|  |  |  | | | | | Music news, reviews, comment and features | guardian.co.uk | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Pet Shop Boys & Javier De Frutos: The Most Incredible Thing, LondonNeil Tennant and Chris Lowe have released 10 albums, collaborated with artists as varied as Derek Jarman and Sam Taylor-Wood, written a West End musical and a film soundtrack; now they've set themselves the challenge of composing a ballet score. TMIT is based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen which tells the story of a king who offers his daughter and half his kingdom to the man who can create the most marvellous object in the world. It's one of the shortest stories Andersen wrote but, with a scenario adapted by Michael Dunster and film animation by Tal Rosner, it's expanded into a fable about the power of art and ideas in the modern world. Collaborating with the PSBs is Javier De Frutos, whose take will guarantee a fertility of ideas and invention. The production's cast of 16 is led by Ivan Putrov, former principal with the Royal Ballet, Aaron Sillis and Clemmie Sveaas, with the score played by a live orchestra of 26. It all promises a classy mix of pop and fairytale. Sadler's Wells, EC1, Thu to 26 Mar The Royal Ballet: Rhapsody, Sensorium, Still Life At The Penguin Café, LondonThe Royal's latest mixed programme comes with a froth of fun courtesy of revivals of two 1980s ballets: David Bintley's Still Life At The Penguin Café (1988)and Frederick Ashton's Rhapsody (1980). The latter, created late in the choreographer's career to showcase ballerina Lesley Collier and guest partner Mikhail Baryshnikov, is a setting of Rachmaninoff's sparkling, lyrical score which this time shows off performers including Laura Morera, Alina Cojocaru, Sergei Polunin and Steven McRae. Bintley's ballet, not seen at the ROH since 1993, is an exuberant carnival of the animals, featuring penguins, zebras and rats and fleas who dance in the manner of morris and ballroom dancers. The central work in the programme is Alastair Marriott's Sensorium, an abstract ensemble piece set to seven of Debussy's Preludes and choreographed for 13 women and two men. Royal Opera House, WC2, Wed to 28 Mar Janis Claxton Dance: Humanimalia, StirlingEdinburgh-based choreographer and dancer Janis Claxton began researching the links between animal and human behaviour in Enclosure 44 – Humans, a work that she staged last summer in the cages of Edinburgh Zoo. In Humanimalia, Claxton deploys an all-female cast to explore dance movement and behavioural tics that morph between the homo sapiens and the primate – examining the 98% of DNA that the two groups share, as well as the crucial 2% that sets them apart. It's an ambitious contemporary dance work set to new music by Philip Pinsky and with powerful accompanying visuals. MacRobert Arts Centre, Thu; tour continues to 14 Apr
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nicolas Jaar makes strange, intelligent electronic music. But what is it called, and how do we dance to it, asks Tony Naylor "Don't print this," frets 20-year-old Nicolas Jaar. "It's the kind of grand statement I make, and regret. But I honestly feel we're at the beginning of a renaissance in music. It's an amazing time. Mount Kimbie, James Blake, a lot of underground LA hip-hop – it's happening. We're all kids making music without studios, producers or other musicians – without anyone giving us money or telling us what to do – because we want to make really honest work. That's different. That's never happened before." It has, of course. But the New York-based producer is also right. With his laptop, his broadband connection and his digital-music label, Clown & Sunset, he embodies a generation of musicians who, thanks to cheap technology, can now operate in defiance of the "industry forces pushing you into doing generic things". Moreover, judging by the excitement Jaar is currently generating – everywhere from Pitchfork to the rave music portal, Resident Advisor – his singular take on electronic music has struck a deep chord. Even if no one can agree what to call it. He might have been inspired by Ricardo Villalobos, and originally mentored by the Williamsburg house music label, Wolf + Lamb, but Jaar doesn't make techno. Or deep house. Or trip-hop. Does he even make dance music? There is a natural rhythmic vibrancy to even his most fragile, strung-out tracks, but Jaar's debut album, Space Is Only Noise, is ruminative, melancholy music (Jaar calls it "blue-wave"). It runs the gamut from experimental sound collage to warped pop, but it makes no direct overtures to the dancefloor. Indeed, Jaar has a weirdly conflicted relationship with his most natural environment: clubland. The Guide recently saw him play a memorably intense Sunday night set (half-live, half-laptop) at Spektrum in Manchester. Slowing things down to 100bpm, occasionally dropping the beats altogether, Jaar made the packed room his own, splicing together ambient electroacoustic pieces, leftfield electronic pop/dance, world musics, and heavily manipulated edits of everything from contemporary R&B to the jazz standard, Summertime. With its slow, low-slung momentum, his set was deeply sonically strange and unusually emotionally complex. The crowd were delirious. The man himself less so. The son of Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar and, currently, a comparative literature student at Rhode Island's Brown University, Jaar takes music very seriously. He has an invigorating faith in its conceptual power. It is not simply a lifestyle accessory, he argues, but a potentially progressive, consciousness-raising cultural motor. "Even if it's not," he laughs, "it's better to think that. Maybe it's really naive of me, but, I promise you, that's why I make music." Consequently, he worries that he doesn't push things far enough in clubs; that he finds himself pandering to the dancefloor. "I really don't hate clubs," he says, "but it's a difficult environment and you have to be conscious of where you are. You can't get completely sucked in because then you're not doing interesting things. Spektrum was a 70% [success]. When I played at [Berlin's] Bar 25, that was very honest. That was beyond a connection. That was a real dialogue between me and the crowd." Frustrating as that gap often is between "what the club space provides, and what it could provide", those moments of sacred communion are what Jaar chases. Nicolas Jaar plays a live set at Fabric, EC1, 30 Mar. Space Is Only Noise (Circus Company) is out now
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Taking place at various venues around Cork City, as well as hosting the bigger events in a disused terminal building of Cork International Airport which, sadly, was in the news last month for all the wrong reasons, Terminal Convention celebrates internationally significant art, film and music, with some of the world's leading and emerging international artists, musicians and academics in attendance throughout the event. Guests keeping Cork's electro fans happy include shadowy analogue aficionado Ekoplekz who shares the bill with Mordant Music labelmates Shackleton, Vindicatrix and Baron Mordant at Cyprus Avenue on Thursday, which also happens to be St Patrick's Night. Echo & The Bunnymen's Will Sergeant is in DJ mode alongside live acts including the Sand Band at Crane Lane Theatre on Friday, while Belfast rockers And So I Watch You From Afar headline the same venue on Saturday, supported by the Black Mariah DJs. Various venues, Thu to 27 Mar Patric Baird Mousetrap, LondonUntil last year's arrival of the Silver Bullet, if you wanted to get your late-night party action sorted while treading the Finsbury Park backwaters, then there was really only one option. Still the finest north London all-nighter in the business, tonight Mousetrap celebrates 20 years of mod-friendly grooves and unashamedly psychedelic sounds. Dr Robert, Speed, Spider Webb of the Horrors and Carolina are tonight's erudite DJs, boasting more obscure tunes in their collections than Paul Weller's had hot dinners. As a kindly thank-you to all the slickly styled punters who've kept the night at the top of its game all these years, the Mousetrap masters will give everyone who attends a free record; a 45rpm single, of course. If that wasn't enough of a treat, the venue will also serve up a free drink to everyone who gets inside the club before 11.30pm. Orleans, Seven Sisters Road, N4, Sat Leonie Cooper Just what would you do if tonight was your last night on Earth? Tell your best mate's girlfriend that you've always loved them? Jog naked across Hampstead Heath? Or go to a disco wearing something ludicrous before dancing your life away? If you're taken by the last option, then you can give the whole thing a trial run at The End Of The World party, which returns with a clubbing simulcast across six UK cities. There'll be apocalypses ahoy in London, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Nottingham and Manchester, so suspend your disbelief for the evening and rage against the massive asteroid heading for Earth by shaking your mortal bits to the raucous hits and last sonic requests posted on the End Of The World's Facebook wall. You can also scrawl your sins and final thoughts on the last-wish wall to complete the heady Judgment Day vibe. Various venues, Sat LC Guilty Pleasures, BrightonAfter dipping a toe into the English Channel on New Year's Eve with a masked ball at Komedia, Guilty Pleasures returns to Brighton tonight. Sean Rowley's celebration of bubblegum pop as an antidote to overly serious clubbing takes over the Concorde for a twin-room wig-out complete with Dolly Parton records, glitter ball and industrial quantities of confetti. In the main room, there's a full stage show with dancers, while the front bar boasts SingStar sessions. The dressing-up theme for tonight is Top Of The Pops, so barring the disturbing thought of a club stuffed with cigar-wiggling Jimmy Savile doppelgangers, a splendid time seems guaranteed. Concorde 2, Madeira Drive, Sat John Mitchell SHINW34/002, Newcastle upon TyneNewcastle's Shindig, like Basics in Leeds or Saturdays at Glasgow's Sub Club, is one of those nights that's been around for an unfeasibly long time. For a good while this was undoubtedly the best night in town, so you couldn't blame them for taking a residency when monstrous venue Digital opened and offered. As time wore on, maintaining a weekly in such a huge venue, in – it has to be said – a not particularly hip city, proved unsustainable and Shindig quit last year. Now holding their parties sporadically and in more intimate surroundings, such as tonight's, a welcome new sense of excitement has emerged on the dancefloor. This will only be augmented by the appearance of tonight's house- and techno-spinning guests, Laurent Garnier, Scan X and Benjamin Rippert, who'll provide a combined DJ, samples and live music set. Hoults Yard, Walker Road, Sat Marc Rowlands
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Cat's Eyes, Manchester & LondonNoise rocker, unlikely fashionista, sly wit … Faris Badwan is a man of parts, and he's recently made a slightly curious decision. Rather than consolidating the breakthrough made by the MBV-style noise of the second album by his group the Horrors, he's decided to start a new group, Cat's Eyes, with Canadian singer Rachel Zeffira: a little Lanegan and Campbell, a bit Nancy and Lee, and a lot of Phil Spector reverb. Those craving the ruckus of the Horrors will come away empty handed, but those interested in their spooky twist on familiar elements won't be disappointed. Zeffira's vocals can't help but remind of Broadcast's Trish Keenan, but Badwan brings a degree of personality and charisma to this newest of beauty-beast pairings. St Philip's With St Stephen Church, Salford, Mon; Amadeus Centre, W9, Fri John Robinson Loop Festival, LondonThe Loop Collective's four-day festival is a broad sweep across offbeat contemporary musics, taking in an evening devoted to continental European newcomers, four album launches, and a raft of specially-composed new material. One of the most widely acclaimed groups on show is the trio of trumpeter Tom Arthurs, bassist Jasper Hoiby and drummer Stu Ritchie (appearing Thursday). Elsewhere, bassist Mick Coady's quartet (Wednesday) features saxophonist Michael Buckley and postbop pianist Ivo Neame, while the Fringe Magnetic is augmented by vibraphonist Jim Hart and trumpeter Alex Bonney (Thursday). On Friday pianist Alcyona Mick and a trio present new music to accompany a movie projection of FW Murnau's 1927 silent Sunrise, on a bill including France's Risser/Duboc/Perraud trio and improv gothic vocalist Andrew Plummer's World Sanguine Report. The Forge, NW1, Wed to 19 Mar John Fordham Primal Scream, On tourSo used are we to hearing Bobby Gillespie shouting the geopolitical odds over his band's automated death-rock, it's a jolt to be reminded that they used to access an altogether more beatific place. Born out of a damascene conversion to ecstasy, acid house, and portable sampling technology, Screamadelica allowed the band (and producer Andrew Weatherall) to create open-ended pieces that could sit comfortably alongside the experimental music of the past, but also find a home in the new dance culture. Material from the album has retained its epiphanic qualities in Primal Scream's sets, so this full album tour is likely to be far more deep sonic voyage than nostalgia trip for pilled-up fortysomethings. O2 Academy Leeds, Mon; O2 Academy Birmingham, Tue; O2 Academy Newcastle, Wed; SECC, Glasgow, Fri JR Kommilitonen! LondonThough Peter Maxwell Davies insisted 10 years ago that he would compose no more operatic works or music-theatre pieces, a joint commission from the Royal Academy Of Music in London and the Juilliard School in New York changed his mind. Davies has always relished opportunities to work with young people, and the chance to a write a work that would be performed by students was clearly too much for him to resist. The result is Kommilitonen!, featuring a libretto by David Pountney, who also directs the production at the Royal Academy and will stage it again in New York in the autumn. Kommilitonen! – Young Blood is the alternative title, though "fellow students" is a more accurate English translation – interweaves three 20th-century stories of student protest from Nazi Germany, China during the Cultural Revolution and the US during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and brings all of them together in the final scene. Royal Academy Of Music NW1, Fri Andrew Clements Jo Kondo, BirminghamSince the death of Toru Takemitsu, Jo Kondo has arguably been the senior figure among the Japanese composers who work in the western tradition. His works only occasionally get performed in Britain, but one of Kondo's persistent champions here has been Oliver Knussen, who obviously relishes the jewelled mechanics and quirky, tangy dabs of instrumental colour in Kondo's quick-witted miniatures, which have been likened to the music of European composers like Donatoni. Knussen includes two of Kondo's works in his latest concert with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, one of them, Three Songs Tennyson Sung, the world premiere of a BCMG commission, with soprano Claire Booth as soloist. CBSO Centre, Sun AC Elbow, On tourGuy Garvey is a man with a faith in people – and large numbers have repaid that trust by having faith in him. That is the arrangement by which the last 10 years have seen Elbow transformed from a private pleasure into a rather more widely discussed proposition, and it continues on new LP Build A Rocket, Boys! 2008's Mercury-winning Seldom Seen Kid was a hard act to follow, but the band's core principles – Pink Floydy wafting, bursts of noise, Garvey's empathic voice – have been utterly unshaken. Here they pledge a faith in the troubled youth of today as the owners of tomorrow, a belief as optimistic and uncommon as the band itself. SECC, Glasgow, Tue; Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle upon Tyne, Wed; Capital FM Arena, Nottingham, Thu JR
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Patrick Wolf has spent most of his adult life channelling Lady Gaga through the body of Marc Almond. He's calmed down recently and now looks like a young Steve Coogan going through a bit of a new romantic phase. In his new video – which has the syrupy charms of a Gap advert with its piano on the beach and cast of radiant model friends – Wolf has left his cape-wearing past behind for a stab at proper mainstream pop stardom. Fortunately it works, The City echoes plenty of quality 80s pop from the Associates to King with a hook-filled melody, powerful vocals and lyrical mumbo about the invincibility of love. It's a pop song so brilliant and so uplifting that even the presence of a honking saxophone can't ruin it. N-Dubz
Morning Star (Universal) With Written In The Stars, Tinie Tempah successfully attached a hippy astrological metaphor to his own rise from the "ghetto" to the penthouse. Here N-Dubz attempt a similar equation but end up jettisoning what little remains of their credibility into a shit-tastic black hole of meaningless Eurovision pish. Morning Star (not to be confused with the socialist newspaper of the same name) sounds like the New Radicals oldie You Get What You Give with the chorus replaced with rubbish chat-up lines about wishing on stars. Woeful. Duffy
