5 and a half hours of soul, jazz and other mellow music….
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Musique Non Stop - Jazz, Funk, Soul, Broken Beat, Electro, Electronic, Funk / Nu Disco, NU Jazz, House, Techno, Ambient, Lo-Fi, Downtempo... and Many More!
Friday, December 27, 2019
Thursday, December 26, 2019
Beatrice Dillon: the most thrilling new artist in electronic music
The London musician is releasing her debut album after years of odd jobs and collaborations, pitting the highbrow against the homespun in masterfully light yet complex music
‘The computer always wins, that was my phrase.” Beatrice Dillon is explaining the sound of her debut album, Workaround, in which her computers spar with acoustic instruments played by a dozen guests ranging from cellist Lucy Railton to tabla player Kuljit Bhamra (who has an MBE for services to bhangra, Dillon points out proudly).
Out in February, the album confirms Dillon as the most thrilling new voice in British electronic music today. Workaround moves with the airborne grace of capoeira fighters, every track rattling along at 150bpm – the tempo between techno and jungle. It somehow connects the pointillist precision of electronic producers such as Mark Fell and Errorsmith with the disorienting bass-scapes of dub masters Scientist and Lee Perry, reflecting Dillon’s wide interests. These extend beyond music into fine art, which she studied at Chelsea College of Arts. “They don’t really teach you anything at art school, it’s a complete waste of time,” she breezes in her bright and airy studio beside the Thames in Somerset House, central London. “But if they do teach you anything it’s criticality: ‘What are you actually doing?’”
Continue reading...by Chal Ravens via Electronic music | The Guardian
Monday, December 23, 2019
The best underground dance music of 2019
Whether it was Conducta’s anti-nostalgic UK garage revival or the experimentalism of Shanghai’s SVBKVLT label, 2019 saw dancefloor boundaries staked out in exciting new territory
Gabber Modus Operandi
Continue reading...by Tayyab Amin and Lauren Martin via Electronic music | The Guardian
Friday, December 20, 2019
Wah Wah Radio Round Up of the Year – December 2019
1. Alison Crockett – Like Rain (Yam Who? Remix)
2. Time Grove – Indopia
3. Honeyfeet – Clap Hands
4. The Milk – Never Come Down (Radio Edit)
5. Lea Lea – The Road (Dub Version)
6. Resonators – Soul Connection (Live at Electric)
7. Soothsayers – Natural Mystic (Sarathy Korwar Remix)
8. Paper Tiger – Bioluminescent feat. Olivia Battacharjee
9. Isaac Birituro & The Rail Abandon – Yesu Yan Yan (Village Cuts Remix)
10. Isaac Birituro & The Rail Abandon – Highlife
11. Kutiman – So Long feat. Rioghnach Connolly
12. Talc – Pie Time
13. The Milk – Colours
14. Hardkandy – Brief Encounters feat. Scarlett Fae
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Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #36 on Soho Radio
The Best of 2019
Damon Locks – From a Spark to a Fire
Steve Cobby – Feline Plastique
Kid Fonque – Infinity feat. Daev Martian & Ziyon
Surprise Chef – Blyth Street Nocturne
Brainstory – Mnemophobia
Jitwam – Temptations
Middle Name Dance Band – Weekend Love Chant (Radio Edit)
Corey King – 3 Years
Laneous – Terms
Ghost Funk Orchestra – Slow Down
Yelfris Valdes – After Sly
14KT – Sunday’s Yellow
Ti Seles – Pa Dekouraje’w Toni
Kutiman – Line 3
Jaimie Branch – Nuevo Roquero Estéreo
GUTS – L’Origine du Monde
Yu Su – Watermelon Woman (Edit)
Zilla With Her Eyes Shut – Get Your Way (Bambooman Remix)
A. Billie Free – Flourish feat. Angel Bat Dawid
79ers Gang – Iko Iko (79ers Gang Version)
Particle Ray – Saints Stomp Their Feet
Tawiah – Lost in a Dream
SAULT – Why Why Why Why Why
Michael Kiwanuka – You Ain’t The Problem
Abdullah Ibrahim – Jabula
The Lewis Express – Clap Your Hands
Homeboy Sandman – Far Out
Sampa The Great – Final Form
Kutiman – So Long feat. Rioghnach Connolly
Quantic – Now or Never feat. Alice Russell
Justine – Mama Didn’t Tell Ya
The Milk – Colours
Resavoir – Taking Flight feat. Brandee Younger
Angel bat Dawid – What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black?
