So theartsdesk on Vinyl reaches its 50th edition. That’s at least a novels’ worth of words. Maybe two! But we’re not stopping yet. The heat of the summer has arrived but the vinyl deluge hasn’t dried up, so check in for everything from Germanic electro to Scottish Seventies pop-rock to Japanese minyo music reimagined. And much more. All vinyl life is here. Dive in!
VINYL OF THE MONTH
Quantic Atlantic Oscillations (Tru Thoughts)
Like Lemmy, the bassist with their fellow London-based freaks Hawkwind, Pink Fairies crossed the bridge between the late-Sixties underground and the great British punk rock boom of 1977. After being sacked from Hawkwind Lemmy formed the punk-friendly Motörhead, whose debut album was issued in ’77. Their short-stay first guitarist was the Fairies’ Larry Wallis. After he exited Motörhead a fleetingly reformed Fairies issued a single on Stiff in 1976, the label’s second release.
“I want to be just like P!nk,” a little girl screams as the lights begin to dim and the introductory music grows louder. It’s no wonder this leg of the Beautiful Trauma World Tour sold out in under 15 minutes. The whole stadium is packed full of adoring fans, in a sea of varying shades of pink, visiting from all over the UK and some further afield. A man takes to the stage offering an out-of-tune version of the 20th Century Fox intro sequence, gesturing towards a popular viral video shown onscreen.
“You want heavy?” Metallica frontman James Hetfield already knows the answer to that question, and he and his three fellow horsemen of the apocalypse certainly deliver that tonight. This stop on Metallica’s mammoth Worldwired tour is the second of only two UK dates this year – they played an extremely rainy Manchester a few days ago – and they are very pleased to be back.
Download is Britain’s premier metal festival, attended by all ages. Theartsdesk’s three person team offer up their reviews of one day each, as they navigated their way between Eighties hair metal, contemporary Viking metal and any other metal you might care to imagine…
Friday 14th June
By Ellie Porter
Camden’s Jazz Cafe reverberated to the sounds of a 50-year-old spiritual jazz classic last night, as saxist and MC Soweto Kinch and his quintet paid fulsome homage to NEA Jazz Master Pharoah Sanders’ consciousness-expanding album, Karma.
Milton Nascimento is 76. Physically, he is quite frail; he had to be helped carefully onto the stage and then up into a high stool for this London concert by a couple of band members. But that arrival and rather ungainly progress were, as one might expect, given a welcome befitting this hero of the Brazilian musical world. The completely full Barbican Hall was willing him on.
In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 was issued by Warner Bros. in October 2003. Hitting shops in time for Christmas, it mixed hits like “Everybody Hurts”, “Man on the Moon” and “Orange Crush” with album and soundtrack cuts, and a couple of previously unissued tracks. Released as an 18-track CD, it was initially issued as double-disc set with the additional material drawn from B-sides, more film soundtracks and live performances.
They showed up with a 30+ song setlist, four costume changes and a floating platform, but the strongest moment of the Backstreet Boys’ tour was when they dispensed with all of that for an a cappella version of “Breathe”, from new album DNA.
“Like we used to do it,” Howie Dorough explained. “Not a lot of people know we started out as an a cappella group.”
In a post Ed Sheeran world, with a glut of acoustic singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi, Tom Walker or Odell, James Bay, Jack Savoretti – all of whom are big on poignantly penned balladry, phonic flair and harmonious melody – is there room for another young male artist to make waves in the indi-folk arena?