New Music Reviews
Duran Duran, Brighton Centre, BrightonThursday, 01 December 2011
It catches everyone out that Duran Duran’s version of the hip-hop classic “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)” comes off so well. Not just affable entertainment but actually fiercely funky, raising a large section of the Brighton Centre to its feet. Duran’s 1995 covers album Thank You – from which the song comes - was once voted by Q magazine as the worst album ever, but looking around at the enthused reaction, including my own, that all seems rather irrelevant. Read more...
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Deep Purple, O2 ArenaThursday, 01 December 2011
If anyone tells you that Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra (1969) wasn’t a masterpiece then they’re an idiot. In fact, it was, more or less, the only successful use of an orchestra with a rock band ever. Now, 40 years on, a pensionable Purple have hit the road again with a full symphony orchestra. But they’re not playing the Concerto. They’re playing their hits. Critically, they’re performing them without founding keyboardist, Jon Lord, and guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore. Read more... |
Hanson, IndigO2Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Can the Hanson brothers ever rid themselves of the shackles of “MMMBop” (the 1997 hit that brought them global renown)? More to the point, should they bother to try? These were the burning questions I armed myself with as I prepared to watch a band whose progress, it’s fair to say, I’ve hardly followed in the last 15 years since their falsetto singing and rambunctious head-banging brought the world such joy. Read more... |
Kasabian, Brighton Centre, BrightonTuesday, 29 November 2011
“LSF” is unarguably a monster of a song. In fact, that whole of Kasabian's self-titled 2004 debut album was a cracker, but seeing the entire sold-out Brighton Centre, balconies and all, on their feet, hands aloft, as one, singing the wordless backing chorus of “LSF” is quite a thing. Even when they stop, and five of the six band members wander off, skinny rake guitarist Sergio Pizzorno stays back and conducts the crowd. Read more... |
Mouse on Mars, Oval, Stockhausen, BarbicanSaturday, 26 November 2011
Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths), composed in 1956, is, in many ways, the mother of all electronic music. I can remember discovering it in the 1960s, before I had acquired my first pair of Koss headphones, lying on the floor, strategically placed between two speakers, my ears opened by the copious ingestion of some red Lebanese. Read more... |
Just in From Scandinavia: Nordic Music Round-Up 2Saturday, 26 November 2011
Although they're beginning to get cold, the winds blowing in from Scandinavia have recently brought enough music to keep anyone warm through long, dark nights. Finnish intensity, pop and introspection from Denmark, Swedish luxuriousness, Icelandic keyboard quirk, Norwegians that enfold - all are here. Along with Estonian haziness. Read more... |
Friendly Fires, Brixton AcademyFriday, 25 November 2011
The Hertfordshire market town of St Albans has not hitherto been renowned for its buzzing music scene: its hall of fame contains but a handful of names from the pop pantheon, most notably Enter Shikari and Lowgold (unless you count the fact that David Essex lives there). It’s not exactly Chicago in the 1950s or Liverpool in the 1960s. But now the citizens of this former Roman stronghold can hold their heads high, thanks to the emergence of Friendly Fires. Read more... |
Yuck, Electric BallroomFriday, 25 November 2011
On 9 September, 1985 The Jesus and Mary Chain played Camden's Electric Ballroom to a ceaseless hail of plastic pint pots. After 20 minutes, the songs gave way to formless feedback and they sloped off the stage. Although Yuck weren’t born then, the significance of playing the same stage can’t have been lost on them. Carrying a torch for the pre-grunge fuzz-rock that was shoegazing’s ugly sister, Yuck know a thing or two about what they’re drawing from. Read more... |
London Jazz Festival Round-UpTuesday, 22 November 2011
The 10-day London Jazz Festival, now in its 19th year, is a diverse and international festival that embraces the unapologetically commercial Jazz Voice, the outer reaches of (free) free improv and even Abram Wilson’s Jazz for Toddlers. Despite a line-up that’s both starry and distinguished there was no single name that might encapsulate the festival’s rainbow palette. Read more... |
Henry Threadgill, Queen Elizabeth HallSunday, 20 November 2011
It’s nine days into the 10-day London Jazz Festival, and highlights so far include the double bill of saxophonists Steve Williamson and Steve Coleman, and the UK’s own Empirical supporting veterans Archie Shepp and Joachim Kuhn (the former a mellowed African-American firebrand, the latter a German pianist with all the wild intensity of Klaus Kinski in a Beethoven biopic). Read more... |
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