Scrimshire – Thru You feat. Georgia Anne Muldrow
Tensei – Walk It Out feat. Georgia Anne Muldrow
Out of the Ordinary – Meadows (Gospel Mix)
Isaac Birituro & The Rail Abandon – Für Svenja
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Sault: 5 / 7 review – intriguing grooves from a mystery funk machine
(Forever Living Originals)
No one seems to know who they are, but one thing is sure: Sault make hooky, dubby, funky music with echoes of ESG and Can
Mystery is a rare commodity in rock and pop these days. The internet has made investigative journalists of us all, and an artist who expends a lot of effort creating an enigmatic aura will almost invariably find themselves revealed online. So hats off to Sault, who managed to release two albums in 2019 – titled 5 and 7 – without anyone managing to conclusively solve the puzzle of who was behind them.
It was not for want of trying. Some people suggested the involvement of a London-based musician called Dean Josiah, whose CV boasts co-writing and production credits for Michael Kiwanuka, the Saturdays and Little Simz – the last of whom raved about Sault on social media. Others have posited that British soul singer Cleo Sol and Chicago-based rapper and sometime Kanye West collaborator Kid Sister – both signed to Sault’s label, Forever Living Originals – are the vocalists. But no one has confirmed or denied anything.
Continue reading...by Alexis Petridis via Electronic music | The Guardian
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Guardian albums and tracks of 2019: how our writers voted
We’ve announced our favourite releases of the year – now the Guardian’s music critics reveal their top picks of 2019
Albums
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Ghosteen
Michael Kiwanuka – Kiwanuka
Sturgill Simpson – Sound and Fury
Billie Eilish – When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Slowthai – Nothing Great About Britain
Sharon Van Etten – Remind Me Tomorrow
Fontaines DC – Dogrel
Sault – 5
Tyler, the Creator – Igor
Dave – Psychodrama
Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising
Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe
Chemical Brothers – No Geography
Brittany Howard – Jaime
Little Simz – Grey Area
Jamila Woods – Legacy! Legacy!
International Teachers of Pop – International Teachers of Pop
Angel Olsen – All Mirrors
Anderson .Paak – Ventura
These New Puritans – Inside the Rose
by via Electronic music | The Guardian
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Burial: Tunes 2011 to 2019 review – a bleak, beautiful, brave compilation
(Hyperdub)
It’s strange to remember how much of the excitement around Burial’s emergence focused on the act’s anonymity. Like any serious underground scene, dubstep was hardly about fame-chasing faces in 2005. But Burial became its Banksy, a feted street artist who told poetic truths about the prosaic to the public. Evocative yet blunt song titles (In McDonalds, Night Bus, Homeless) introduced music that was easy to digest yet restless and difficult to define. Burial was the city after dark, sometimes comforting, often unsettling, studded with scraps of songs from passing cars or phones, industrial static mixed into ghostly, gorgeous melodies.
Then, after a Mercury prize nomination in 2008 for Untrue and the unmasking of Will Bevan as Burial, there were no more Burial albums, just some remixes and singles, the latter collected here over a languorous two-and-a-half hours. Bevan has jettisoned the sleep paralysis pop of his early work for something even more dissociated and peripatetic. You might head for the vicious rave of Rival Dealer or Nightmarket’s sumptuous, pealing melody first, to swerve some long, austere, beatless passages, but this is a compilation of rare bravery and beauty.
Continue reading...by Damien Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian
Alabama 3 review – raucous ravers soak up mashup outlaws' sin and soul
Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
This was a rambunctious wake for founding member Jake Black – with their Sopranos’ theme a high point among club and country meldings
Jake Black, one of the founding members of Alabama 3, died in May this year. The southern-fried, dance-infused country irregulars formed in Brixton in the mid-1990s, yet Black was from Glasgow: this would have been a hometown gig.
Usually, you might say he was here in spirit. But Black, who performed as addled preacher the Very Reverend D Wayne Love, is also here in a more corporeal form, commemorated as an alabaster-white idol in a black suit, gazing out over a raucous, sold-out flock of ravers of all ages.
