electronica
Thomas H. Green
The top-selling vinyl at independent UK record shops in 2020 was Idles' latest album (closely followed by Yungblud, which is impressive, given his only came out in December!). The Top 10 is dominated by indie, rock and retro but, actually, the bigger picture is that limited runs by music in all styles are selling across the board. Our first theartsdesk on Vinyl of 2021 showcases, as ever, the enormous range of music pouring out on plastic. From Bond themes to blues rock to Afro-experimental and much more, it’s all here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHAlostmen Kologo (Strut)This album is punkin’. Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s odd that there’s still no name for the wave of genre-agnostic British bands of the '00s. Not manic enough to be nu rave, way too interesting for the retro-guitar nu rock revolution / landfill indie tsunami, the likes of Hot Chip, Metronomy, Friendly Fires, Simian and the super-louche Wild Beasts between them mapped out a new area of psychedelic pop. And into this in 2009 came the Scottish / Northern Irish / English band Django Django, a perfect fit into this unnamed movement with their winsome melodies and ability to fold everything from psyche-folk to acid house to rockabilly into their Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
2020 marks the year when the PC Music label’s influence became undeniable. It’s easy to forget that, founded by A.G. Cook in 2013, it was once at the centre of a mini culture war. The label’s refusal to distinguish “between high and low, between Burial or Britney” felt exciting to some, but contemptuous to others. In retrospect, journalists’ comparisons to “Japanese tween pop of the distant future played through JD-Sports in-store radio of 2002” didn’t help the case against the latter.The war was waged and won, as A.G. Cook’s futuristic vision of what pop music could be is now reality. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 2020, one archive release exerted a more forceful presence than any other. Live At Goose Lake August 8th 1970 caught The Stooges as they promoted their second album Fun House. The source was a previously unknown, professionally recorded tape documenting the whole album as it was played live, in its running order. Iggy Pop and the band were hard yet sloppy, tight yet rough, always blazing. Wonderful – and a reminder that musical surprises still crop up.While contemplating what’s been covered in this column over the last year, the feeling that archive releases can shift perceptions rises to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Doncaster musician Dominic Harrison – Yungblud – appeared a couple of years ago, a self-proclaimed punk, alive with vim and righteousness, touting music that, loosely speaking, fused the snarling northern outrage of Arctic Monkeys with hip hop-tinted power-pop. It was a lively combination and his debut album, 21st Century Liability, had its moments. Since then, his profile has raised dramatically, a cult Gen Z figurehead, his appearance an impressive, sexually fluid spin on Keith out of The Prodigy. This album could be the one that supernovas him – it’s catchy enough – but it does so by Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“During 1975, 1976 and the first half of 1977 punk was the future but, after the highpoint of ‘God Save the Queen’, London punk already seemed spent. By the time that the Sex Pistols ‘Pretty Vacant’ was tumbling out of the charts in early September, there had been two huge hits that changed the way I heard music. Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and ‘Magic Fly’ by Space made it clear: electronics were the future. And it didn’t matter whether it was post-punk or the despised disco.”So begins the titular writer’s essay accompanying Do You Have The Force? (Jon Savage’s Alternate History Of Read more ...
joe.muggs
Charles Webster is one of those connecting figures who make the idea of “the underground” seem quite convincing. Originally from the Peak District but coming of musical age in Nottingham, he was inspired by Chicago house and Detroit techno music from their very genesis in the mid 1980s, and went on to make some of the finest British house music ever. Along with Notts locals like the legendary DiY Soundsystem (prime movers of the week long Castlemorton Free Festival) and Martin “AtJazz” Iveson, he pioneered an ultra sophisticated and soulful sound that forged connections with odd Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Almost 30 years since Stephen Mallinder jumped ship from Cabaret Voltaire, it still seems strange to accept that the band is now the solo concern of Richard H Kirk, the final remaining original member of Sheffield’s path-beating electronica experimentalists. This isn’t to suggest, for one minute, that the quality of the Cabs’ work has taken a dip since Mal’s departure. It’s just become a totally instrumental concern with any vocals, such as they are, provided purely by mangled spoken word samples. In fact, if anything Shadow of Fear is a return to the proto-acid house magnificence of the band Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lordy, how much marijuana did we smoke in the 1990s? When people arrived home from the endless dance, jack-frazzled, 6.00 AM or later, pupils the size of 7” singles, legs twitching to invisible percussion, the time arrived for doobies, chillums, bongs, an eternal blissed NOW in foggy, curtained living rooms. The accompanying music was my generation’s unlikely conceptual fusion of prog rock and easy listening. Music journalists gave it proper names, like "trip hop" and "chill out", but it was really just wibbling, spliffed ear massage. And Austrian duo [Peter] Kruder & [Richard] Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Due to COVID-related nonsense too tedious to relate, this month’s theartsdesk on Vinyl was delayed. But here it is, over 7500 words on new music on plastic, covering a greater breadth of genres and styles than most major festivals. From reissues of some of the biggest bands that ever lived, to limited edition micro-releases from tiny independents, it’s all here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHKiko Dinucci Rastilho (Mais Um)São Paulo artist Kiko Dinucci has said, “The idea has always been to play the guitar as a percussion instrument.” Couldn’t agree more. Dinucci has iron in his musical blood and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
After Florian Schneider left Kraftwerk in 2008, Ralf Hütter was left in the driving seat. The pair had first been heard on record in 1970 as members of Organisation, and their first album as Kraftwerk followed later in the year. Although others were in Kraftwerk and contributed to the ethos to varying degrees, it was always about Schneider and Hütter. In 1973, titling the third Kraftwerk album Ralf und Florian confirmed this.Post-Schneider (he died in 2020), Kraftwerk’s first outputs were, in 2009, a series of 3D live performances and reissues of most of their albums. Really though, Kraftwerk Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There are no one-size-fits-all solutions and Lockdown (it has surely earned its capital status) provided its own problems for many of us. For some, however, there was an upside. For people who find themselves powering through when they need to power down, it was a chance to take themselves away from the anxieties, expectations and obligations of the everyday and narrow focus. It was an enforced clarification of our lives - a diktat to breathe.For Andy Bell, Ride guitarist and former member of Oasis and Beady Eye, it was a chance to put the finishing flourishes to a collection of songs that Read more ...