Wah Wah Radio – End of Year Special

Listen again here!

Paper Tiger – Here We Go

Honeyfeet – Sinner (Envee Remix)

The Expansions – Breakthrough (7″ Version)

Hector Plimmer – Sunshine

Hunrosa – All (Jonny Drop Remix)

Children of Zeus – Tonight

Legacy – Monday Blues

Hello Skinny – Watermelon Sun

Jordan Rakei – Sorceress (Photay Remix)

Daphni – Face to Face

Chaka Khan – Some Love (Scrimshire Edit)

Blood, Wine or Honey – Loosefoot

Dusty & Sam Irl – Pick Up The Pieces

Prequel – Lefty

Soothsayers – Blinded Souls (Titeknots Remix)

The post Wah Wah Radio – End of Year Special appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

18 for ’18: the talent and trends tipped for the top in 2018

From girls with attitude on screen to new grime debuts, from Steve McQueen’s return to Tacita Dean’s London takeover, Observer writers on what to look forward to in the coming year

Something special is happening in UK publishing. After the success of The Good Immigrant (edited by Nikesh Shukla) and titles like Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, there has been a renewed push to rectify the problems of an industry that has too long ignored narratives outside the white experience. Out of the thousands of titles published in 2016, a Bookseller study found that fewer than 100 books were published by non-white Brits.

Continue reading...
by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff, Holly Williams, Killian Fox, Laura Snapes, Tara Joshi, Laura Cumming, Simran Hans, Kitty Empire, Hannah Devlin, Wendy Ide, Michael Hogan, Claire Armitstead, Rowan Moore, Guy Lodge, Luke Jennings, Simon Parkin via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dom Servini – Netil Radio Show #1

Listen again here!

Children Of Zeus – This Christmas

Gil Scott-Heron – Winter in America

Charlotte dos Santos – Good Sign

Hamid El Shaeri – Ayonha

King Errissen – Space Queen

Shirley Caesar – Heavenly Father

Ike Strong – Boogie Land

Material – I’m The One

Soothsayers – Dis & Dat (Steve Cobby Remix)

Veronique Sanson – Bernard’s Song (Young Pulse Edit)

The Expansions – Breakthrough (7″ Version)

Run Child Run – Can’t Catch Me

Honeyfeet – Sinner (Envee Remix)

Kutiman – Too Late feat. Princess Shaw

Laraaji – All of A Sudden

Freiheit – Keeping the Dream Alive

Sam Irl & Dusty – Pick Up the Pieces

Jon Dixon – Fly Free (John Collins Edit)

Tee Mango – Tryin Times

Steve Spacek – Ring Di Alarm

Nosaj Thing – U Got

Penya – Why So Angry? feat. Dasiho

Som 3 – Jungle

Brute Force Steel Band of Antigua – Jingle Bells (Nirobi Edit)

Gay Flamingos – Black Man Wants to Cry

Made in NY – God’s Spirit (edit)

Legacy – Monday Blues

Darkhouse Family – Modaji Suite

The Superimposers – Chasing Christmas

The post Dom Servini – Netil Radio Show #1 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Observer readers' hidden musical gems of 2017

Last week, Observer music critics nominated their hidden gems of 2017 – the albums that didn’t get the coverage they deserved. Now it’s the readers’ turn…

Continue reading...
by Lauren Kelly via Electronic music | The Guardian

Myra Davies: Sirens review – witty spoken-word skewering of violence, patriarchy and modern music

(Moabit)

Backed by smart techno-pop production by Beate Bartel and Gudrun Gut, Canadian spoken-word artist Myra Davies delivers a supremely droll series of observations. Some are close portraits with the vibrancy of a Manet or Degas – on Golddress, she frets about a girl on the cusp of womanhood (“I’m aching to take her picture / it’s nothing compared with what the world will do”), while Inshallah is a funny meet-cute at Istanbul airport. Elsewhere there is a brilliantly pithy three-part retelling of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (“Girl and a guy on a dopamine high …”) and a cool evisceration of John Cage and his acolytes, highlighting their snobbery while lampooning their methods (“If something is boring for two minutes, try it for four / if still boring, then eight”). As she looks at our sexist, violent culture from her panopticon, Davies is omnipotent, and drily jaded. But crucially – as on Noutiné, a stark lament about a father walking free from the killing of his daughter – not aloof.

Continue reading...
by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Powerdance: The Lost Art of Getting Down review – love is the message

The collective celebrate disco and post-punk from an age before tedious dancefloor Instagrams – but their bass-heavy toughness means they never become retro

In spring this year, dance music collective Powerdance released their third single, A Safe and Happy Place. It came accompanied by a video shot at the Bethnal Green strip club that hosts Savage, an LGBT+ club night “combining disco music with an army of pole-dancing drag queens” at which Luke Solomon – the core of Powerdance, alongside Chicago-born, German-based producer Nick Maurer – is among the resident DJs. The video features the club’s regulars turning themselves into androgynous creatures of the night, a riot of stiletto heels, leather, sequins, thongs, gold teeth grills and, perhaps more unexpectedly, Jacobean ruffs. The images fit perfectly with the track. Its soft, understated sound, occupying an area somewhere between disco and early Chicago house, seems to capture a sense of anticipation about the coming night; its lyrics hymn clubs as a place of transformation and abandon, where the outside world is barred: “Don’t be afraid to let it go … unless it’s love nobody cares … disco has made this place for us.”