Continue reading...by Graeme Virtue via Electronic music | The Guardian
Friday, December 13, 2019
St Vincent/Nina Kraviz: Masseduction Rewired review
(Loma Vista)
Russian producer Kraviz moves St Vincent’s 2017 album through a variety of gloomy musical lenses, from footwork to dub
Throughout the 2010s, the album has become somewhat amorphous. Today’s artists are more prone to releasing multiple versions of their records, and many of the old rules about the format have gone out of the window.
Continue reading...by Aimee Cliff via Electronic music | The Guardian
Daniel Lopatin: Uncut Gems Original Soundtrack review
(Warp)
Lopatin, AKA Oneohtrix Point Never, has created a soundtrack for the Safdie brothers’ latest that brings its whole roiling humanity brilliantly to life
Uncut Gems is one of the films of the year, cementing its directors, the Safdie brothers, as the masters of stressing you out by watching flawed people make even more flawed life decisions – here, Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a gambling-addicted jeweller who is in love not so much with the winning as the survivors’ adrenalin of not losing. After scoring their previous film, Robert Pattinson heist movie Good Time, Daniel Lopatin – AKA electronic producer Oneohtrix Point Never, now composing under his own name – once again writes the music.
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Thursday, December 12, 2019
Sheffield's post-punk explosion: synths, steel and skinheads
In the late 70s, the city’s bands set out to create the sound of the future – while trying to avoid getting beaten up. Jarvis Cocker and other leading lights recall a revolutionary scene
‘Sheffield in 1977 had a slight feeling of being the city of the future,” recalls Jarvis Cocker. “I didn’t realise that it was all going to go to shit. It was Sheffield before the fall.”
That pre-fall year is the starting point for a new box set: Dreams to Fill the Vacuum: The Sound of Sheffield 1977-1988. Familiar names appear – Pulp, Heaven 17, the Human League, ABC – but they are joined by a wealth of other acts, such as I’m So Hollow, Stunt Kites, They Must Be Russians and Surface Mutants, spanning punk, post-punk, indie and electronic with that droll outsider energy particular to South Yorkshire.
Continue reading...by Daniel Dylan Wray via Electronic music | The Guardian
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
The 50 best albums of 2019, No 7: FKA twigs – Magdalene
Sex, sensuality and inner strength formed the core of a breakup album that mixed moments of fragility with rousing uplift
Despite a total lack of scriptural evidence, Mary Magdalene is commonly remembered as a penitent former sex worker, a once-sensual disciple of Jesus who straightened out to follow him to his death and beyond. On this album named after her, FKA twigs seems to say: get somebody who can do both. On the title track, she sings “I do it like Mary Magdalene” in the context of sex – carnal, but devotional. “Mary Magdalene would never let her loved ones down,” she sings on Home With You, and neither, she intimates, would she.
She’s written about this kind of emotional labour and nurturing sensuality before on her breakthrough single Two Weeks: “Suck me up, I’m healing / For the shit you’re dealing,” promising sex that satisfies the soul as well as the body. On stage, twigs has added pole-dancing to her routines, movements that are loaded with sexuality but, as she performs them, also transcend it to become a celebration of sheer corporeal movement and self-discipline.
Related: The 20 best songs of 2019
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
DOM SERVINI’S ALLO LOVE BEST OF 2019 TEN :: DECEMBER 2019
- SAULT – Why Why Why Why Why (Forever Living Originals)
2. Tawiah – Lost in a Dream (First Word)
3. Jaimie Branch – Nuevo Roquero Esteréo (International Anthem)
4. Greg Foat – Of My Hands (Athens of the North)
5. La Boa – Por Eso (Big In Japan)
6. A. Billie Free – Flourish feat. Angel Bat Dawid (Tokyo Dawn)
7. Quantic – Now or Never feat. Alice Russell (Tru Thoughts)
8. Corey King – Beautiful People (Def Pressé)
9. Steve Cobby – Feline Plastique (Bandcamp)
10. Sampa The Great – Final Form (Ninja Tune)
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'The vibe was sex, sex, sex': Cocktail D'Amore, Berlin's free-love club night
Now celebrating 10 years of hedonism, this staple of Berlin nightlife has become a place for people to escape the drudgery of 9-to-5 existence
The room is dark and teeming when, four hours into his set, Boris drops Patrick Cowley’s remix of I Feel Love. Sweat-scented and balmy with body heat, the room lifts off. As Cowley’s synthesiser solo gets ever more ludicrous, hands throw silhouettes on the rainbow lights; two men make love; a hand-standing Italian woman tries not to topple over.
