Born in Beckenham, Kent, in 1960, Django Bates is a self-taught composer and founder member of the seminal big band Loose Tubes (1983-1990). As well as leading his own groups, Human Chain and Delightful Precipice, he has composed works for the Brodsky Quartet, Joanna MacGregor, Evelyn Glennie, the Britten Sinfonia and the Dutch Metropole Orchestra, amongst others. In 1997, Bates was awarded the prestigious Jazzpar prize, known as the 'Nobel Prize of Jazz' (previous recipients include Lee Konitz, Roy Haynes and Geri Allen). He currently teaches at Bern University of the Arts and the Read more ...

It has occasionally worked against Hot Chip that their first single – or, at least, the first to make any impact – was “Over and Over”. This 2006 song is such a perfect pop nugget, brutally reducing the appeal of club culture to a snappy yet celebratory couplet, that later work seemed wet in its shadow. Not that you’d know it from the music media adulation that attends the band. Consisting of five smart, geeky-looking blokes from London, they were quickly taken up by that same city’s taste arbiters, their clever electronic pop appealing to those observing the dance floor rather than on it.In Read more ...

Opened in 2007, the Prudential Center in Newark, 16 miles from Manhattan, is a cavernous indoors sports arena, the home of ice hockey’s New Jersey Devils and basketball’s Seton Hall Pirates and, temporarily, the New York Liberty. The arena’s capacity for concerts is 19,500 – perhaps 2,000 can stand on the floor in front of the stage, the remainder must take their seats in the tiers that rise and rise to a stratosphere that removes them, emotionally and spiritually, from the show below.If you’re up so high and also at the opposite end from the stage or stuck in a far corner you might think you Read more ...

Neneh Cherry has never been conventional. The singer and rapper's latest album is a collaboration with The Thing, a Swedish free jazz trio who have previously tackled songs by PJ Harvey and The White Stripes. If anything, the presence of Cherry has made them braver: The Cherry Thing features reworkings of The Stooges' "Dirt", Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" and MF Doom's "Accordion". It's gutsy stuff, but it works. The album already sounds like a contender for the end of year lists.At first, this project seems like an unlikely comeback vehicle for Cherry, but on closer inspection it could be Read more ...

“We’re back together, easy money”. For anyone feeling a wee bit cynical about The Beach Boys' reunion, that lyric – from “Spring Vacation” – is likely to push them towards full-blown contempt. Although That’s Why God Made the Radio is defined by missteps, it’s worth persevering to the end.The album reanimates The Beach Boys’ brand to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Given that they formed and released their first single in 1961, it must be the anniversary of the first chart hit, 1962’s “Surfin’ Safari”. Reunited are three originals - Al Jardine, Mike Love and Brian Wilson - and Bruce Johnson Read more ...

“Before I met James Yorkston, I used to write songs that had choruses in them - and here’s one of them.” Irish folk-inspired singer-songwriter Seamus Fogarty may be one of the newer additions to the legendary Fence Records label from which Yorkston sprang, but at the end of a clutch of dates on which the more established artist performed his 2002 debut Moving Up Country in its entirety he certainly isn’t over-awed.And nor he should be. Yorkston’s emergence from the crowd to provide some harmonies for one of his protege’s earlier songs - one of the ones with a chorus, and a smart and foul- Read more ...

Ever since their original collaboration on 1969's Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young and Crazy Horse have made music that sounded as old as the hills. Primitive and funky, they reduce rock to its raw materials, without flash or frills or any chords more complicated than a G7. For this new project (their first together since Greendale in 2003), Young has assembled a batch of elderly folk songs and traditional ballads and processed their simple chord structures through the Crazy Horse blender.Folk music connoisseurs will recognise several of these, even if Young has given himself Read more ...

I love the BBC. “Auntie Beeb” really is the appropriate nickname for the Corporation, at least when it comes to television, because you just know when they try and get involved with any kind of pop culture it's going to be with all the gaucheness of a very enthusiastic auntie trying to adopt kids' tastes. This goes double with Danny Cohen – a man who gives the impression that he starts every sentence with “hey guys” and thinks “mega” is the latest street slang – at the helm of BBC One. And it's precisely this which has made The Voice such compelling viewing.The series finished last night Read more ...

Bob Dylan talked, after his 1966 motorcycle crash, about having to learn to do consciously what he once did instinctively. That quote kept popping into my head as I listened to One Day I’m Going to Soar, the fourth Dexys album and their first for 27 years. On the surface everything seems to be in its right place: the vigorous horns, the virile fiddles. Old hands “Big” Jim Paterson, Mick Talbot and Pete Williams are back on board, aiding and abetting Kevin Rowland’s eccentric yelp, rambling monologues, wry humour and lacerating self-doubt. But somehow it doesn't quite add up.The primary Read more ...

Everything But The Girl: Eden, Love Not Money, Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, IdlewildJasper ReesCan it really be nearly three decades since the release of Eden defined the quintessential bedsit sound? Everything But The Girl are somehow ageless, a reality underwritten by this bloody wonderful set of reissues which tells the story of their quietly immense contribution to intelligent Eighties pop. There is also a clear narrative of their early progress from the undergraduate balladeering of Eden (1984), embellished and politicised in Love Not Money (1985), thrown entirely over for Ben Watt’s Read more ...