It’s a theme that’s been taken up in countless tracks aimed at dancefloors over the last 50 years, but, as with the music it’s set to, A Safe and Happy Place presents it with what you might term a modern twist. The ideal dancefloor, suggest the lyrics, is a place where “nobody stares”, a line that seems to gently suggest that that you can’t really escape into unselfconscious abandon if there’s someone nearby with their phone out, snapping away and posting the results on social media, searching for likes; that it’s hard to shut out the outside world if people insist on bringing the outside world with them in their pockets.

Related: Run the code: is algorave the future of dance music?

Continue reading...
by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

XLR8R News and Features: Podcast 521: DJ Gregory

---

• Podcast 521: DJ Gregory
• Davy to Make Production Debut with 'The Long Now' EP
• CRSSD Festival Announces 2018 Spring Edition Lineup
• Sade 'Couldn't Love You More' (Lauren Lo Sung Remix)
• Murcof x Wagner 'Avril 14th' (Aphex Twin) [Loscil Remix]

Podcast 521: DJ Gregory Posted: 19 Dec 2017 03:06 PM PST Many readers of XLR8R may not be too familiar with Grégory Darsa's DJ Gregory moniker. Although Darsa was one of the first proponents of house music in France, with one of the most storied resumes in the game—to give you an idea, he's collaborated with DJ Deep, Alex From Tokyo, Julien Jabre, and Bob Sinclair, among many others—in […]

RAPPAMELO | René Schier – Seeds | Musique Non Stop

---

René Schier – Seeds Posted: 19 Dec 2017 07:59 AM PST René Schier. Seeds. nice seeds. yeah. Available. at. urbanwavesrecords.bandcamp.com. enjoy. full stream. The post René Schier – Seeds appeared first on RAPPAMELO.

Dom Servini at The Hop Yard on 24/12

Details

• Artist:
  Dom Servini
• Date:
  25/12/17
• Time:
  7:00pm
• Venue:
  Hop Yard (Sussex)
• City:
  Sussex
• Address:
  Hartfield Road, Forest Row
• Venue phone:
  01342 824272
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Notes:
  The Hop Yard – Dom Servini DJ Set
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Dom Servini at The Hop Yard on 24/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

The Prodigy review – teeth rattled in dystopian breakbeat pantomime

Glasgow Academy
Twenty years on from their multimillion-selling album The Fat of the Land, the Prodigy refuse to get nostalgic, nor reduce the energy levels below total pandemonium

In an era when memories can be monetised, most bands – active or otherwise – might hungrily eye the 20th anniversary of their most successful album as an opportunity to mount a special tour to shore up their legacy and top up their Isas. Not so the Prodigy, Liam Howlett’s tetchy but tireless road warriors.

As Britpop shrivelled, their third album, 1997’s The Fat of the Land, took Howlett’s uncouth youthquake of evil techno and hot-wired breakbeats to the world; an astonishingly successful incursion into the US arguably laid the groundwork for the recent EDM explosion. Two decades on, you could forgive these Essex boys a backward-looking victory lap to fatten the brand.

Related: The Prodigy: 'we should be as important as Oasis or Blur'

Continue reading...
by Graeme Virtue via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #10 on Soho Radio

Listen again here!

Prequel – Freedom

Lightmen – Talk Visit

Album of the Month: Charlotte dos Santos – Cleo

Charlotte dos Santos – It’s Over Bobby

Daniel Casimir – Really for Always

Yazmin Lacey – Still (Alex Patchwork’s 2-Step Dub)

Tee Mango – Tryin Times

Osage – Anyway feat. Yemi

Garden City Movement – Slightly All The Time

Darkhouse Family – Modaji Suite

Khaled Kurbeh & Rahman Khalef Ensemble – Shamal

Run Child Run – Can’t Catch Me

Album of the Month: Charlotte dos Santos – Cleo

Charlotte dos Santos – Cleo

TT Edit – God’s Spirit

Brief Encounter – What About Love?