My Boy (A&M) Having sold 17 copies of her last album, Duffy revealed recently that she was considering retiring from recording, possibly to concentrate on riding her bicycle through supermarkets instead. I doubt releasing a song that sounds like Minnie Mouse gargling a Lisa Stansfield B-side will help, but you never know. Shambling indie combos named Something & The Somethings are a rarer commodity than they were in 2008 following the nation's distrust of ampersands and songs with too many words in them. After making minor ripples with their choppy guitar pop back then, this not very piratey Reading five-piece have returned with grander ambitions. Singer Pete Hefferan's vocals are loaded with charm – no American accent for him, you can practically smell the Thames on every word – the music is intricately surreal, while the song itself is a winning celebration of booze-based time wasting. Cheers. Before her concerts, Ellie likes to go jogging with her fans. While one hardly expects her to be "banging seven-gram rocks" with Charlie Sheen, is this really behaviour becoming of a pop star? Shouldn't she at least be backstage overseeing the removal of orange Revels from her rider? Thankfully, Lights is a welcome return to her patented folky-pop-with-some-tasteful-drum-and-bass-wobble sound following her brief spell helping John Lewis flog candles. It will briefly make your life more pleasant.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Fancy a bit of a theatrical spectacle? Get bags of it, in suitably surreal style, with the Flaming Lips and British Sea Power headlining beneath the looming Lovell Telescope at Live From Jodrell Bank (1 & 2 Jul, Jodrell Bank, Manchester) ... Or you can just revel in the feather-cut retro rocking of Rod Stewart at Hard Rock Calling (26 Jun, Hyde Park, W2) ... François Kevorkian and Danny Krivit play their only Scottish shows this year alongside DJ Yoda and more at the third Electric Frog urban and electronic gathering (23 & 24 Apr, SWG3, Glasgow) ... Tickets are now on sale for the Underworld and Pendulum-headed dance weekender South West Four (27 & 28 Aug, Clapham Common, SW4), and Creamfields (27 & 28 Aug, Daresbury Estate, Halton), where Armin van Buuren, David Guetta and the Chemical Brothers form only the tip of the big dance DJ beats ... Finally, the non-commercial, multi-arts Supernormal festival returns (19-21 Aug, Braziers Park, Oxfordshire) with punk, noisegaze, glam, and psych from the likes of the Cravats, Teeth Of The Sea and Skullflower.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Readers' favourite photographs, songs and recipes Snapshot: My father surveying the NigerThis is a photograph of my father, John Dunkley, surveying the Niger river in 1949 (he's the one holding the map). I found it in a faded blue cardboard album recording his flying career during the war, and afterwards with West African Airways Corporation. This picture was taken in Sokoto, north-west Nigeria. In the course of their work, routes were planned and planes were delivered – De Havilland Doves and Bristol Wayfarers. My father joined the RAF at the age of 18, in 1941, and trained to fly in Terrell, Texas. The newly qualified pilots returned home and assembled at Lord's cricket ground, where my father joined 31 Squadron. During the war, he dropped supplies in Burma and released British and Dutch prisoners of war from the Japanese camps. Two quotes were found in his album. The Squadron Song: "Rotting in the jungle, on Ramree's marshy shores, with dysentery, malaria and bags of jungle sores," and on what was expected of the men: "The forecast is atrocious – in fact the outlook's grim. The CO says we have to fly, get up them stairs and have a try." As my father was standing on the wing of a Dakota, supervising the refuelling, he received a telegram informing him of my birth. In the 60s, he flew BOAC VC10s across the Atlantic. He returned home from America laden with stiffened nylon frilly petticoats, paper dolls and lollipops on strings, to the delight of my sister and myself. LPs of Rock Around the Clock, Mack the Knife, High Society and Come Fly with Me would envelope the house excitingly. My mother would make Shirley Temple cocktails from grenadine and lemonade, and bake blueberry pies and Betty Crocker white-frosted cakes. From east Africa, he brought woven baskets of avocados and pineapples, back scratchers and wooden carvings. He proudly brought back a gold watch given to him by the Sheikh of Bahrain. He had to retire at 50, due to a heart problem. Cruelly, he received another letter the same day – he had been accepted to fly Concorde. His vision remained skywards, and at dawn he would point out Venus and at dusk, Jupiter. "There is Orion and the Corona Borealis," he would enthuse. "Can you see the belt?" We tried to share in his awe of the magnitude of space. His love of astronomy and his wish to share its wonder was channelled into preserving the Norman Lockyer observatory, near Sidmouth in Devon, and lecturing in the planetarium against a background of Holst's The Planet Suite. His love of flying was summed up at his funeral, in the Flyer's Prayer by Patrick J Phillips, read by my son: "The hours logged, the status reached / The ratings will not matter / He'll ask me if I saw the rays / And how he made them scatter // How fast, how far, how much, how high? / He'll ask me not these things / But did I take the time to watch the moonbeams wash my wings? // So when these things are asked of me / And I can reach no higher / My prayer this day – His hand extends / To welcome home a Flyer." His idea of uncharted territory skyward was for ever there. Jane Tipping Playlist: Thank you for the musicLove Minus Zero/No Limit by Bob Dylan "My love she speaks like silence / Without ideals or violence / She doesn't have to say she's faithful / Yet she's true, like ice, like fire." I came out of an all-girls school and only had sisters. It was 1969, and I was 16. Boys were an alien species. I walked into the college common room and saw someone playing the guitar. Male – but I could only tell by his lower half because the face was covered by long, straight white-blond hair. He was playing Love Minus Zero/No Limit by Bob Dylan, but I only found that out later, when I heard him play it many times again at the folk club we ran together. He was my first real male friend. After college we lost touch and I married another amazing guitarist – someone I'd recommended we book for the folk club! He, too, played "My love she speaks like silence, without ideals or violence", sadly, I think, remembering a past love. We divorced after 13 years. Then after another relationship (a country music fan – a bit of a musical hiatus for me) and 30 years since we had last seen each other, my college friend with the long blond hair and I made contact again. He still sings Love Minus Zero/No Limit, only now he has short hair and a range of guitars to choose from – and he's my beloved husband. I really want to say thank you to these two exceptional guys for the music they've brought into my life. Jo Fallon We love to eat: Our secret breakfastsIngredients 170g mushrooms, wiped and sliced Butter Four eggs One packet of smoked salmon Two muffins One bottle of sparkling wine (optional) Scramble the eggs, fry the mushrooms in butter, toast the muffins and serve with slices of smoked salmon. With stressful full-time jobs, three school-age children and two dogs we didn't get much time to ourselves. So once in a while my husband and I would skip a day from work (usually a Friday, to relax at the end of a busy week) and after getting the kids off to school and walking the dogs we'd eat our special breakfast while reading the morning papers – in peace, phones switched off, no interruptions from small voices asking for more toast or quarrels over the last of the cereal. If we could get someone to pick the kids up from school, we'd enjoy a glass or two of sparkling wine with our breakfast. And even better – take it all back to bed and enjoy the decadence. Total bliss. My husband retires soon and hopefully we will spend many leisurely breakfasts together. If you're reading this husb – I can't wait. Anonymous
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Number crunching the famous. This week Rihanna
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | What do Mendelssohn, Nina Simone and Gremlins II have in common? They have all made use of Bach. Nicholas Kenyon on a composer who turns a different face to each age Choirs and choral societies around the country are preparing Johann Sebastian Bach's music for Easter. In London alone, there will be performances varying from the Bach Choir's massive annual rendition of the St Matthew Passion in the Royal Festival Hall, to much smaller, intimate, chamber-sized accounts such as Martin Feinstein's B minor Mass at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The enduring power of Bach's music across three centuries is evidenced by the ways in which it has been adapted to suit changing tastes. Of course Bach has never been liked by everyone: remember Bernard Levin, despairing that "practically all Bach sounds as if it was written to make me feel unhappy . . . he leaves me literally cold", or Thomas Beecham's complaint: "too much counterpoint, and what is worse Protestant counterpoint". Then there's the more recent admission from as great a musician as the pianist Stephen Hough that "I'm quite embarrassed about this, but I don't like Bach . . . there's clearly some important screw missing in my musical mechanism." It has tended to be composers who revered Bach above all. Works range from Mendelssohn's famous revival of the St Matthew Passion in 1839 to Mauricio Kagel's St Bach Passion (which used the format of Bach's Passion settings to tell the story of his life, a typically surreal device) and John Tavener's Ultimos Ritos, a choral fresco based on, and eventually evaporating into, the "Crucifixus" from Bach's B minor Mass. But Bach has also been significant in popular culture – another tribute to the enduring appeal of his music as well as its profound emotional associations. The range of films in which his music features is huge, from the abstract realisation of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor in Leopold Stokowski's Fantasia (which made more impact in the 1960s than on its initial release in 1940) through to the references to the same piece in Rollerball and Gremlins II. The Goldberg Variations is heard in Silence of the Lambs and The English Patient. Films about musicians (Truly Madly Deeply, the dreadful Hilary and Jackie) feature his music, and directors from Anthony Minghella to Ingmar Bergman have used it to capture emotional states (The Talented Mr Ripley, Autumn Sonata, Cries and Whispers). But the most purely intense and powerful use of Bach, relevant to Easter, is in Pasolini's classic, stylised The Gospel According to St Matthew, a ritualised telling of the story, which uses a couple of disjointed moments from Bach's St Matthew Passion alongside spirituals, folksongs and the Missa Luba to create a resonant score. A bar of two of the Bach recordings of the a capella group the Swingle Singers conjures up instantly, for me at least, the mellow feel of the 1960s, and the famous Moog synthesiser Switched-On Bach (one of the first LPs of classical music to sell more than a million copies) transported the composer to an age of technology in which the music could be played with a mechanical, colourful virtuosity. The appropriation of Bach by pop culture seemed to symbolise a moment of openness in the 1960s, a coming-together of pop and classical music, that held out much hope for the future. Was Bach essentially trivialised by the jazz interpretations of the Jacques Loussier Trio and their peers? I don't think so: the Loussier versions were relaxed, sophisticated and often intricate responses to the music. The Swingles sound rather sweet and sentimental now, as they croon gently through the F minor Prelude or the Badinerie from the Suite No 2. But who has ever made as many people enjoy "Contrapunctus X" from The Art of Fugue? Bach and jazz seem to click, not least in the classically trained Nina Simone's "Love me or leave me". This is partly because Bach's music is so adaptable, so flexible – the composer himself adapted his works from sacred to secular use, from one solo instrument to another. So composers through three centuries have been inspired to rework his music to their own ends, adding accompaniments to the solo violin works, as did Mendelssohn and Schumann, or gloriously orchestrating the organ works, as did Schoenberg, with his fleshed-out, thickly scored grandeur in the "St Anne", and Elgar with his hilarious xylophone writing at the climax of the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor. The greatest Bach orchestration of the last century is surely Anton Webern's version of the six-part Ricercar from The Musical Offering, where every strand of Bach's concept is coolly exposed and dislocated between instruments in a way that forces us to listen anew. And the most touching Bach transcriptions of today are the simple piano-duet versions by the Hungarian composer György Kurtág in his collection Játékok (Games), which he plays with his wife on an upright piano – as they did at the funeral of their compatriot György Ligeti. These composers' versions of Bach have become more pared down as our approach to performing his music has changed. The biggest shift in performance has been the move towards historically informed attitudes. Paul Steinitz was one pioneer, and then in the 1970s the controversial but hugely influential Bach cantata cycle on disc by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt altered our whole idea of what the music sounded like, with its dancing textures, skating strings, quirky oboes and burbling bassoons, with boys' voices that were sometimes insecure but always plangent. For me, that cycle is the most influential recording of our generation (though others would cite the Solti Ring cycle). It is an irony that this performing revolution has undermined the basis of the predominant choral society tradition that kept Bach's music alive and performed, especially in the UK. The work of the scholar/conductors Joshua Rifkin in America and Andrew Parrott in Britain has established the extent to which Bach's vocal writing grew out of a tradition of one performer to a part – departures from that norm were the exception rather than the rule. Bach's choir, they have argued, was a consort of solo-led voices, sometimes augmented, but never a multi-voice choir as we have become used to it. This works against the tradition of inclusive participation, involving voices of all abilities, and an involvement in the community, which has kept Bach's music alive. But perhaps we are now diverse enough in our performances to accept both the huge Passions conducted by Vaughan Williams at the Leith Hill music festival and the tiny "B minor madrigal" of Joshua Rifkin with a handful of voices; to enjoy both weighty Brandenburg Concertos by Furtwängler and Karajan, and speedy, light-footed ones from Musica Antiqua Cologne and Il Giardino Armonico. Bach turns a different face to each age, and we have no magic ability to say which is right and which wrong. Richard Wagner was baffled by "the almost unexplainably puzzling phenomenon . . . this master, a wretched cantor and organist wandering from one little Thuriginian village to another, dragging out his existence in miserably paid posts, remaining so unknown that it took a century for his works to be rescued from oblivion . . ." Wagner was correct about one thing: Bach was a worker. From his earliest days he was surrounded by music at home, he was taught music, played music, and probably wrote music as soon as he was able (the earliest manuscripts of his have recently surfaced, written when he was 14 or 15, a thrilling discovery). Most likely every day of his life he either wrote down or thought out, or performed, or made up music. As Malcolm Gladwell has recently suggested in Outliers, talented people, to make an impact, need to be in the right place at the right time with endless opportunities to practise their skills (whether that means thousands of hours at the piano or at a computer). Bach did not compose more than other composers – Telemann, Graupner and other contemporaries produced far more music – but Bach learnt so much more productively from what he did. In his continual quest to correct his scores and revise his music, he shows an exceptional level of self-criticism and self-awareness. "I have often felt both surprise and delight at the means he employed to make, little by little, the faulty good, the good better, and the better perfect," wrote Johann Nikolaus Forkel in his early biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art and Work. Bach is the apotheosis not only of our idea of the composer as craftsman, but also of our idea of the composer as idealist, as a striver for something beyond. This is the secret of his appeal across the ages, for rarely do these two characteristics come together in such perfect balance as they do in Bach: they cannot be separated because the work, whether sacred or secular, is the spiritual quest. He challenges us to do better.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Dinosaur Jr axe-grinder has inspired two generations of guitarists. But now he's turning down the volume, who else should we be listening to? NB There all in Spotify for you here It's not easy to coax ageing rock musicians out of their comfort zones, so kudos to Sub Pop, who've managed to cajole ultimate guitar fuzz fiend J Mascis into making an acoustic album. The sometime Dinosaur Jr frontman has risen to the challenge with a rather lovely collection of tender singer-songwriterly efforts called Several Shades Of Why, featuring guests such as Band Of Horses' Ben Bridwell and ex-Mercury Rev flautist Suzanne Thorpe. The album is an unqualified success, although J can't say he exactly enjoyed the process of making it. "It's good to have certain restrictions sometimes, but it's definitely more fun to play really loud, with distortion," smiles the eternal teenager, over a mug of green tea in the lounge of London's K West Hotel. "Generally my songs are just some riffs slung together as an excuse for a guitar solo." Ever since Dinosaur Jr's bilious blend of heavy rock riffage, punk attitude and whiny melodic nous paved the way for grunge back in the 80s, Mascis has been the role model for long-haired loafers with rock god pretensions everywhere. "I've never liked rehearsing too much," he admits, unsurprisingly. "I've always thought it was really strange when people would play the same solo that's on the record. When I play a solo I'm just expressing that moment. It can go horribly wrong easily enough. Some nights you can pull stuff off, other nights you can't … but you don't know until you try." However, with J confined to the unplugged arena for the time being, what the Guardian wants to know is which young bucks he sees as the heirs to his heroically sloppy guitar-slinging legacy. Graham Clise
Annihilation Time, Lecherous Gaze, Witch"He was in Annihilation Time and now he's in this band Lecherous Gaze. Annihilation Time were on Tee Pee, the same label as Witch [stoner metal band for whom Mascis plays drums]. Everybody really liked him so now we've got him to be in Witch and in Sweet Apple [Witch side project], because he's up for doing whatever. When I play drums, I need somebody who's really on it, somebody to hold it down. I like to have a guitarist who's really solid so I don't have to worry about holding it together myself. His style is classic rock meets hardcore, which is interesting; he doesn't know any indie rock, he doesn't know who Thurston Moore is. The sound that comes out is something like UFO or Thin Lizzy mixed with Black Flag." Marissa Paternoster
Screaming Females"When Marissa plays she doesn't hold back. She's a female guitar hero. I like anybody who just lays it out there and goes for it. We had Screaming Females open for Dinosaur Jr so I could see her at close quarters. They did a really interesting version of [Neil Young's] Cortez The Killer, which is a brave song to take on. Their version is sorta reggae-ish and new wavey." Kurt Vile
