New music
Tim Cumming
Out of the hundreds of gigs, surprises and collaborations that make up the EFG London Jazz Festival (LJF), this review focuses on four concerts fusing jazz with world music. They are the Korean extravaganza of Dionysus Robot (pictured) at the Queen Elizabeth Hall; British-Bahraini trumpeter Yazz Ahmed’s melding of jazz, Middle Eastern elements and Bahraini history at Ronnie Scott’s; a late-career turn from Ethio-jazz giant Mulatu Astatke at the subterranean Here at Outernet; and the festival’s closing weekend ‘takeover’ by the Aga Khan Master Musicians at the Royal Festival Hall.Won Il, Read more ...
johncarvill
Bliss it was to be a fan of Thin Lizzy 50 years ago, in November 1975. Phil Lynott referred to fans as “supporters”, an apt term given Lizzy were followed with a level of partisan fervour generally reserved for football teams. And they were on a sharp upward curve.This set covers 1974 to 1975, including remasters of Nightlife and Fighting, demos, alt takes, remixes, and live performances. It’s the origin story of the classic “twin lead guitar attack” lineup, driven by pugnacious Glaswegian Brian Robertson and laid-back Californian Scott Gorham. This is a band in transition, a good band Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Strings swirl. A flute drifts like a bird floating on warm air. The melody is subdued, its tonality evoking The Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please, Let me Get What I Want.” A wistful, French-accented voice sings “I’ve always been so cruel, Hard on myself, You say I’m just a fool, Trying to be somebody else.” Mood set with opening track “Bluer Than Blue,” How and Why subsequently showcases nine more similarly moody, acoustic-centred songs.The dreamy, slightly husky, voice is recognisable. Since 2003, Mélanie Pain has been a main vocalist with France’s Nouvelle Vague, Marc Collin and Olivier Read more ...
Tim Cumming
If you want a peek into a lost world of rock n roll degeneracy and decadence, you won’t find a better glory hole than the grubby, outlandish view offered by the video for “Hey Negrita” from the Rolling Stones’ 1976 album, Black & Blue.
It’s on the band’s YouTube channel, Jagger flouncing about in some lime green Latina blouse, vocally molesting pianist Billy Preston on the breakdown, and Keith and new boy Ronnie posing about in shades, their battered guitars locking in to that song’s unspeakably brilliant, filthy, sleazy groove.
Black & Blue is not high in the canon of Great Rolling Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHMartel Zaire (Evil Ideas)Montenegro-born, Cyprus-based producer Martel Vladimiroff is a hard man to find out about. His meagre online imprint and extensive global travels make him seem more like “an asset in the field” than a musician. Whoever he is, his new EP, four tracks drawn from his second album of the same name, is a unique idea, well-executed. Inspired by the imperial ravaging of Africa and the ongoing horrors of its modern equivalent, with the Congo as prime exemplar, it’s a conceptual head-trip. A dense gumbo of African field recordings and tribal drums play off Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Opening acts don’t always enjoy a full house, but at at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of a UK tour in support of Suzanne Vega and her acclaimed new album Flying with Angels, there was a warm and generous welcome for singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy’s opening five-song set, drawn from her first two albums, The Eternal Rocks Beneath and The Pendulum Swing, and featuring a preview from the third, These Frightening Machines, due in March.The new song is “Matches”, about the witch trials, but a springboard, too, to broader and wider concerns that persist and exist beyond historical time. They Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Issued in September 1974, Hall of the Mountain Grill was Hawkwind’s fifth LP. The follow-up to 1973’s live double album The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London, it found the band in a position which seemed unlikely considering their roots in, and continued commitment to, West London’s freak scene. Their June 1972 single “Silver Machine” had charted and, irrespective of what they represented or espoused, Hawkwind had breached the mainstream.Nonetheless, Hall of the Mountain Grill didn’t chart high – in the UK, it peaked at 16 in late September 1974: when Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Heard now, 50 years after its release, Tangerine Dream’s Rubycon sounds like what it became: part of the musical template for Jean-Michel Jarre’s 1976 international breakthrough and also as an integral component of the records The Orb began attracting attention with in the early Nineties. Beyond the aesthetic ripples, a specific aspect of the May 1975 album was and is also significant.Rubycon was one of the first albums by a rock – in its loosest meaning – band to seamlessly incorporate the use of a sequencer. Those with the budget for the gear and the attendant technical know-how could Read more ...
Guy Oddy
In all honestly, 2025 has not been a vintage year for new recorded music and there certainly seems to have been a significant paucity of high-profile album releases that are likely to be viewed as stone-cold classics in years to come. Nevertheless, there has been gold for those prepared to look hard enough.Swiss electro-rock veterans, the Young Gods unleashed a techno-metal monster, Appear Disappear, that dug deep into an intoxicating malevolence with their muscular, sample-heavy electronics and live percussion. Soulwax brought us the gritty electro-pop flavoured All Systems Are Lying. While Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
Of all the problems a band could face, fighting for room onstage with a Christmas tree must be far down the list of possibilities. Yet there was David "Jaff" Craig struggling to find room to move around, while avoiding knocking over the decoration next to him with an errant swing of his bass. It was the Futureheads own fault though, as both their current album and tour have a festive theme, hence the choice of two large trees on either side of the band.Some of the crowd had taken this theme to heart, with Christmas jumpers and Santa hats worn, suggesting a works night out had wandered into Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Among millennials, Taylor Momsen is likely to be primarily remembered as an actor of things relatively sweet and family friendly. She appeared in Spy Kids 2 and TV’s Gossip Girl, but most notably as Cindy Lou Who with Jim Carrey in How the Grinch Stole Christmas at the turn of the century.Since then, of course, she’s reinvented herself as the post-grunge front woman of the very successful Pretty Reckless. As a rock’n’roller, she may like people to believe that she’s something of a replacement Courtney Love but actually she really inhabits Avril Lavigne-like territory. Still, she’s not Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
According to the fifth song on their first Christmas album, seasonal shenanigans in Old Crow Medicine Show’s family are boozy and raucous. Step aside Santa because “Grandpappy's been a-brewing since before the war” and is “the best bootlegger for a Georgia mile”. The result is the riotous barndance fiddlin’ of “Corn Whiskey Christmas” (which brings “good cheer to all the gals and the fellas). I’m in!The song is a highlight of OCMS XMAS, a 13-track set which showcases the light-hearted side of a Nashville outfit who’ve been at the forefront of the US bluegrass revival for over two decades. Read more ...