EKO – Bowa’a Mba Ngebe

Collocutor – Agama (Contours Remix)

My Mate – Love You So

Renegades of Jazz – Prison Island (Jonny Drop Remix)

Amadou Balake – Bar Konon Mousso (Musicien C’est Pas Quelou’un) (Ben Gomori N’est Pas Musicien Edit)

J.Morrison – Tunnel Vision feat. Jack Baldus

Moses Boyd – The Balance

Fulgeance & VECT – Gifted

Crackazat – Coffee Time

Chip Wickham – Rebel No.23

JRBB – The Euclidean Trip Through Paintings

Michael Sardaby – Welcome New Warmth

Album of the Month: Charlotte dos Santos – Cleo

Charlotte dos Santos – Watching You

The post Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #10 on Soho Radio appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Tom Rogerson With Brian Eno: Finding Shore review – improvisation in the right key

(Dead Oceans)

Three Trapped Tigers frontman Tom Rogerson plays piano and submits himself to Eno’s improvisational techniques on his debut solo album. In a very Enoesque way, a chance meeting outside a toilet led to the producer training infrared beams on the pianist’s keys and improvising around signals created when the beams were broken. The results are easy enough to digest, even if the process isn’t, with just enough repetition and structure to prevent attention drift. Most of the pieces forgo any sort of rhythm, although the baleful ambience of March Away’s percussion is so good that it’s a shame the pair didn’t pursue it.

Continue reading...
by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian

Kitty Empire’s best pop of 2017

From Jay-Z to Taylor Swift, it’s been a year of high political and personal drama in the worlds of rap, pop and rock

• Observer critics’ reviews of the year in full

With a couple of weeks to go until the new year, a number of significant records still teeter on the edge of an unannounced drop in 2017. Rihanna, for one, loves a fourth-quarter release; and Frank Ocean has hinted tantalisingly that he did make his promised five albums before he turned 30 at the end of October – he just hasn’t released one of them.

But the past 11 and a bit months have already seen more than enough melodrama: heartache and soap operatics, lawsuits and moral victories, and everywhere a political climate that was impossible to outrun. There were albums that engaged explicitly, from Hurray for the Riff Raff’s The Navigator to Joey Bada$$’s All-Amerikkkan Bada$$.

Continue reading...
by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian

Simon Says at The Jazz Cafe on 01/03

Details

• Artist:
  Wah Wah 45s
• Date:
  01/03/17
• Time:
  7:00pm
• Venue:
  Hop Yard (Sussex)
• City:
  Sussex
• Address:
  Hartfield Road, Forest Row
• Venue phone:
  01342 824272
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• More information
• Notes:
  Simon Says – Charity Night for The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Simon Says at The Jazz Cafe on 01/03 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Scrimshire at The Hop Yard on 31/12

Details

• Artist:
  Scrimshire
• Date:
  31/12/17
• Time:
  5:00pm
• Venue:
  Hop Yard (Sussex)
• City:
  Sussex
• Address:
  Hartfield Road, Forest Row
• Venue phone:
  01342 824272
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £25
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Hop Yard – Scrimshire DJ Set
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Scrimshire at The Hop Yard on 31/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

From bush doof to clowncore: your favourite underground music scenes

In the final instalment of our underground music series, readers share the scenes that inspire them – whether it’s radical brass bands, queer punk or doom-metal Mormons in Salt Lake City

At the outset of this series on underground music, we asked you for your suggestions of where to find it today – and nearly 800 of you responded. In this final chapter, we cover some of the most exciting scenes you uncovered across the globe, from Dartmoor to Slovakia, Queens and Luton. Thanks to everyone who took part, and who contributed to the series as a whole.

Think like an entrepreneur

Related: Where is the musical underground in 2017?

Related: Run the code: is algorave the future of dance music?

Related: 'There are a lot of weird people around here': how the north stayed underground

Continue reading...
by Guardian Staff via Electronic music | The Guardian

The sound of mega orgasms: the female composers taking music into intimate places

A soundtrack to an erotic feminist film, the crunch of crisps in your own mouth, a composition for ‘strap-on and electric guitar’ … meet the women who are making music and telling stories on their own terms

In the early 1990s, the accordionist and musical improviser Pauline Oliveros wrote the soundtrack for a feminist porn film called The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop. The film is presented and co-directed by Annie Sprinkle, a sex worker turned academic whose lecture covers everything from deep breathing and vaginal bling to STD prevention and “mega orgasms”. Along the way, we get a spectacular sonic counterpart of drones, glitches, bleeps, twangs and pulsations.

Conventional porn music this is not: no sultry saxophones, no oily bass guitars. Instead, Oliveros made sounds that are fun, tactile and inquisitive. If Sprinkle’s mission was to confront industry standards of what erotic looks like, freeing viewers to define their own tastes, Oliveros reminded us that the power to decide what music means should ultimately belong to the listener.

The librettist, the composer, the director are all men … Why aren't women allowed to write their own stories?