This is Sunday night at Cocktail d’Amore in Berlin, a friendly, gay, delirious party that is celebrating its 10th birthday this year with, among other things, a compilation and coffee table book. Berlin has a new generation of queer club nights – among them Herrensauna, Lecken and Buttons – but Cocktail d’Amore was the initiator of this wave.
Continue reading...by Liam Cagney via Electronic music | The Guardian
Sunday, December 8, 2019
The 50 best albums of 2019, No 10: Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising
The LA singer-songwriter’s switch to stately orchestral pop earned Karen Carpenter comparisons, but her all-American concerns were firmly of our times
Going from playing bass in an avant-garde noise band called Jackie-O Motherfucker to garnering comparisons to Karen Carpenter is no mean feat. And yet that has been the winding trajectory of Natalie Mering, an auteur based in LA whose solo career reached an almighty crescendo this year with her fourth outing, Titanic Rising.
As slow and stately as a tanker turning, and as waterlogged as its title implies, Titanic Rising was a curio in 2019. Unburdened by modish musical trends – no guests, no genre crossovers – it was a feat of immersive beauty, the kind of record you might put on an old-fashioned stereo, dim the lights and sit through in one indulgent sitting, the better to appreciate its three-dimensional production washing over your skin like a gong bath.
Related: The 20 best songs of 2019
Continue reading...by Kitty Empire via Electronic music | The Guardian
Friday, December 6, 2019
Grimes review – a suitably surreal invasion of the Miami Art Basel
The artist appeared among Florida’s monied art fiends with a pristine alternate-reality trip – and a gloriously flawed DJ set
The art world has descended on Miami for Art Basel, the annual fair dedicated to proving that old idiom about a fool and his money. The most talked-about piece so far is by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, who has found at least two buyers for a work consisting of a banana duct-taped to a wall. Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth once blithely asked: “I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. How much could it cost?” The answer, it turns out, is $120,000.
Grimes fans could be forgiven for wondering if she might pull similar art pranks at her mysterious one-off show Bio-Haqué, held at an abandoned RC Cola plant that’s now transmogrified into a graffiti-blitzed 7,000-capacity outdoor venue in the city’s trendy Wynwood district. Details were scant when she first announced the show, writing cryptically on Instagram that she’d be joined by fellow provocateurs Sophie and Nina Kraviz and that it would be “a place where the well-proven anti-aging properties of raving have been distilled into the most potent experience available on the market today”.
Related: Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras
Continue reading...by Kevin EG Perry via Electronic music | The Guardian
Burial: Tunes 2011-2019 review
(Hyperdub)
The producer’s collected post-Untrue EPs reveal him as one of the most evocative voices in British music
The nights are drawing in and the weather outside is frightful, so it’s the time of year to reach for an old favourite – no, not just Michael Bublé but Burial, the south London producer whose tracks remain the perfect accompaniment to a moody illicit joint in the snow at your parents’ house over Christmas; the sound of cloud covering a 4pm dusk.
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Thursday, December 5, 2019
The Veronicas, Violent Soho, Jade MacRae: Australia's best new music for December
Each month we add 20 of the best new Australian songs to our Spotify playlist. Read about 10 of our favourites below – and subscribe on Spotify, which updates with the full list at the start of each month
Related: The 20 best songs of 2019
Continue reading...by Nathan Jolly and Guardian Australia via Electronic music | The Guardian
The 50 greatest Christmas songs – ranked!
