"Descarga Royal" by Los Royal’s de Pucallpa opens proceedings. After flurries of wobbly wah-wah guitar, a driving percussion bed interweaves with a rolling guitar figure. Then, about two minutes in, the guitarist steps on the fuzz pedal. Groovy. Psychedelic too. The band’s name is taken from the tropical east-Perú city of Pucallpa, located on the Amazon tributary river Ucayali.
new music reviews
Kieron Tyler
Kieron Tyler
When Trevor Beales’s band Havana Lake released their only album in 1977, it was on a label which also issued records by The Ryman Country Band, The Saddleworth Male Voice Choir, The Slaithwaite Brass Band, The Thurlstone Bell Orchestra and a version of Sixties beat band The Merseybeats. Look was the offshoot of West Yorkshire studio September Sound Studios – anyone booked there could have a record pressed as part of the deal.
Mark Kidel
Justin Adams has been exploring music that produces trance or near-trance states for a number of years. Along with being Robert Plant’s lead guitarist for a long while, he has followed his own path, seeking out what he had dubbed the secret heart of rock’n’roll.
Peter Culshaw
Even those with the most tangential connection to pop music will be aware that K-Pop is all conquering, and the likes of BTS and BlackPink are on some metrics the most successful of recent acts anywhere. But at the same time, there is also a growing awareness that there is a burgeoning Korean indie and art music scene, the flames of which have been fanned by what has become one of London’s most interesting and enterprising annual festivals, K-Music.
Barney Harsent
“All of this music, it’s nothing to do with the listener,” Stormzy announced to Louis Theroux in a recent TV interview. “All I can do is feel what I feel and document that, and whatever that is, that’s what it’s going to be.”
Liz Thomson
Mary Gauthier’s first tour in more than three years landed at London’s Union Chapel on Saturday, concluding with another sold-out gig. The venue is perfect for unplugged acts – intimate, architecturally pleasing and acoustically spot on. But cold, on this windswept November night.
Kieron Tyler
Any reminder of the greatness of Love is welcome, and Expressions Tell Everything does this in fine style. A box set, it contains eight picture-sleeve seven-inch singles, a book and a couple of postcards. It’s very stylish.
India Lewis
Arriving to the second night of two shows in the same venue, you would expect it to be a little quieter. But Wet Leg’s second outing at the O2 in Kentish Town was anything but – their burgeoning reputation (they are supporting Harry Styles next year) ensuring an excellent and enthusiastic turnout.
Robert Beale
If there was a certain doom-laden dimension to Clemens Schuldt’s Bridgewater Hall programme with the Hallé ( … Requiem … Mozart in D minor … Strauss describing Death and …), it was easily lightened by the conductor’s own approach and personality.
Thomas H. Green
The chorus to Working Men’s Club’s song “Money is Mine” usually runs, “Endless depression, it’s time/Suicide is yours when the money is mine.” Presented as the penultimate song of their set, frontman Syd Minksy-Sargeant distils this. Grim-faced, his hand twisting about under his tee-shirt as if suffering from an untenable itch, he spits “endless depression” and “suicide” into the mic on a jarring loop, backed up every inch by harsh, dark, techno-adjacent battering. It’s a moment that sums the night up.