New music
Matthew Wright
Anglo-Ghanaian musician Fuse ODG – born Nana Richard Abiona – is a leading exponent of the new Afrobeats movement, which combines Western pop and rap with Nigerian and Ghanaian pop, and some stylistic elements from the Fela Kuti-inspired Afrobeat scene. Unlike many of his contemporaries on the scene, Fuse spent many years of his childhood in Ghana, returning to London for secondary school, and has detailed first-hand experience of both cultures. He retains a musical interest in both countries, and is the first British musician to be nominated for two Ghanaian music awards.He’s built his Read more ...
Guy Oddy
To the uninitiated, Black Veil Brides are five young men who look and sound pretty much like ‘80s hair metal horrors Motley Crűe – but with a hefty dollop of emo attitude on top. They may be the kings of hard rock cliché but it hasn’t stopped them from selling ridiculous amounts of albums right from their 2010 debut, We Stitch These Wounds.Black Veil Brides IV is, unsurprisingly, the band’s fourth album and sees them taking on the woes of the world with a bagful of jolly ditties going under titles such as “Drag Me To The Grave” and “World Of Sacrifice”. “You want a fight. I’ll bring the war” Read more ...
Matthew Wright
In the time that Culture Club have been planning reunions, bands, movements, whole musical eras have come and gone. And still, once every couple of years, a rumour circulates, and a demo is aired. Generally, nothing comes of it, and those memories of dancing drunkenly to “Karma Chameleon” grow a little fainter. Now, with last night’s taster gig at Heaven (where the band gave their first big London performance in 1982), we can definitively say, they are back. A nationwide tour is booked, new songs are written, and the album (provisionally entitled “Tribes”, if I heard Boy George correctly) is Read more ...
Matthew Wright
You wonder what gets them out of bed. After more than a decade together, and with this, their fourth album, just released, The Twilight Sad must be feeling very miserable. The odd thing is, they seem to revel in their misery. “Scottish band who enjoy drinking & making miserable music,” says The Twilight Sad’s Twitter profile. “Enjoy” and “miserable” are key. They have taken shoe-gazing mournfulness to a new level of craftsmanship. This time, it’s more enjoyable than ever, but you can’t help feeling it’s a bit less spontaneous. There’s just a hint that this is not ordinary misery, but Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The humming is rising. Only three songs in and already a large section of the crowd is swaying, tranced out, from side to side, like southern Baptists, swept along by an extended version of “Meet Me There” from Nick Mulvey’s 2014 Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut album First Mind. The Komedia’s basement is an odd venue. It has a very low ceiling and takes exact ratios of performance energy, visual impact and audience goodwill to make it work. Whatever it takes, Nick Mulvey has it from the off. He doesn’t say much but captivates a cheerful, chatty and, admittedly, distinctly partisan crowd. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As tough-going as expected, the eagerly anticipated collaboration between Scott Walker and deconstructed metallers Sunn O))) is 48 minutes of deliberately ugly darkness. On the opening track “Brando”, in his now-familiar strangulated tenor, Walker wails “a beating would do me a world of good.” He’s already punned “whip-poor-will” which was, with crushing inevitability, followed by the sound of an actual bullwhip. All the while, Sunn O))) grind away, producing elongated slabs of unyielding noise.Like Walker's last album, 2012’s Bish Bosch, Soused (as in saturated or drunk) is, sonically, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
In a week packed with releases from music industry veterans including Neil Diamond, Chris De Burgh and Status Quo, it’s actually the new one from Slipknot that’s the most interesting. .5: The Gray Chapter is the mask-wearing Iowan metallers’ first album in six years, and their first since the 2010 death of founding member and bassist Paul Gray from an accidental overdose. As its title suggests, much of this album is a tribute to friend and colleague – and, as the genre suggests, it’s one that is brutal, honest and raw.Musical tributes to absent friends are not rare – “Silver Bridge”, from Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Madness: One Step Beyond - 35th Anniversary EditionLast time One Step Beyond was reissued on CD, for its 30th Anniversary, the album was expanded to cover two discs with added B-sides, tracks from EPs and a flexi-disc, a John Peel session as well some live cuts. The package was rounded out with five promo videos and liner notes by author Irvine Welsh.Now, five years on and 35 from its original October 1979 release, Madness’s debut long player resurfaces again in a multi-foldout digi-pack as a double-disc set. Disc Two is a DVD with four of the videos from last time (“The Prince” is Read more ...
Matthew Wright
A first live experience of the French-Cameroonian singer Sandra Nkaké leaves many questions unanswered. Once the immediate bewilderment has passed, the most pressing question for a British audience should be: why is this extraordinary performer not block-booking the festival circuit? In a single set, accompanied by flautist and controller of the electronics, Jî Drû, Nkaké gave a stunningly complete display, as voice, accompaniment, movement and stage presence combined to project her mesmerising, leonine charisma. For Georgia Mancio’s ReVoice Festival, it was an inspired booking.There’s a Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Online comments for the preview stream of Kings and Queens of the Underground have been disappointing. So poor, in fact, they could have you checking Mr Idol’s new autobiography, Dancing With Myself, to see if Billy had insulted the authors personally. But, c'mon guys, the album really isn’t that bad! Ok, it’s overproduced and patchy, but once you ignore the worst three or four tracks, surely there's something rather loveable about this 58-year-old from Bromley still hung up on being a 20-year-old American punk.Inspired by writing his life story, this new album looks back on William Broad’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Apologies, I missed nearly half the concert. I turned up at 9.00 when I’d been told the gig began but they started half an hour early. Apparently it was a last minute decision. There we go. When I crushed into the back of the Concorde 2, a space jammed mostly with men between 35 and 55, Buzzcocks guitarist Steve Diggle, clad in a polka dot shirt, was singing “Sick City Sometimes” from their eponymous 2003 album. It’s no classic but Diggle was throwing his every ounce of zest at it.The band has always been based around the dynamic of Diggle and the other Buzzcocks lifer, Pete Shelley. The Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
John Foxx was one of electro-pop’s original instigators. His alienated synth sound and Ballardian sci-fi vision defined the genre in its early days. He was, for instance, an acknowledged influence on Gary Numan who became a global star in 1980 as a result. Foxx did not, but his Metamatic album is still regarded as an important stepping stone in electronic music’s development. With a sideline in academia and graphic conceptual art, Foxx retains a rabid fan-base who follow his every move. He’s also extraordinarily prolific, recording at least twenty albums since the millennium, including Read more ...