|  |  |  | | | | | Music news, reviews, comment and features | guardian.co.uk | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | St George's, Bristol The Goldberg Variations are a pinnacle of Bach's art. Conceived for harpsichord, the work has been transcribed for quite different instruments, including string trio, guitar, synthesiser and harp. Richard Boothby's version for his own consort of viols, Fretwork, is arguably the most unusual, in that it opts for a soundworld that looks even further back in time. Part of the justification for such a setting must be Bach's own liking for viole da gamba, already then old-fashioned. Even so, hearing the treble viol intone the opening Aria – the theme on which the 30 subsequent variations are based – came as a shock, with its gentle intimacy given an almost ghostly effect. Boothby's setting is dexterously divided between various combinations of the treble, tenor and bass viols, and he achieved some magical effects, notably in variation 20, when a single tenor was accompanied by pizzicato bass viols, and in variations of gossamer passagework. But the virtuosity demanded by these variations is unrelenting. Though it was evident that Boothby's involvement in the transcription has imprinted every note on his consciousness, there were some, let's just say fretful, moments when the necessary precision eluded the players. Happily, those moments were ultimately rendered negligible by the cumulative force of the later variations, crowned by the humorous Quodlibet, where Bach, just for fun, throws in a number of jaunty folk tunes. The final return to the opening theme, bringing the piece full circle, took on an almost ascetic purity. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool Mahler's symphonies are sometimes read as chronicles of imperial decline as well as dramas of psychological introversion. Vasily Petrenko's ranting, brutal interpretation of the Sixth, however – a high point of the Liverpool Philharmonic's anniversary cycle – was driven by a strong sense of the prophetic: political as well as aesthetic. Throughout, Petrenko gave Mahler qualities of terror and protest more usually associated with Shostakovich. The opening march, flung out with militaristic exactitude, peered beyond intimations of impending war towards the totalitarian rigidities of the mid-20th century. The so-called fate motif, with its slide from major to minor, was implacable and crushing at every appearance; the orchestral textures had the harsh greyness of gun metal. The pervasive sense of violence served as a reminder of the fragility of the work's counterbalancing lyricism. The first movement's impetuous second theme, usually associated with Mahler's love for his wife, Alma, sounded lurching and unstable here. The Andante meandered with a weird pallor, while the finale's eventual collapse was all the more horrid for the desperation of its earlier strivings. Just occasionally, I felt Petrenko was overstating his case, but I also doubt whether anything so provocative has been done with the piece for ages. Its rawness was juxtaposed with a performance of Strauss's Four Last Songs, in which the RLPO was at its most refined, and which also found Petrenko more at ease with Strauss than usual. The soloist was Sally Matthews, good on rapture, but not so hot on diction; her voice, in its lower registers, was occasionally subsumed by the orchestra. Rating: 4/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Shepherd's Bush Empire, London "We put this song out just when everyone thought we were finished, in 1993," says Simon Le Bon, introducing Ordinary World. "Well, 18 years on, all of the people who thought that can kiss my arse!" It is indeed ironic that Duran Duran have proved such resolute survivors. Roundly mocked as plastic pop by the Keep Music Live brigade when they first formed back in the post-punk/new wave days, they have hung around to the extent that they are poised to celebrate their 30th anniversary with the release of a 13th studio album, All You Need Is Now. It is laudable that the band have continued to make new material. They could easily have joined the greatest-hits touring circus a decade ago. But their Mark Ronson-produced latest will not add to their legacy as one of the great singles bands. Of the tracks premiered here, Being Followed is a dreary plod, while Leave a Light On sounds like a turgid take on old favourite Save a Prayer. Le Bon's voice remains a shrill, strained yelp, but its shortcomings are forgiven by an indulgent crowd who loyally greet unremarkable new songs as enthusiastically as ancient hits such as View to a Kill and Notorious. The Reflex remains a compelling, preposterous slice of synthpop genius, a reminder that, unlike their artier peers, Duran Duran never strove to be anything more than glossy mainstream popstars. It is a professional, slick evening, but as the beaming band encore with their 30-year-old breakthrough single, Girls On Film, it is hard not to reflect that they are a band who made a little go a very long way. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Summoning the spirit of Alex Chilton, this singer-songwriter turns sadness into something lovely with his soft and sibilant voice Hometown: Northampton. The lineup: Liam Dullaghan (guitar, vocals). The background: Liam Dullaghan, a lifelong fan of Big Star, the Replacements and Wilco, will surely be delighted to be told that he sounds American. He is one of those characters operating at the frontier between between Americana and power pop. The sound he makes veers between fast and slow, but even when it's frantic it seems forlorn. Somehow, it manages to sound rootsy – because it is mainly played on guitar, with a little pedal steel, bass, guitar, some keyboards and strings for comfort or company, or both – and polished, because it is full of lovely little details, took three years to create and apparently nearly drove its perfectionist creator mad. What stops it being one of those raw and ragged troubadour discs and puts it in a pop class is Dullaghan's melodic sensibility and breathy vocals. We're not sure if there's a sigh-o-meter that can measure such things, but we feel sure his wispy voice would appear only slightly closer on the scale towards Colin Blunstone than it would to Elliott Smith (albeit some distance, it hardly needs saying, from, say, Phil Anselmo of Pantera). All soft and sibilant, it makes everything on his album Making History sound airy and light, even when things get riffy and rough, which does happen, but not a lot. They say Dullaghan turns sadness into something quite lovely, and we won't argue with that. Neither will be argue with the fact that he used to be in a band called the Havenots, although we reserve judgment on the assessment by one magazine of the latter's "rosy harmonies" as sounding "cured in Benedict Canyon circa 1970" because we never heard a note by them, although we are tempted to investigate, especially now that we've heard Making History. Apparently, Dullaghan made it after "an ill-fated trip to Chicago" to record a new Havenots album left him homeless, at which point he sold all of his guitars, moved into his parents' garage and didn't pen a song for ages, working instead fixing radios at a local hospital. His return to the fray with Making History occurred after a chance encounter with producer and multi-instrumentalist Lee Russell, encouraging him to make his first solo record in a Wesleyan chapel. We're not sure what a Wesleyan chapel is, but we're guessing that what Dullaghan wants to convey with this information is the sense of mania and devotion behind the project. He wants it to be seen as a labour of, not just love, but of mad love, one of those borderline sick-obsessed or close-to-collapse affairs that he grew up admiring such as Big Star's legendary Third/Sister Lovers or the Replacements' Let It Be. "When I met Lee I couldn't believe my luck," he has said. "Finally I'd met someone as stupid as me – someone who was happy to throw three years of their life away trying to join that list." Making History doesn't quite belong in that damaged company, but it is a splendid record full of achingly pretty moments worthy of, at the least, the Pernice Brothers circa the World Won't End or Teenage Fanclub circa Bandwagonesque. Opener Radio Verona is near-perfect in its evocation of Dennis Wilson's Cuddle Up and talk of love as "a fairy tale, a business deal". Paradise Beach ends with a nice orchestral-rock flourish – he gives good coda, actually, does Dullaghan, even if, as enigmatic minute-long album closers go, Goodnight is no ST 100/6. He won't make history, or enter the sick-rock pantheon, but he might give Joe Pernice a few sleepless nights. The buzz: "He does sadness so well, I think he might actually be enjoying it. I am" – Alan Moore. The truth: He's not a wasted face or a sad-eyed lie, let alone a holocaust, but he sure sings pretty. Most likely to: Take care. Least likely to: Stroke it Noel. What to buy: Making History is released on 4 April by Signal/Noise. File next to: Elliott Smith, Andrew Morgan, Pernice Brothers, Teenage Fanclub. Links: You can hear the album here. Wednesday's new band: Destroyer.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | After winning an Oscar for The Social Network soundtrack, Reznor plans to bring his industrial metal band out of retirement "Nine Inch Nails is not dead," Trent Reznor has declared, less than a month after he won an Oscar for his work on The Social Network's film score. Despite the distractions of several other soundtracks, a possible TV series and a new band with his wife, Reznor said he plans to return to the band that he all but retired in 2009. Writing on the official NIN message-board for the first time since October, Reznor updated fans on his "surreal" post-Oscar week and his various ongoing projects. "The three columns of things I'm currently funneling music into – [new band] How to Destroy Angels, NIN and film work – I believe will start to make more sense to you (and me) as everything unfolds," he wrote. "By having a few different outlets for my work I'm finding more inspiration within each one. No, Nine Inch Nails is not dead and I plan to focus on that next." Reznor confirmed that as a follow-up to The Social Network, he and musician Atticus Ross are again collaborating with director David Fincher for his adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. "We've been composing quite a bit of music for this and have just begun to see some of what's been shot," he explained. He also addressed last week's report that he will write the score – and don fangs – for Timur Bekmambetov's film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. "I am friends with Timur," Reznor said. "He asked me if I was interested in scoring his new film with Tim Burton ... I was familiar with the book, read the script and it felt like an interesting challenge as a composer – different from the Fincher films." Reznor will indeed have a cameo role in the president v bloodsuckers movie, although he had hoped to keep this a surprise: "While discussing the film with Timur he started gently pressing me to play a small role. The idea was a cameo that would be kept under wraps and be a surprise around opening night ... We both apparently forgot the internet existed AND THERE ARE NO SURPRISES any more. So ... do me a favour and act surprised, OK?" This summer, Reznor hopes to finish the debut album by How to Destroy Angels, the project with Ross and Reznor's wife, Mariqueen Maandig. There will then be more time for Nine Inch Nails, whose last release was in 2008. The group called an end to live gigs in 2009, and Reznor sold the touring band's equipment. "I'd never want to be [Kiss frontman] Gene Simmons, an old man who puts on makeup to entertain kids, like a clown going to work," he said at the time. "In my paranoia, I fear that if I don't stop this, it could become that."