The War On Drugs, Kurt Vile And The Violators"He's on about half of Several Shades Of Why. Megan at Sub Pop, who got me to make this acoustic record, first told me about Kurt Vile. I played a few shows with him last year, and he recorded a little bit of his new album at my house, too. I like the way he uses pedals with acoustic guitars. He gets some interesting sounds and textures that I haven't really heard before and fills the space in an interesting way." Rick Tomlinson
Voice Of The Seven Woods, Voice Of The Seven Thunders"I met him through another guy who's also called Rick and also from Manchester. So I actually met Rick before I'd heard his music. I didn't have any expectations but I thought it was interesting how he was working loosely in the British folk tradition of Bert Jansch, Richard Thompson and John Renbourn. I like that kind of music but not many people go down that path successfully. People think folk music is simplistic, but it's hard to play that way convincingly; it takes a lot of commitment." Elisa Ambrogio
Magik Markers"Elisa's from around my area, western Massachusetts. She's another guitar player who really goes for it. Her style is really intense and totally not traditional or technical or anything like that. I've seen her play with Six Organs Of Admittance, too – she goes out with the guy, Ben Chasny – and she really added a lot to their music." Derek Stanton
Awesome Color, Turn To Crime"Derek learned to play guitar from [Stooges drummer] Scott Asheton because he grew up next door to him, so he's got a really classic Stooges, Detroit feel to his playing. He could be in the Stooges; in fact they'd sound a lot better if he was in there now and not James Williamson. He plays lead and sings, and you don't see that done well much these days. Awesome Color just broke up, it's too bad. Although Derek has another band [Turn To Crime] that I might record at my house. He says they sound kinda like Big Star, which is never a bad thing."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Former Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt regrets not practising more – and an embarrassing mishap in Pizza Hut One of the worst jobs I had before my music career took off was with Pizza Hut. The first time I took an order I was holding a tray full of drinks when I tripped into the restaurant and the drinks went flying everywhere. Looking back, I don't think I was quite cut out for a career in food service. The biggest mistakes I have made in my career since then have come from not preparing enough. Good performances only come with a lot of preparation and if you don't take the time and put the hours in the show just doesn't work as well. You have to be brave as a dancer, to try new things and tricks and be flexible – you have to be prepared to fall on your bottom or your head. It's happened to me a lot and it happens to dancers all through their careers. I'm lucky in that I have a background in gymnastics, which helps, but showbusiness is live and anything can happen. Younger performers shouldn't worry about it. You have to shrug off mistakes you make and get on with it – everyone expects dancers to fall over. I fell over a lot learning what became my signature dance move – the standing leg-split. You never know what to expect – there's always drama, with costumes too. They can be torn or ripped or fall off. I was once wearing a beautiful Vivienne Westwood full-length gown when I tried a kicking move and my foot got caught. I ended up doing a complete face-plant on the stage. You just have to get back up and brush it off in this business – onwards and upwards. Kimberly Wyatt is supporting the vinspired awards to celebrate the work of young volunteers. To find out more, visit vinspired.com.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Director's Cut is the new album from the Wuthering Heights singer – but it's not what anyone expected So the rumours are true. Kind of. We'll have to wait patiently – is there any other way to wait for a Kate Bush record? – for an album of new material, but the news that Bush will release Director's Cut on 16 May, an album of new versions of songs originally included on The Sensual World (1989) and The Red Shoes (1993), provides plenty to ponder. Director's Cut is a typically atypical Bush curveball: risky and potentially exciting, but most of all surprising, because she has rarely spent much time raking over her past moves. There has been only one rather cursory greatest hits album in 33 years, reluctantly released in 1986 to capitalise on her commercial triumph, Hounds of Love. Deluxe editions of her albums, freshly scrubbed and featuring bonus discs of outtakes and rarities, have been notable by their absence. For an artist as fully in control of her career as Bush, these are conscious creative choices. She once said: "I can't possibly think of old songs of mine because they're past now. And quite honestly I don't like them any more." The Director's Cut might well suggest a softening in this attitude, but it's telling that in finally looking back she has chosen not to disinter but to reinvent; to build something new on the skeletons of her old songs. Rather than The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, we might have expected Bush to revisit her earliest records. On her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart, she wasn't in control of the production process and the results often felt to her like a compromised, overly polite version of the sound she heard in her head. However, since 1980's Never for Ever, and certainly by The Dreaming in 1982, she had been a driven, obsessive, autonomous presence in the studio, spending months and later years building self-contained musical worlds entirely to her own exacting specifications. Her back catalogue is generally agreed to be one of the finest and most carefully cultivated in pop, but it's not flawless, and the fact that of all her records she has chosen to revisit The Sensual World and The Red Shoes makes sense: the former has some fabulous songs but in places sounds oddly flat, while The Red Shoes is her most predictable album, recorded at a time of personal upheaval and which too often fails to soar. Bush has been critical of both. Director's Cut will keep elements from some of the original recordings from these records while introducing new ones, though I have yet to see a tracklist. It will be fascinating to hear what she has chosen to change and add, and whether these will be radically revised interpretations or mere tweaks. Her voice, deeper and more resonant these days, will certainly be one point of difference, while production techniques have developed significantly since these albums were made. Should we worry that this news is evidence of a songwriter in decline? I don't think so. Bush's last album Aerial, released a little more than five years ago, was evidence of a muse in rude if unhurried health, while we are told she is working on new material that will be released before too long. If Director's Cut is perhaps anti-climactic for those waiting for new songs, here's one final thought that falls somewhere between sobering and thrilling: this release may be the closest we ever get to hearing Bush do something that most artists regard as routine, which is to reinvent and reappraise their songs by performing them onstage. She may have no desire to play live or be the dazzling visual presence she once was, but this is the first time since her tour in 1979 that Bush has made an effort to reinterpret and recontextualise her back catalogue. Not a tour of life, perhaps, but a significant reimagining nonetheless. Unusual, unexpected, a little bit strange, Director's Cut is a classic Bush move. I can't wait to hear it. Graeme Thomson is author of Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush (Omnibus Press)
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds There are many reasons why you might encourage children to go to the opera: enchantment, education, the beginnings of a lifelong interest in music. You wouldn't necessarily expect them to receive a reprimand for going; but then Hilaire Belloc's moralistic Cautionary Tales delivers a peculiarly fascinating form of telling off. Published in 1907 and never out of print since, Belloc's Cautionary Tales Designed for the Admonition of Children between the Ages of Eight and Fourteen Years, to give its full title, has inspired composers from Peter Warlock to Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. Now Errollyn Wallen has crafted a selection of the stories into a dramatic cantata delivered by a stern quartet of Pink Floydish scary schoolmasters. These macabre, masked pedagogues prowl between rows of desks demanding silence in class: any shufflers or fidgeters are glowered at before the opera can begin. But when it does start, Wallen's piano-led score turns out to be a delightful mish-mash of influences cheerfully capable of quoting Bach and the theme from Mission Impossible in a single phrase. It's backed up by a wittily inventive production by Pia Furtado in which Matilda, the liar whose house was on fire, disappears as if by magic; and Henry King, "who chewed too much string", undergoes a knotty, on-stage operation. All the performances are good, though Mark Le Brocq has a particularly fine time playing a child-eating lion as a cat-suited rock god. Opera North has an impressive commitment to commissioning new work for young people: Wallen's piece joins Jonathan Dove's Adventures of Pinocchio and Swanhunter among a growing corpus of child-friendly classics. If you have any unruly offspring between the ages of eight and 14 who need admonishing, this comes highly recommended. Rating: 4/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I want the music industry to support Palestinians' rights and oppose this inhumane barrier In 1980, a song I wrote, Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so to speak, on certain songs, including mine. Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Palestinian children participating in a West Bank festival used the song to protest against Israel's wall around the West Bank. They sang: "We don't need no occupation! We don't need no racist wall!" At the time, I hadn't seen firsthand what they were singing about. A year later I was contracted to perform in Tel Aviv. Palestinians from a movement advocating an academic and cultural boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider. I had already spoken out against the wall, but I was unsure whether a cultural boycott was the right way to go. The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory to see the wall for myself before I made up my mind. I agreed. Under the protection of the United Nations I visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The wall is an appalling edifice to behold. It is policed by young Israeli soldiers who treated me, a casual observer from another world, with disdainful aggression. If it could be like that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my conscience would not allow me to walk away from that wall, from the fate of the Palestinians I met: people whose lives are crushed daily by Israel's occupation. In solidarity, and somewhat impotently, I wrote on their wall that day: "We don't need no thought control." Realising at that point that my presence on a Tel Aviv stage would inadvertently legitimise the oppression I had seen, I cancelled my gig at the stadium in Tel Aviv and moved it to Neve Shalom, an agricultural community devoted to growing chick peas and also, admirably, to co-operation between different faiths, where Muslim, Christian and Jew work side by side in harmony. Against all expectations it was to become the biggest music event in the short history of Israel. Some 60,000 fans battled traffic jams to attend. It was extraordinarily moving for us, and at the end of the gig I was moved to exhort the young people gathered there to demand of their government that they attempt to make peace with their neighbours and respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel. Sadly, in the intervening years the Israeli government has made no attempt to implement legislation that would grant rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews, and the wall has grown, inexorably, illegally annexing more and more of the West Bank. For the people of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison behind the wall of Israel's illegal blockade, it means another set of injustices. It means that children go to sleep hungry, many chronically malnourished. It means that fathers and mothers, unable to work in a decimated economy, have no means to support their families. It means that university students with scholarships to study abroad must watch the opportunity of a lifetime slip away because they are not allowed to travel. In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair-minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance. Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government's policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. My conviction is born in the idea that all people deserve basic human rights. This is not an attack on the people of Israel. This is, however, a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott. Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa's Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel until the day comes – and it surely will come – when the wall of occupation falls and Palestinians live alongside Israelis in the peace, freedom, justice and dignity that they all deserve.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Green Gartside of Scritti Politti talks to Alexis Petridis and looks back at his music career as a new album 'Absolute - The Best of' is released. It's an up and down career with Gartside achieving success in America in the mid-80s, but giving it all up for several years to go and play darts in a pub in Wales whilst getting over stage fright and depression. Alexis is joined by Jude Rogers and Pete Paphides, and inspired by the interview, spark of a discussion about academic thought in pop and rock. The team also review three new tracks: one from Lykke Li, one from Solar Bears and one from The Gentle Good. Leave your reviews of those tracks and any other comments below, or on our Facebook page or by talking to us on Twittter.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Director's Cut will see the singer revisit tracks from 1989 album The Sensual World and 1993 successor The Red Shoes Kate Bush has not toured since 1979, and her last studio album was released in 2005, so fans of the Wuthering Heights singer can be forgiven their excitement at the announcement on Friday that she is releasing a new album on 16 May. But as its title suggests, Director's Cut is not a wholly new record, but rather a revisiting of a selection of tracks from her 1989 album, The Sensual World, and its 1993 successor, The Red Shoes. The 52-year old Bush, who lives in Oxfordshire, has re-recorded some elements while keeping the best musical performances of each song. It is an unusual move for any artist, and particularly surprising of Bush, who once said: "I can't possibly think of old songs of mine because they're past now. And quite honestly I don't like them any more." She has never released Live at Hammersmith Odeon, recorded in 1979, nor her collection of groundbreaking videos, Hair of the Hound, on DVD. Deluxe editions of her albums featuring bonus discs of outtakes and rarities have been notable by their absence. Bush has not commented on the release, but Graeme Thomson, author of a recent biography, Under the Ivy, said: "It's telling that she has chosen to build something new on the skeletons of her old songs. Although her music is frequently defined by a haunting nostalgia and repeat excursions to the shadowy dream country of childhood, in her attitude to her work she has always been resolutely forward-facing." According to Thomson, fans might have expected Bush to revisit her earliest two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart, both released in 1978, when she wasn't in control of the production process. Her 1986 compilation album The Whole Story included a version of Wuthering Heights with a new vocal. A new version of Deeper Understanding, originally recorded for The Sensual World, will be released as a single in April. Those still patiently waiting for a fully new album may, however, have their hopes realised. Bush's spokesperson said on Friday: "Kate is currently working on new material although no release date has been set for this."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Director's Cut will see the singer revisit tracks from 1989 album The Sensual World and 1993 succesor The Red Shoes Kate Bush has not toured since 1979, and her last studio album was released in 2005, so fans of the Wuthering Heights singer can be forgiven their excitement at the announcement on Friday that she is releasing a new album on 16 May. But as its title suggests, Director's Cut is not a wholly new record, but rather a revisiting of a selection of tracks from her 1989 album, The Sensual World, and its 1993 succesor, The Red Shoes. The 52-year old Bush, who lives in Oxfordshire, has re-recorded some elements while keeping the best musical performances of each song. It is an unusual move for any artist, and particularly surprising of Bush, who once said: "I can't possibly think of old songs of mine because they're past now. And quite honestly I don't like them any more." She has never released Live at Hammersmith Odeon, recorded in 1979, nor her collection of groundbreaking videos, Hair of the Hound, on DVD. Deluxe editions of her albums featuring bonus discs of outtakes and rarities have been notable by their absence. Bush has not commented on the release, but Graeme Thomson, author of a recent biography, Under the Ivy, said: "It's telling that she has chosen to build something new on the skeletons of her old songs. Although her music is frequently defined by a haunting nostalgia and repeat excursions to the shadowy dream country of childhood, in her attitude to her work she has always been resolutely forward-facing." According to Thomson, fans might have expected Bush to revisit her earliest two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart, both released in 1978, when she wasn't in control of the production process. Her 1986 compilation album The Whole Story included a version of Wuthering Heights with a new vocal. A new version of Deeper Understanding, originally recorded for The Sensual World, will be released as a single in April. Those still patiently waiting for a fully new album may, however, have their hopes realised. Bush's spokesperson said on Friday: "Kate is currently working on new material although no release date has been set for this."