Continue reading...
by Kate Molleson via Electronic music | The Guardian

DOM SERVINI’S ALLO LOVE CHART :: DECEMBER 2017

1. Joe – Tail Lift (Hessle Audio 12)
2. Pugs Atomz & Mulatto Patriot – Come With Me feat. Wes Restless (Dinked 7)
3. Prequel – Lefty (Local Talk 12)
4. Run Child Run – Can’t Catch Me (JLM Promo DL)
5. Various – Versus II (On The Corner 12)
6. Charlotte Dos Santos – Cleo (Fresh Selects DL)
7. Darkhouse Family – The Offering (First Word LP)
8. Tee Mango – Tryin Times (Local Talk Test 12)
9. The Diabolical Liberties – All Out for Love (DL 12)
10. Siassa et Tokobina – Mama Africa (Nouvelle Ambiance 12)

The post DOM SERVINI’S ALLO LOVE CHART :: DECEMBER 2017 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 16/02

Details

• Artist:
  Dom Servini
• Date:
  16/02/17
• Time:
  10:30pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £5-£10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• More information
• Notes:
  Night Thing – Dom Servini DJ Set
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 16/02 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Dom Servini – Unherd Soul #3 on MiSoul Connoisseurs

Listen again here!

Pt1

Intro

Daniel Crawford – For Da Love of Da Magnificent

The Lyman Woodward Organisation – Creative Musicians

Betty Adams – Make it Real

The Emperor – Tough Times (Things Getting Tough)

Space Captain – Blue

C.O.W. – White

Amp Fiddler – Return of the Ghetto Fly feat. J Dilla

Sunny & the Sunliners – Open Up Your Love Door

Annette Peacock – Too Much in the Skies (Ole Smokey’s Inst Reprise)

Pt2

The Diabolical Liberties – Tuesday Evening

Jono McCleery – Ingenue (edit)

Manu Delago – A Step (Albin Janoska Remix)

Daev Martian – Blue Tick Tricks

Darkhouse Family – Just So You Know feat. Vanity Jay

Visioneers – The World is Yours

LEX718 – Reinforced

The Flying Stars of Brooklyn, New York – My God Has a Telephone

Pt3

Intro

Gizelle Smith – Sweet Memories (Radio edit)

Stark Reality – Say Brother

Dennis Farnon – Lady Killers

Caston & Majors – I’ll Leave a Light in my Window

Matthew Larkin Cassell – Heaven

Ocho – Undress My Mind

Modern Manners – Running With Me

Pt4

Minnie Ripperton – Here We Go

Benita – Time For a Change

Flapjack – Hawthorne Blvd

Jackie Moore – This Time Baby (M+M Mix)

Archie James Cavanaugh – Take It Easy

Daev Martian – Whaturrrp

Silver Jubilees – You Don’t Know

Hodges, James & Smith – Can’t Hide Love

The post Dom Servini – Unherd Soul #3 on MiSoul Connoisseurs appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Soothsayers at The Portico Gallery on 31/12

Details

• Artist:
  Soothsayers
• Date:
  31/12/17
• Time:
  9:00pm
• Venue:
  Portico Gallery
• City:
  London
• Address:
  23B Knight’s Hill
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £20
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• Notes:
  Soothsayers LIVE at the Portico Gallery on New Years Eve!
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Soothsayers at The Portico Gallery on 31/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Soothsayers at The Jazz Cafe on 09/02

Details

• Artist:
  Soothsayers
• Date:
  09/02/17
• Time:
  7:00pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £10-£15
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Notes:
  Soothsayers LIVE at the Jazz Cafe, London
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Soothsayers at The Jazz Cafe on 09/02 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Honeyfeet at The Marshall Rooms on 08/12

Details

• Artist:
  Honeyfeet
• Date:
  08/12/17
• Time:
  8:00pm
• Venue:
  The Marshall Rooms
• City:
  Stroud
• Address:
  27A Nelson Street
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £8-£10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• Notes:
  Honeyfeet LIVE at The Marshall Rooms, Stroud
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Honeyfeet at The Marshall Rooms on 08/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Honeyfeet at The Attic on 14/12

Details

• Artist:
  Honeyfeet
• Date:
  14/12/17
• Time:
  8:00pm
• Venue:
  The Attic
• City:
  Bristol
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £8
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• More information
• Notes:
  Honeyfeet LIVE at The Attic Bar, Bristol
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Honeyfeet at The Attic on 14/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

The best albums of 2017: 50-41

We start our countdown of this year’s most outstanding sounds with slacker duets, African fusions and mournful brilliance. Tune in tomorrow for another reveal

• More on the best culture of 2017

₄₁

Continue reading...
by via Electronic music | The Guardian

The top 100 tracks of 2017

In the year the album’s power eroded, we collate the 100 best songs of 2017 as voted for by Guardian critics – and put them in a giant playlist

Many listeners are still in love with the album: a piece of work that allows a musician to fully sketch out their current worldview. And we’ll be counting down our favourite 50 albums of the year over the next three weeks.

But many listeners have made a decisive shift away from albums and towards playlists on streaming services – often curated by Spotify or Apple themselves. We explored the phenomenon here – as well as how albums are mutating in response – and started our own monthly playlist.