From John Fahey, the Sonics and the Waitresses to Slade, Wizzard and Mariah Carey, we count down the best festive numbers
Continue reading...by Michael Hann via Electronic music | The Guardian
Monday, December 2, 2019
The 50 best albums of 2019: 41-50
We begin our pick of the year’s finest albums with gritty electropop, oddball songwriting, tender jazz, louche punk funk. Check in every weekday as we count down to No 1
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes via Electronic music | The Guardian
Sunday, December 1, 2019
Hannah Diamond: Reflections review – gloriously overwrought
(PC Music)
The press release for Hannah Diamond’s debut album hammers home the fact that the 28-year-old from Norwich is a real person. As the early figurehead for gonzo collective PC Music’s synthetic, hyper-real take on pop music, Diamond was caught in a wider conversation surrounding notions of authenticity, with her early singles dismissed as two-dimensional or, worse, the work of male geniuses using her as an avatar. Reflections, a gloriously overwrought breakup album, proves there’s a beating heart beneath Diamond’s self-aware, Photoshopped exterior.
Over 10 off-kilter songs, Diamond, whose deadpan, heavily tweaked vocals lend every word a sort of icy detachment, details the stages of a relationship ending, from catching a new flirtation on OTT hyper-ballad Invisible (“do you wish I wasn’t even there sometimes?”), to unpicking the moment of full implosion on the tactile Never Again.
Continue reading...by Michael Cragg via Electronic music | The Guardian
Friday, November 29, 2019
Doon Kanda: Labyrinth review – welcome to the haunted fun fair
(Hyperdub)
The designer and musician makes his mark using synthetic-sounding instruments to produce his spooky electronics
Jesse Kanda has made a considerable mark on culture with his graphic design – his mythic, bulbous, gender-indeterminate beings are the perfect foil for Arca’s music, and he has made beautiful, influential collaborations with FKA twigs and Björk. He then moved into music, as Doon Kanda, with two EPs leading up to this debut album, featuring another melancholy demigod on the cover.
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Omar Souleyman: Shlon review | Ammar Kalia's global album of the month
(Mad Decent)
The Syrian musician has released 500 records and now lives in exile in Turkey, but this short, sharp record shows an undimmed spirit
There was a glorious moment during Syrian singer Omar Souleyman’s 2011 Glastonbury set. Having just opened to a crowd of sedate, sun-baked West Holts revellers with the trilling saz lines of ballad Saba, he gives one waft of his hand and commands the entire crowd into a dabke-fuelled frenzy.
His keyboard player starts hammering out electronic drums on the keys, while Souleyman wails deep-throated entreaties to his audience; it is a joyous encapsulation of his music and appeal.
Continue reading...by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
The month's best mixes: celestial acid and rave nuttiness
Afrodeutsche brings her dark electro from Berlin’s Griessmuehle, UK techno elder statesman Luke Slater does an Essential Mix and Hessle Audio’s Ben UFO goes back to back with Joy Orbison
Honcho Campout Series: Mike Servito
Related: The month's best mixes: digital sludge, techno slammers and Kylie
Continue reading...by Lauren Martin via Electronic music | The Guardian
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
DOM SERVINI’S ALLO LOVE BIRTHDAY TEN :: NOVEMBER 2019
- Espen Horne – Magnetica (Wah Wah 45s 7)
- Debbie Cameron & Richard Boone – Gimme-Gimme (Metronome LP)
- Hackney Colliery Band – Africa (Wah Wah 45 7)
- Qwestlife – Fever (KON Remix) feat. Sugarhill Gang & Siedah Garrett (KON DL)
- Rosie Brown – Bliss (Quantic Remix) (Wah Wah 45s 7)
- Donna Summer – If It Hurts Just a Little (Young Pulse Re-work) (DL)
- Isaac Birituro & The Rail Abandon – Yesu Yan Yan (Village Cuts Remix) (Wah Wah 45s 12)
- Patrice Rushen – Haven’t You Heard (Elektra 12)
- Dele Sosimi – You No Fit Touch Am (Medlar Remix) (Wah Wah 45s 12)
- Rodney Franklin – In The Centre (Columbia LP)
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DJ Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe 30/11
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DJ Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe 27/12
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Wah Wah 45s at The Horse & Groom 30/11
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DJ Dom Servini & Scrimshire at Bussey Building 21/12
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DJ Dom Servini at The Jazz Cafe 29/11
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Soothsayers at Portico Gallery 29/11
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Why is 2019 so nostalgic for 80s rave?
Once the subject of tabloid moral panics, dance music’s early days are now being celebrated in books and galleries. What can 21st-century Britain learn from the ‘second summer of love’?