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A hack weekend here, a site scrape there and pretty soon we had this wonderful new tool for tracking artists at the SXSW festival
• Check out our SXSW 2011 band tracker Alastair DantLast year I attended my second Music Hack Day, a spirited event encouraging geeks who love beats to get together and build new and unusual projects. After a busy weekend building a web-based karaoke game that enables spontaneous formations of choirs, I sat back to watch all the great ideas at the final presentation. There amid the demos, something caught my eye. A chap named Jameel Syed was showing off an app that transformed numbers measuring the popularity of Justin Bieber into a groovy electronic track. He mentioned that his company specialised in such measurements and was developing tools to help the music industry track the popularity of artists in all manner of different ways. This led to an ongoing conversation about how we might use MusicMetric's data to power interactive content for the Guardian. Jameel and I discovered a mutual affinity for machine learning and Detroit techno but unfortunately couldn't pin down a specific project on which to collaborate. Upon hearing that the Guardian was sending a posse to cover the South By South West festival, I saw my opportunity. Few places rival Austin when it comes to the music industry's efforts to promote new bands. In the words of Poe: "There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few." In order to promote developer/journalist collaborations, Google agreed to sponsor a hack day of our own, focused on creating new tools for covering large events. This would give three members of our dev team a chance to create hacks to help our coverage of SXSW. When I heard what Matt, Robbie, and Lisa were planning to build, I had a bit of a brainwave. Rosie Swash in our music team had mentioned that it would be great to have a tool for tracking the popularity of all the artists we're following at the festival. By combining Lisa's system for combining third-party data into cohesive artist pages with Matt's gig scraper and interface ideas, we had the basis of a band tracker that uses MusicMetric data to figure out every artist's popularity throughout the course of the festival. The icing on the cake was realising that Robbie's recommendation engine would enable Last.fm users to find out which bands might be the best match for their tastes. At this point, we had to find a way to visualise the data in a cross-platform manner. After trying various options, a language called haXe came to the rescue which gave us the ability to render to both HTML5 and a Flash fallback from a single code base. Keep an eye on our developer blog if you're interested how we're starting to use haXe to create cross-platform content - there's an article to follow soon. Last but not least, our interactive team designer, Mariana Santos, worked hard to design a series of pages that would suit the tone of the festival whilst fitting in with our in house rules. We're really happy to have had the chance to do something a little experimental. A fully worked version of these ideas could come handy with our upcoming coverage of this summer's many festivals. Please accept our apologies if things aren't quite perfect. All being well, all our brown paper and string will hold together after we leave for Austin! Lisa van Gelder and Matt AndrewsThere are more than 2000 artists playing at SXSW music this year and deciding which ones to track can feel rather daunting. We are doing our best to make it easier. Our music team have picked the 10 artists they think are worth keeping an eye out for. We also invited you to write in and tell us who you thought were worth paying attention to and you can see the results on our readers' recommend page. Want to know which bands are trending? Our most popular page updates hourly with the latest figures. Have a Last.fm account? Use our recommendation service to show you artists playing at SXSW who are similar to artists you already like. If you want to go beyond our selection, our A-Z listings allow you to track any band playing at SXSW with a MusicBrainz ID. Listen to music, find gigs and track artists popularity on Twitter, Facebook etc. How they work: We scraped the SXSW website to get the complete list of artists playing and got the unique MusicBrainz ID for each of them from the Musicbrainz.org API. Then for each artist we pulled in pictures and bio from Last.fm and music from Soundcloud. Guardian software developer Robbie Clutton wrote a Last.fm-powered application which took a username and grabbed their top bands, then compared similar bands to the ones playing SXSW, allowing us to build a custom list of recommended acts to check out tailored to each user. Front end developer Matt Andrews then took the resulting JSON feed and sent it back to Last.fm to grab artist images (making sure to respect their API request rate limit, of course) and display the results in a Javascript-paginated window. We also made use of several CSS3 selectors to style the band tracker, including border-radius and nth-child. The Last.fm API provides artist recommendations based on your favourites – we wrote an API that compares those recommendations to the artists playing at SXSW to provide personalised recommendations. But that is only the beginning - Musicmetric can track the popularity of any artist with a MusicBrainz ID and their data powers our graphs. Stay tuned to see how they change during and after the festival.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Actor best known for her role as a go-go dancer in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The actor Tura Satana, who has died aged 72, lived a life as eventful as the plots of the lurid B-movies that made her a star. Almost 6ft tall and trained in martial arts, she specialised in a kind of tough charisma that has rarely been matched on screen. She was best known for her role in the Russ Meyer sexploitation movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965, tagline: "Superwomen! Belted, buckled and booted!"). As Varla, the leather-clad leader of a gang of thrill-seeking go-go dancers, Satana was given an opportunity by Meyer to perform her own stunts and choreograph fight scenes, as well as to adlib dialogue. She responded by channelling a kind of controlled rage, stating in an interview: "I took a lot of my anger that had been stored inside for many years and let it loose." Made for $45,000, the film became a cult classic, inspiring directors including John Waters and Quentin Tarantino. Satana was born Tura Yamaguchi in Hokkaido, Japan, where her part-Filipino father acted in silent films and her mother was a circus performer of mixed Native American and Scottish heritage. The family moved to the US in 1942, but Tura and her father were interned for two and half years in the Manzanar relocation centre for Japanese-Americans in California. The family were eventually reunited and settled in Chicago. At a time when anti-Japanese feeling was still prevalent, the young Tura suffered constant bullying at school. One evening, just before her 10th birthday, she was sent out by her mother to buy some bread. On the way home she was raped by a gang of teenagers. The five youths were never prosecuted, although in interviews she claimed that over the course of the next 15 years, she tracked down each of her assailants and exacted an unspecified revenge. Her father responded to the attack by teaching her the martial arts akido and karate. Tura was soon afterwards sent to reform school as a result of her frequent delinquency. When she was 13, her parents arranged for her to marry a 17-year-old family friend, John Satana. The marriage lasted nine months, by which time Tura was appearing in Illinois nightclubs as a burlesque dancer and a nude model – her act combined martial-arts displays with the usual tassle-twirling. Moving to Los Angeles, Satana dated Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra before being spotted performing at the Follies theatre and offered a role in the television series Hawaiian Eye. Her martial arts skills led to bit parts in shows such as The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and she appeared in Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce (1963) and alongside Dean Martin in Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963). In the former she played a prostitute and the latter, a stripper. It took the softcore king Meyer to fully recognise Satana's potential, even if he did not exactly cast her against type. After Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, she appeared in two more films, The Astro-Zombies (1968) and The Doll Squad (1973), before she was hospitalised after being shot in the stomach by an ex-boyfriend. She had abandoned her burlesque career when changes in California licensing laws led many club owners to require dancers to perform topless. Satana gave up acting to become a nurse and, later, a police radio operator. In 1981 she married a former policeman, Endel Jurman. Soon afterwards, she was injured in a serious car accident. For much of her later life, she worked in hotel security in Reno, Nevada. She was a canny businesswoman, trademarking her image, which appeared as an action figure, a Halloween mask and on T-shirts. She was also a good-natured regular at cult film conventions and, despite having a pacemaker fitted in 2003, seemed as tough as ever. Indeed, in one interview she recounted what had happened when an over-enthusiastic fan hid in her hotel room after a signing: "He went flying across the room and wound up with a broken arm, busted nose and badly twisted leg. The house detective carried him out." Jurman died in 2000. Satana is survived by her daughters, Kalani and Jade, and her sisters, Pamela and Kim. • Tura Satana, dancer and actor, born 10 July 1938; died 4 February 2011
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Interactive: Which artists in Austin are people blogging, tweeting and buzzing about? Find out with our ever-changing hype chart
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Academy, Manchester In this era of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, you really wouldn't have put money on Oregon's Decemberists becoming huge. They play old-fashioned instruments ranging from piano, pedal steel and accordions to a funny gadget wound with a handle. They wear checked shirts, sing about the joys of chimney sweeping and hanging out the washing, and bespectacled singer/"song-crafter" Colin Meloy looks more like someone auditioning for the role of Clark Kent than a rock star. And yet, this tour seems them playing their biggest ever British venues, while their current album, The King Is Dead, went to No 1 in the US. Partly, their success has been built on years of touring, but The King Is Dead signifies a gear change. Gone are the medieval quirks and 20-minute prog metal operas. In comes American classicism and simply beautiful songs. Meloy has stopped writing short stories and written from the heart. The tour feels like a band savouring their moment. The lightshow is bigger and able to respond to Meloy's request to "make it blood red", while the singer is becoming quite the showman. He holds a mandolin above his head, conducts the singalongs and even compares Manchester to "the land of Oz, or Narnia", which must be a shock to anyone stumbling in from Oxford Road. However, a two-hour set retains their individuality, with such oldies as The Rake's Song (about burying children) throwing dark into the light. Dividing the crowd into a choir of two halves shouting at each other feels too showbiz until Meloy announces, "That's what's happening in American politics right now", and blasts into This Is Why We Fight, a stirring rocker about how power is being taken from the unions. The bizarre, poetry/violin-enhanced Mariner's Revenge – which seems to appeal most to that section of their audience who do drunken dances while wearing funny hats – finds Meloy making what must be one of the most bizarre requests ever delivered from a British stage. "I want you to make the sound of a multitude of people being swallowed by a whale," he asks the audience, and amazingly, they do. Rating: 4/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This Paris band are like a bubblegum Crystal Castles, as perky as they are punky. Just don't call them the French Tings Tings Hometown: Paris. The lineup: Brice Montessuit, Mademoiselle Marine, Vinz and Aymeric. The background: Did that "comeback" Ting Tings single ever get released in the end? Ah, our team of researchers inform us that the song in question, Hands, did indeed come out late last year and reached No 29. We also hear that their "long-awaited" second album will be released next month. This may not be good news to you; it's even worse news for If the Kids, a Parisian four-piece who we are struggling not to describe as "the French Ting Tings". Listen to their punkily exuberant electro-pop and see if you can find an alternative, we defy you. Either they are going to blow the Ting Tings out of the water, or vice versa. A third possibility is that nobody will care about either, but let's look on the bright side. It is, after all, Friday. Like the Ting Tings - and, to be fair, bazillions of bands before them - If the Kids are squaring the circle between punk and disco. They even named themselves after the Sham 69 anthem, If the Kids Are United, and if they use more electronic gizmos than guitars, the intention is to be all bolshy and brash like Sham frontman Jimmy Pursey, only in a club-pop context – their press release even invokes France's history of radicalism and protests. Here, of course, it's a French girl on the mic, not a Hersham boy, although we dare say singer Mademoiselle Marine is probably scarier than Pursey these days. In one song she threatens to "lick your tits in front of everyone" while in another she's complaining that "this party is shit" and reminding you there is nothing more terrifying than a bored, belligerent twentysomething female. What will she be cross about if her group have a hit? There'd be nothing left, surely. But if they don't? Perish the thought. They could catch on, what with their new single, Life Is Now, featuring on the soundtrack of the Alexa Chung-fronted Lacoste advert. They've also got something called a "sync" with a new Hollywood film starring Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus, which could be cool because really If the Kids are like a bubblegum Crystal Castles, as perky as they are punky. Life is Now is so irrepressible and infectious it makes the Ting Tings sound like Leonard Cohen. Another track, Walk Away, could be Gaga doing Abba, while Tell Me What You Want ricochets around the room like a hyperactive Alice Glass high on helium and Haribo. Sweet, but with a kick. The buzz: "It kicks into its groove from the first second, with some delicious riffs along with backing vocals that make the chorus very sing-a-along" – soundblab.com. The truth: We liked the Tings Tings, and we like If the Kids, although we suspect "the kids" (ie the record-buying public) may resist this punky electro fare. Most likely to: Tell you what they want. Least likely to: Shut up and let you go. What to buy: Life Is Now was released this week. File next to: The Ting Tings, Shampoo, Daphne and Celeste, Transvision Vamp. Links: myspace.com/ifthekidsfr. Monday's new band: Washington.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Paul Andrews – aka Paul Di'Anno – given nine-month sentence for claiming £45,000 in benefits while on tour The former lead singer of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden has been jailed for nine months for benefit fraud.. Paul Andrews – better known to fans as Paul Di'Anno – claimed £45,000 in benefits while he was touring around the world, sometimes playing to crowds of 10,000 people. The 52-year-old, who was a member of Iron Maiden between 1978 and 1981, had claimed he could not work after he was injured leaping off a stage. But he was caught when videos posted on YouTube of him performing were spotted by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) investigators. James Newton-Price, prosecuting, told Salisbury crown court that Andrews claimed income support, housing benefit and council tax handouts despite touring between 2002 and 2008. He said Andrews did not notify the DWP that he was working or travelling abroad as he should have done. "His touring took him to Europe, India, Brazil, Canada, Russia, and Mexico," said Newton-Price. "There is footage on YouTube of over 50 live performances between 2004 and 2007. He admitted in an interview at one of his concerts in 2005 that he was living in Brazil for a time and that he played to crowds of 10,000 people." Steven Ritter, defending, said Andrews was naive and that all he cared for was the welfare of his family – a wife and a son in the US and a daughter in Venezuela. "He was obsessed with music and performing. He is very naive in terms of business matters and has no formal education," Ritter said. Andrews had credibility and a "loyal fan base across the world" but when it came to money he was muddled, said Ritter, adding: "He has fallen into a pit of mayhem and has lost practically everything. He does not care what happens to him, only his wife and children." Sentencing Andrews, who lives in Salisbury, Jane Miller QC, told him: "Your public persona is not relevant. Your greed has cost this country a lot of money. The claims were for a long time and for a large cost. It must be a custodial sentence. "In 2002 you started claiming benefits when it was quite clear you were already working. It took many years to track you down. In 2007 you performed at 69 venues, in 2006 you performed 67 times." Andrews admitted eight counts of benefit fraud. A confiscation hearing to settle payments the singer owes to the DWP will be heard in June. Andrews left Iron Maiden after three years and was replaced as lead singer by Bruce Dickinson.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | British rapper DELS gets a makeover courtesy of TV On the Radio main man on this genre-splicing Guardian exclusive British rapper DELS, aka Kieren Dickins, is connected. His last two singles – Shapeshift and Trumpalump – were collaborations with Joe Goddard from Hot Chip, while his forthcoming debut album features production work from Kwes and Sampha (there's also a team-up with Micachu and the Shapes on the cards too). The attention seems justified – not least for the ridiculous Shapeshifting video – with Dickins's languorous flow riding beats that merge genres like they're going out of style. GOB, his new single, has been remixed by TV On the Radio's Dave Sitek, who was apparently "super passionate" about the song and spent weeks getting the mix just right. Listen to the results – a Guardian exclusive – below. GOB is out on 2 May with the album of the same name due on 9 May through Big Dada.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The use of Can's music in Norwegian Wood confirms the krautrock pioneers have always made sounds fit for cinema He hardly needs to give up his day job, but Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood seems have a pretty good alternative career lined up as a film composer. After his dissonant, overpowering strings on There Will Be Blood, he does sterling work on this week's excellent Norwegian Wood, adding to the Japanese teen gloom with sheets of orchestral noise and tender acoustic guitar melodies. But what caught my attention on the soundtrack was the welcome reappearance of Can, whose music not only fits the late-60s setting, but also reminds us how much Radiohead are indebted to the trailblazing krautrockers. They've made no secret of it, even covering Can's The Thief, but listening to The King of Limbs' precision clattering, jazzy guitars, slightly slurred vocals and unorthodox song structures, the spirit of Can still courses through them. Another reason Can complement Norwegian Wood is the band's Japanese frontman, Damo Suzuki, who sounds like he is singing in his native tongue even when performing in English. The band famously recruited Suzuki off a Munich street in 1970 to play a gig that same night – where his incendiary improvised performance turned away all but the most hardcore, including, bizarrely, actor David Niven, who stayed till the end. Two of the Can songs in Norwegian Wood are already from existing soundtracks, hence their inclusion on the 1970 album, er, Can Soundtracks: Don't Turn the Light On, Leave Me Alone (bet Radiohead wish they'd thought of that title), Suzuki's first recording with the band, which sounds like a stoned art-students' jam (someone's done a homemade video here); and She Brings the Rain, a mellow, bassy, jazzy melody that doesn't really sound like Can at all (it was performed by their original singer, Malcolm Mooney, shortly before he had a breakdown and left the band). The version in Norwegian Wood, however, sounds like a cover. Back in my student days – when I should have been listening to Radiohead or studying – Can Soundtracks was a favourite on the electric gramophone. But before imdb, Amazon, iTunes or, in fact, the internet, it was difficult tracking down the films the songs were originally made for. And it still is. They all seem to be obscure German B-movies from the late-60s. Don't Turn the Light On …, for example, is from a film called Cream – Schwabing-Report, on which the only light imdb can shed is the salacious tagline: "What a bored child bride did until she got caught!" That's probably enough information. She Brings the Rain, meanwhile, was from a film called Ein Großer Graublauer Vogel (A Big Grey-Blue Bird). Apparently it's about scientists who invent a computer that solves the mysteries of the universe, but then forget they've done so. Has anyone ever seen this film? Does it really exist? Fortunately Can's music has been used in edgier but more accessible movies ever since. Keyboardist Irmin Schmidt went on to produce scores of scores, including Wim Wenders's Alice in the Cities. Wenders used She Brings the Rain in Lisbon Story, as did Oskar Roehler in his 2000 film No Place to Go. And the band reunited to do a track for Wenders's Until the End of the World. There's also a lot of Can in Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar (the book was dedicated to bassist Holger Czukay), and their funky Vitamin C cropped up in Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces. Apparently Can's biggest earner, though, was the track Spoon, which was adopted by hit German TV cop show Das Messer. I thought I heard them recently in another fine and gloomy Japanese youth movie, Confessions, but it turned out to beBoris. Coincidentally, Confessions' soundtrack also features Radiohead. The good news is that the best of those "lost" movies featuring music from Can Soundtracks is to become available for the first time. This is Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End, which the BFI is re-releasing in May. A teen drama set in a swimming baths at the end of Swinging London, it features the most legendary song on Can Soundtracks: Mother Sky, which plays as the hero trawls through sleazy Soho, steals a cardboard cut-out, makes the acquaintance of a prostitute with a broken leg and buys a hotdog from Burt Kwouk. Mother Sky is quintessential Can: a mighty 15-minute psychedelic wig-out with crazy screeching guitar, minimalist bassline, clockwork drumming and indecipherable Damo Suzuki chanting. It's garage punk with a longer attention span, math rock with a human soul, and prog without the self-indulgence. Nobody could get away with that now, not even Radiohead.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Singer/songwriter Judith Owen can't leave the house without her grab bag of gadgets What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
Everywhere I go I have to have my iPhone, my iPad, my Flip camera, my Macbook and my Leica digital camera with me. It's a lot to carry around, but every day I feel I need all those things. I'm a big Mac lover, and I feel that the iPhone is one of the best inventions ever. When was the last time you used your iPhone, and what for?
