tue 29/07/2025

New Music Reviews

Hoobastank, P.O.D., Alien Ant Farm, KOKO

Lydia Perrysmith

It was a strange atmosphere inside Camden’s KOKO last night, like a very particular nu metal subgroup of 2003 having a reunion. There was no one under the age of 20 but there were still dreadlocks and beards aplenty. First up on this nostalgia-fest were Alien Ant Farm, the American rock band who formed in 1995 in Riverside, California. By the time the band come out on stage, the crowd has had time to buy a few warm, over-priced beers and are ready to let loose.

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The Prodigy, O2 Academy, Birmingham

Guy Oddy

The over-full O2 Academy is already like a sauna, with sweat dripping down the walls and clouds of condensation drifting above the audience, before the Prodigy even take to the stage in Birmingham. However, when a fur-coated MC Maxim leads the band out the atmosphere goes up several notches further and then positively explodes as Liam Howlett lays down the intro to 1997’s hit single “Breath”.

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Laura Moody, The Old Church, Stoke Newington

Russ Coffey

The venues Laura Moody has played on this, her first national tour, have included a launderette, a lighthouse, and the philosophy section of a well-known Oxford bookshop – all, apparently, selected for their “intimate and unusual” quality. It's certainly been an odd couple of months. On the other hand Acrobats, the album she featured last night, seemed a little more mainstream than her previous material. 

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The Warlocks, Rainbow, Birmingham

Guy Oddy

The Warlocks are a psychedelic band from LA who dress not unlike the Velvet Underground in their prime and are clearly not given to star-like behaviour. They slope onto the stage at Birmingham’s Rainbow, tune up and burst straight into “Red Camera” from their 2009 album The Mirror Explodes. A heavy, dense mediation that comes on like a deep, Spacemen 3-flavoured drone, it whacks up the volume and sets the tone for the evening.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Eurovision 2015

Kieron Tyler

 

Building Bridges Eurovision Song Contest  Vienna 2015Various Artists: Building Bridges - Eurovision Song Contest Vienna 2015

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San Fermin, Jazz Café

Matthew Wright

San Fermin have enough brass to rock Mardi Gras and the vocal range to stretch an opera chorus, but they are, still, a pop group. The Brooklyn indie octet’s straight-through rendition of their second album Jackrabbit, released last week, inspired the Jazz Café on Monday night, their obliquely hyperactive compositions, by Yale graduate and Nico Muhly associate Ellis Ludwig-Leone, decked in the gaudy distractions of the carnival.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Dion

Kieron Tyler

 

Dion Recorded Live at the Bitter End August 1971Dion: Recorded Live at the Bitter End August 1971

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The Fall, Brixton Electric

Tim Cumming

They begin with “My Door is Never” from 2007 album Reformation Post TLC, and close a little over an hour later with “Sparta FC”, from early in the century, and from a long-gone Fall line-up. In between, a flurry of blurred, brutal songs from the new and most recent albums set about pummelling a packed house at the Brixton Electric.

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Public Service Broadcasting, Corn Exchange, Brighton

Thomas H Green

A band are doing well if they have their audience laughing and cheering before they’ve even hit the stage. Such is the case with Public Service Broadcasting who show a creaky public information-style animation, with a distinct 1970s feel, prior to their appearance. In it we’re presented with Calman-esque cartoons Ralph and Geoffrey who each have contrasting approaches to using their mobile phones at concerts.

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Three Tales, Ensemble BPM, IMAX Science Museum

David Nice

Poised vibrantly enough between the buried-alive monotony of Philip Glass and the dynamic flights of John Adams, Steve Reich’s Three Tales deserves a special place in music-theatre history ("opera" it is not).

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