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael, as John Lennon did before him, has fallen into the trap of thinking karma is instant. He'll have to wait until another life George Michael's self-castigating comments on Radio 2's Chris Evans show on Monday appeared to convey genuine remorse – but they also exposed the singer's sketchy understanding of the laws of karma. He was talking about being imprisoned for a month last autumn, following his second conviction for driving while high on cannabis: "This was a hugely shameful thing to have done repeatedly, so karmically I felt like I had a bill to pay. I went to prison. I paid my bill." John Lennon probably kicked off western misinterpretation of eastern philosophy around the principle of cause and effect with his song Instant Karma, released as a single in 1970 – a time when hippy travellers were roaming the orient in search of spiritual experience, but for the most part more interested in exotic quick fixes than the long hours of meditation needed to gain genuine insight. The truth of the matter is that karma is not instant. In Buddhist terms it has to do with taking responsibility for one's actions. The British Tibetan Buddhist teacher Lama Jampa Thaye explains: "The laws of karma are subtle and complex and it's simplistic to assume that you will undergo the consequences of actions in this life while you are still living it. For starters, one has to accept that karma is based in human consciousness being subject to a continuous cycle of death and re-birth – just like the cells in your body or leaves on a tree." According to Lama Jampa, karma places what the future has in store for us firmly in our own hands. It is the basis of our moral and ethical compass – how we live today will reflect in the quality of our lives as we recycle through the life-death continuum. But, he says, there are other aspects that factor into how karma works: "Karmic timelines are almost infinitely variable. Some take aeons before a cause matures into effect, others are on a shorter cycle, but in human terms they still move through over long periods." In his book The Crystal and the Way of Light, the Tibetan lama Chogyal Namkhai Norbu offers an analogy for another aspect of karma: "Primary karmic causes, good or bad, are like seeds which are capable of reproducing the species of plant from which they come. But seeds need secondary causes such as light, moisture and air if they are to mature. Primary karmic causes, remaining as traces of past actions in the stream of consciousness of the individual, also need secondary causes if they are to mature into further actions or situations of the same kind." Namkhai Norbu makes it clear that it is possible to escape from repetition of the same actions and reactions by being aware of secondary causes as they arise in daily life, so that negative primary causes are prevented from coming to fruition. It has to be said that this level of continuous awareness is easier said than done. For most people it means that meditation and/or yoga have to be the focal points of a lifetime. For a fortunate few, this degree of motivation comes more easily – and that, according to Buddhism, pivots on the quality of previous lives. When the historical Buddha attained enlightenment 2,600 years ago, the theory of karma was already around in his native India. But Lama Jampa points out that the Buddha gave it a "subtle and powerful twist" because he realised that karmic repercussions originate in the mind, rather than as a fate which none of us can escape. "Karma derives from intention," he says, and he quotes a popular myth about the Buddha: "In a previous life he was a ship's captain and because he was already highly evolved, he could see that one of his passengers was going to kill many people. So he killed this passenger – not simply to save the lives of others, but also to save the murderous passenger from the karmic consequences of the action he was planning." Lama Jampa cautions against a knee-jerk interpretation of this story: "The road to hell can very easily be paved with good intentions. This means that we are required to investigate cause and effect, so that we do not fall into the trap of justifying war for example. Compassion has to be allied with wisdom – ignorance is a refusal to examine our actions and the causes they will create." After his painful confession to Chris Evans on Monday, the unfortunate George Michael woke up on Tuesday to headlines proclaiming the end of his 15-year relationship with the Texan businessman Kenny Goss. The star says he's in therapy for his drug problems. Perhaps he also needs advice from a lama about primary and secondary karmic causes.
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