About 30 seconds ago, to see a photograph that my husband [Simpsons and Spinal Tap star Harry Shearer] sent to me of him in full costume on a float at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He looks like a very terrifying clown. What additional features would you add if you could?
What else is there, really? I'm on my iPhone all the time, it's genius. I record stuff on it on the go, and I use Tube Deluxe in London all the time – it's the greatest app. Maybe if I could get my iPhone to do the hoovering for me as well ... Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
I hope not. You don't want it to be any smaller because you want to be able to see things on it properly. I have a feeling that it will be wafer thin by then. I kind of expect everything to be obsolete in 10 years, because we can't imagine what will come next. What always frustrates you about technology in general?
When I can't get on the internet, then I feel like someone has taken away my sweets, or my drugs. A lot of people probably feel the same way. I have a serious problem with hotels that make you pay for the internet – that's a crime against humanity, and airports are the same. Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?
There's nothing that I've ever hated that I've bought, because I always buy Macs and I love them. But I don't like reading books on the iPad, or an ebook – it doesn't feel comfortable to me. I iike to have a real book in my hand, and I don't like staring at a screen for that long, ether – it's more tiring for my eyes than watching a film. If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
Don't be afraid of it, and try not to panic. A lot of people hear the word technology, and they feel scared, but this is a technological age and they'd better get used to it. If I can do it, anyone can. Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?
I'm a nerdite. I have definite nerd capabilities, but then again when it comes to things like books, I'm a bit of a luddite. What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
I would say it's the most remarkable concert grand piano that I'm renting for the show I'm in right now. It's a digital hybrid piano – a Yamaha AvantGrand – but it's the closest you can get to a real piano. There's not a string in there, it's purely samples, but as a pianist its a really incredible piece of technology. Mac or PC, and why?
Mac. Oh boy, they're just amazing and intuitive. I think they are really great for people doing creative things, and artists and musicians. And they're very straight-forward and easy to get your head around. And they look so beautiful. Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?
I buy CDs a lot. I buys as many physical CDs as I do downloads, because certain things I actually want to see, hold, feel, touch. But I'm not precious about that, because I download enormous amounts of stuff. I do buy most of my DVDS, I don't download a lot of movies. I like to have a physical library. The last one I bought was a box-set collection of Laurel and Hardy – a must-have for any person who has a sense of humour. Robot butlers – a good idea or not?
No, no, no … I'll take a human butler any day. Harry is pretty much the butler in my life. I wouldn't be able to relax with a robot butler. A robot dog though, that I could get my head around – I wouldn't have to walk it or anything, it would be perfect. What piece of technology would you most like to own?
Right now I'd kind of like to have a high-tech home recording studio, because I just love being in the studio so much. • Judith Owen is co-starring in Ruby Wax – Losing It, at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Guitarist Nick Valensi claims that recording the new Strokes album was an 'awful' experience. So how are we supposed to enjoy a record we know the band hated making so much? If I was to start this blog by declaring that it was a really annoying writing experience, the copy filing system I used was playing up, the bloke behind me wouldn't shut up about some fishing trip he took at the weekend and I really couldn't think of a decent intro other than this load of toss … well, you're probably about to click away already, right? And yet that seems to be the tactic the Strokes are employing – on an alarmingly regular basis – to promote their fourth album, Angles. Just this week, Nick Valensi told Pitchfork: "I won't do the next album like this. No way. It was awful – just awful. Working in a fractured way, not having a singer there." Fun times! But statements like these are no anomaly. In fact, only a couple of months ago Valensi was back on the campaign trail with MySpace Music, providing Strokes fans with words they've longed to hear: "There are still undertones of hostility and resentment in the band." When asked why Angles was coming out now he said: "Maybe everyone needed money or something. We gotta pay our mortgage so may as well get this going again." Tongue in cheek? Possibly, but that doesn't mean it's not true. The sessions themselves, after all, have been so unpleasant that singer Julian Casablancas didn't turn up for most of them, arriving to add his vocals and then buggering off, no doubt to get well away from those undertones of hostility and resentment. In 2009, I interviewed Casablancas about his retro-futurist solo album Phrazes for the Young. During our discussion (a rather torturous experience in itself) Casablancas made the Angles sessions sound like a living hell, having to appease everyone's creative urges for the sake of inter-band harmony rather than a decent finished product. "I want Thin Lizzy-style, kung-fu rock with cool 80s melodies," he said, before extinguishing this enthusiasm. "But there's only a 20% chance it'll end up being that." You might applaud the Strokes for at least being honest, rather than making out all is fine and dandy when they actually detest each other. On the other hand, how is a fan supposed to feel knowing that sessions for their favourite band's new album was such a depressing experience for all involved? All this bickering and moaning hardly fits in with the image of the Strokes as effortlessly cool and elegantly wasted NYC rockers. Artists have slated their own material plenty of times in the past, of course – earlier this month Lupe Fiasco told the Guardian he hated his third album, Lasers: "When I look at it I don't see the songs, I see the fight." Often, though, these kind of comments – see also the Las – only serve to bolster the myth. But that's the thing. It's not that the Strokes sessions sound like they were bad – just depressing and tedious. Not that we should be too worried, though, as Valensi promises: "I feel like we have a better album in us, and it's going to come out soon." Can't wait! So what do you think – does the making of the Strokes' Angles sound like the recording session from hell? Or are there other similarly tedious sessions that crawl slowly to mind?
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Justin Bieber trapped inside Hard Days Night hotel as police hold back hundreds of hysterical fans Biebermania hit Liverpool last night, with hundreds of hysterical fans trapping 17-year-old Justin Bieber in his hotel. At least 50 police officers were brought in to control the situation, closing North John Street and escorting ambulances for fainting fans. "Love everybody but gonna try and get some sleep," the teen idol wrote on Twitter. "Please dont scream. Lol." Bieber is staying at the Beatles-themed Hard Days Night hotel, where he is booked into the £650-per-night McCartney suite, according to reports. On Thursday he had been scheduled to go on a Beatles tour – this was, understandably, called off. Instead, he remained cloistered in his swish room, amid screams "so loud it could make your ears bleed". But he was not, contrary to certain rumours, forbidden from stepping out on to his balcony. "Merseyside Police has at no time threatened to arrest Justin Bieber or members of his management team," a spokesman told the press. Earlier, the singer wrote on Twitter, "I cant even say hi to my fans outside cuz of the police. some bull." This tweet was later deleted. Although Bieber arrived at the Hard Days Night at around 9am on Thursday, fans didn't start pouring in until after school, around 3pm. At least two girls required treatment at Alder Hey hospital, according to the Daily Telegraph, after fainting from excitement. And the hysteria only got worse amid rumours that X Factor boyband One Direction were also booked into the hotel. "We are taking every precaution to ensure the security of the hotel and the safety of our guests," said the hotel's general manager. Justin Bieber is presently the most Googled name in the world.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Kindness Of Strangers | True Blood | Treme | The Only Gay On The Estate? | Hidden Treasures Of Indian Art | Friday Night Dinner The Kindness Of Strangers
7.30pm, BBC4
The life of André Previn has been captured on film elsewhere – Lillian Birnbaum's A Bridge Between Two Worlds was broadcast last year during the Proms. There's plenty of material to go round, however. Tony Palmer's 1998 documentary, The Kindness Of Strangers, reflects on Previn's eventful past as the indefatigable composer, nearing his 70th birthday, wrangled the world premiere of his first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire. From first rehearsal to opening night, from Vienna to San Francisco, this is an intimate portrait of one of the most versatile and energetic musical forces of our time. Andrew Mueller True Blood
10pm, FX
After losing its way somewhat – the werewolves, in particular, have hit a dud note this season – True Blood is temporarily back on track, as top dog Nan Flanagan puts the heat on Eric following the disappearance of the Magister. But it's Russell who brings the magic this week, waging war in one of the show's most gruesome scenes to date. It's even worse than the Bill-Lorena frisky business. Rebecca Nicholson Treme
10.15pm, Sky Atlantic
Quite a pivotal episode in David Simon's new drama series tonight – no surprise the writing is entrusted to novelist and Wire scribe George Pelecanos. Interestingly, one of the stories that becomes most compelling is that of the immensely irritating busker couple Sonny and Annie. When the pair decide to spread their wings and seek gigs on their own, the harsh realities of trying to make it in the music business are deftly set out. Meanwhile, one of the best sequences in the series so far finds Antoine (Wendell Pierce) having his teeth fixed by his ex-wife's new partner. It's low-key, unassuming and slyly brilliant. John Robinson The Only Gay On The Estate?
7.30pm, Channel 4
The First Cut slot is a great opportunity for new film-makers, and tonight's story is an intriguing addition. Director Michael Ogden recalls growing up gay on an estate in Wythenshawe, Manchester, where he hid his sexuality from his friends, getting a girlfriend to cover up the truth. Tonight, he goes back to his roots, meeting up with old friends, finding out what happened to others and confronting his difficult relationship with his parents, who still do not accept his life. RN Hidden Treasures Of Indian Art
9pm, BBC2
Griff Rhys Jones's epic survey of indigenous Indian art reaches the Gujarati capital of Ahmedabad. The journey has been timely – the visual aesthetic of India has become, in recent years, an increasingly influential part of popular culture. In tonight's final episode, Rhys Jones explores another batch of artefacts and their subtexts. In the remote region of Kutch, for example, he learns that embroidery technique has remained at a premium due to the tradition of dowry gifts, and manages to get invited to a wedding of two of the Rabari people. AM Friday Night Dinner
10pm, Channel 4
Grandma's hair is stuck in the car door and dad still isn't wearing a top (he's baking) as Robert Popper's sublime fam-com continues. Tonight's spiral of doom is triggered by the curtains and only exacerbated by a casserole mishap. Meanwhile, the boys continue to spike each other's water glasses: "Don't waste gin. It's your mother's for when she's depressed." The scene with the neighbour's dog and an oblivious grandma is an excruciating comedy classic – but it's not the set-pieces this show relies on, it's the beautifully crafted script. Julia Raeside
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This week's topic is all about little bits of history repeating Another week, another Readers Recommend. Yet stalwart RR nominators don't have much truck with repetition. I was hauled over the coals a couple of weeks ago for including songs on the playlist that had previously been A-listed. This week I'm not after songs that feature repetition – there are simply too many of them. Because repetition is a crucial part of music. Remember the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill, which tried to outlaw raves featuring music "wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats"? But repetition is very much on musicians' minds. In making music, they recognise the pleasures of repetition. We can lose ourselves in it. And there is satisfaction in identifying a pattern. And there are also songs that wearily recognise history repeating itself, placing a foot once again on life's treadmill. Footnote: Bizarrely, RR regular Lambretinha suggested this topic mere moments after I'd finished writing a draft of this blurb. The toolbox: * This week's collaborative Spotify playlist * The RR archive * The Marconium (blog containing a wealth of data on RR) * The 'Spill (blog for the RR community) Please do: * Post your nominations before midday on Tuesday if you wish them to be considered. * Write a few lines advocating the merits of your choices. But please don't: * Post more than one third of the lyrics of any song. * Dump lists of nominations. If you must post more than two or three at once, please attempt to justify your choices. Newcomers to the blog may be puzzled at some of the words used by regular posters. Here's a guide to the RR lexicography: * Dond: To second another reader's nomination. Here's how the word was coined. * Zedded: The song has already been included in an A-list (and so convention dictates it cannot be included in another one) Here are the results of last week's Readers recommend: foreign-language versions.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Columbia) Since their 2007 debut, Hats Off to the Buskers, crashed into the UK charts at No 1, Scottish four-piece the View have spent most of their time on the road, stopping briefly to record and release their 2009 follow-up, Which Bitch? Recorded under the not-so-watchful eye of Oasis producer Owen Morris, it was an album mired by a lack of focus, and stayed in the top 40 for just two weeks. For Bread and Circuses, Morris has been replaced by Youth, whose first job was to ban alcohol from the studio. For the most part, it seems to have helped. Tracks such as Tragic Magic and Sunday gallop along nicely with festival-ready choruses, while the feather-light Friend bolts sighing strings to a tale of woe on a night out: "The girl that I've been speaking to all night, has left me for a friend". There are moments when they descend into pub-rock territory – on Grace and Beautiful, in particular – but overall it's solid, well-written and anthemic. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Our music team pick the songs or albums, old or new, they just can't turn off Kenny Wheeler One of Many Octogenarian star and still-fluent flugelhornist Wheeler seems to have more creative projects in the pipeline now than at any time in his long career. On One of Many, he explores his poignant harmonies and bittersweet themes in the all-star company of British pianist John Taylor and American bass guitarist Steve Swallow. John Fordham Nick Lowe Cruel to Be Kind Classic pop, from his 1979 album Labour of Lust, which has just been rereleased. Robin Denselow Madam The Snake Madam – former EastEnders actor Sukie Smith – specialises in small, spooked, goth-inclined acoustic pieces. This song from her new album, about a woman befriending a snake, is as eerie as anything she's done. Caroline Sullivan Dum Dum Girls There Is a Light That Never Goes Out The Brookyln girl-group indiepoppers' new EP concludes with an effort at one of pop's great uncoverable songs. By replacing the Smiths' swooning, melodramatic melancholy with a kind of blank-eyed sigh, they just about make it coverable. The rest of the EP's grand, too. Michael Hann Rainbow Arabia This Life Is Practice These Kompakt signings combine MIA-style globetrotting with otherworldly synthpop reminiscent of the Knife. But when it clicks, there's an optimism and uplift in the music that makes pointing out these obvious influences seem like nit-picking. Tom Ewing Noah and the Whale Life Is Life It's rare these days for a band to make three great albums, each better than the last. Noah and the Whale have done it, and this driving, electro-flecked song provides a suitably stirring and optimistic opener. Chris Salmon Black Uhuru (left) Party Next Door BBC4's Reggae Britannia inspired a reggae splurge that led me to this stonking 12in from 1983: roots music at its most danceable and enjoyable. Dave Simpson
