Showing 1134 results for: Reviews
Martin Simpson – Purpose + Grace - September 2011 September 12th, 2011
Thirty-five years into his career, the Lincolnshire folk singer and guitarist Martin Simpson has perfected a professorial fusion of British and American forms. The Sheffield Apprentice’s provenance blurs in a hillbilly hootenanny, a transcript of an archive interview with the Kentucky musician Banjo Bill Cornet arcs around BJ Cole’s swooping pedal steel, and there’s a…
The Raincoats – Odyshape - September 2011 September 11th, 2011
Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain found The Raincoats’ can-do, English art school playfulness as invigorating as Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon did their dismissal of gender stereotypes. Nominally still under punk’s umbrella, The Raincoats’ second album, from 1980, featured then forbidden art rock drummers Robert Wyatt and This Heat’s Charles Hayward, betraying wider influences. Tempos and moods mutate…
Lean Left – The Ex Guitars meet Nilssen-Love/Vandermark Duo Volume 2 - September 2011 September 11th, 2011
It’s a tag bout to drive wrestling enthusiasts wild. On guitars, Holland’s Terrie Ex and Scotland’s Andy Moor, from Amsterdam’s anarcho-punks The Ex; on drums, the Norwegian improviser Paal Nilssen-Love; and on tenor, Chicago’s free jazz drill sergeant, Ken Vandermark. The twelve minute appetiser Knuckle Cracking Party lets the guitarists spew electric sparks at each…
David S Ware, Cooper-Moore, William Parker & Muhammad Ali – Planetary Unknown - September 2011 September 11th, 2011
The saxophonist David S Ware, the pianist Cooper-Moore, and the bassist William Parker are Seventies veterans, pre-dated by half a generation by the drummer Muhammad Ali, whose brother Rashied defied time for John Coltrane when he broke rules still being broken here. Planetary Unknown is an instant genre classic, Cooper-Moore’s pendulous suspensions bracketing sustained ecstatic…
Edinburgh School For The Deaf – New Youth Bible - September 2011 September 11th, 2011
Historically, Scottish indie rock favours either the transcendental power of feedback, from the surly Jesus And Mary Chain to the spiritual Snow Patrol, or winningly winsome feyness, from The Pastels to Belle And Sebastian. Teenage Fanclub switched from the former for the latter. Edinburgh School For The Deaf do both simultaneously. Like all today’s youngsters,…