Category: Music
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Difficult questions
Josienne Clarke has a vocal style. Some of its appurtenances, such as its precise diction, its half-rounded vowels, its purity of tone, and its inevitable but particular phrasing, signal an allegiance to British folk music traditions, but there is a large and important difference between working ‘in’ a style, and…
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More than its parts
Neither One Of Us was the last album Gladys Knight & The Pips recorded for Motown, released after they’d left for Buddha Records in New York. It was a solid commercial success, although the group’s highest chart positions and best-remembered singles would come in the years they spent with Buddha.…
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Root access
When I was young, reggae was a central part of pop-music—everyone had heard it, and although it wasn’t the most mainstream of musical interests, it was in the charts, and occasionally it produced a number one single in the UK. Then popular tastes changed, and reggae itself underwent some radical…
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The not done
The Beastie Boys landed in the public consciousness with Licensed to Ill, an album of spoof hip-hop over cartoon metal beats that established them clearly as some kind of humorous novelty act—however, nobody thought to tell the Beastie Boys that’s what they were. Their sophomore long-player, Paul’s Boutique, was a…
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Rigorously nourishing
This album was a gift from a friend, who I imagine had it recommended to him for its prog connections, but found it a bit too spicy when it arrived. I had it hanging around for several years before I gave it a really deep listening, but now I have……
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Shiny dance machine
It was the 1980s. We all had glossy hair, wore shoulder pads, and made music with the same three models of FM synthesiser. Style was substance and everything was shiny. African musicians were beginning to make an impact on global record sales, and France was starting to be known as…
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Bonfire of the hierarchies
As a librarian, as a lover of history and the literature that constitutes it, as a custodian and celebrant of what might be called the collective archive of human discourse, it can be uncomfortable to hear someone shouting ‘burn the archive’, which is Siyabonga Mthembu’s opening declamation on this extraordinary,…
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Once upon a time in Canterbury…
Lots of regional music scenes have come and gone. Some we’ve heard of. We know that there were interesting things happening in electronic dance music in 1980s Detroit, because techno is now one of the most pervasive elements of global music; we know the same about Washington D.C. and emo,…
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No detour
Slayer’s fourth album, South of Heaven was released when their sound and status were well-established, and it was conceived as a conscious effort to avoid slipping into cliché or repetition. With their reputation for blistering tempos there was nowhere to take them but down, and they combined this slowing with…
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Joyous celebration
People whose names appear on albums are often not ‘professional musicians’ in the sense of someone who has honed their skills and technique in the exacting and instrumental way that implies. They are more often people whose primary drive could be summarised with a term like ‘self-expression’, or ‘creative fulfilment’—singers,…
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A ritual of world-building
A rich, deep evocation of… Well, it’s something of a cliché to say ‘the movement of the earth’, or ‘geology’, since the founding act of drone metal is called Earth, but the slow, heavy movements of Asva’s Futurists Against The Ocean produce an affect which is reminiscent of little else.…
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Staring back
Darkness, an absence of light, is an obvious, unavoidable presence in the visual realm. We live in a world of light, so when it’s removed we see its lack. It’s the most visible form of negative space. But darkness is a rich and diverse idea/feeling/aesthetic/domain. In music darkness exists by…
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Balancing act
So what happens when you take one of the most distinctive and stylish rhythm sections of the post-punk era and pair them up with a much younger avant-jazz/experimental guitarist, who is one album in to what will doubtless be a storied recording career? Something disastrous, perhaps—there are an awful lot…
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Sharing the fun
Herbie Hancock was right at the beginning of his career as a sideman when he made his debut recording as a leader. Takin’ Off is quite a debut. Blue Note Records obviously thought Hancock had something, because aside from allowing him to retain the publishing rights to his tunes they…
Oliver Arditi 