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Jagjaguwar) Brooklyn's Parts & Labor are appropriately named: their music – part psychedelia, part noise, part all-out rock – has a distinct air of something created in a workshop, hammered and bolted together by mechanics in overalls. It's not that it sounds ramshackle and homemade, more the opposite: it's so solid and unwieldy it's hard to imagine it taking the listener's mind up into the exosphere. Where you might expect some wispy, away-with-the-drugs singing, BJ Warshaw and Dan Friel both have the kind of hectoring voices that would suit a parade ground, and Joe Wong's drumming is just as military in its rigidity. There's nothing swinging around here. But in their favour, Parts & Labor embrace melody far more willingly than many of their counterparts on the US underground scene, building their layers of noise in a manner intended to excite and entertain, rather than confront. When the elements click into place in the most simple form, as on the the near-motorik of Rest, it's exhilarating stuff. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Intakt) The US saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman made his British debut in January, but this duo set with the brilliant multigenre Memphis bassist Stephan Crump showcases his innovative melodic approach on alto sax rather than the big-ensemble music of that trip. Lehman, who fuses adventurous postbop with contemporary-classical harmonic approaches, is an original thinker who will be one of the transforming figures of early 21st-century jazz. Though this fine session certainly confirms that, he demonstrates a tonal delicacy and impulsiveness that may bring Lee Konitz to the minds of some. There are just two long tracks, in which Lehman hums repeat-note patterns against Crump's graceful rejoinders, skims fast boppish runs over the bassist's hard-struck riffs and emphatic accents, purrs in the alto's lower depths against pattering hand-drum sounds on the woodwork, or massages multiphonic abstractions over sliding bowed figures. For all the austerity of the lineup and the radicalism of Lehman's outlook, it's a session of immense musicality, uncliched grooviness and accessibility – with the motivically varied and busy Terroir and the mostly lyrical and texture-rich Voyages having significantly different identities. Rating: 4/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The American R&B star has become a chart regular again just two years after becoming persona non grata, following his assault on then-girlfriend Rihanna Chris Brown is certainly having a busy 2011. Last month the American R&B singer was No 2 in the UK chart, having appeared as the "featured artist" on Chipmunk's hit single Champion. In recent weeks, he's also guested on records by Diddy and TI, and he even teamed up with pipsqueak du jour Justin Bieber on a song destined for Brown's own new album. And, speaking of the album – modestly titled FAME – expectations are high. Fans have left scores of gushing anticipatory comments on his blog, Mechanical Dummy, the gist of which is conveyed by a message from someone called Team Breezy Freak: "I can't wait for FAME. I love you, Chris, I love you sooo damn much, you're my life and my absolute everything." All told, it's hard to believe that this is the same Chris Brown who, just two years ago, was persona non grata in the music business after being convicted of assaulting his then-girlfriend, Rihanna. Now, despite still being on probation (he also completed community service and a domestic-violence programme), he's been accepted back into the industry fold as if nothing had ever happened. At this rate, there's every likelihood his career will regain its pre-assualt momentum, when he was being tipped as the all-singing, all-dancing successor to Usher. Brown is feeling so confident these days that he's given his album the magnanimous sub-title Forgive All My Enemies. Pretty rich, you might say – yet his confidence is understandable, given other artists' warmth toward him: "Whatever happened in his personal life is nothing to do with me," Chipmunk said recently. "I think he's probably one of the best singers and dancers." How did he lose his pariah status so quickly? Even for America, a country that relishes seeing tarnished heroes return triumphant, his rehabilitation has happened indecently fast. J Dakar, a cultural writer on the US-based urban-music site Concrete Loop, suggests two things were responsible. The first were high-profile gestures of remorse, such as the release of a song called Changed Man several months after the offence, and his breaking down in tears during an appearance at America's BET awards last September. "[The BET awards were] a real turning point," he says. "Then came TI's Get Back Up [a duet with the now-incarcerated rapper in which both apologised for letting fans down]. Pretty soon, other artists no longer saw him as someone to avoid at all costs, but to embrace, because his fans, in turn, would be there to embrace him wholeheartedly," he says, via email. Second, suggests Dakar, the public decided that however reprehensible his crime, it didn't merit lifetime banishment. "He was 19 at the time, so a lot of people wouldn't want to see this kid's life messed up over a single stupid mistake. On the most basic level, no man should ever hit a woman, but humans make mistakes." Like R Kelly, whose career was only fleetingly affected when he was charged with (and eventually acquitted of) producing child pornography, Brown is also benefiting from a fervent fanbase who've chosen to ignore the fact that their hero has feet of clay. "His teenage fans really stuck by him," says a British urban-music executive, who wants to remain anonymous. "They suggested he was provoked – they were saying things on the blogs like: 'Rihanna must have done something to deserve it.'" Woefully, it's female rather than male fans who tend to take this view; in Brown's defence, he's never blamed Rihanna for his actions. London-based publicist Mark Borkowski, who has worked with similarly compromised celebrities, says Brown's comeback is likely to succeed because he's used a time-tested PR strategy. "The classic tactic is to go off the radar for a while, then come back penitent. With Brown, you draw him back through an audience who possibly doesn't have the same view of his conduct as the [mainstream] media, then you break it out of the urban media." But, Borkowsi says, all the strategies in the world won't work without one extra ingredient: "The star has to have the talent, the ability, to make the investment worthwhile." For better or worse, the music industry has decided Brown, regardless of his crimes, does have that talent. FAME is released on 21 March on RCA
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (EMI/Rabble Rouser) The Unthanks experiment continues, with an album of gentle melancholia that matches their most elaborate instrumental arrangements to date with a reworking of a startling variety of songs. As ever, their music centres around the delicate, haunting vocals of the Unthank sisters, Rachel and Becky, but Rachel's husband Adrian McNally is playing an increasingly important role as producer, pianist, co-arranger and composer of the gently epic title track. Based around a sturdy, drifting piano theme, it's a thoughtful, sad and lyrical meditation on "why the future doesn't look so great". Elsewhere, there's more epic gloom with an unlikely revival of King Crimson's Starless, now based around trumpet and strings, while other cover versions include a breathy treatment of Tom Waits's No One Knows I'm Gone, and Jon Redfern's slow, sad reflection on the Iraq war, Give Away Your Heart. The traditional songs do little to change the mood, but include some fine harmony singing and violin work on Canny Hobbie Elliot, a quietly eerie Gan to the Kye, and impressive piano work on The Galloway Lad. There's not the emotional range of the last Unthanks album, Here's the Tender Coming, but it's a bold and highly original set. Rating: 4/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The best of your comments on the latest films and music "Peter, I am staggered you've given this five stars." This being Archipelago, the second feature from the British director Joanna Hogg, and "I" being gavinscottw. "Archipelago is one of the most emotionally uninvolving and dramatically eviscerated films I have ever seen." It's a point of view, certainly, and one several readers shared. Pollymagoo couldn't quite believe the film's trailer picked out as a highlight one character announcing: "Guinea fowl's actually meant to be served slightly pink." Or, as ladymarmalade put it: "Seems to be a film about posh people talking about cooking lobster and quail." Then, of course, there was the other point of view, put by FionaSib: "It's set in a different sphere to most British films, revealing the very fraught human relations that can exist in any family. Focusing on the fact that they are 'posh people' who engage in activities we don't judge as normal, I think, misses the point. All these negative comments seem to reinforce how utterly obsessed we are by class … I'd urge people to watch it, not because it's about people going on a picnic, it's about a family situation just like many people find themselves in, and the film makes you feel you are at the emotional centre of it." The last word, though, will go to livingboy76: "In our screening, a man in the front row stormed out halfway through, flicking the Vs at the screen as he did so. Sadly, this was the high point of the entire film and I only wish we'd followed him out to cut our losses." Issues of cultural identity cropped up again in the thread beneath Alexis Petridis's review of the new album by Elbow. On the one hand, there was Sniffer8's dismissive summation of the band and their fans: "Music for people who say 'I'm loving' instead of 'I love', who hold their mobile phones aloft at sub-Glastonbury outdoor festivals, who wish they were like the couple in the BT ad, who think it's a shame about the cuts but, honestly, some of those benefits people just take advantage don't they?" On the other, you had SaltofTheEarth's defence: "I love Elbow simply for what they are; their smart, affecting lyrics and their beautifully melodic tunes, their everyman personas, their cheerful longevity. I don't think that, by liking them, I live 'in a whole world of polite beige' … and I don't think that Elbow becoming 'mainstream' is an automatically negative thing. I do think some people just have a violent, involuntary anaphylactic response to anything crossing over into the realm of general public awareness." Similar bitter divisions opened up over another group not in the first flush of youth, REM, whose new album was approvingly reviewed by Dave Simpson, who also used the dread phrase "return to form". Gabrielcasey dismissed that one straight off the bat, using psychic powers: "I haven't heard the new REM album, new single aside, but I feel sure that you have given a glowing review to an absolute piece of crap." Hmmm. Not sure how to respond to that one. MCSkjlftti tried: "I don't know what it is about REM that brings out such vigorous complaining every time they do pretty much anything. What's funny is every 'classic' REM album, with perhaps the exception of Murmur, was met with equal levels of unmitigated bitching upon its release. At least no one gripes about them 'selling out' any more." One comment, from djmikeyc, offered a poser that could go underneath plenty of album reviews – last week it would have been just as germane to our Lupe Fiasco review: "What is it with reviews and people signing up especially to tell the reviewer how wrong they are?" Who knows, mikey?
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Fiction) Beneficiaries of much NME hype, not to mention a gong for best up-and-coming band at the magazine's recent awards, Auckland's Naked and Famous may find it hard to translate all that stuff into tangible success outside New Zealand. It's not that Passive Me, Aggressive You isn't fine in its own way. The group's high regard for MGMT, Nine Inch Nails and the shoegaze era has been distilled into a sound that's admittedly derivative, yet packed with interest in the shape of brilliant melodies and layers of dreamy distortion. But their most arresting moments – Punching in a Dream, Young Blood – replicate to a T the ravey, synthy zing of MGMT's Kids and Time to Pretend; thus, despite the ear-flaying but catchy dissonance found on Wolf in Geek's Clothing and singer Alisa Xayalith's breathy stoner-musings on No Way, the overall impression of the album is that the Naked and Famous have arrived rather late to the 80s-retro party. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As psych-pop recluse Jeff Mangum returns, Mark Beaumont weighs up the influence of Neutral Milk Hotel and Elephant 6, while below Martin Aston talks to a kindred spirit, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter For a certain breed of music fan, it was like hearing that JD Salinger was returning from the grave to read The Catcher in the Rye at the Hay festival. On 25 January, Jeff Mangum, the reclusive former frontman of Athens, Georgia cult legends Neutral Milk Hotel, announced his first major live appearances since he silently retired from music more than a decade ago. To the thousands of fanatics of Elephant 6 – the US musical collective dedicated to all things buzz-fi, psychedelic and anti-slick, of which Mangum was a key member – this was astounding news. And then he topped it: he'd be coming to the UK for the first time since the final Neutral Milk Hotel show in 1998, to curate the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in December. For many years, the prospect of Mangum making any sort of serious return had been as unlikely as the Smiths reconvening. Neutral Milk Hotel released only two albums in their lifetime – 1996's berserker-folk sprawl On Avery Island and 1998's follow-up In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. That second album was little more than a curiosity on release; a scuzzy, unhinged album inspired by the story of Anne Frank and Mangum's recurring dreams of a Jewish family caught up in the Holocaust, given a magical, surrealist sheen by its archaic penny-arcade artwork and lyrics about two-headed foetuses in formaldehyde jars, burning pianos and semen-stained mountaintops. Those who heard it adored it, enough that the pressure of their passion contributed to Mangum disappearing from view. But few did hear it, at least at first: that final Neutral Milk Hotel show, at the Underworld in London, was barely half-full. That changed over the following years, as the album slowly became recognised as an alternative milestone – feted by Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand and even Simon Schama, filtering ever-higher into best-ever lists across the alternative media and growing in sales to the point where it still shifts around 25,000 every year. Mangum, though, was hardly to be seen. Never the most well-adjusted character (many of his songs were written during all-night sessions brought on by night terrors, and sung to the ghost in his haunted wardrobe), he was acutely uncomfortable with his new status as a cult hero. "Jeff's a very private person," says fellow Elephant 6 mainstay Bill Doss, co-founder of one of E6's other key bands, the Olivia Tremor Control, "and kids were freaking out over him. [They'd] be following him around, these little packs of kids staring at him. It weirded him out in a way, and he just sorta backed off." In the decade between the beginning of NMH's indefinite hiatus and this year's announcement, word of Mangum's activities seeped out like a faint voice amid radio static. He'd turned down an REM support slot for their Athens hometown shows. He released an album of field recordings from the twice-a-decade Bulgarian folk festival Koprivshtitsa. He hosted a graveyard slot radio show on New Jersey's non-commercial WFMU station, calling himself Jefferson, immediately quitting once unmasked. He played a one-off show in a pub in Auckland, New Zealand, with his friend Chris Knox of the Kiwi band Tall Dwarfs. Those were the unremarkable events. His ex-girlfriend Laura Carter claimed he'd had a breakdown and would spend days on end staring at his apartment wall in paranoid panic, or shuffling back and forth to a local Dunkin' Donuts in a pair of threadbare slippers he never took off. He'd become obsessed with Y2K scaremongering and started stockpiling rice. The rumours mounted up: he was travelling the US from Nova Scotia to Arizona like a folk-rock Forrest Gump; he was planning a hot air balloon trip across the Atlantic; he was holed up in a monastery; he was starting a new career as a sculptor. Only one thing was certain – he wasn't making any new music. A rare interview with Pitchfork in 2002 shed a glint of light upon Mangum's frame of mind at the time: "I went through a period, after Aeroplane, when a lot of the basic assumptions I held about reality started crumbling. I guess I had this idea that if we all created our dream we could live happily ever after. So when so many of our dreams had come true and yet I still saw that so many of my friends were in a lot of pain … I realised I can't just sing my way out of all this suffering." Then he began popping up again. In 2008 Mangum appeared at several dates of the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour to perform one song, Engine, the first NMH material he had performed live in seven years. When Chris Knox suffered a stroke, Mangum played a five-song set at a benefit gig, and last December he performed 10 songs at a Brooklyn loft party. The red mist is clearing, and Mangum's re-emergence couldn't be more timely. For 2011 is bringing a wave of bands who have adopted Elephant 6's aesthetic of outsider music, made in a spirit of derangement. The Rural Alberta Advantage, based in Toronto, share NMH's uplifting sense of no-fi abandonment in the face of personal anguish, as evinced on their excellent second album, Departing. "I remember when I first heard [In the Aeroplane…]," singer Nils Edenloff says, "and it struck me as really beautiful, like the melodies themselves were perfect. And the emotion to it, you felt like he was singing directly to you. In a way we're trying to take those sort of elements and do our own thing with them and hopefully bring them to a less frightened audience – taking powerful, emotional songs and making them celebratory." Over in New York, meanwhile, the Morning Benders are exploring the lusher end of the E6 oeuvre. "Elephant 6 was the gateway for me," frontman Chris Chu says. "They seemed to be bridging that tradition from the 60s to a more modern, more indie approach. It was exactly what I was looking for, a new take on that stuff. It sounded cool, like these guys were bashing around in the garage." And while acts as far-flung as Australia's Tame Impala and Starfucker are plundering E6's vaults for influence, New York's the Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! perhaps do it best. They released a self-titled debut album in 2010 that was an amalgam of all the central E6 bands – NMH's celebration of the uncelebratable, the acid-fried pop of the Olivia Tremor Control and the bubblegum psychedelia of E6's other founding band, the Apples in Stereo – but with a dancefloor edge. "I'm trying to marry the feeling that a lot of Elephant 6 recordings have of a bunch of friends in a room making music, plus super-sleekness, super-poppy jams," singer Neil Fridd says. "I don't think they're unmarriagable, but they are difficult to put together." TTPDR! also follow the Elephant 6 tenet of "chaos gigs": they hold pillow fights and wrestling matches at their shows, and Fridd often plays dressed in a suit made entirely of stuffed toys. It's an ethos inspired by E6 act the Music Tapes. "In New York they got us to write down all of our dreams and make a wish," Fridd recalls with no little sense of wonder. "We ended up out on the street burning the dreams on a little fire and everyone would burn it and then run and jump over it. So a