Visitors entered this summer’s Sweet Harmony exhibition through a tangle of ripped-up fencing, as if stealthily gaining access to a forbidden ritual. Inside, old-skool rave anthems rattled the Saatchi Gallery’s window frames. On the walls were hundreds of flyers alongside photographs of saucer-eyed youngsters waving air-horns and wearing T-shirts adorned with amusingly brazen drug references.
Dave Swindells, the man responsible for many of these classic photographs – and, indeed, many of the most memorable visual documentations of 1988’s summer of love – was struck by how much his images meant to strangers whose reckless youth he captured. “It’s emotional. I was getting messages from people saying how amazing it was that they were on the walls of the Saatchi!”
Related: Aciiiiid! Rave's first 30 years – in pictures
Continue reading...by Phil Harrison via Electronic music | The Guardian
Modern Toss
Monday, November 25, 2019
'It's more important than family': the music scene keeping Bristol weird
By blending noise, punk and techno, the ‘misfits and weirdos’ of Bristol are shaking the city out of its trip-hop nostalgia – in various states of nudity
In the smoke-filled basement of Bristol’s Brunswick Club, the T-shirts are off for Giant Swan. The duo coax unearthly noise from a web of drum machines and guitar effects pedals; as Robin Stewart’s robotic howls and Harry Wright’s clattering beats resolve into techno, their audience of peers in Bristol’s music community disrobe from the sweat and explode into dance.
For the family of artists in the room, in January 2018 at the last festival by Howling Owl Records, this closing show marks the start of a new chapter – one that has been moving into the spotlight ever since.
Continue reading...by Alastair Shuttleworth via Electronic music | The Guardian
Friday, November 22, 2019
More to the floor: the decade the dancefloor was decolonised
Collectives like NON and Naafi helped to loosen the west’s stranglehold on club culture – and now the most exciting dance music is coming from east Asia, Africa and Latin America
In the first half of the 2010s, the western world dominated the conversation in electronic music. White, male producers and DJs, often based in London, New York or Los Angeles, mostly controlled the barriers to entry, and took music from foreign cultures without consequence. Diplo, cherry-picking from baile funk, dancehall and reggaeton and tailoring each rhythm to suit an English-speaking market, is the most high-profile example of this appropriation, but he is just one of many white producers in the post-internet decade who dabbled in different cultures with boyish insouciance they regarded drop-crotch trousers, curtained hair, or any other passing trend.
In the second half of the decade, however, multilateral club scenes from Latin America, Africa and east Asia have come to define the global underground, each pressing their native sounds towards the razor’s edge with confidence and technical prowess.
Continue reading...by Whitney Wei via Electronic music | The Guardian
Chemical Brothers review – a glorious, meaningless sensory overload
First Direct Arena, Leeds
Against huge projections of robots, disco balls and angels, the band deliver a rousing set that even makes the players themselves punch the air
In the 90s electronic boom, when the Chemical Brothers, Leftfield, Orbital and the Prodigy formed the “big four” acts making dance music a live experience, occasional festival appearances were the only real opportunities they had to take their music to the masses. Most of their gigs saw audiences crammed into student halls and mid-sized venues. Today, as live music has exploded along with bigger, visuals-friendly venues and the band’s influence (this week they were nominated for three Grammy awards), the Chems have made the step into arenas, where they can showcase their electric dreams on the scale they’ve long imagined.
At first, the opening night of their first regional tour in 20 years feels like an old-school rave. Some people have exhumed their 90s bucket hats – once popularised by Stone Roses drummer Reni. Others in the balconies are constantly up and in the aisles all night, giving security staff a headache. Meanwhile, DJs play vintage dance tracks before the main act come on. LFO’s thumping sub-bass workout of the same name, once popularised in nearby Leeds Warehouse, gets rapturous cheers of recognition.
Related: Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras
Continue reading...by Dave Simpson via Electronic music | The Guardian
Hannah Diamond: Reflections review – 303s and heartbreak
(PC Music)
On these melancholy bangers, the PC Music singer uses nursery rhyme-like trance-pop melodies and a girlish sing-song delivery to essay the pain of being lovelorn and vulnerable
Here’s an affecting companion piece to Caroline Polachek’s recently acclaimed Pang: another breakup album with production handled by one of the PC Music collective, who rescue trance-pop sonics from the tyranny of good taste. Polachek’s record featured work by Danny L Harle, while Diamond’s is produced by AG Cook. Where Polachek is erudite and poetic, Diamond is prosaic; where Polachek’s vocals are astonishingly skilful, swooping into high registers, Diamond’s are unremarkably ordinary.