Continue reading...
by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Nabihah Iqbal: Weighing of the Heart review – nostalgic, sweet pop and pristine beats

(Ninja Tune)

For the last few years, Nabihah Iqbal has been confecting bright and airy electronica as producer Throwing Shade. For her debut album, she bursts out from between the synths with a warm and fuzzy vocal-led collection of tracks that nod to both New Order-ish post-punk and the intimate dream pop of the early 90s. The record also recalls fellow Londoners Real Lies, whose layering of street-lamp lit synths and gutter/stars portraits of the city echo in tracks like Zone 1 to 6000. The latter is just one of the highlights of an album that weaves sweet pop melodies and strange, scuttling beats together into something that feels both nostalgic and recklessly new. It’s all done with a precision and neatness that betrays Iqbal’s dance music roots, with each moment providing an aesthetic delight, from the medley of drumbeats that opens Eternal Passion to the liquid gold guitars that frequently surface.

Continue reading...
by Rachel Aroesti via Electronic music | The Guardian

Resonators at The Jazz Cafe on 04/05

Details

• Artist:
  Resonators
• Date:
  04/05/17
• Time:
  7:00pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £10-£15
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Notes:
  Resonators headline show at the Jazz Cafe!
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Resonators at The Jazz Cafe on 04/05 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Pauset: Canons CD review – cool precision and dense virtuosity

Nicolas Hodges
(Wergo, two CDs )

Canons have been a feature of western music since at least the 13th century, and it seems that composers are still fascinated by their possibilities. Brice Pauset, the French-born, German-resident former pupil of Gérard Grisey has taken that fascination further than most; as well as these cycles of canons for solo piano, he has composed equivalent cycles for chamber ensemble and chamber orchestra.

The 18 pieces in these four collections were composed between 1989, when Pauset was studying at the Paris Conservatoire, and 2010. They range from spare, rather Webern-like contrapuntal pieces lasting barely a minute, to much denser, virtuosic showpieces, in which the canonical techniques generating them are hard, if not impossible to discern. It’s not easy music to get on terms with. The later sets were composed for Nicolas Hodges, who plays them with his typical combination of cool precision and expressive freedom. He’s also the pianist in the single work on the second disc, Perspectivae Sintagma I, for piano and live electronics, also based on canons.

Continue reading...
by Andrew Clements via Electronic music | The Guardian

Readers recommend playlist: your unlikely collaborations

This week’s reader-curated list gives us pairings such as Neneh Cherry and Youssou N’Dour, and the combined powers of Bono, Brian Eno and Pavarotti

Here is this week’s playlist – songs picked by a reader from hundreds of suggestions on last week’s callout. Thanks for taking part. Read more about how our weekly series works at the end of the piece.

The KLF, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, the world’s biggest-selling singles act of 1991, were never short of ideas. Some were good, some were decadence on a bun. It’s hard to get away from their burning of a million quid and then making a house brick from the ashes. Fortunately, they were rarely short of musical ideas, and their chart success bought them an appointment with Tammy Wynette for the Illuminatus-inspired Justified and Ancient, with which we begin this list.

Continue reading...
by George Boyland via Electronic music | The Guardian

Run the code: is algorave the future of dance music? – video

By building up tracks through the manipulation of programming code – and pairing them with visuals also made on the fly – algorave producers are among the underground's most dextrous and daring work. Iman Amrani heads to Sheffield to meet those at the heart of the scene

Continue reading...
by Iman Amrani Noah Payne-Frank via Electronic music | The Guardian

Run the code: is algorave the future of dance music?

By building up tracks through the manipulation of programming code, algorave producers are among the underground’s most dextrous and daring. We head to Sheffield to meet those at the heart of the scene

As part of the Guardian’s underground music series, we asked readers where they thought we should be looking for weird scenes. We’ll round up the best suggestions next week to close out the series, but one that stuck out to me was algorave, put forward by an anonymous reader from Sheffield: “This is music created using computer code which is written live in front of an audience … Places in Sheffield hold algoraves where this music is created on the fly with accompanying also live-coded visuals.”

Continue reading...
by Iman Amrani, with film directed by Noah Payne-Frank via Electronic music | The Guardian

Grammys 2018: Britain's reign comes to an end as diversity flourishes | Ben Beaumont-Thomas

With Ed Sheeran, Calvin Harris and various One Direction members snubbed, it paves the way for one of the most ethnically diverse Grammys ever – though female musicians have been sidelined

• Grammy awards 2018: Ed Sheeran snubbed as Jay-Z leads nominations

The iconic moment of the 2017 Grammys was Adele beating Beyoncé for album of the year, and the former acknowledging what a force of nature the latter is. “The way that you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel, is empowering,” she said. “And you make them stand up for themselves. And I love you.” She vocalised what everyone else already knew: that Beyoncé, and indeed black American music, had become culturally dominant in the US.

