dance music
peter.quinn
South Korean quintet TXT's latest mini-album delivers six meticulously crafted tracks that showcase the group's evolving artistry through everything from dreamy pop to reggaeton to classic R&B.With its stripped back arrangement – some ethereal guitar chords here, an unforgettably chirpy three-note descending synth riff there, plus vocal lines that flow and blend mellifluously – album opener “Heaven” delivers the mini-album's first and perhaps most memorable earworm.Lead single "Over The Moon" begins in similarly dreamy fashion, and while soulful electric piano and string pads initially Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Purveyors of extraordinary energy and euphoria, Underworld never miss a beat. The new album – 30 years on from their debut, and their exposure in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting – once again features music that will always be better live, in the midst of a bouncing throng, ablaze with smiles of joy, than on the best stereo at home, or state-of-the-heart cordless headphones.Karl Hyde and Rick Smith recommend that listeners avoid shuffle mode, as this new offering is programmed as a sequence, raising a storm, driven by the electronic bass drum, pulsating synths and Underworld’s trademark Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s a real bind for Kylie Minogue. Her core audience want disco pop, people like me slag her off if she branches out from disco pop and goes country, she does disco pop well… but it’s really, really hard to do disco pop relentlessly well all the time.She’s done much, much better at it than pretty much anyone else on the planet: her creative longevity and continued cultural relevance has been truly something to behold, she’s proved that being a pop princess isn’t only about providing low-camp fizz and sensation in the moment (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course) but can Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Dan Snaith’s career has been a joyous thing to watch. Almost a quarter of a century the Canadian started out as Manitoba (soon renamed to Caribou) making a giddy mixture of dreamy ‘60s psychedelic pop, glitchy electronica and then cutting-edge dance music.Since then, much like his friend and contemporary Kieran “Four Tet” Hebden – latterly joined on their journey by Sam “Floating Points” Shepherd – he’s refined and tightened his sound, reaching bigger and bigger crowds, while impressively retaining the same fundamental character and inspirations. This is his 11th full album – eighth as Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As the name of a music genre, new jack swing was coined in an issue of the Village Voice dated 18 October 1987. Writer Barry Michael Cooper was profiling producer, songwriter and member of the R&B trio Guy, Teddy Riley when he created a tag exemplifying the mix of R&B and hip-hop which had hit super-big in 1986 with Janet Jackson’s Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis-produced Control. Riley was on the same wavelength, and Cooper recognised a groundswell.Swingbeat was interchangeable with new jack swing, but it was the latter which caught on. So When TLC and SWV emerged in 1992 they were swiftly Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s been a lot of early 90s rave aesthetics in popular culture lately, but an awful lot of it has been at the level of signifiers. Fila, Stüssy, Air Max 90s, smiley faces, sirens, rewinds, crowd noises, hop in a Ford Cortina, tribes coming together, dancing at dawn, baggy hoodies for goalposts, isn’t it, wasn’t it, hmm? There’s been a little less discussed, though, about what raving actually felt like, and in particular that it its revolutionary character came from everyone having the same feeling of being on the same drug at the same time.Again, we might see the signifiers of tablets, Read more ...
Joe Muggs
I made a terrible mistake when I first got this LP: I played it on my laptop speakers. That’s not the straight up foolishness you might think, mind – after downloading something for review I’ll often play it quietly in the background while I catch up on admin, because it can be a good way of getting the general shape of an album, an overview as it were, before properly diving into it. But for this album in particular that really didn’t work.Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points is a virtuoso producer – and one of the world’s best DJs, which has taken him on a consistent upward trajectory parallel Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Some performers are born to perform. It seems obvious, but it’s not a given in the music world. Some just want to make sound, some want to compose, not all are in it to connect directly to an audience. Rob Gallagher, however, is all about that connection, and he’s never stopped doing it. It was there in his band Galliano’s genial funk from 1988 through 1997: his London beat poetry always felt like it was addressing you direct, and the band came to live above all on the live stage where he could speak to the crowd.In the subsequent band Two Banks of Four he did admittedly step back from the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
I won’t give it loads about the atmosphere and attendees at We Out Here – suffice to say that in its fifth edition, it has maintained all the strengths I mentioned last year, with the added benefit of slicker-operating infrastructure having ironed out any remaining wrinkles in its new Dorset site. The navigability, sound levels, smooth running bars etc were all just a little better, which only added to the good vibes that have been there from the start.Given how fun last year had been I wasn’t going to miss Thursday this time. As I set up my tent I could hear the brilliantly quirkly Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Trip hop is everywhere these days. From Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey on down, some of the biggest artists in the world channel a smoky, bluesy, late 90s mood – and in the UK something even more interesting is happening that taps into a longer, deeper continuum.In the burgeoning soul/jazz underground (and mainstream!) the likes of Jorja Smith, Dave Okumu, Yazmin Lacey are all tapping into a wellspring of uniquely British introspective groove that runs not just through Massive Attack and Nightmares On Wax but back through Sade, Soul II Soul to the years of lovers rock and Cymande.Squarely in Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Joe Goddard’s torrent of creativity rarely fails to amaze. As well as eight albums as a crucial part of Hot Chip, he has made two in the 2 Bears duo with Raf Rundell, one as Hard Feelings with Amy Douglas, and there’s been various other collaborations besides (A Pulse Train, Extra Credit, Greco-Roman Soundsystem, Lightbox Of Magic Unknowledge), not to mention dozens of remixes and a none too shabby DJ career too. Through all of this there’s been a strong musical personality, circling around palpable love of the dancefloor and its communities, and use of synthesisers to conjure feelings of Read more ...
caspar.gomez
SUNDAY 30th June 2024It’s late. But not really. Not by the standards of this place. Photographer Finetime and I are in Block9 in the South-East Corner. The so-called “naughty corner”. We take turns juggernauting quomble off a pinecone. Finetime’s right eyelid is twitching. This tic developed today. Nearby is a gigantic head. About the size of a large Victorian house. It’s at an acute angle to the ground. Instead of eyes it has a kind of welders’ mask blitzing white-noise light. Like the haunted, detuned television in the 1982 film Poltergeist.We all know what happened to the little blonde Read more ...