funk
mark.kidel
Janelle Monáe’s much-awaited second album doesn’t disappoint. She navigates the ever-renewing waters of African-American pop invention, drawing on R & B, funk, gospel, rock and dinner jazz, with a sense of fun and a great deal of talent. She is a master of eccentric chic, sophisticated, with a hint of the (tastefully) bizarre.Questions of identity have both haunted and inspired black culture in the USA. Monáe, with her cyborg and extra-terrestrial alter egos, mines a vein of fantasy that the likes of George Clinton and Sun Ra have explored before her: the space-man or woman as avatar of a Read more ...
James Williams
When The Golden Age of Apocalypse, the first LP by Stephen Bruner, the American musician better known as Thundercat, was released in 2011, it was a revelation. Co-produced by Flying Lotus and taking its cues from electronica, prog, pop and funk, its sublime jazz sound united head-bobbing musos, fellow musicians (Bruner counts Dr Dre, Erykah Badu and Odd Future among his fans and collaborators) and critics.To celebrate the release of his equally inspiring follow up, Apocalypse, Bruner and his band took to the stage at XOYO in London’s Shoreditch for a show that was remarkable in both its Read more ...
joe.muggs
The easy thing would have been for Omar to come back trading on nostalgia, made his seventh album a nice smooth jazz-funk set and reminded everyone what made them fall for his biggest hit, "There's Nothing Like This" from 1991. Indeed you might even think that's what he's doing, with a new recording of that song appearing here. The moment you put the album on, though, there is no question at all of a man resting on his laurels.OK, "Simplify" is kind of smooth in its way, but as Omar's voice cruises in on a cloud of harps and strings, it sounds rather a lot more like the rich and strange Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's pretty impressive that at 74 years old, the drummer Jaki Liebezeit should still be one of the most vital musicians on the planet. Maybe not all that surprising, though. From the moment in 1968 when he switched from free jazz to the narcotic jams of Can, he pioneered a rolling rhythmic style that suggested infinite patience and a man comfortable in his body, and it feels entirely natural that his beats should keep on rolling into old age. “Liebezeit” translates literally as “Love Time”, and it feels like he really does.Though he's collaborated with all kinds of big names including Brian Read more ...
joe.muggs
We're extremely happy to be able to offer a free download of this live track by New York collective Mice Parade to mark the release of their seventh album, Candela, today. In its six minutes, this version of "Couches & Carpets" encapsulates much of the diversity that has made Mice Parade a cult act over the past decade - from indie introspection to expansive post-rock guitars, jazz-funk grooves to melodies and techniques influenced by anagramatically eponymous band leader Adam Pierce's wide research as an ethnomusicologist. In last week's review of the album, Thomas H Green found Read more ...
graeme.thomson
It was one of those entirely unverifiable "facts" that music documentaries increasingly prefer over genuine insight: early on in this serviceable but routine overview of a truly stellar talent, we were told that Nile Rodgers’s guitar has “played on two billion dollars' worth of hits”. Who really knows? Who actually cares? You don’t measure the sheer joy of Chic’s “Good Times” or Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” by counting the cash or doing the math. You simply use your ears.As Johnny Marr pointed out, Rodgers is responsible for countless records “you’d have to be made out of stone not to be Read more ...
joe.muggs
You really don't need the context on this, do you? Event album, comeback, cheesy title, blah blah – it's all there splattered all over the internet if you really want it. I'll just cut to the chase and say: I love Justin Timberlake's music, and I'm very, very relieved to say I love this album, for a number of reasons. And rather than try and analyse anything too much, I'll just list them.It doesn't try too hard. There's nothing that explodes in your face with hyper-pop orgasms like "Cry me a River" or "Sexy Back", and neither should there be. This wouldn't be dignified for a movie star, keen Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
First off, if you want to read a proper review of Two Fingers’ album just head here where I reviewed it a few months back. Instead, starting today and for the rest of the year, the musical side of Disc of the Day will be devoting itself more subjectively to theartsdesk's new music writers’ favourite albums of 2012.My contenders range from Orbital’s startlingly vital post-sabbatical return (Wonky) to Dexys' superb concept album about life, love and relationships (One Day I’m Going To Soar), from the very different, fascinating femme-pop of Santigold (Master of My Make Believe) and Sinead O’ Read more ...
joe.muggs
At the beginning of last night's show, Herbie Hancock looked like he was going to perform with the dignity and serenity befitting a 72-year-old with some 50 years playing experience. The improvisation that launched from a base of Wayne Shorter's “Footprints” was elegant, charming, tasteful and often very beautiful. The synthetic instrumental loops that he triggered via a couple of iPads mounted on his grand piano as backing were unobtrusive to begin with and had a delightfully loose groove.Hancock's playing over some 15 minutes of that piece ran through a meandering narrative that took in Read more ...
joe.muggs
Herbie Hancock has never stood still. He hit the ground running, joining Miles Davis's second great quintet on piano in 1963 at the age of just 23, and from that moment on demonstrated a Stakhanovite work ethic and appetite for the new which saw him on the crest of wave after wave of revolutionary music.From bop and soul-inflected grooves of the 1960s, through jazz fusion in the early 1970s, the solid funk of his band the Headhunters later in the decade to his engagement with electro and hip hop going into the 1980s, he continuously produced music that appealed to both the intellect and the Read more ...
garth.cartwright
At 66 Larry Graham remains a remarkably supple, handsome man. The huge afro that once towered over him is long gone but the ability to pluck and thump the funkiest rhythms on earth from his white bass remains unmatched. Graham made his name as original bassist/bass vocalist in Sly & The Family Stone, the Bay Area band that proved such a potent force in popular music 1968-1973.Assembled by DJ/vocalist/pianist Sylvester Stewart aka Sly Stone in 1966, The Family Stone combined men and women, blacks and whites, rock with soul. And in Graham they had their secret weapon – playing bass with his Read more ...
Andrew Perry
When these blazin’ psychedelic jazzers first landed here from Austin in 2007, there’d already been four or five years’ worth of herky-jerky cod-post-punk-reviving going on, way past the point of overdose, but White Denim were different, and obviously worth making an exception for. Initially a trio, comprising James Petralli (guitar/vocals), Josh Block (drums) and Steve Terembecki (bass), their early gigs here were explosive, crystallizing the genre-transcendent ideal of the original post-punk era, blasting through everything – 1960s beat, funk, Tropicalia, Krautrock, folk – with Texas-fried Read more ...