new music reviews, news & interviews
Cathi Unsworth |

I got my contract to write Season of The Witch: The Book of Goth just as the first Covid lockdown began in March 2020.

Kieron Tyler |

Shadows opens with “The Lone West,” a short, desolate instrumental featuring a simple keyboard refrain with a flute-like quality and what may be an early Seventies drum machine. There’s a bit of Young Marble Giants in there. The Brian Eno of Another Green World, too. The Ghost Box label’s characteristic nebulousness is also apparent.

Kieron Tyler
Between June 1964 and September 1966, London-area R&B band Downliners Sect issued ten singles, one EP and three albums on EMI’s Columbia imprint…
Tim Cumming
Beginning with “The Ground Above” and closing with “Otherside”, there’s an ambient, otherwordly, disembodied feel to Beth Orton’s new album on…
Thomas H. Green
La Sécurité are a Montreal supergroup… kind of; in that all members are involved in other projects which have had local success. In the case of…

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

Jonathan Geddes
Crowd shows warmth toward the Londoner, back touring after mental health break
Joe Muggs
Detroit techno, avant-classical discord and visionary sci-fi in dark disharmony
Ibi Keita
A warm, nostalgic celebration of home and family
Ellie Roberts
The star’s 12-night residency is off to an impressive start
Thomas H. Green
The Changingman of pop performs a long set that lives up to the nickname
Erin Lewis
Personal detail seasons universal themes as Rodrigo charts an unravelling love affair
Kieron Tyler
New edition of the album capturing ‘possibly the most powerful human sound ever recorded’
Sebastian Scotney
A brilliant musician disappoints
Thomas H. Green
The rain just about stays away as Eighties synth perennials stick to the hits
Thomas H. Green
Genial strummings and spaciness as an underheard master drifts off
Liz Thomson
Rufus Wainwright's final tribute to Judy Garland
Guy Oddy
US garage rockers climb back in the ring with gusto
Joe Muggs
World-bestriding Australian house DJ hits all the right notes, albeit maybe too consistently
Miranda Heggie
A sensational send off for one of the city's last industrial spaces
Mark Kidel
The master of the Arabic-tinged quarter-tone trumpet in party mode
Guy Oddy
Independent Country’s shindig takes on a grey Saturday and wins out
Jonathan Geddes
Yorkshire sextet were exciting at times, but not consistently so
Kieron Tyler
Overdue - albeit digital-only - return of the former Servants lynchpin’s 2002 solo album
Bedouine
On her new album, the musician follows her Armenian heritage to its roots
Thomas H. Green
Fourth album channels passion through low-flavour soft rock
Thomas H. Green
L.A.-based Welsh singer delivers a sweaty maximalist pop love-in
Erin Lewis
An undeniable talent seems determined to go over old ground on album no. 3
Joe Muggs
A brilliant new sound, and some rabble rousing, from a mercurial hip hop talent
Sebastian Scotney
A jazz supergroup on hallowed ground in Burgundy

the future of arts journalism

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing! 

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

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…
It’s the summer vacation and eight-year-old Sasha (Eylul Guven) and her three brothers have moved into a new house on Vancouver Island with…
I got my contract to write Season of The Witch: The Book of Goth just as the first Covid lockdown began in March 2020. During that time of…
Shadows opens with “The Lone West,” a short, desolate instrumental featuring a simple keyboard refrain with a flute-like quality and what…
During the calm evening before an apocalyptic London storm, trumpet virtuoso Håkan Hardenberger delighted the Barbican audience with not…
King Charles I famously declared that Much Ado About Nothing should be renamed the "Beatrice and Benedick play". So it’s not difficult to…
I first became aware of the playwright Teresa Deevy, the Irish author of the Jermyn Street's imminent A Wife to James Whelan, while leafing…
How much more can Jeremy Clarkson’s body take? The fifth season of his reality show about his Oxfordshire spread, Diddly Squat Farm and…
Bloomsday doesn't just celebrate James Joyce's odyssey through so many parts of Dublin that still teem with character; it's also putatively…
“I guess you could call it a lost album. I stumbled upon it in my vault at home. I’d forgotten about it completely,” explained Rodney…

Most read

Begun in 1943 and released in 1945, Les Enfants du paradis, which unfolds in two acts – the first frantic, the second slow – in Paris’s…
It had begun to seem that Jon Hamm, whatever other roles he might appear in, was destined to be forever remembered exclusively as Mad Men’s…
O Glengarry, where is thy sting? That's likely to be one response to the bewildering Old Vic revival of David Mamet's defining (and…
Aptly scheduled for our Great British Heatwave, writer Catherine Shepherd’s eight-part drama whisks us away to a remote Greek island, where…
Finding a clear narrative among the deadly uncertainties of the long-lasting stand-off between Israel and Palestine is a challenge. Israeli…
If you’re not French, there are probably two things you know about Claude François: that he wrote “My Way” and that he died from…
How much plotting went into GLOW? It has been gussied up by the people who brought you the jumbo Netflix hit Orange Is the New Black. Both…
Anyone doubting Venom’s place on the highest level of the pantheon of Rock Gods might want to check out Sunn O)))’s recent, self-titled…
After the evening’s second song “The Last of England,” Patrick Wolf cautions “I’ve got nothing left to say.” During the shows leading up to…
There are a lot of cheerful people in the world, most of them outside the United States. That's the startling conclusion of Michael Moore's…