techno
CD: Maya Jane Coles - ComfortMonday, 01 July 2013![]() The part-Japanese Brit Maya Jane Coles displays elaborate asymmetric hair, interesting piercings and enormous tattoos in her moody photoshoots, makes sounds that are uniformly smooth and high-gloss, and has a sonic palette that takes in populist... Read more... |
CD: Alison Moyet - the minutesWednesday, 01 May 2013![]() Alison Moyet is not just one of the great voices in pop, she's one of the most likeable figures. A brilliantly no-nonsense character, she consistently skewers music industry pomposity, laughs in the face of the expectations the world has of female... Read more... |
Karl Hyde, Union Chapel IslingtonFriday, 26 April 2013![]() I have to admit I was That Hipster with Underworld: loved them circa 1991, stopped being intensely interested around the first album, diverged almost completely after “Born Slippy” went supernova circa 1995. It was wonderful the way that Karl Hyde... Read more... |
CD: Morris Cowan - Six DegreesMonday, 15 April 2013![]() Some 20 years ago, a series of albums called Artificial Intelligence on WARP Records aimed to promote techno as home-listening music. They made up a frequently sublime collection, but unfortunately the word “intelligence” in their title was picked... Read more... |
Preview: Denovali Swingfest LondonThursday, 11 April 2013![]() We're pleased to announce The Arts Desk is a media partner of the Denovali Swingfest London on 20 and 21 April at London's The Scala. It's a good match, as Swingfest and the Denovali label, like The Arts Desk refuse to acknowledge... Read more... |
CD: Ulrich Schnauss - A Long Way to FallWednesday, 23 January 2013![]() The last proper Ulrich Schnauss album – there have been collaborations and pseudonymous outings since – was going to be hard to top. Goodbye, released in 2007, breathtakingly took shoegazing further out than ever before: although gossamer, its sonic... Read more... |
RBMA presents LFO, XOYOMonday, 21 January 2013![]() Of all the major acts from the the acid house/rave explosion, Leeds's LFO seem least interested in becoming a “heritage act”. Perhaps it's because Mark Bell (the sole member of LFO since the early departure of Gez Varley) has no need to cash in on... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Pula: Dubstep's Croatian conferenceThursday, 13 September 2012![]() It's a truism in dance music culture that “everyone's a DJ nowadays”. It's generally meant in a flip, pejorative sense – suggesting that cheap technology means every man Jack and his dog can put a sequence of records together and the role is somehow... Read more... |
Matthew Herbert's One Pig, Theatre Royal, BrightonWednesday, 23 May 2012![]() There is a shouty lady outside the Theatre Royal in Brighton who takes strong objection to us attending tonight’s Brighton Festival performance of Matthew Herbert’s One Pig. The show is based around the life and death of a pig, from birth to... Read more... |
CD: Simian Mobile Disco - UnpatternsMonday, 07 May 2012![]() This is a techno album. A techno album on a British label best known for the indie-est of indie rock, from a duo whose last album featured rock vocalists Beth Ditto and Alex Turner among others, but a techno album nonetheless. It's all about pulse... Read more... |
CD: Huoratron - CryptocracyWednesday, 18 April 2012![]() Anyone remember gabber? It was a moment in the mid-Nineties when Dutch and New York dance music went as fast and loud as it could. In retrospect it was a bizarre anomaly but achieved brief cult popularity combining puerile juvenility, punk, avant-... Read more... |
CD: Orbital - WonkySaturday, 31 March 2012![]() In 2009 Orbital returned too soon. Dance music icons Paul and Phil Hartnoll only called it a day a little over four years previously so it was hardly a magnificent comeback. The resulting live shows smelt more of tax bills than art. Fair enough, we... Read more... |
