alternative
CD: WHY? - AOKOHIOTuesday, 06 August 2019
Founded in 1998, the Los Angeles based Anticon collective has become one of the most curiously individual of 21st century groupings. Taking the wordiest and nerdiest tendencies of hip hop – notably the slam poetry-informed tongue-twisting of fellow... Read more... |
CD: Cross Record - Cross RecordSaturday, 27 July 2019
It’s not every artist who performs “living funerals” along the way as she tours. Then again, American singer Emily Cross is far from the average rocker. Cross Record was previously Cross and her husband Dan Duszynski, who were also both in the... Read more... |
CD: The Flaming Lips – King’s MouthWednesday, 17 July 2019
Oh to be inside the head of Wayne Coyne. The frazzle-haired frontman has always been an enigma, persistently quirky, morally dubious, and undeniably fascinating. Perhaps King’s Mouth offers our best chance yet to get in there – the album is an... Read more... |
Elbow and New Order, Lucca Summer Festival review – a meeting of Mancunian minds?Tuesday, 16 July 2019
Thirty-three years ago, at Manchester's Festival of the Tenth Summer, I fumed that New Order had been given top billing over The Smiths, much to the mirth of a couple of reviewers of this very parish. History has proved me wrong, obviously. So... Read more... |
CD: Thom Yorke - AnimaFriday, 12 July 2019
Thom Yorke is frontman of Radiohead, a festival-headlining rock band who sell out stadiums all over the globe. His artistic aspirations, however, right back to Radiohead’s Kid A album 19 years ago, often seem to lie elsewhere, in the world of... Read more... |
Better Oblivion Community Center, Shepherd's Bush Empire review - a winning combinationMonday, 13 May 2019
Better Oblivion Community Center may be a supergroup of sorts, but the name still draws less recognition that its members (Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes). Maybe it’s just too complicated to remember, because a packed Shepherd’s... Read more... |
CD: Holly Herndon - PROTOWednesday, 08 May 2019
To consider the third album from experimental composer Holly Herndon solely as a piece of music is to miss the point. PROTO is part artwork, part research project, on which Herndon teams up with collaborators both human and inhuman to discover... Read more... |
10 Questions for Musician Will GregorySaturday, 04 May 2019
Will Gregory (b.1959) is best known as one half of the alt-pop duo Goldfrapp but has a long career in music that dips into many areas. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he was a working musician who toured with multiple bands, notably, Tears for Fears... Read more... |
CD: Karen O and Danger Mouse - Lux PrimaSaturday, 09 March 2019
As collaborations go, it’s a doozy. Karen O’s signature vocals over Danger Mouse’s production – it was always going to pique interest. And Lux Prima does much to meet expectations, gorgeous cinematic soundscapes that flit between haunting and... Read more... |
CD: Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard - Yn Ol I AnnwnSunday, 24 February 2019
Their music is a bit wizard-y. It’s certainly imbued with a pungent sense of mammoth weed. And the “bastard” is surely for the sheer, meaty rock’n’roll heft of the word (much as Motörhead used it to title an album). But don’t be fooled. Mammoth Weed... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 47: The Beta Band, Ry Cooder, The Cardigans, Sgt. Pepper goes jazz and moreWednesday, 13 February 2019
Let’s cut straight to the chase. Here are reviews of 48 records, running riot across genre boundaries and categorizations, from preposterous pop metal to woodland-themed classical piano pieces. It’s the wildest vinyl ride in review-land, an... Read more... |
CD: Ladytron - LadytronWednesday, 13 February 2019
When Ladytron appeared in 1999, at a time when electronic music was glutted with pop-trance, Mitsubishis and superclubs, they drew instead directly on the post-punk synth-pop explosion of 20 years before, The Human League and the like. While all... Read more... |
