hip hop
Album: Camila Cabello - C,XOXOFriday, 28 June 2024
Oh this is sad. Up until this point Camilla Cabello has been a good pop star. Her biggest songs were loaded with familiar-to-the-point-of-cheesiness retro Latin samples, or angsty mini-dramas loaded with the musical theatre-style chops that had made... Read more... |
Album: Kehlani - CRASHMonday, 17 June 2024
The noise in the international mainstream in recent years might be about dance-pop, hip hop beefs and the serious balladry of Taylor, Billie and Lana – yet at the same time, R&B has been strange, brilliant, ultra-popular, but generated a tiny... Read more... |
The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - 12 hours on the musical frontline of Day ThreeTuesday, 21 May 2024
If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.... Read more... |
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rockers deliver a whopperMonday, 13 May 2024
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok, 1989), boasts a whopping guitar riff. Keys-player Adam Mole, his ushanka cap’s ear-covers flapping, leaps onto his seat, waves his synth aloft. Frontmen... Read more... |
Album: Jonny Drop • Andrew Ashong - The Puzzle DustFriday, 19 April 2024
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm, that’s pretty nice”, now it was more “mmmmmmm, that’s pretty niiiiiice!” That’s not just a suble... Read more... |
Album: High Llamas - Hey PandaSaturday, 23 March 2024
Hey Panda is unlike any previous High Llamas album. While the characteristic traces of late Sixties and early Seventies Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks and Steely Dan are here, they have become melded with a sensibility lead-Llama Sean O’Hagan has... Read more... |
Album: Kim Gordon - The CollectiveThursday, 14 March 2024
Some icons sit back and bask. Kim Gordon does not. She has occasionally intimated that her New York cool and relentless work rate may be down to a smidgeon of imposter syndrome, even after all her years on the frontline. Whatever the truth of it,... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 82: Human League, Hawkwind, Roberta Flack, Kid Acne, Photek, Rudimentary Peni and moreMonday, 04 March 2024
VINYL OF THE MONTHMito y Comadre Guajirando (ZZK)Mito y Comadre are Guillermo Lares and Shana Comadre, a Bogota-based pair of Venezuelans whose debut album is produced by Christian Castagno (a man who’s more likely to be found helming outings by... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2023: Janelle Monáe - The Age of PleasureMonday, 18 December 2023
It was a year of bleak and brutal conflict, ugly and stupid imposition of power, overt Fascism in the mainstream public sphere, decay of infrastructure and apocalyptic weather. So what better than a record of total pleasure? And Janelle Monáe’s... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl Christmas Special 2023: Aretha Franklin, Barbara Streisand, Oasis, Robb Johnson, Jimi Hendrix and moreThursday, 14 December 2023
Welcome to the annual seasonal one-off, in which theartsdesk on Vinyl dives into festive releases, as well as the boxsets and reissues that will make fine presents. Grab a glass of something and dive in!CHRISTMAS VINYL OF THE MONTHVarious Stax... Read more... |
Album: Burna Boy - I Told Them...Friday, 01 September 2023
There’s been a lot of flak flying around this album already. It’s mainly been triggered by Burna Boy’s public activities which have included disparaging the wider Afrobeats music scene of West Africa, and some somewhat overcooked expressions of his... Read more... |
We Out Here Festival, Wimborne St Giles review: it's a family affair, and then some...Friday, 18 August 2023
We Out Here Festival, now in its fifth year (and fourth edition, as 2020 was of course cancelled for Covid), has become an institution. Curated by jazz-centric veteran DJ Gilles Peterson and actualised by Noah Ball – best known for his role in... Read more... |
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