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Thursday, November 21, 2019
'We're all Earthlings': the scientists using art to explore the cosmos
Can art advance science? Researchers on the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence are using videos, music and more to go beyond the final frontier
Since 1984, the scientific research institute SETI has worked with some of the brightest minds on our planet: astronomers, solar system dynamics experts, exoplanet detection specialists, astrochemists. All of them are on a mission to decode the universe’s mysteries – but has one area of expertise been overlooked?
Jill Tarter thinks so. She’s the chair emeritus of SETI – whose name stands for “search for extraterrestrial intelligence” – and the inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact. Tarter believes scientists should look to the art world to help solve some of their biggest problems. “Art gives people an opportunity to think about bigger-picture ideas or think about them in a new way,” she says. “It can make people think differently about who they are, where they are, or questions such as: where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there anybody else out there?”
Continue reading...by Melissa Clocker via Electronic music | The Guardian
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Lizzo, Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X top 2020 Grammy nominations
Lizzo scores eight nominations with Eilish and Lil Nas X on seven, but British artists largely snubbed in major categories
The 17-year-old pop sensation Billie Eilish has become the youngest artist to be nominated in all four of the most prestigious Grammy award categories: record, album and song of the year, and best new artist.
Her gothic, innovative single Bad Guy, which topped the US charts, is nominated in the song and record categories, while her similarly chart-topping album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? is nominated for the album prize. She completed a sweep of the top categories with a best new artist nomination, and has six nominations in all. Her album engineers got a nod in the best engineered album category, including her brother and collaborator Finneas, who received three nominations in total.
Continue reading...by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian
Björk review – a spectacular vision of Utopia
O2 Arena, London
Writhing alien life forms engulf a set so elaborate it reduces the audience at the singer’s Cornucopia stadium show to hushed awe. But her voice rings out clear
When Björk first conceived of the live show for her ninth studio album, 2017’s lush Utopia, she envisioned something “a little bit Pollyanna”. Having cut short the tour for the preceding Vulnicura album owing to the emotional weight of its dense break-up songs, this was a chance to create a new world, one bathed in light. Cornucopia has been billed by Björk as her “most elaborate staged concert to date”, which is saying something considering that 2011’s Biophilia jaunt utilised actual lightning to make beats. Her choice of arena-sized venues suggests that logistics won out over intimacy. Everything here is oversized, from the constantly shifting fringed screens that drape the stage – made up of a collection of fungi-like pods – to the crisp projections showing polymorphous alien-like flora and fauna that often engulf the 18-piece choir and the flute septet, to the dome-like reverberation chamber into which Björk occasionally disappears to sing without a microphone. That it’s predominantly soundtracked by Utopia’s birdcall-heavy art-pop makes it feel as if you’ve been shrunk and let loose in an underwater episode of Blue Planet.
It’s an unnerving experience at first, with the crowd hushed as if in a theatre, all polite applause and near silence between songs. It’s a respect that Björk – resplendent in a peach ruffled dress and gold headpiece – wallows in, unleashing that crystal clear voice on opener The Gate, before kicking and prodding at an imaginary figure on the gloopy Arisen My Senses. Her movements often seem to relate to a different song entirely, as if these sprawling, densely layered epics read as pop to her now. Even when cloaked in blossoming flowers or, as on the rumbling highlight Body Memory, surrounded by CGI bodies crashing into each other, she remains your main focus. When she loses her way during Hidden Place – one of the few songs from her pre-2015 discography – she styles it out with some trademark, wordless ad-libs, while a cute cry that “flutes rock!” is met with the night’s only real concession to arena-sized cheering.
Related: Björk – her 20 greatest songs ranked!
Continue reading...by Michael Cragg via Electronic music | The Guardian
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Wah Wah Radio 20th Birthday Special – November 2019
Listen again here!
