electropop
Thomas H. Green
Many people think Kasabian are some sort of sub-Oasis lads' band. This is mostly down to gobby lead singer Tom Meighan. Also Q like them which doesn't help - they're on the magazine's current cover being cuddled by two naked ladies. The Leicester band don't fit the bill. Kasabian are no lame indie band, not that anyone is these days, now that it's terminally unhip. Kasabian, however, never were. One listen to their excellent eponymous 2004 debut album tells you that.With their first long-player Kasabian combined Happy Mondays' insouciant baggy drug-funk with something dark, electro and self- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
There’s a strand of electro-assisted, dance-leaning French pop that’s captured the international consciousness. Phoenix and Justice are Grammy winners, while Air exemplify the cooler, more reflective end of it. The bands come from chi-chi burbs like Versailles or towns south of Paris, south of the Seine. And so it is for Housse de Racket, an outfit from Chaville, between Versailles and Paris. On the evidence of their second album, they’re potential border breakers.There’s a strand of electro-assisted, dance-leaning French pop that’s captured the international consciousness. Phoenix and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Spencer Krug must have problems knowing the name he should adopt. Over the past six years, he’s played with his main band, Wolf Parade, recorded as or with Fifths of Seven, Frog Eyes, Moonface, Sunset Rubdown and Swan Lake. Organ Music not Vibraphone Music Like I’d Hoped is his second release as Moonface, a guise he now reserves for his entirely solo work. Organ Music... is quirky, but worth hearing.
Wolf Parade (nothing to do with Wolf Gang) are often driving, anthemic indie rockers on a line between Animal Collective and Krug’s fellow Montréal dwellers Arcade Fire. Moonface, though, follows Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Few bands maintain their early fanbase for 20 years by barely changing their sound, their dress sense, haircuts even, and yet manage to mature like Gouda cheese, gaining depth of flavour and punch over time. But Portishead have. The crowd in Alexandra Palace in north London was largely made up of people who would have bought Dummy, Portishead’s Mercury Prize-winning debut, when it came out in the mid-Nineties. I even spotted three people wearing combat jeans.This cusp-of-vintage style was perfect for the sticky floor and blackout-fabric-draped interior of the people’s palace, where even the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The French national holiday of 14 July might be marked by parades and fly-pasts in Paris, but here on the Atlantic coast it’s the central date for Francofolies, the annual festival dedicated to French music. La Rochelle hosted its first Francofolies in 1985. Twenty-six years on, the festival remains the premier showcase for Francophone music. This year the bill took in David Guetta’s dance-floor cheesiness, Gotan Project's overhauled tango, actress Mélanie Laurent plugging her recent album and all points in between. A window like no other on the French mainstream, it also showcases up-and- Read more ...
joe.muggs
“It's like an advert for American Apparel,” said my companion a song into the set – and she had a point. The elegantly poised electropop of Little Dragon is so sharp, so cool, so impeccably internationalist in its outlook and presentation that, taken in small doses, it would be perfect for any brand targeted at affluent hipsters. But while their antics on stage, and especially those of singer Yukimi Nagano were admittedly a brand manager's dream at any given moment, over time they proved to be something much more interesting.'Pleasingly for a crowd so dressed up, they appeared extremely Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Gothenburg electro-moodists Little Dragon aren’t short of high-profile cheerleaders. All four members appeared on a couple of tracks on Gorillaz' Plastic Beach, and the band supported Damon Albarn's gang on the subsequent tour. TV on the Radio’s David Sitek borrowed their singer Yukimi Nagano for his solo album, also from last year. Ritual Union, their third album, escapes from the shadows cast by the collaborations to reassert that this is a band, rather than a box of sticking plasters for other people’s careers.The collaborations – Big Boi has also co-opted them and Nagano appears on Rafael Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although record producer Martin Rushent was firmly identified with the punk and post-punk eras, the biggest records he had worked on before then were those of Shirley Bassey. His production of The Human League’s epoch-defining Dare changed that.Rushent was a freelance producer and studio engineer – mainly working with artists signed to the United Artists label. It was his enthusiasm that got The Stranglers signed to UA. Before that, he had worked with anyone from prog-rockers Curved Air to pop fodder like David Essex. He’d engineered the T-Rex album Electric Warrior as well.But it was the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
At one level the day of the single is gone - the 7-inch, the CD, the physical format - and yet, at another it's more relevant than ever. Sure, any track can now be downloaded from an album and hit the charts but singles, downloads - chosen representative songs - still give the best snapshot of what an artist is capable of. With this in mind, theartsdesk gleefully tucked into the latest batch of releases which includes Depeche Mode, Arctic Monkeys, pop, rave, folk and a whole lot more besides.Wiley, Numbers in Action (Big Dada)
Sometimes it's hard to separate tracks by the jester-king of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On the Jutland coast, Aarhus is Denmark’s second largest city after capital Copenhagen. Its attractive continental atmosphere is amplified by the presence of this week’s temporary population, which includes visitors from Britain, Estonia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the US and the other Nordic countries. They’re here for SPOT, Denmark’s annual festival showcasing homegrown music. It’s a good moment as electro-popper Oh Land is making significant waves in the States. Bands like Efterklang, The Ravonettes and the seminal Mew are embedded in the international musical landscape. Of course, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Why gripe about Lady Gaga? The biggest pop star on the planet is a surrealist fashion icon, fag hag hedonist, high school outsider, art pusher, sex kitten, New York hustler, tween-pop cartoon, and a whole lot more besides. What's not to like? Gaga combines freakhood with selling 68 million singles, 22 million albums, 31 million "like"s on Facebook, numero uno on Twitter and on and on. She is surely a far more exciting public figure than most of her competition put together?And so to the music. The new album doesn't pause for chirpy prepubescent summer romance like its predecessor; indeed, the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Moby (b 1965) has been a presence on the dance scene and in global clubland for two decades. He is best known for the multimillion-selling 1999 album Play which, among other things, combined lush electronic orchestration with old field recordings of a cappella blues shouters. Moby's musical career, however, began at least a decade earlier.Born Richard Hall, he was raised in Connecticut, and moved to New York in his late teens. He played with punk band Vatican Commandos and gained the name Moby due to his very distant ancestral relationship with Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick. The single Read more ...