sat 12/07/2025

New Music Reviews

theartsdesk at Bestival 2011

Caspar Gomez

Friday 9th September

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King Creosote & Jon Hopkins, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Russ Coffey

There are some acts you’d rather not catch in a concert hall. The relatively recent pairing of King Creosote and Jon Hopkins isn’t, however, one of them. Diamond Mine, their seven-year project, is a deceptively serious piece of art that prefers to be listened to closely and without distraction. It may have been one of the more obscure nominees at...

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John Grant with Midlake, Royal Festival Hall

Kieron Tyler

John Grant’s Queen of Denmark was released less than 18 months ago. Yet here it is, already being performed at one these "so-and-so plays such-and-such an album" shows. Does it merit this treatment? Based on last night, yes. This one-off reunion of Grant with his patrons, Texas’s Midlake, lit the Festival Hall with the beauty and literate miserabilism of his songs. In jeans, suit jacket and a T-shirt, Grant strolled on stage and the audience erupted in applause.

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Heidi Vogel, Pizza Express Jazz Club

peter Quinn The capacity to unfurl long-lined melodies: Heidi Vogel

While the physical and mechanical elements of its production are common to all, the sound of a person's voice is as individual as a fingerprint. Launching her Brazilian-themed solo album Lágrimas de um pássaro (Tears of a Bird) in the intimate surroundings of Soho's Pizza Express Jazz Club, Heidi Vogel's extraordinarily rich and complex vocal timbre proved capable of completely seducing the senses.

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Red Hot Chili Peppers, Koko

Bruce Dessau

I'm not quite sure why Anthony Kiedis bothered to put on his multicoloured frock coat. It certainly wasn't to keep warm. The atmosphere in Koko was positively volcanic even before the Red Hot Chili Peppers appeared on stage at this exclusive Radio 1 showcase. Highlights are due to be broadcast during Zane Lowe's show on 12 September from 7pm to 9pm, but a radio airing will convey only a miniscule fraction of the zip of this age-defying band.

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Gilbert O’Sullivan: Out on His Own, BBC Four

howard Male Maybe the young Tom Waits got one or two sartorial ideas from our Gilbert?

While obviously not as seismic a Top of the Pops moment as Ziggy singing “Starman”, the almost contemporaneous appearance of the flat-capped Gilbert O’Sullivan hunched over his piano as if it were a dying coal fire certainly stuck in my memory as clearly as Bowie’s androgynous space-age carrot-top. Although the flat cap was quickly ditched in favour of casual knitwear and even a hairy chest phase (see pic below), today’s 64-year-...

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Caro Emerald, Jazz Café

Kieron Tyler

In a black dress, Caro Emerald is playing her UK debut. Behind her, an eight-piece band is squeezed onto the Jazz Café’s small stage. Snappy and pin sharp, they’re in black suits, white shirts and black ties. Except the guitarist, who’s jacket-free. Three brass players are ranged behind music stands. Nothing is overstated. Emerald races through her jazz-grounded pop, the rumba-ish “A Night Like This” ending a set that filters filmic swing through a current pop sensibility.

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Edinburgh Fringe: Luke Haines/ The Horne Section

theartsdesk Luke Haines: the former Auteurs man has a story to tell

If the cards had fallen differently Luke Haines might have been as big as Blur. As frontman of The Auteurs he was briefly tipped for Britpop greatness, so it is no surprise that he likes the idea of alternative histories. This special show, The North Sea Scrolls, was all about them, as Haines, former Microdisney linchpin Cathal...

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Edinburgh Fringe: Adam Riches/ Kristin Hersh

theartsdesk

From the moment Adam Riches bursts onto the stage, spewing his business cards around as a manic showbiz agent who wants to sign up everyone and everything - including even the venue's walls and floor - this is a show of hyper energy and absurdist comedy.

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Anyone for Demis? How the World Invaded the Charts, BBC Four

Kieron Tyler

"Anyone for Demis?" wasn’t the only question posed by this trawl through some of the foreign – not American - popular music that’s been hugged to our collective bosom. That the large, hirsute, kaftan-shrouded Greek wonder that’s Demis Roussos was popular is obvious. He landed in the Top 10 in 1975 with “Happy to be on an Island in the Sun” and became a chart regular for the next two years. Everyone was for Demis. The other poser was the self-cancelling, “Now that pop music’s gone global, has...

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