crowd of 200 people, one by one, went through and jumped over this fire." Such eccentricities were commonplace at early E6 performances where, according to Robert Schneider, the Apples in Stereo's frontman, "the idea of getting through a song casually and playing it all nicely was offensive … 50% of the songs didn't make it all the way to the end. Our shows felt like a really fun train ride, but falling off the track and rolling sideways down the hill, but somehow it gets to the bottom and it's maybe sliding on ice but it still keeps going." Elephant 6 was founded in 1992 by four friends who grew up together in Ruston, Louisiana, obsessed with the Beach Boys, Black Sabbath and 60s psychedelia. Those four were Schneider, Mangum, Doss and Olivia Tremor Control's Will Hart. Although all were southerners, E6 began in Denver, Colorado, where Schneider formed the Apples in Stereo, though both the Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel based themselves in Athens, Georgia. E6 adhered to a manifesto of familial collaboration (on early tours the Apples in Stereo and Neutral Milk Hotel were essentially the same band, fronted by Schneider or Mangum for their individual sets) and the celebration of home-produced music. "We'd developed a tolerance and a love for really lo-fidelity recordings and sloppy musicianship," Schneider says. "We had a hatred of slick musicianship and recording. I hated indie, I hated all modern music. To my ears it had the most offensive sound quality, the shimmery, late-80s, early-90s sound made my skin crawl. There was a repulsion for the sterile feeling on all major label and studio-recorded releases at the time. I had a mission to take down popular culture. My vision starting Elephant 6 was this perfect pop world, completely pure and completely untainted by slickness or money or commercial interests." Having built a cult following thanks to impressive releases by bands including Beulah, Of Montreal and the Minders, as well as the three core bands, E6 floundered towards the end of the 90s. The ever-expanding E6 family had become unwieldy and, post-Aeroplane, Mangum wasn't the only member with personal problems. Schneider went through a painful divorce, which led him to give up running the E6 record label and quit the collective, while Will Hart, who had multiple sclerosis, was unknowingly developing legions on his brain which made his behaviour erratic, ultimately splitting OTC and contributing to the collapse of E6's central social group. "None of us knew why, we just knew he was acting crazy," Doss remembers. "His brain was fritzing out and he was having a difficult time trying to figure out why. It was like getting divorced: all of a sudden I hated him, for no reason other than I was confused. We didn't speak for years." For six years Elephant 6 lay dormant. But just as Mangum has reanimated, E6 activity has resumed. In 2005, Schneider travelled the US collecting contributions from Mangum, Doss and Hart for the Apples in Stereo's synth-pop classic New Magnetic Wonder, the first album to use the E6 logo since the collective's disintegration. Then, in 2008, the Music Tapes staged the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour, featuring Mangum, Doss and Hart. "In terms of giving you a fingerprint of what Elephant 6 was like and the feeling and the chaoticness and problems, it was awesome," Schneider recalls. "It was this totally amazing, shapeless musical circus. It was what Elephant 6 was." In addition, the Olivia Tremor Control are recording together again, and hope to release an album this year, just in time to surf the second wave of E6. But why is the collective's influence emerging now? "There's been a huge surge of people making music," Neil Fridd says, "and if you're making music at home on your computer it's going to sound lo-fi. It's like hearing a bunch of friends try to make music in a bedroom." "There's been a 60s garage and pop revival," Chu suggests, "and also home recording is becoming more popular and lo-fi recording is becoming more fashionable. That combination has intuitively led people back to Elephant 6." But it's E6's community spirit that most inspires the Rural Alberta Advantage. "The idea of a group of people working together," Edenloff says, "trying to help out all their friends and creating something special among themselves and then having it get a wider audience – everyone wants that. Elephant 6 did it really well on a larger stage." This September, E6 reaches its largest stages ever. Cherish it, before it disappears again on that aeroplane over the sea. All Tomorrow's Parties Curated By Jeff Mangum takes place from 2-5 December at Butlins, Minehead. The Olivia Tremor Control and the Apples in Stereo will also be appearing. The psychedelic south: Deerhunter's Atlanta'I'd rather not be doing this interview," Bradford Cox says, wincing. "But you had the audacity to invite yourself into my world. And if someone flies to Atlanta to talk to me, I better treat him with respect." Given the American south's reputation for hospitality, it's fascinating that Cox's definition of "respect" includes threatening to "rip you a new asshole if you paraphrase my emotional moment of transparency" when my tape recorder runs out at an inopportune moment. Likewise his threat – said with a smirk, admittedly – not to let me leave his house until we've redone the interview to his satisfaction. This comes after 13 hours in his company. Luckily, no amount of cat-and-mouse tactics stops him from being compelling company. It's like scrapping with an over-achieving, extremely lucid teenager. As Deerhunter's lead singer, main songwriter and co-guitarist, Cox is proof Janelle Monáe isn't Atlanta's only shining star. Though Deerhunter formed in 2000, the band only settled on their current lineup when Cox's schoolmate Lockett Pundt joined on guitar in 2005. The brilliant Microcastle album (2008) raised expectations, made good by last year's Halcyon Digest, which expands the band's uniquely eerie, heavy-lidded and cryptic vision. "A southern gothic take on glam Berlin. Exile on Main Street meets Low meets Tusk," Cox reckons, though that leaves out the doo-wop influences that set Deerhunter further apart from the uplifting crescendos of North America's most successful alternative bands, from Arcade Fire to Grizzly Bear. On top of this, Cox's beguiling and troubled lyrics (the recent single Helicopter is based on the story of a Russian rent boy reputedly thrown to his death after losing his youthful allure) also demand exploration. Unfortunately, 30-year-old Cox is done with exploring himself. He admits that in his teens he would interview himself in the mirror, fantasising about the attention. Not any more. This is partly due to having inherited the genetic disorder Marfan's syndrome. People with Marfan's tend to be unusually tall and skinny, often with weakened lungs and spine. "People think I'm a junkie because of how I look," he says. But as a former inveterate blogger at frequent loggerheads with fellow bigmouths, engaging with the rest of the world has left him weary and wary. "I think I confuse more than anything when I talk," he says. After giving no UK interview for two years, Cox accepts my suggestion to try something different – to show me around his Atlanta. He picks me up in his Volvo, and after driving around the city's industrial outskirts, he points out Lenny's, "a dive bar where Cole [Alexander, of the Black Lips] would do weird improv stuff, really chaotic and energetic". Cox is still at it today, creating music almost to the exclusion of socialising. "I don't like going out," he says. "Except to one of three restaurants. I'm very rigid like that." He made an exception for a New Year's Eve party, to his chagrin. "These young fucking art school kids attacked me because I took off Duran Duran and put on [experimental minimalist] Tony Conrad. I don't understand what kids want any more, and I'm not interested in catering to it. All they want to do is dance and fuck, and those are two things I'm completely incapable of." Cox has identified himself before as gay, but now claims he's asexual, "because I'm a virgin". While his teenage pals were having fun "on stained couches, I was in hospital, addicted to painkillers after spine surgery, addicted to that blissed-out feeling that I think has a lot to do with my taste for ambient music". Drinking sweet black tea – "the table wine of the south" – in Sauced, one of his three food stops, Cox talks about the music he listened to as a kid. He was just 10 when he heard the Velvet Underground, from which he moved on through 60s garage, 70s krautrock and 80s post-punk. "But we've always tried to blur things further," he says. "Like the sound and the fury of a show more than the actual notes." He pauses. "We've always been dismissed by avant-garde people as too pop, and by pop people as being fucking freaks." Over a late brunch the next day, he adopts his usual posture of perching, legs drawn under him like a gigantic bird. Relaxed conversation is clearly off the menu. Daylight makes him nervous, he says, "useless" even, and he fills time by eating, running errands and visiting family. But at night, there's no stopping him. He recently gave away four albums – 49 songs in all – online under the title Bedroom Databank. "You come off on tour and there's this crippling depression, like, what do I do with myself? I improvise. Fuck record labels and commercial criticism – let people hear what it sounds like when I'm making music without knowing there's an audience, like I used to." We drive to neighbouring Marietta, to visit Deerhunter's rehearsal space, Notown, a suburban carriage house full of band stuff. Cox sits behind the drumkit and starts playing the krautrock motorik pulse, before slumping on the sofa. "I get irritated when I see all this equipment and think we should be doing more. But everybody else has girlfriends and they're lazy. But I'd probably want to settle down too with some nice girl, or guy, or whatever I fancied at the time. People with kids, I'm often struck by jealousy. Because my parents love me unconditionally. They were supportive even when we fought, so I'm not terrified of failure like many people I know." He suddenly springs up. "I'll take you through the process. I set up a shitty mic and fuck around with a guitar until something melodic happens. I usually come up with a vocal feeling, trying to sound open and vulnerable and androgynous. That's inspired by John Lennon, how he always sounded like a little boy. Then I just rap stupid shit. And then I move on to the next one." He plays me his last effort, a slice of happy/sad pop called Right of Way that, given its origins, is breathtakingly good. "Thanks. What you're hearing is the sound of someone really depressed because they can't write. It's a shit B-side at best." He then suddenly decides I should meet his parents. "You gotta interview them!" he barks. "I get my strength from my dad and my punk from my mum." Cox's love of 50s rhythms also comes from Jim Cox, a Fats Domino, Little Richard and Coasters fan. "Dad was a badass," Bradford grins. Dad says of son: "He was creative from the time he was cantilevering building blocks. You couldn't mould him." "I was an emboldened, precocious kid," Cox says as we drive to his mother's house. "In middle school, my best friend and I would hold hands just to attract this wild energy. I always had a thing about teenage mental institutions. I read that Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music was very therapeutic for shock therapy. I relate to those who find solace in dissonance and chaos." His mother, Edith, who also has Marfan's, recalls Bradford's childhood "was ruined" by illness and bullying. But art and music saved the day. "When he was 12, Kurt Cobain was his idol, and Brad suddenly started playing guitar. Before that, he'd write and draw stuff that was just not usual for someone his age. I have boxes of it upstairs." A box labelled "Keep Forever, Ages 8-11" is retrieved. "Even in my youth, I was a cynical dick," Bradford says, searching through the cuttings: "Flame and aerosol can/ Have you lost your path in red eye watering embers?" was written when he was eight. "Aren't you glad I kept these?" Edith beams. The daylight gone, Cox has brightened up, and suggests we eat tacos. "And then I'll take you to my house." In a messy, dim and paraphernalia-strewn bedroom ("My sanctuary"), fit more for a student than an adult, he says: "Ask me the questions again, and you'll get better answers. Starting now." I ask why he is a misanthrope. "Why are you a journalist? That's the summary of this article. Do you really think I am?" You act like it, I say. "I don't disagree with that. But misanthropic people don't cry at films like I do. You just see me in the context of being interviewed. For crying out loud, you have me under a microscope." As if suddenly remembering his dad had raised him "to have a strong stomach, and not be self-pitying", Cox softens again. "Nothing replaces seeing someone appreciate my music, their eyes closed, singing along, and telling me after the show how much it means to them. You can't be some cynical, whiny-arsed artist, shouting: 'I want my space!' There's nothing but gratitude." We call it a night and he drives me home. "Thanks, it's been fun hanging out," he says, and he's gone. Deerhunter tour the UK and Ireland from 25-31 March
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (ECM) With last year's excellent The End of a Summer, German pianist Hülsmann's ECM debut finally brought the kind of attention her harmonically adventurous trio has deserved for more than a decade. Hülsmann sometimes hints at what a Bill Evans trio might have sounded like in the era of Brad Mehldau and the Bad Plus. She loves simple chord vamps that slowly change voicings or are nudged and pulled by the bass and percussion, and her entrancing compositions glow vividly through the freest of improv variations. The opening Rond Point, a succession of tonal-centre shifts over a steadily pulsing beat, shows off the essence of her magic, as does Grand Canyon, with its hissy cymbal sounds and surging basslines. Hulsmann mostly holds her jazz-improv skills back, but develops fluent runs on the hypnotic A Light Left On, applies an urgency to the rocking, pop-ish (Go and Open) the Door and the funky Ritual, and saves her most jazzy exuberance for the closing Who's Next. Rating: 4/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Concord) This pop-angled album from dazzling Chicago singer Elling, produced by Bonnie Raitt and Rolling Stones collaborator Don Was, features tracks like King Crimson's Matte Kudesai and Earth, Wind and Fire's After the Love Is Gone. But his improv ingenuity consistently sidesteps cliches, and The Gate is far from a bland set of adult-contemporary classic-pop covers. Matte Kudesai, delivered as a pensive drifter coloured by John McLean's guitar slurs and some vocal-harmony overdubbing, opens the set in a seductive trance, before Joe Jackson's Steppin' Out showcases pianist Laurence Hobgood's apposite contribution. The phrasing of Norwegian Wood seems to be stretching too hard to distinguish itself from the original, and Stevie Wonder's Golden Lady tends towards formulaic soul-jazz, but a dreamy Blue in Green is a tour de force. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Price/Corelli/MacNeil/New York Met Chorus and Orchestra/Adler
(Sony, 2CDs) This stupendous set is among the first issues from Sony's new collaboration with the New York Metropolitan Opera, the aim of which is to release remasterings of some of the house's finest archive material. Taped in April 1962, this is one of the greatest of all performances of Puccini's political thriller, violent in its passion, yet also extremely subtle in its menace. Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli are glorious as Tosca and Cavaradossi. She suggests the vulnerability and naivety beneath Tosca's fire and fury, though she also confronts Cornell MacNeil's Scarpia with the enraged terror of a cornered animal. Corelli, meanwhile, is very much the noble revolutionary, with every sustained high note sounding like a call to arms. MacNeil, turning from charm to sadism in a flash, is often at his most chilling when at his most lyrical, and Kurt Adler's weighty conducting blends electricity and malevolence in equal measure. The enraptured audience break into applause at every opportunity, adding immeasurably to the excitement. Rating: 5/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Thomas McCarthy's Irish Traveller songs were all but forgotten – until he stepped up It has been more than a century since Cecil Sharp overheard John England singing The Seeds of Love in a Somerset garden, setting him off on a lifelong quest to document and preserve the folk music of Britain, and hand-cranking the sense of a whole tradition into life in the process. Most commentators would agree that the age of the source singer – a John England of the 21st century who is loaded with rare songs – is done. But a largely undocumented song tradition does still survive among the UK's tight-knit Traveller and Gypsy communities: the role they have played in keeping many great songs alive and in circulation has been crucial in shaping the folk tradition as we know it. "These are very private communities There are very few outsiders. Which means the oral tradition is very strong," says Sam Lee, a folk archivist and researcher. "And the nature of their being a transient community means there's this tradition of self-made entertainment. The men are not afraid to be great singers, to stand up and sing an unaccompanied song. They grew up with it, it's part of their life and they have great ownership of it." Nevertheless, formal live performances on a stage are rare. But one who has crossed that line is Thomas McCarthy, an Irish Traveller in his 40s who turned up at Cecil Sharp House one evening in December 2008. Just a couple of weeks earlier, McCarthy had not even heard of Sharp. "I was at a cousin's wedding," he tells me. "My uncle asked me to sing a song. Afterwards someone came over to me and said, 'Have you heard of this Cecil Sharp House?' I didn't know of it, so he said, 'Go down and have a listen – they sing all of them old songs.' 'You mean old songs like that one?' 