tue 26/08/2025

New York

CD: Philly ReGrooved 2: Tom Moulton Remixes - The Master Returns

'Philly ReGrooved 2': 'There has rarely been a better demonstration that when a formula ain't broke it doesn't need fixing'

This series of albums is the sound of one of the most epochally important producers in soul and dance music history reworking his magic. The closest analogy I can think of that non-dance music fans would appreciate is The Beatles' Love album in...

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Paul Merton's Birth of Hollywood, BBC Two

Paul Merton started his three-part series on the origins of the American film industry with a deliberately clichéd shot, greeting us while standing with the Hollywood sign in view. But he quickly whizzed over to New York City, the true location of...

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Sonic Youth play London – almost

Next Tuesday, 31 May, will be a day of difficult choices for fans of New York’s Sonic Youth. London is hosting three separate shows by band members and associates. That evening their mainstay guitarist, Thurston Moore, plays the Union Chapel. SY’s...

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All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, BBC Two

As The Observer once put it, an abiding theme of Adam Curtis's documentaries "has been to look at how different elites have tried to impose an ideology on their times, and the tragicomic consequences of those attempts". This neatly sums up the...

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CD: Thurston Moore - Demolished Thoughts

Thurston Moore's 'Demolished Thoughts': Beautiful

Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore has never been constrained by being in one of the planet’s coolest and always-interesting bands. Since the late Eighties he’s released a string of collaborations and solo releases that are mainly experimental, atonal or...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Moby

Moby, punk, electronic orchestrator and self-confessed nerd

Moby (b 1965) has been a presence on the dance scene and in global clubland for two decades. He is best known for the multimillion-selling 1999 album Play which, among other things, combined lush electronic orchestration with old field recordings of...

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Des Bishop, Soho Theatre

Des Bishop: An outsider’s acutely observational view of people and their foibles

As the audience files in, James Bond title songs accompany a looped clip from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which was George Lazenby’s sole outing as 007. There’s a reason, as this funny, touching but wholly unsentimental show is a sort of comic...

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What happened to Daniel Radcliffe?

Daniel Radcliffe may Succeed in Business, but won't succeed at the 2011 Tony Awards

That’s the question New York theatre folk are asking this morning, following the announcement of the 2011 Tony nominations, honouring the best of the Broadway theatre season just gone. Radcliffe was thought to be a dead cert for a nomination for...

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CD: Beastie Boys – Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

The question used to be: “Can white men rap?” A more apt variant today is, “Can white men in their middle forties with juvenile nicknames rap?” Mike D, Ad-Rock and MCA recorded Hot Sauce Committee Part Two in 2009, but then put the release on...

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Arthur

Back in 2004, Russell Brand performed Russell Brand's Better Now at the Edinburgh Fringe, one of the best shows I have ever seen. In it he described his recovery from addictions to alcohol and drugs and how he had lost his job as an MTV presenter...

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Filthy Cities, BBC Two

Dan Snow: TV's enthusiastic filthmeister

Dan Snow's toxic trilogy climaxed in New York, where he crawled voyeuristically through the rotten core of the Big Apple. It was part Discovery Channel documentary, part Gangs of New York dirty realism, as Snow took a frankly indecent relish in...

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theartsdesk in New York: Spruce Flats by Gehry

Affordable housing by Gehry: 'The best skyscrapers wear skins that express that fact with the strength and subtlety of great art'

“Do you realise we’re talking about a rental apartment building? It’s unheard of,” says a friend. We’re standing on a street corner discussing the new Frank Gehry building in lower Manhattan. Most new apartment buildings here are concrete and...

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