Related: Grammy awards 2018: Ed Sheeran snubbed as Jay-Z leads nominations

Continue reading...
by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Gorillaz review – Damon Albarn refuses to be pigeonholed in hip-hop jamboree

Brighton Centre
The Blur frontman brings his animated band’s world tour to the UK, and it’s the house vocalists – such as Peven Everett and Jamie Principle – that really shine

The first Gorillaz tour in seven years is an event that arrives in Britain trailing a certain degree of hype. It is apparently the fastest-selling tour that Damon Albarn has been involved in: not even the re-formation of Blur shifted tickets around the world so quickly, testament perhaps to the fact that, initially at least, Gorillaz achieved the kind of multiplatinum success in the US denied to Albarn’s original outfit. There has been much talk of the vast, continually rotating cast involved: in addition to Albarn, a band that features in its ranks two drummers and six backing vocalists, there’s the ever-changing menu of guest stars to contend with. Over the course of its American leg, the Humanz tour variously featured appearances from Carly Simon, Kelela, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Yasiin Bey, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano and Savages’ Jehnny Beth, while last weekend’s shows in Paris brought Popcaan to the stage for an encore of Saturnz Barz.

Tonight, however, the Jamaican MC is merely on a big screen at the rear of the stage, while Chicago brass bands and indie frontwomen are noticeable by their absence. The supporting cast is stripped down to something approaching a skeleton staff: depending on your taste in hip-hop, the biggest names present are either Long Beach rapper Vince Staples or two-thirds of De La Soul, the latter performing a rapturously received version of Feel Good Inc. The visuals featuring Jamie Hewlett’s familiar animated figures are strong, but not quite as eye-poppingly innovative as the show’s excitable advance billing might have led you to believe – amid the synched videos and interstitial cartoons, there’s nothing quite as visually arresting as the moment during their 2005 shows when the children’s choir who sang on Dirty Harry unexpectedly broke first into synchronised dance moves, then gleeful body-popping.

Related: Gorillaz, Oxfam and a tarot fool: the art of Jamie Hewlett – in pictures

Continue reading...
by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Leather daddies and jazz: a beginner's guide to garage-rock hero John Dwyer

Dwyer has released 21 albums with Thee Oh Sees – and 20 other records that range from German industrial electronics to heavy metal. He gives the backstories about key tracks in his vast back catalogue

‘My motto is: try everything, life is short,” says John Dwyer, the leader of San Francisco garage rockers Thee Oh Sees. “We are growing at every turn. Every day you get a little older, a little closer to the grave – you should taste it all.”

A master of contemporary garage rock, he came into prominence as part of the fruitful San Francisco scene of the early 2000s. Since then Thee Oh Sees have rattled out 21 LPs of bewilderingly consistent quality, under various iterations of their name, and Dwyer has written, recorded and released another 20 albums with other collaborators, encompassing everything from industrial electronics to improvised jazz and death metal.

Continue reading...
by Gareth Main via Electronic music | The Guardian

BBC reveals its Sound of 2018 longlist

Artists on the broadcaster’s annual poll of musicians tipped for success next year include Norwegian singer Sigrid and London rapper Not3s

The BBC have revealed their annual Sound Of … list, which predicts the musicians likely to make waves in 2018.

This year’s crop include representatives from genres including rap, R&B, indie, dance and pop. The list was voted for by 173 critics, broadcasters, DJs and other music industry figures, with the poll’s winner set to be announced on 12 January on Radio 1.

Continue reading...
by Guardian music via Electronic music | The Guardian

Thurston Moore, Holly Herndon and more on today's musical underground

Thurston Moore, The Black Madonna and other underground musicians discuss how the scene continues to mutate – and why quantum physics is where today’s avant garde truly resides

Continue reading...
by Rachel Aroesti via Electronic music | The Guardian

Honeyfeet at Rich Mix on 31/12

Details

• Artist:
  Honeyfeet
• Date:
  31/12/17
• Time:
  9:00pm
• Venue:
  Rich Mix
• City:
  London
• Address:
  35-47 Bethnal Green Road
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £16.40-£21.67
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  NYE Love Revolution – Honeyfeet LIVE
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Honeyfeet at Rich Mix on 31/12 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 02/02

Details

• Artist:
  Dom Servini
• Date:
  02/02/18
• Time:
  10:30pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £5-£10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Night Thing – Dom Servini DJ Set
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 02/02 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 19/01

Details

• Artist:
  Dom Servini
• Date:
  26/01/18
• Time:
  10:30pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £5-£10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Night Thing – Dom Servini DJ Set
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 19/01 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 19/01

Details

• Artist:
  Dom Servini
• Date:
  19/01/18
• Time:
  10:30pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £5-£10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Night Thing – Dom Servini DJ Set
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 19/01 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 12/01

