Reviews
Inside Reviews
Album: Jay-Z & Kanye West, Watch the Throne (Mercury)
Sunday, 14 August 2011
News that the two undisputed heavyweights of hip-hop were planning to collaborate on an album smacked of some dreadful finance-first Hollywood franchise tie-up.
Album: Various artists, Chicago Soul (Soul Jazz Records)
Sunday, 14 August 2011
Continuing Soul Jazz's repointing of music history, here's its take on the curious hive that was Chess Records in the 1960s – not the showstopping blues hub of the previous decade but a home to the diversifying yet soulful African-Americanisms of Rotary Connection, Laura Lee, Fontella Bass, Ramsey Lewis and Dorothy Ashby, as well as the more psychedelic efforts of Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters.
Album: Baxter Dury, Happy Soup (Regal)
Sunday, 14 August 2011
The little kid from the front of dad Ian's New Boots And Panties!! is 39 now, and Happy Soup is his third attempt to become something more vital than just another Jakob Dylan.
Album: Nero, Welcome Reality (Mercury)
Sunday, 14 August 2011
Nero are the London dubstep/drum'n' bass duo of Daniel Stephens and Joe Ray whose debut mixes the pop and the ponderous, occupying a halfway point between Burial and N-Dubz.
Album: Martin Speake, Live at Riverhouse (Pumpkin)
Sunday, 14 August 2011
Some musicians make fun of corny standards.
Album: Various artists, Johnny Boy Would Love This (Hole In The Rain / Absolute)
Sunday, 14 August 2011
A tribute album to the late, sometimes-great John Martyn (betcha couldn't see that coming).
Album: Various artists, The Rough Guide to World Lullabies (World Music Network)
Sunday, 14 August 2011
This makes for a very pleasant hour: lullabies are the most universal of art forms, and the wishes expressed by these mothers are both multifarious and significant.
Album: Watch The Throne, Watch the Throne (Mercury) (Rated 2/ 5 )
Friday, 12 August 2011
Sometimes, music requires more than merely combined star power to make it work, as Watch the Throne, the eagerly-awaited alliance between Jay-Z and Kanye West, seems to confirm.
Oneohtrix Point Never, Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh (Rated 4/ 5 )
Thursday, 11 August 2011
As the Fringe's more performance-based elements kicked into life, so the Edge festival returned. Run by the promoters who put on T in the Park, it is a weekend's worth of music stretched out to three weeks, around the venues of Edinburgh. This was its first must-see set.
Underage Festival, Victoria Park, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
Thursday, 11 August 2011
On a hot Friday afternoon in Victoria Park, the free Coca-Cola was flowing liberally, as if to underline the fact that this was the place where middle-class teenagers could soak up the festival vibe safely, without drink or drugs and without their dreaded parents in tow. (Though we spotted plenty of naughty young people filling pop bottles with vodka on their way in.) And soak up the festival vibe they did – after all, what better opportunity could there be for all those 14-year-old hipsters to hang out in the sunshine, showing off their vintage clothing and their quirky music knowledge?
Field Day, Victoria Park, London (Rated 4/ 5 )
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
A one-day festival in east London's Victoria Park, Field Day is awash with names faintly familiar from ones-to-watch and best-new-album lists. Now in its fifth year, Field Day has a swelled capacity of 20,000. You can feel it; just getting under canvas to see certain bands can be a challenge.
The Big Chill, Eastnor Castle, Ledbury (Rated 4/ 5 )
Tuesday, 9 August 2011
The Big Chill may not be one of the largest festivals in the UK, but this year it attracted an impressive array of talent. Electro, pop, hip-hop, dance and rock were all represented, from Wild Beasts to 2ManyDJs.
Vintage Festival, Southbank Centre, London
Ed Sheeran, The Duchess, York
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Music festivals aren't what they were – except when they are better.
Album: Jonathan Wilson, Gentle Spirit (Bella Union)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Much will depend on what the words "Laurel Canyon" mean to you. For this is an updating of the late-'60s model of golden, folk-inflected pop so associated with that storied gulch.
Album: Steve Reich, WTC 9/11 (Nonesuch Records)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
The 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US is marked by composer Steve Reich with a piece performed by the Kronos Quartet, triple-tracked, and incorporating recordings of the words of air traffic controllers on duty at the time.
Album: Blood Orange, Coastal Grooves (Domino)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Blood Orange is the latest alias of former Test Icicle Dev Hynes, aka Lightspeed Champion.
Album: Cerebral Ballzy, Cerebral Ballzy (Cooking Vinyl)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Like Anal C*** and Fucked-Up, these Brooklyn punkers have risen to modest prominence due to their "shocking" name rather than any claim to musical greatness.
Album: Azari & III, Azari & III (Loose Lips)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Set to induce Proustian rushes of amyl nitrate is the debut of this Toronto quartet and its loving homage to early house music.
Album: The Bottletop Band, Dream Service (Bottletop)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
This loose supergroup assembled by "fourth Beastie Boy" Mario Caldato Jnr in aid of fair trade/youth development charity Bottletop combines Brazilian musicians with Brits such as Tim Burgess, Eliza Doolittle and assorted Arctic Monkeys.
Album: The Pirates, Shakin' with the Devil (Salvo/Fly)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Without The Pirates we wouldn't have had Dr Feelgood, let alone Johnny Kidd. Maybe not The Who.
Album: Nidi d'arac, Taranta Container (Galileo)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
An inventive and involving overhaul of the traditional Italian folk dance form, the taranta, which on the whole works well.
Album: Nils Okland, Sigbjorn Apeland, Hommage a Ole Bull (ECM)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
With Norway on one's mind, the austere yet deeply soulful and melancholy music here can sound almost distressingly apt. Ole Bull was a 19th-century violinist who was heavily influenced by his native folk music.
Album: Bill Frisell, Sign of Life (Savoy)
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Guitarist Frisell has been straddling the gap between bluegrass-picking and the plinky-plonk avant garde for years but this latest recording, the second with his 858 string quartet, marks a return to peak form.
Album: Jonathan Wilson, Gentle Spirit (Bella Union) (Rated 4/ 5 )
Friday, 5 August 2011
Everything goes in circles, everything comes around again, and at the moment one of the more prominent trends in music is a fascination with the folk- and country-rock sounds of the early 1970s, the singer-songwriter boom based around Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, where the likes of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell and sundry Mamas and Papas laid the foundations for the colossal success of such as The Eagles.
Album: The Bottletop Band, Dream Service (Bottletop Band) (Rated 3/ 5 )
Friday, 5 August 2011
A supergroup/collective organised by producer Mario Caldato Jr in support of the Bottletop charity promoting educational and commercial initiatives in the third world, The Bottletop Band here offer a series of Anglo-Brazilian crossovers fronted by the likes of VV Brown, Gruff Rhys and Tim Burgess.
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