprise. Jill Scott was feared lost to music industry machinations, more likely to succeed in her acting career than make a fourth album (she's probably best known now to mainstream British audiences as Mma Ramotswe in The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency TV series). But it seems a four-year musical hiatus and change of label has done her the power of good, as this is the Philadelphia singer and spoken-word artist's best album since her debut Who is Jill Scott?It kicks off in fairly straightforward “nu soul” fashion, with “Blessed”, featuring the kind of I'm-a-strong-woman- Read more ...