New music
Ismene Brown
The autumn 2012 season at the Barbican Centre offers an international history of photography, Juliette Binoche in Strindberg, a train packed with African music, a festival of ecstatic, devotional and psychedelic music, and a film made by London schoolgirls about Bosnia, as well as classical music from the LSO and two new associate ensembles.
Last chance to see summer exhibitions, Bauhaus: Art as Life (until 12 August) and Designing 007 - Fifty years of Bond Style (until 5 September). Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical Carousel comes to the Barbican in August 2012, for just 37 Read more ...
Peter Culshaw and Garth Cartwright
You know, as someone tweeted, that the acid has kicked in when you see Prince Harry wearing a duck’s hat backstage, writes Peter Culshaw. For every newcomer like Harry or Channel 4’s Jon Snow, who raved about it, there were as many others others for whom WOMAD is an essential part of the British “summer” (although this year they were lucky with the weather). Now 30, which makes it an institution, the Peter Gabriel inspired Festival is a pretty well-oiled machine by now.While some of the more famous headliners - Femi Kuti, Khaled, Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club - were predictable, and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Describing the music of Franz Nicolay is a formidable task: it’s almost as easy to imagine the work of some of the bands he has loaned his considerable talents to in the past - most notably during his five years as a member of The Hold Steady - and then imagine the exact opposite. As proficient on accordion, saw and banjo as he is on keyboard or guitar; Nicolay’s music fuses elements of folk and punk with polka, gypsy and klezmer influences to create an articulate, joyful mix that is always entertaining.At least, that’s how I would have described it before my first listen to Do The Struggle, Read more ...
theartsdesk
Welcome to another show, in which Joe guides us around some of the weirder, smokier corners of the broad church of hip hop, and discussion returns to how far genre can stretch and where originality can reside in a multi-channel, everything-available-at-once world. We also take a listen to more and less authentic sounds of South America courtesy of a Brit-in-Colombia, a Colombian Brit, and a legend of British underground sounds turning Colombian sounds into house music. There's some neo-psychedelia and neo-folk thrown into the mix for good measure.The Colombian Brit is one José Hernando Read more ...
howard.male
It’s perfect timing for the release of this collection of cover versions of London-themed songs by multi-cultural London-based musicians. The big surprise is that some of the tracks could so easily have descended into cheesiness or simply not measured up to the original, yet nearly every band has successfully put a new spin on the song they’ve chosen, in some instances even momentarily blocked the original from memory.The Soothsayers reggaefied “Streets of London” makes you forget Mctell’s maudlin original, Katy Prado & The Mamboleros retain the punk spirit of 77 on their version of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Iceland’s kings of heavy metal Momentum are launching into an assault called “The Creator of Malignign Metaphors”. It’s broad daylight and they’re playing about 10 meters from the kitchen window of a suburban-looking house. The stage is sited on an AstroTurf football pitch, with one of the goals pushed to the side of it. On the opposite side, kids are shimmying down a blow-up slide. Very little about G! conforms with the standard festival experience.G! is the Faroe Islands’ – The Føroyar - annual celebration of its own music. The chocolate-box coastal village of Syðrugøta is the host ( Read more ...
Russ Coffey
They're calling it "Conormania". One website says that unless you don’t “like things that are awesome” you should be developing a healthy obsession with him. He is Conor Maynard and his debut album is Contrast. Over the last three years, Maynard has built up a massive fan base from YouTube cover songs recorded in his bedroom, and mixed by Anth Melo, his American “sick rapper brother from another mother”. Then came a subsequent record deal and MTV award. Now many are calling him the British Justin Bieber.Maynard hates that comparison. He wants to be taken more seriously. Rather than using his Read more ...
theartsdesk
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Nocturama, Abattoir Blues, The Lyre of Orpheus, DIG!!! LAZARUS, DIG!!!Howard MaleThere’s something just not right about having to reassess a bunch of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds albums in August, just as the sun is finally making a concerted effort to do its job. Cave is generally either icily cold or autumnally melancholic with the only heat being issued from the fiery hell awaiting some of his vividly conjured protagonists.The first three of these rather swiftly re-released albums - Nocturama, Abattoir Blues, and The Lyre of Orpheus (2003, 2004, 2004 Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Way up in the mountains of northern Italy sits a small spa town called Porretta Terme. For many visitors it is the resort’s healing waters that brings them here. Yet for others it is the healing music – once a year the Porretta Soul Music Festival is held across the second to last weekend in July. Here veterans of American soul music take the stage, often performing their only European show of the year (and, sometimes, many years). I’d heard rumours of Porretta for several years – it has existed since 1988 – and having missed elusive genius Swamp Dogg at last year’s festival meant I went Read more ...
bruce.dessau
If there was ever an album that could be reviewed on the basis of its track titles it is this one. "Helping the Retarded to Know God", "I'm Working at NASA on Acid" and "That Ain't My Trip" sound like they have been automatically generated via some Flaming Lips Title-Generating Machine. Luckily the music, recorded with chums including Nick Cave, Yoko Ono, Ke$ha, Bon Iver and Erykah Badu and first released in limited edition outside the UK on this April's Record Store Day, does not feel quite so formulaic.It is definitely thrilling to hear Nick Cave in playful comedy sex god mode barking out Read more ...
peter.quinn
The UK premiere of Wynton Marsalis's Swing Symphony (Symphony No 3) last night was extraordinary on several counts. We heard, first and foremost, a real dialogue between jazz band and orchestra. Not one of those fist-bitingly cornball jazz arrangements where the jazz players get to stretch out and the orchestral players sit back and contribute the sustained, saccharine harmonies. This was a genuine coming together where all hands contributed equally to the rhythmic, harmonic and melodic detail of the work. And talking of melody, the one that Marsalis penned for the orchestral bass section – Read more ...