fri 02/06/2023

New Music Reviews

The Great Escape Festival 2023, Brighton review - a long, hot, messy Day Three

Caspar Gomez

“stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover.” So said Charles Bukowski in his poem “how to be a great writer”. Who am I to argue. It’s a bright day and 11.50 AM. The sun isn’t past the yard-arm but the beer is cold and good. IPA. Finetime and I stand with Vanessa, her 18-year-old son Cody and her mate Jodie. Vanessa has a short blond crop which glows.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Cherry Stars Collide, Waves of Distortion

Kieron Tyler

In July 2007, an article in The Guardian expressed surprise that shoegazing was influencing a series of current musicians, Blonde Redhead, Deerhunter, Maps and Ulrich Schnauss amongst them.

“You could hear the heady, woozy influence of a style of music that had been a byword for naffness and overindulgence for the past 15 years,” said the article’s opening paragraph. “A type of music that Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers had said he ‘hated more than Hitler’".

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Róisín Murphy, Royal Albert Hall review - shamanic razzle dazzle keeps us on our feet

joe Muggs

In one sense you know what you’re going to bet with Róisín Murphy. Disco beats, a lot of bright colours, costume changes, goofing about, kick-arse vocals, and hats – lots and lots of hats. And yes, all that was present and correct at the Royal Albert Hall. But in another way, any given show is alien territory.

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The Great Escape Festival 2023, Brighton review - a vibrant dip into Day One

Thomas H Green

Brighton is writhing with music biz sorts. The Great Escape is here, the multi-venue festival that’s taken place here for over a decade-and-a-half, presenting bands from all over the world, most of them little known, at least in the UK.

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Lucinda Chua, ICA review - sublimity on a rainy evening in London

India Lewis

As my editor noted, this was the first gig in his 30 years of music journalism that had guided meditation as its support act. This set the tone for a beautiful, peaceful evening at the ICA for Lucinda Chua, a homecoming gig and a welcome listen to pieces from her new and older albums.

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Jah Wobble, Brighton Festival 2023 review - Coronation bank hol Sunday marathon

Caspar Gomez

Jah Jah Jah blah blah blah. We’ll get to that.

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Duran Duran, Utilita Arena, Birmingham review - New Romantic veterans return home

Guy Oddy

Duran Duran were back in their hometown of Birmingham this weekend for the first time since performing as part of the open ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games and were justly forthright in trumpeting their local history. Even Pinner-born Simon Le Bon was keen to claim his stake, telling the audience a long and convoluted tale about being dubbed an honorary Brummie by UB40’s Ali Campbell 25 years ago.

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Die Verlierer, New River Studios review - Berlin punks instantly find an audience at their UK debut

Kieron Tyler

It’s flabbergasting. OK, there’s the power of the internet as a propagation tool but here’s a German band playing their first UK show to a jumping-up-and-down audience punching the air while shouting along with the chorus of “X-Ray Vision” – which, indeed, is “X-Ray Vision”. The reception is extraordinary.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Tony Rivers - Move A Little Closer: The Complete Recordings 1963-1970

Kieron Tyler

Amongst the stranger recordings surfacing in 1977’s summer of punk was the version of Sex Pistols’s “Pretty Vacant” appearing on the budget Hallmark label album Top Of The Pops Volume 60 – the latest in a long-running series collecting ostensibly sound-alike versions of current hits recorded by anonymous session musicians and singers in a Wembley studio.

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Lankum, Barbican review - a stunning set

Tim Cumming

“YOUR NEW ALBUM IS FUCKING DEADLY!” hollers a voice from the depths of a full house at the Barbican on Thursday night, the first date on the north Dublin band’s UK tour for their stunning new album, False Lankum.

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