Hardkandy – Brief Encounters feat. Scarlett Fae
Time Grove – Sir Blunt
Resonators – Sweet Love Affair
Richard Groove Holmes – No Trouble on the Mountain
The Gene Dudley Group – No Trouble on the Mountain feat. Anne Frankenstein
Talc – Modern Sleepover
Stac – All or Nothing
Stac – Glory (Elias Linn Remix)
Henri-Pierre Noel – Diskette (The Reflex Revision Long Version)
Soothsayers – Watching The Stars feat. Julia Biel
Isaac Birituro & The Rail Abandon – Für Svenja
Kutiman – So Long feat. Rioghach Connolly
Paper Tiger – Weight in Space feat. Shafiq Husayn
The Milk – Colours
Hackney Colliery Band – Africa
The post Wah Wah Radio 20th Birthday Special – November 2019 appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
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No Bra: 'In Britain, I was seen as page-three humour'
Susanne Oberbeck sings sexually charged songs in a German accent while standing topless and sporting a moustache – and at last she’s found an audience that understands her
Two decades ago, Susanne Oberbeck saw a headline in the Sunday Sport referring to a member of S Club 7. “Rachel Stevens,” it said, “with no bra.” Oberbeck, who is German, was sufficiently intrigued by this sleazy tabloid prurience to name her own band No Bra.
Originally a duo, No Bra soon became known for Oberbeck’s habit of intoning sexually charged lyrics in a Nico-esque accent over industrial sounds while standing topless and wearing a moustache. No Bra’s single Munchausen – in which two hipsters try to outdo each other with extravagant boasts (“I used to share a squat in Camden with Nina Hagen and she used to make pizza out of dead cats”) – even got championed by the unlikely figure of BBC Radio 1’s Pete Tong when it was released in 2005.
Love and Power is out 27 November.
Continue reading...by Alex Needham via Electronic music | The Guardian
Monday, November 18, 2019
Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #35 on Soho Radio
Listen again here!
Brainstory – Peter Pan
Alps 2 – I Wonder
Tawiah – Recreate
Hardkandy – Brief Encounters feat. Scarlett Fae
Remi – Brain feat. Lori
Gang Starr – Family & Loyalty feat. J. Cole
Masok – Regimen
Klik & Frik – Achalay
Synthia – Tonight You Might
Dwight Druik – Georgy Porgy (Disco Version)
Ti Seles – Pa Dekouraje’w Toni
The Quiet Ones – Matamba feat. Sergio Perere
Quantic – Orquídea feat. Sly5thAve (Sampology Remix)
Danny Goliger – Giselle
Orchestra Baobab – Sibou Odia (Ben Gomori Edit)
DJ Raff – Memoria (El Buho Remix)
CVER – Feeling U (Delfonic Remix)
Donna Summer – If It Hurts Just a Little (Young Pulse Remix)
Qwestlife – Fever feat. The Sugar Hill Gang and Siedah Garrett (KON Remix)
Liotia – Blackout (Afrikanz on Marz Vocal Remix)
Leon Vynehall – I, Cavallo
Rayowa – Better Man
The Pendletons – Keep It Working (Jaques Renault Remix)
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – In The House
Psychemagik – Gonna Fly Now
The post Dom Servini – Unherd Radio Show #35 on Soho Radio appeared first on Wah Wah 45s.
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Saturday, November 16, 2019
One to watch: Giant Swan
Progressive club music is Bristol’s latest export, and this duo work the dancefloor perfectly
by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian
Bristol has long held a reputation as one of the UK’s more formidable musical cities – from 1970s post-punk pioneers the Pop Group to the 90s trip-hop of Massive Attack. In recent years, forward-thinking artists such as Batu and his Timedance label, as well as producers Hodge & Facta, have been perfecting an incisive gut-punch of a techno sound with regular DIY parties in the city.
And now comes electronic duo Giant Swan. Robin Stewart and Harry Wright met as skateboarding 11-year-olds, and formed guitar band the Naturals, immersing themselves in Bristol’s local indie scene. Later, formative trips to London clubs such as Corsica Studiosturned them on to the hedonism of the dancefloor, and they soon began to experiment with analogue setups, exchanging instruments for electronics.
Giant Swan’s album is out now on Keck. They play the Star and Shadow cinema, Newcastle, on Friday, and the Loco Klub, Bristol, 23 November
Continue reading...by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian
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