New music
Mark Kidel
65daysofstatic, the instrumentals-only post-rock experimental band from Sheffield, have suffered from the obsessive need to brand every supposed sub-genre of music when, in their case, they are much more than a math rock or glitch band. They are instead just courageous and adventurous, searching for new ways to put sounds together. Their strength and originality lies in the fact they escape categorisation and, as the good artists they are, re-invent themselves at every turn.With their latest album, the band have come a long way from their first outing The Fall of Math (2004), which rather Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
While bands such as The Birthday Party, Siouxsie and the Banshees and, especially, Bauhaus had a hand in inventing goth music at the start of the Eighties, it was The Sisters of Mercy who defined it. Their combination of black clad cowboy shtick, mirror shades and dry ice worked a treat. In recent years, there have been rumours that the band’s live shows are less than impressive, mentions of a tendency to focus on unreleased material while dressed in leisurewear. Happily, this was certainly not the case tonight.The Sisters’ output, especially their early records, has dated well; gritty, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Charles Hazlewood (b. 1966) has worked across the gamut of orchestral music, his career showcasing the multitude of ways it can be perceived and enjoyed. Recently he has reengaged with his longstanding love of minimalist music, first via his two BBC documentaries Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism, and now with forthcoming concerts which follow in their wake. These ares the latest chapter in a creatively restless career.In 1995 Hazelwood won the European Broadcasting Union’s conducting competition and has since performed with orchestras including the Swedish Radio Symphony, Read more ...
Nick Hasted
New Pornographer-in-chief AC Newman grew up enraptured by how much and how little pop could be: from David Bowie shucking skins to the rush of the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”, to Pixies' boiling down of a song to three chords and a scream. Eight albums in, and Newman’s Vancouver art-power pop veterans retain the capacity of a tightly edited musical thesaurus, spinning out compacted melodies and metaphors and challenging the listener to keep up, ideally with a code-book.The New Pornographers’ sometimes contentious personnel equation, always amorphous in their typically Canadian rock commune, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Among the issues integral to the final album The Beatles recorded two, though usually low profile, are worth bearing mind. Abbey Road was their first album to be released in stereo only. There was no mono edition. Also, in late 1968, an EMI TG12345 console had been installed in Studio 2 of their label’s Abbey Road studios. Unlike its predecessor, the REDD.51, it was a solid-state piece of equipment. Transistors had replaced valves.The album was recorded in a new world, one where the old – mono and valves – was being ushered out. And likewise, The Beatles were in the studio as they ushered Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hatari’s 10th placing in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest hasn’t done them any harm. Neither did ruffling the feathers of the European Broadcasting Union and host nation Israel with their stance on Palestine. Based on their performance in Hamburg at 2019’s Reeperbahn Festival, Iceland’s favourite BDSM-leaning popsters haven’t smoothed-off their rough edges.The more gruff of their two singers, Matthías Haraldsson, sounds like a Dalek were one of the wheeled monstrosities angrier than usual, and even more stentorian. Team this with co-frontman Klemens Hannigan’s somewhat sweeter tones and Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Keane grew up six miles away in Battle, making this night in balmy Bexhill-on-Sea as close as they can practically get to a hometown gig. Prior to their first headline tour in six years, they’re playing new album Cause and Effect in full in an “in-store appearance”, hosted by the Music’s Not Dead record shop within the town’s art deco De La Warr Pavilion, but played in the main auditorium.This intimate localism from one of Britain’s biggest bands is somewhat undercut by the gig being live-streamed. But it’s a welcome opportunity to focus on new songs shaped by what singer Tom Chaplin coyly Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
This episode of Peter Culshaw's occasional global music radio update features guest interview Viveick Rajagopalan, one of the hits of this summers WOMAD Festival. He talks (from 40 minutes in) about how he mixes South Indian rhythms and contemporary Mumbai rap in a very cool and innovative manner. The rest of the show is almost entirely subcontinental, featuring film musicians from Lahore, groovy 1960s Bombay hipsters, and sufistic music from the likes of the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, among other delights. To listen to the show - click this link Playlist: Ananda Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Rachid Taha, sadly felled by a heart attack just over a year ago, has come back from the dead! He could not sound more lively than on this vibrant posthumous offering, definitely not something cooked up from tasty leftovers, but a well thought-through album, which, in his usual vein, draws together the sounds of the Maghreb and rock’n’roll.At his very best (and he could be erratic) Taha, born in Algeria, having lived the difficult childhood and adolescence of an Arab immigré in Lyon, was a volcano of energy, pacing around the stage with fury and joy. Inevitably, only a fraction of this can Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Keane were always the best of that post-millennium Coldplay crowd. Tim Rice-Oxley showed adult craft in his lyrics and keyboard textures on their 5 million-selling debut, Hopes and Fears, where the small-town specificity of Battle, Sussex’s biggest band lifted singer Tom Chaplin’s yearning. Six years after they effectively broke up, this fifth album’s title announces itself as a sequel, dissecting Rice-Oxley’s divorce (foreshadowed in 2012’s Strangeland) with forensic relish.“You’re Not Home” describes the split’s aftermath like that of a neutron bomb: “bike wheels still turning” on the back Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Liam Gallagher's 2017 solo debut, As You Were, took everybody by surprise. Not only did it show Gallagher Jnr to be still capable of capturing the public's imagination, but it also revealed him to be a much more capable writer than anyone had suspected. Two years on, things have (slightly) changed. Each song on Why Me? Why Not. has been co-written with a one or two superstar songwriters, leaving Liam to concentrate on his inimitable vocals.Unsurprisingly, the basic formula remains the same. There may have been some tinkering around the edges - a little more classic rock and a fraction Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Renée Zellweger already has strong musical cinema form, Her role as Roxie Hart in Chicago garnered her second Oscar nomination. However, playing and singing Judy Garland is a whole different ball game. The film Judy takes a late-Sixties run of London dates as the prism through which to view the Hollywood star at the end of her life, focusing on both the triumphs and the damage wrought by her celebrity rollercoaster career. The soundtrack, on the other hand, doesn't often intimate those highs and lows so much as capture her hyper-jolly, go-get-‘em film persona.Zellweger inhabits the vocal role Read more ...