sun 10/11/2024

New Music Reviews

Music Reissues Weekly: Jon Savage's The Secret Public - How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture

Kieron Tyler

Jon Savage's The Secret Public How The LGBTQ+ Aesthetic Shaped Pop Culture 1955-1979 accompanies the titular author/historian/journalist’s book of almost the same name. The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979) and this 41-track double CD each track exactly what their titles say, drilling into what has often paralleled or underlain yet repeatedly influenced a constantly evolving mainstream.

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Album: Samana - Samana

Kieron Tyler

The final track of Samana’s third album is titled “The Preselis,” after the west Welsh mountain range – the place antiquarians suggested as the source of Stonehenge’s blue stones. The song’s opening lyrics are “The blue stones, they grow over me, Carved into mountains, the blood of need.” Later, the words “anima” and “animus” are repeated before the song ends with the recurring refrain “Lay the body down.”

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The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - 12 hours on the musical frontline of Day Three

Caspar Gomez

If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Andwella - To Dream

Kieron Tyler

Original pressings of Love And Poetry sell for up to £2,800. Copies of the August 1969 debut album by Andwellas Dream can sometimes also be found for £700, a relative bargain in the context of the upper limit of the prices the collector’s market has settled on.

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The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - a dip into day one and the elephant-in-the-room

Thomas H Green

Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like the trash compactor in the first Star Wars film.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM BIT

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Laufey, Royal Albert Hall review - fans in heaven

Sebastian Scotney

In many ways, Laufey’s emotionally charged, sold-out Royal Albert Hall debut was a masterclass.

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Hidden Door 10th Birthday Party, St James Quarter, Edinburgh review - going underground

Miranda Heggie

It’s hard to imagine that The Arches – a string of stylish glass-fronted units in prime city centre location, housing boutique bars, high-end eateries and stylish salons – were once a bunch of old storage units which were opened up a decade ago by a volunteer-run, grassroots arts festival calling itself Hidden Door.

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Conchúr White, St Pancras Old Church review - side-stepping the past to embrace the future

Kieron Tyler

If there’s a feeling of déjà vu, it isn’t detectable. Conchúr White played St Pancras Old Church in April 2016 with County Armagh’s Silences, the band he fronted. This evening, a mention of having been here before is absent. Nothing in the body language suggests any familiarity with where he’s playing.

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Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rockers deliver a whopper

Thomas H Green

By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok, 1989), boasts a whopping guitar riff. Keys-player Adam Mole, his ushanka cap’s ear-covers flapping, leaps onto his seat, waves his synth aloft.

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Music Reissues Weekly: Little Girls - Valley Songs

Kieron Tyler

The name, Caron and Michelle Maso explained to Los Angeles radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, was a literal description. “We’re both like five feet. We’re all grown up, but we’re still little.”

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