Details

• Artist:
  Dom Servini
• Date:
  12/01/18
• Time:
  10:30pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £5-£10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Night Thing – Dom Servini DJ Set
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 12/01 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 05/01

Details

• Artist:
  Dom Servini
• Date:
  05/01/18
• Time:
  10:30pm
• Venue:
  The Jazz Cafe
• City:
  London
• Address:
  5, Parkway, Camden Town, London, NW1 7PG
• Venue phone:
  +44 20 7485 6834
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £5-£10
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Night Thing – Dom Servini DJ Set
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe on 05/01 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

Come together! How rave returned to the cultural mix

Twenty five years on, the spirit of rave is being seen everywhere from catwalk fashion and art to the collective political experience of Acid Corbynism

Before the May bank holiday in 1992, Castlemorton Common in the Malvern Hills was chiefly known only to walkers keen to hike through its 600 acres of unspoilt, unenclosed land. After that bank holiday, however, it became known as the site of Britain’s biggest-ever illegal rave.

Partygoers arrived in such numbers that Castlemorton featured on TV and in the newspapers – which brought more revellers. In the end, an estimated 20,000 people flocked to the site. By the Tuesday, it had induced moral panic in the Daily Mail: “A walk through the hippy encampment was like walking into a scene from the Mad Max movies. Zombie-like youngsters on drugs walked aimlessly through the mobile shanty town or danced to the pounding beat,” it reported. By 1994, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was passed, with the now infamous ruling against parties playing music “characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”.

Continue reading...
by Lauren Cochrane via Electronic music | The Guardian

Björk: Utopia review – a lush, airy fresh start

(One Little Indian)
Björk exudes a lust for life again on her self-styled ‘Tinder album’, a hope-filled set powered by flutes and birdsong

To talk of Björk’s Utopia as a rebirth is no stretch. On the cover of her ninth solo album she emerges as though from an iridescent caul. Her forehead has been modified into a uterine shape; pearls fall from fallopian flowers.

It wouldn’t be a stretch either to note that after the austere, extreme Vulnicura – the 2015 album that marked the pain and fury of Björk’s separation from the father of her daughter – Utopia harkens back to the nature love of older albums such as Biophilia and Vespertine, and the default lust for life Björk has exhibited throughout her long career.

Related: Björk: ‘People miss the jokes. A lot of it is me taking the piss out of myself’

Continue reading...
by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian

Kelly Lee Owens: ‘My patients were my career advisers’

The Welsh nurse turned techno-pop shaman is creating waves with her healing, trance-like debut

Music can soothe the soul, but Kelly Lee Owens’s techno pop appears to have an especially balm-like quality. Her eponymous debut album came out in March, and while she didn’t have any specific intentions for it – “I had the Yoko Ono mindset, which is just to put good work out into the world and let it do its thing” – she didn’t anticipate the response it received. Perhaps it was the Tibetan singing bowls sampled on the song CBM. Or the meditative, 10-minute closing track inspired by gong baths. Or Owens’s soothing coo, which ripples trippily throughout the album. Fans would message her on Instagram telling her: “Your music has healed me.”

That revelation could sound pretentious, but Welsh-born Owens, 29, operates on a sweetly spiritual plane.Throughout our interview, there is talk of natal charts and the age of Aquarius, but also of how lazy festival promoters need to step outside their “boys’ club” and book more women. She’s pleased about the response to her record because for a time she felt guilty about leaving her job as an auxiliary nurse in a cancer ward in Manchester to pursue music. It was, however, her patients who encouraged her to quit. “They were kind of like my career advisers,” she says. “They had this unique perspective, of having their lives threatened by something out of their control, so I respected all of their words of advice.”

Continue reading...
by Kate Hutchinson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Xenoula: Xenoula review – an intricate, experimental debut

(Weird World)

Occasionally this debut album from Xenoula (real name Romy Xeno) feels like relatively run-of-the-mill indietronica – tracks like Luna Man, for example, are somewhat forgettable. But as the album opens out, it’s clear the South Africa-born, Wales-based artist, along with producer LA Priest, offers something more intricate and strange. Dreamy Caramello boasts breathy, sweet vocals ghosting over rich but fragmented electronic textures, pulled together over a warm, organic, psych-infused groove, while standout Tororoi finds lithe percussion dancing and weaving around her voice. At its best this is earthy, experimental pop, but the unusual sounds that pique the interest come too inconsistently.

Continue reading...
by Tara Joshi via Electronic music | The Guardian

Kim Myhr: You | Me Myhr CD review – blissed-out twangs for big-sky vistas

Myhr
(Hubro)

Here’s an album that feels beautifully out of season. Norwegian composer/experimental guitarist Kim Myhr is a master of slow-morphing rhythms and sun-dappled textures that seem to glow from the inside. His electronics are mellow and inviting; his 12-string acoustic guitar has a loose, blissed-out twang. With just two long tracks (A and B on the vinyl release) that loop and shimmy around a single simple hook, You | Me has a 60s psych-folk vibe and something of the roving thrum of early Steve Reich or Terry Riley’s In C, or indeed Julius Eastman’s joyous Femenine. Three drummers – Ingar Zach, Hans Hulbækmo and The Necks’ Tony Buck – add spangling commentary and tranquil momentum and occasionally drift into sombre eddies. It’s an album to bolster the spirits and ground the nerves: travelling music for big-sky vistas.

