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latest in today
We are bowled over! We knew that theartsdesk.com had plenty of supporters out there – we’ve always had a loyal readership of arts…
Reviewing The Clash’s 27 October 1976 appearance at Birmingham’s Barbarella’s, UK music weekly Sounds detected a particular, unique,…
“Trump Arrangement Syndrome”, my propensity to see the world refracted through the lens of the omnipresent ogre’s cult, raised its head…
The Fez Festival of World Sacred Music has been peerless over the years in presenting world/global music acts in one magical place. Only…
Ever since he crashed into the world with that eerie masterpiece, Maxinquaye (1995) – an album that has never aged – Bristol-born Tricky,…
Mould are a post-punk sounding trio from Bristol. The press release says that their debut album is “13 tracks that explore the horrors of…
The regular scriptwriter for Yorgos Lanthimos’s films, Efthimis Filippou, has worked with another director, Karim Aïnouz, on Rosebush…
This week saw something of a landmark gig for Birmingham’s ever-exuberant folkies, Bonfire Radicals. New album, Spaghetti Junction was…
A voice at the start of dancer Aakash Odedra’s performance speaks out of the darkness about the Sufi myth behind what we are going to see,…
Pyschedelic music has always encouraged intergenerational influence. Thus West Midlander Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, in his 1980s Spacemen 3…
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What did the Romans do for us? On the evidence of new drama Britannia, they pillaged, murdered and tortured, but also found themselves…
There’s not – and never has been, really – that much discourse about commercial dance music as music. It’s either talked about by ageing…
Mk.gee has been an unexpected thread in a year of music that’s pulled me in many different directions, punctuating the need for unique,…
Stuttgart Ballet, one of Europe's most highly respected companies, is clearly determined to show London its best sides – all of them.…
“It all started with a June 7, 1976 article in New York magazine about Queens, New York working-class young adults who flocked to a local…
“Family-friendly fun” seems to have mutated over the years into elaborate films featuring high-octane animation, starry voicing and often…
Cambridge 1954, and Christmas was coming, which meant carol singing, mince pies and an unnecessarily conceptual nativity play. But murder…
It’s hard to feel sympathy for a young man plotting to stove his prospective father-in-law’s head in with a hammer. But when Matvei (…
Istanbul six weeks before the failed coup, the south-west coast of Turkey six weeks after: what's the difference? None that I could see;…
Music and therapy have always been closely connected – it is indeed possible that music grew out of a quest for a kind of medicine for the…