sat 16/08/2025

New Music Reviews

Download Festival: downpours can't dampen spirits at metal bonanza

theartsdesk

Download is Britain’s premier metal festival, attended by all ages. Theartsdesk’s three person team offer up their reviews of one day each, as they navigated their way between Eighties hair metal, contemporary Viking metal and any other metal you might care to imagine…

Friday 14th June

By Ellie Porter

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Soweto Kinch, Jazz Cafe review - instant karma in Camden

peter Quinn

Camden’s Jazz Cafe reverberated to the sounds of a 50-year-old spiritual jazz classic last night, as saxist and MC Soweto Kinch and his quintet paid fulsome homage to NEA Jazz Master Pharoah Sanders’ consciousness-expanding album, Karma.

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Milton Nascimento, Barbican review – besotted audience hails frail legend

Sebastian Scotney

Milton Nascimento is 76. Physically, he is quite frail; he had to be helped carefully onto the stage and then up into a high stool for this London concert by a couple of band members. But that arrival and rather ungainly progress were, as one might expect, given a welcome befitting this hero of the Brazilian musical world.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: R.E.M.

Kieron Tyler

In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 was issued by Warner Bros. in October 2003. Hitting shops in time for Christmas, it mixed hits like “Everybody Hurts”, “Man on the Moon” and “Orange Crush” with album and soundtrack cuts, and a couple of previously unissued tracks.

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Backstreet Boys, SSE Hydro, Glasgow review - 90s boyband showcase grown-up new material

Lisa-Marie Ferla

They showed up with a 30+ song setlist, four costume changes and a floating platform, but the strongest moment of the Backstreet Boys’ tour was when they dispensed with all of that for an a cappella version of “Breathe”, from new album DNA.

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Charlie Cunningham, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - Spanish guitar and strong songs

Katie Colombus

In a post Ed Sheeran world, with a glut of acoustic singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi, Tom Walker or Odell, James Bay, Jack Savoretti  all of whom are big on poignantly penned balladry, phonic flair and harmonious melody – is there room for another young male artist to make waves in the indi-folk arena?

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Lenny Kravitz, O2 review - gloriously joyful rock 'n' roll

Ellie Porter

“Lenny’s coming! Lenny’s coming!” When the lights go down at the O2 tonight, it’s not just the small child behind us who’s excited.

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Bob Dylan Special - Rolling Thunder Revue, Netflix

Tim Cumming

Tomorrow, Martin Scorsese delivers, via Netflix, two hours and 22 minutes of screen time devoted to Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, following on from the release last week of the latest Bootleg Series boxed set, 14...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Marty Wilde

Kieron Tyler

Although Marty Wilde will forever be inextricably linked with the late 1950s British rock ‘n’ roll wave he rode, his career did not peter out as musical styles transformed. While he didn’t have the high-profile mutability of Cliff Richard or claim a niche like the moody Billy Fury, he was enviably chameleonic.

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The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices with Lisa Gerrard, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - voices from another world

Tim Cumming

A hushed expectation filled the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Friday night in advance of the return on stage of the legendary Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (now rebranded as The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices), who graced Kate Bush’s 1989 classic The Sensual World with their astonishing style of throat singing, combining drones, quarter tones and complex rh

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