New music
Thomas H. Green
Debashish Bhattacharya (b 1963) is India’s leading lap steel guitar player. Equally happy in the worlds of Indian classical and West-leaning fusion music, it’s no exaggeration to say he changed the way his instrument is regarded, at home and abroad. Born in Kolkata (AKA Calcutta) to parents who were both classical singers in the gwailor tradition, he embraced both sitar and western guitar as a young child, then spent most of his twenties studying with Pandit Brij Bhushan Kabra, a master of raga slide guitar. His career since has seen him push raga slide into whole new areas, including Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The recent Alien Day was a contrived event designed to sell as much tat related to the Alien film franchise as possible. However, it had one intriguing side effect. Seventy-five copies of the soundtrack to the second film, Aliens, appeared on liquid-filled vinyl, created by New York artist Curtis Godino. These strange artefacts are pictured above. In theartsdesk on Vinyl record collection, there’s a version of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” by Al Jourgensen’s tongue-in-cheek industrial act Revolting Cocks that originally came in a transparent sleeve containing liquid (until it all Read more ...
peter.quinn
A diverse mix of musicians from the worlds of jazz, blues, soul and beyond were honoured at the third Jazz FM Awards on Tuesday night, which took place in the 1920s art-deco setting of London’s Bloomsbury Ballroom.Hosted by writer, actor and broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli, and produced by Serious, the ceremony featured performances from Kansas Smitty’s House Band, Liv Warfield, rising star singer/pianist Kandace Springs, and Hiatus Kaiyote. Guest presenters included Cerys Matthews, Nitin Sawhney, Soweto Kinch, plus Simon Bartholomew and Andrew Levy from the Brand New Heavies. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ry “X” Cuming is an Australian singer with an unpleasing Hoxtonite beard. And he certainly gets about. He first came to prominence when he hooked up with former UK breakbeat DJ-producer kingpin Adam Freeland to form Californian band The Acid. Their output has mainly been ghostly minimalist, post-dubstep songs. It was when Cuming got together with Frank Wiedemann of successful dance music unit Âme as Howling that he came to this writer’s attention. Their debut album, Sacred Ground, was one of last year’s best, albeit very much in the ghostly minimalist post-dubstep vein. At a guess then, what Read more ...
Tim Cumming
It's the first night of The Fall's four-night residency at The Garage in Highbury, north London, a suitably small venue to get the full visceral rub of the current group – Elena Poulou on keyboards, guitarist Peter Greenaway, drummer Keiron Melling, and bassist Dave Spurr. It’s the longest-lasting Fall line-up Mark E Smith has permitted in the group’s 40-year history, and they have a fabulous, wildly experimental and rough-at-the-edges new EP, Wise Ol' Man, and one of the best albums of The Fall’s latterday career – one of the best, full-stop – in Sublingual Tablet behind them.Much of the 75- Read more ...
mark.kidel
Brian Eno has consistently explored the frontiers of music, bravely charting new territories of sound in a way that’s never left his audience behind. He can bring his finely attuned ears and inspiration to the likes of Coldplay or U2 while, with a sensibility that embraces the unashamedly popular, also creating installations in art galleries or playing with Cagean random selection.His new album, the first solo effort since Lux (2012), is refreshingly experimental, and yet rooted in the trademark soundscapes he painted electronically and which defined the ambient genre. Invention in the field Read more ...
Martin Longley
The name of the Savannah Music Festival might sound somewhat vague in these days of specialist events, but this is an (almost) three-week sonic orgy which treats all styles equally, blending classical beside bluegrass, jazz next to African, and country side-by-side with the blues. Multiple venues are used, some more than others. All of them are within easy walking distance, around the centre of this historically-attuned southern States city.Landing down in Georgia from New York City, as did your scribe, the transition is immense. Down here, the traffic actually waits for pedestrians at all of Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Set in the grounds and rooms of the Master Shipwright’s Palace on the Thames at Deptford, Unamplifire brought together more than 30 artists over eight hours, with new and ancient folk and world music stirring from the riverside wing of the building – a stripped-to-the-plaster-and-floorboards palace, one you might find yourself in after a revolution. Built by master shipwright Joseph Allin in 1708, it’s a rich historical anomaly bordering the bleak remains of what was once the King's Wharf, established by Henry VIII in 1513, and about to be redeveloped by a Hong Kong investment company. The Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The new album from Wire consists of a hodge-podge of cuts originally composed for last year’s eponymous Wire album. Colin Newman, a lynchpin of the band, describes it as “less respectful of the band – or, more accurately, the band being less respectful to itself.” Which is to say that this is Wire, one of the 20 or so key outfits forged in the crucible of 1970s UK punk, relaxing somewhat from their reputation for the cerebral and artily calculated. Nocturnal Koreans, as its bizarre title hints, is possibly the sound of Wire having fun.It is, however, no unhinged party. With three original Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The immediate reaction to Close to the Noise Floor is “Why hasn’t anyone done this before?” This new four-disc set’s subtitle captures its objective in a nutshell: to collect Formative UK Electronica 1975–1984 – excursions in proto-synth pop, DIY techno and ambient exploration. While the stars include Blancmange, John Foxx, Throbbing Gristle and the big cult names Bourbonese Qualk, Legendary Pink Dots and Instant Automatons feature, the less well-knowns Sea of Wires, We be Echo and Muslimgauze are also collected.Close to the Noise Floor sets the moody electropop of Spöön Fazer’s previously Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
In interviews, the Scottish songwriter RM Hubbert has described his new album as being the “mirror image” of his best-known work, the 2013 Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award-winning Thirteen Lost and Found. Like that album, Telling the Trees is a series of collaborations with other artists and musicians – but, this time, rather than hole up in a studio with his friends and collaborators, the musician known as Hubby reached out to people whose work he admired with new acoustic compositions and let them create something new, at a distance, in their own time.The process might have involved a Read more ...
Matthew Wright
It’s a nice dilemma. Cameroonian saxophonist and band leader Manu Dibango, who has a Ronnie’s residency ending tonight, helped create the disco sound with his 1972 single “Soul Makossa”. Since then he has ranged over the extended Afro-soul-funk-jazz family of genres with insouciant ease, his showbusinesslike gift for a glitzy riff leading his influence into pop, too. So how to consolidate this influence? Having blazed so many trails, he seems content to enjoy their warm glow through the rear view mirror on the evidence of last night’s pleasant but slightly underwhelming performance.Though the Read more ...