Continue reading...
by Kate Molleson via Electronic music | The Guardian

Björk: Utopia review – romance, angst and troublingly thin tunes

The musician’s self-professed ‘Tinder album’ spins from ecstasy to frustration by focusing more on soundscapes than melody

At this stage in her career, no one expects Björk’s latest record to sound much like her last one. And yet it’s hard to avoid heaving a thankful sigh when Arisen My Senses, the opening track of her ninth studio album, Utopia, crashes into life: birdsong giving way to bright splashes of electronics, beatific-sounding harp chords and cascading beats not unlike the oft-sampled rhythm track of Schoolly D’s old rap classic PSK, What Does It Mean? It sounds positively ecstatic, which comes as a relief. Utopia’s predecessor, 2015’s Vulnicura, was a remarkable record, a latterday entry into the canon of legendary break-up albums. It attained its place alongside Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear and Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks by setting its fathomless misery to atonal string arrangements and abstract electronics that, during its central track, kept vanishing into a single flatlining beep. It was raw, brave, challenging, unique and all the other adjectives heaped on it in reviews, but with the best will in the world, any album so harrowing that the appearance of gloom-laden vocalist Anohni constitutes a moment of light relief is going to be one that defies you to listen to it repeatedly.

Related: Björk: Vulnicura review – a sucker punch of a breakup album

Continue reading...
by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian

Stimmung review – Singcircle take us back to Stockhausen's future

Barbican, London
A rare performance of Stockhausen’s legendary Stimmung, replete with terrible erotic poems, recaptured the spirit that inspired a generation

It is 40 years since Singcircle, a group of six young British singers directed by Gregory Rose, devoted six months to rehearsing and performing one of the most extraordinary and groundbreaking vocal works of the 20th century. Premiered by Collegium Vocale Cologne in 1968, Stockhausen’s Stimmung quickly acquired legendary status. The first significant piece of western music to be based entirely on vocal harmonics, it seemed to open up a new musical world – not only for Stockhausen but for a younger generation of composers who realised its implications. Stimmung became one of the starting points for the spectralism movement in European music of the 70s and 80s.

Related: Crackle goes pop: how Stockhausen seduced the Beatles

Related: Paul Morley on music: Stockhausen

Continue reading...
by Andrew Clements via Electronic music | The Guardian

'We could build something revolutionary': how tech set underground music free

YouTube, social media and even Bitcoin are allowing musicians to reject major labels and go it alone – but the industry is fighting back. Can artists use technology to stay truly independent?

In the 20th century, the vast majority of music you heard and bought was controlled by a small number of companies: record labels, radio stations and other dominators of the media. Artists needed them to reach the public and the public’s choice was prescribed by what these gatekeepers believed could best turn a profit. You liked it or lumped it. Now, however, a networked world is giving artists and audiences the tools to reject those companies for ever.

Think like an entrepreneur

Continue reading...
by Eamonn Forde via Electronic music | The Guardian

Dele Sosimi & Seun Kuti at Electric Brixton on 02/03

Details

• Artist:
  Dele Sosimi
• Date:
  02/03/18
• Time:
  11:00pm
• Venue:
  Electric Brixton
• City:
  London
• Address:
  Town Hall Parade; Brixton
• Country:
  United Kingdom
• Admission:
  £18.50-£22.50
• Age restrictions:
  No Minors
• Buy Tickets
• More information
• Notes:
  Electric Brixton – Dele Sosimi LIVE
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

The post Dele Sosimi & Seun Kuti at Electric Brixton on 02/03 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.

via Wah Wah 45s

The vinyl frontier: why do we keep sending music to outer space?

Sónar festival is beaming cutting-edge dance music to an exoplanet 12 light years from Earth. But can such experiments ever be more than hubris?

What item would you choose to sum up humanity if you were, like Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, seeking out new life and new civilisations? A “five items or less” sign from a supermarket, with a note explaining why it should be “fewer”? Maybe a selection of press cuttings about the Greggs sausage roll Jesus controversy, summing up both humanity’s silliness and its capacity for overreaction?

Of course you wouldn’t. You’d do what the Barcelona electronic music festival Sónar has done to mark its 25th anniversary: send out 33 separate 10-second clips of music by electronic artists such as Autechre, Richie Hawtin and Holly Herndon.

Music 'might not translate to extraterrestrial life – the possible inhabitants of Luytens B might not even have ears'

Continue reading...
by Michael Hann via Electronic music | The Guardian