'Yep.' That's when I got interested." McCarthy has spent his life travelling around Britain. He grew up on the Travellers' site under the elevated A40 – the Westway – in west London, though he often spent months at a time with his grandfather in Birr, in central Ireland. "Lots of songs passed through his house. I've heard thousands of songs. It was a stop-off for many people, not just travelling people, but tradespeople, and my grandfather used to travel and picked up a mountain of songs. He wrote songs about the travelling way of life and he'd tell stories. He was a great storyteller, what you call a seanachi. Like a genealogist, telling you your background, and great stories that go on for days. Literally days. Like he'd come home and eat at five and start a story at six and wouldn't finish until two. And he'd say: 'Come back the next day and listen to the rest of the story.' That's the way it was. They were known in that town. Famous storytellers and singers. Years ago. I'm the only one now in my generation keeping the songs going." Since that first live appearance, word about McCarthy and his repertoire rapidly spread through the folk scene. "I made friends very quickly. Which I was amazed at. I had no idea people were interested in these old songs. I didn't even know there was a big English tradition of singing. Which is brilliant – it shows that the songs were from all the parts of these islands." Last spring he recorded his debut album. Fittingly, it opens with Round Top Wagon, the first song he performed at Cecil Sharp House. Also on the album is the epic, richly poetic ballad Donal Kenny. This beautiful song was unknown until McCarthy introduced it. "Ron Kavana, who produced the CD, is telling me now that's become a very big song," he says. "It was never known until I started singing. Which I find amazing. I knew it was a great song. It's about having to go away and leave the village. And now all the singers over there in Ireland have started singing it. It's gone into circulation." For the most part, McCarthy sings unaccompanied, with a lyrical vocal ornamentation that's unique to the Irish Traveller tradition. It has been compared to sean nos ("old-style") Irish singing, a term McCarthy only discovered recently. "My mother and grandfather all sang like that. With a twist in their voice, an up and down. It's always been there," he says. "Some people will tell you that style of singing isn't meant for our ears," he adds, suggesting that such oral ornamentation was originally developed by singers at the court of the kings of old Ireland. McCarthy's repertoire – he reckons he knows around 200 songs, with many more scattered among family members – ranges across the centuries. The Battle of Aherlow is about pitching up against the Normans in Tipperary in 1190; Clasped to the Pig, a comic song about the perilous joys of drunkenness, dates from the 18th century; his grandfather's songs from the 1940s evoke the Travelling way of life just as it was dying out. The social challenges facing Travellers and Gypsies today are profound. Next month, McCarthy embarks on a tour of schools in the north-east, introducing Traveller tales, songs and culture to children of both settled and Traveller communities. "We're coming to a time when our way of living is dying," he says. "You need an education to get on. We'll still have our traditions, dealing with horses, our culture, but it's getting harder and harder. You have to think of new ways." For McCarthy, with his wealth of songs – many of them unknown or rarely documented – performing to a settled audience is one of those new ways of moving forward without losing the culture that's behind him. Life on the road may be over, but the songs keep on travelling. "I'm going to record for the Irish traditional music archives, songs that they wouldn't have. It's important, I think, me being the last one of my family. Even if Travelling people don't sing our songs, they'll be there for other people and they won't be forgot. People will still sing them." Thomas McCarthy's Round Top Wagon is available from tinfolkmusic.com. He plays at the Cellar Upstairs, London, on 19 March.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Schubert has been a lifelong passion for pianist and author Graham Johnson. Four decades on, has he achieved nirvana? Nowadays every accompanist and many a solo pianist wants to perform Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise – works so iconic that, unless you have them under your belt, you are not even a player. The Müllerin, the story of a miller boy in love, disillusioned, and finally suicidal, remains the preserve of tenors and baritones, but both male and female singers are impatient to depict the unravelling sanity of the rejected and solitary winter traveller. Things were different nearly 40 years ago when Winterreise stood on the outer fringes of the repertoire, spoken of in awe, and seldom attempted by British artists. I was in the audience on an unforgettable afternoon in June 1972 when Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten performed those 24 songs. This was some years after their recording of the work for Decca (which I did not know at the time), and as a duo they were at their interpretative height. Pears was enjoying a vocal renaissance; a new teacher had helped him add a commanding lower register to his tenor timbre and at the top he was freer and more eloquent than ever. At 62, he employed a greater range of vocal colour than when he was a younger man. I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music at the time, and was an avid fan of Britten's music – it would surely be worthwhile, I thought, to hear him play anything. But I found Schubert's piano music mystifying. With Mozart and Beethoven you knew where you were, but Schubert, neither completely classical nor openly Romantic, slithered elusively out of my grasp. My exasperated piano teacher should have pointed me in the direction of the Lieder. From the opening notes of Gute Nacht, the audience in Snape Maltings was transported to another world. Schubert's songs were unknown to me, but the way this music transformed Wilhelm Müller's terse and heartbreaking poems was miraculous. The electricity generated by Pears and Britten stunned everyone there that day, but it ignited a flame in me that changed my life. I realised that accompanying songs was what I wanted to do, and working with a singer in music as great as this was clearly one of the most rewarding things in the world. I emerged from this experience a convert but a neophyte; the first thing I needed to do was to listen to how everyone else interpreted the cycle. If I were doing this today, I would be spoiled for choice, but in the early 70s one felt lucky to have, as well as the prized Pears-Britten LP, the recordings of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Hans Hotter, both with Gerald Moore, and Gérard Souzay with Dalton Baldwin. The Gramophone Exchange in Wardour Street, London, unearthed Gerhard Hüsch, Lotte Lehmann, Elisabeth Schumann and even Elena Gerhardt, the first woman to record the cycle in 1928. These were my shellac days of bonding with the past. The next phase was another kind of bonding – scouring the printed music, and getting it into my head and fingers. Most performers of the time owned the conveniently sized Peters edition. For £18 I found a hardback Dover reprint of the 10 volumes of songs in the Schubert Gesamtausgabe from 1895, containing 200 songs left out by Peters. Britten played from this scarce edition, but it remains inaccessible to most modern musicians. By the late 70s, the two Müller cycles had appeared in different volumes of the bank-breaking New Schubert Edition. And then there was the fascinating facsimile of Winterreise that differed in so many details that I rashly altered my printed copy to match the composer's autograph. Fortunately the great song scholar Eric Sams gently pointed out that Schubert himself had corrected the work in proof, and the printed edition, not the autograph, represented his final thoughts. The preparatory work required of singers and pianists is as multilayered as winter clothing. German was not on offer during my school days in Zimbabwe and I had to set my cap at the language. My collecting began with records and scores and culminated in poetry. When I was finally able to leaf through and read the same editions that Schubert had used for his musical settings I felt I had arrived at the heart of the music. At last I could retrace Schubert's voracious reading, the journeys of his mind. My own journey was on two tracks: to play the music as well as to write about it. And, for the last two decades, I have been working on commentaries of the Schubert songs and their poets. This will be published next year in three volumes by Yale University Press. My first London Winterreise was with Richard Jackson in 1980 as part of a Songmakers' Almanac summer series; my first recording of Die Schöne Müllerin was with Martyn Hill in 1982; my most hair-raising of winter journeys was with Brigitte Fassbaender, the most personally touching those with my partner, Brandon Velarde, in Los Angeles and Cape Town (for these are works that reward celebrity and student alike, and celebrity is not the automatic winner). Between 1987 and 2003 I recorded the complete Schubert lieder for Hyperion (over 700 songs, including the vocal ensembles and fragments) on 37 CDs with more than 60 singers. In the mid-1990s Hyperion's Die Schöne Müllerin launched the recording career of Ian Bostridge, and Winterreise that of Matthias Goerne. Great works of this kind are self-renewing in the minds of diligent interpreters and there are always oversights and misconceptions to be rectified. Tempo and balance require constant re-examination, clearly marked phrasing should be audible, and staccato markings and accents are too often ignored. The score is always there to reproach you, the key to the musical depths that are fancifully ascribed to an artist's own suffering. Perhaps illness or personal crisis make you more open to what the composer, who suffered enough for all of us, actually requires. All pianists go through phases when the classical poise of Schubert predominates at the expense of romantic fluidity, and other times when the balance is off-kilter in the opposite direction, but it is the singer's vocal personality, musical imagination and technical ability that determine the tone and convey the core message. With these kinds of variables nothing turns out as expected, including the magical surprise of new musical revelations. I have recently recorded all three Schubert cycles with Christopher Maltman, live at Wigmore Hall, which was a very different challenge from hours in a studio. I am 20 years older than Chris, but still younger than Peter Pears when I first heard him in Winterreise. To support Chris in his prime I hope, like Pears, that I can say something at 60 that would not have occurred to me at 40. In youth is pleasure, but with age comes understanding. The thousands of past performances of these mighty works, and the thousands to come, must not deter us. We are proud to be championing Schubert at Wigmore Hall, but there is no such word as definitive, no such thing as a last word. Tomorrow we may well be in the mood for something subtly, unexpectedly, different. The journey goes on. Volume one in the complete Schubert song cycles, Die Schöne Müllerin, by Christopher Maltman and Graham Johnson, is released on Wigmore Hall Live on 28 March.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Spinefarm) Power metal – a kind of high-camp Eurovision take on Iron Maiden – has two main constituencies in its fanbase: lonely World of Warcraft addicts with no sense of irony whatsoever, and vintage Dio T-shirt-wearing hipsters whose ironic detachment tips dangerously into the red. But while Children of Bodom subscribe to many of power metal's hallmarks – no song is so epic that it can't be augmented further by a swathe of synth washes or duelling guitars and harpsichords – there is enough dirty riffing, rasped invectives and breakneck thrash on this, their seventh studio album, to appeal to the kind of metal aficionado for whom a belief in dragons and wizards isn't compulsory. And any band that can crib a melody from the soundtrack of horror movie classic Seven Notes in Black without sullying the original, as CoB do in the exemplary title track, deserves far more than an ironically raised eyebrow in appreciation. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Who is she? Emika is a British-born producer/vocalist of Czech heritage. She's obsessed with the communicative power of sound, and is adamant about avoiding that "girl producer" tag. What's her music like? Creepy, seductive and brimming with bass. She spent a number of years in Bristol as UK dubstep took root, appearing at parties, and there's an elegantly glitchy menace to the two singles she's released so far (Drop the Other and Double Edge), though she claims to take inspiration from the mainstream pop music she relished during her Music Technology degree – an antidote to the avant-garde sounds her classmates favoured. So she's part of UK dubstep scene? Not exactly. After a botched appendix removal and a long period on prescribed morphine, she moved to Berlin and discovered the underground electro scene, where she honed her sound. The Ninja Tune label, which had politely turned down her previous efforts, was impressed by her progress and promptly signed her. Is she still based in Germany? Yes. Her love affair with Berlin electro scene has proved reciprocal; the library of field recording samples she made in Berghain's famous nightclub were distributed among its resident producers and DJs; the resulting music was released as the club's anniversary compilation release, Fünf. She works part time as a sound engineer for Native Instruments, developing sound libraries for their digital instruments and synthesisers. Where can I hear her? Go to facebook.com/emikamusic. Her single Count Backwards is out on 11 April, with remixes from Kryptic Minds and resident Berghain DJ/producer Marcel Dettmann. A debut LP should follow sometime this year.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Hampson/Wiener Virtuosen
(DG) Thomas Hampson is a scholar as well as a singer, and his recording of Mahler's Wunderhorn songs is very much influenced by his own research. He uses a critical edition on which he worked. Mindful that Mahler insisted that Des Knaben Wunderhorn be considered as chamber music, he performs them conductorless with a small ensemble, drawn from the Vienna Philharmonic. And arguing that the songs are not gender-specific, he sings all of them, rather than share them with a mezzo as is more usual. The results are hit and miss. The principal revelations are instrumental, with sinewy, acerbic textures steering us into a world closer to German expressionism than post-romanticism. Vocally, things are less coherent and secure. Some people probably won't care for Urlicht and Das Himmlische Leben sung by a man. I emerged from it all wondering whether this particular set is really manageable by a single performer. Hampson isn't in his best voice here. Wo die Schönen Trompeten Blasen is hushed and haunting, but there are effortful top notes and slips in intonation elsewhere, while the coloratura of Wer Hat Dies Liedel Erdacht is ungainly. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Mute) Best known for Lift to Experience's 2001 cult classic The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads – which, just before 9/11, prophesied the end of the world – Josh T Pearson has spent the following decade losing his faith and his mind in Tehuacana, Texas, and spending months in bed. Somehow, he found time to pen a handful of songs documenting – but, of course – the collapse of a brief, ill-fated marriage. Those songs – with titles such as Sweetheart, I Ain't Your Christ – are as troubled as you'd expect, with the preacher's son conjuring clouds of intensity from mostly just plucked guitar and his ravaged Jeff Buckley of a vocal. The violin-assisted Woman, When I Raise Hell sounds like a brilliant, disturbed relation of Bruce Springsteen's haunted Nebraska, although elsewhere, 13-minute trawls through Pearson's innermost feelings and failings, with lines such as "I'm in love with an amazing woman, she just is not my wife", make for uncomfortable listening. Rating: 3/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Glasgow Singers/BBCSSO/Volkov
(Hyperion) Ilan Volkov's Liszt album with the BBC Scottish Symphony focuses on the composer's major confrontations with mortality. With the exception of the late, valedictory From the Cradle to the Grave (1881), the works here all date from the late 1850s to mid-1860s – traumatic years that saw the end of Liszt's hopes of marrying his mistress, Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, and the deaths of both his son Daniel in 1859 and his elder daughter Blandine in 1862. The disc's centrepiece is the uncompromising Three Funeral Odes of 1866, in which ferocious laments for both children are followed by Le Triomphe Funèbre de Tasse, in which the posthumous reputation of the Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso is taken as a symbol for the collective memories that survive the death of the individual. The Two Episodes from Lenau's Faust, meanwhile, allow us to hear the familiar First Mephisto Waltz alongside its rarely performed companion piece, Der Nächtliche Zug, in which Faust is forced to confront the abysses of his own soul as a religious procession passes him by. The performances are tremendous. Volkov turns out to be a superb Lisztian, alert to the music's anguish and exaltation. The playing is beautifully textured, with a strong sense of technical and emotional limits being broached and sustained throughout. Highly recommended. Rating: 5/5
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | (Saregama) Veteran superstar crossover pop, Indian style. Asha Bhosle may now be in her late 70s, but the queen of the Bollywood playback singers is still in remarkably fine voice on an album in which she's joined by the classical singer and sitar player Shujaat Khan, son of one of the country's finest-ever sitar players, Ustad Vilayat Khan. It's an intriguing combination, but those expecting an album of brave pop-classical fusion work will be disappointed, for both sides play it safe. Khan provides relaxed, melodic settings for traditional lyrics, and the songs are, for the most part, easy-going and gently rhythmic, to which he adds occasional sitar flurries, with just one extended solo. He's an easygoing, soulful singer, and contrasts well with the slightly more emotional Bhosle, who is at her best on her solo treatment of Naina Lagai Ke, a song which mysteriously appears three times (two solo versions and a duet). The result is a pleasant if sometimes soporific easy-listening set that doesn't match her best film work or her recordings with Kronos Quartet. Rating: 3/5
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