New music
Kieron Tyler
John Tavener: The Protecting VeilIn its tribute to John Tavener which followed his death last November, theartsdesk acknowledged the difficulties his devotional music brought. David Nice asked “what was there here that I couldn’t get from a standard traditional service?” He continued to describe The Protecting Veil as a masterpiece which “certainly cast its spell.” The tribute also included a fond and frank reminiscence from cellist Steven Isserlis, for whom The Protecting Veil was composed. Tavener was “was complicated," he said, "and could be very difficult.”This reissue of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
British brothers Simon and Robin Lee – AKA Faze Action - have been bubbling under the radar for a couple of decades. There was a point in the late Nineties when the disco-powered duo were poised to break through as the super-hip Nuphonic label’s signature act. But this was in the days before Daft Punk, multiple Norwegians and your Aunt Mildred had rediscovered, reinvigorated and reinvented disco. In some alternate universe Faze Action invaded the charts from the disco-house underground circa 1996, while the Disclosure siblings were still busy watching Clifford the Big Red Dog, sat in their Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“You’re great listeners. You have surrendered your ears.” The reverent hush that descended for two hours on the Festival Hall is a new sort of sound at a Christy Moore concert. There was a time when such a gathering would bristle with fervour. Twenty years ago, if not of Irish descent, you could feel distinctly like the odd one out. Things have changed, for any number of factors: the peace dividend in Ulster, the ever-diluting Celtic DNA of the Irish diaspora, while the senior sections of Moore’s audience – and pensioners abounded last night – have grown older and less raucous with him.But Read more ...
joe.muggs
I'm starting to get irritated that the term “indietronica” steadfastly refuses to catch on. We live in a world now where Hot Chip, Metronomy, Fujiya & Miyagi, tUnE-yArDs, M83 and on and on and on are as much the norm in just-left-of-centre music as any kind of guitar-centric bands. It's not dance music, it's not particularly avant garde, it's got nice songs and interesting, vulnerable lyrics: it's indie, but electronic. It's indietronica, surely? But no, the years tick by, and this whole area remains essentially unnamed.Anyway. Phil Kay – not the under-rated stoner Scottish comedian, but Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s hard not to admire Kelis Rogers’ spirited and unpredictable approach to the music business. She’s been through multiple incarnations, approaching them with real zest, the spiritual successor to Nena Cherry, albeit more prolific and emanating a very American hip hop raunch. At her career’s start she explored the shouty borderland where R&B meets rock; in “Milkshake” she created one of the sexiest, starkest, best R&B numbers of the century, yet her last album was produced with EDM-pop Satan, David Guetta. Even outside her music, there’s always some new enthusiasm. The only time I Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Drummer Billy Cobham has been an innovative and influential figure since the 1960s across jazz, Latin, funk and the areas of fusion between. He has played with Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Randy and Michael Brecker, and in 1971 was a founder-member of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, widely considered to have been the greatest jazz-rock fusion group of all. The sensitivity and thoroughness with which the drumming was integrated into the Mahavishnu Orchestra ensemble, and Cobham’s management of the new and unbalanced rhythms and structures of that orchestra is usually considered to have Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
The ease with which Wallis Bird can flit between genres armed with nothing but a guitar and her warm, raggedly bluesy voice has been apparent since at the very least her 2012 self-titled third album. Even still, those of us who fell for that album’s considerable charms could hardly have expected its architect to celebrate a move to Berlin by going full-on Eurodisco.It’s an acquired taste, the throbbingly incessant disco beat that punctuates “Hardly Hardly”, the opening track - and first single - from Architect from about four bars in, but the multiple Irish Meteor winner Bird has never been Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Pianist Ivo Neame, whose quintet gave a masterclass in the more reflective, concept-driven variety of contemporary jazz at Kings Place last night, is one of the lynchpins of the London scene. As well as leading and composing for this, his own group, he’s also a member of the LOOP Collective, supertrio Phronesis, and Marius Neset’s Golden Xplosion. Playing a mixture of new originals and a couple of pieces from their last album, Yatra, Neame’s quintet demonstrated both the highest collective technique and a winsome sense of wit and whimsy.With an instrumental line-up of piano/accordion, double Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Chicago Hit Factory – The Vee-Jay Story 1953-1966According to the book accompanying this 10-disc tribute to the Chicago independent label, “in one month alone in 1964 Vee-Jay records sold 2.6 million records. Two years later the company was bankrupt.” The reason for it flying so high in 1964 was a deal made in 1962 when the label began licensing material from Britain’s EMI. The prize then was yodelling popster Frank Ifield, whose “I Remember You” Vee-Jay got into the US Top 10. Along with Ifield, they got an unknown quantity called The Beatles. When 1964 arrived, Vee- Read more ...
Guy Oddy
2014 marks rock-jazzers/post-jazzers Led Bib’s tenth anniversary as a going concern and three years since their Bring your Own album. It also sees the release of The People in your Neighbourhood: an album that in no way suggests a band that is merely marking time. Weird electronics rub up against psychedelic bebop and there are even hints of dub reggae on closing tune “Orphan Elephants”. There are, however, still plenty of the pounding grooves and driving sax riffs that we have come to expect from Led Bib. Tracks like opener “New Teles”, “Giant Bean” and “Curly Kale” see them Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Mark Oliver Everett, AKA Mr E, is the voice and brain behind US alt-rock heroes, Eels - a band that has been described as "frank, thunderous, and unusually uplifting”. That's some achievement given their overriding themes of loss and angst. But this band's unique approach to life's set-backs gives them a very wide appeal - their fans range from arthouse hipsters to the audience of Shrek (whose soundtrack interprets “My Beloved Monster” rather literally). On April 21st the band release The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett, their 11th, and quietest, album.Mr E was Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In the five or so years since Paolo Nutini’s last release, the profile of the tousle-haired Scotsman has hardly diminished. Ladies, of all ages, continue to find his raspy voice seductive whilst his laid-back style still gets of the nerves of many men. Or should I say laid-back styles - for Nutini's first two albums were nothing if not eclectic. Caustic Love, however, is appreciably more coherent. The overriding mood is a Seventies-ish mix of blues, soul and funk with a strong undertow of Al Green. But whilst the tone is defiantly retro, Nutini’s gravel voice prevents tunes like “Let Me Read more ...