Music news

• ‘What drives a man to do this?’: re-examining the murder of John Lennon

  04-12-2023 16:33 via theguardian.com
  
  In a new Apple docuseries covering the shocking murder of one of music’s most beloved figures, the life and motivations of his killer are placed under the spotlightThe production company 72 Films specializes in what the executive producer Rob Coldstream calls “box set” documentaries, “archive deep-dives into compelling figures, events or moments in history that also say something about the world”. They have tackled such enigmas as Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Bashar
  
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• ‘Forty years on, nothing’s changed’: Fun Boy Three on The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum

  04-12-2023 16:22 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘Terry Hall was writing about nuclear war and Ronald Reagan, then the US president, the idea being that the world was being run by lunatics’When we were in the Specials, working on the More Specials album, every day someone would leave the band, then three days later they’d rejoin. It’s an amazing record, but we needed a good break from each other. After doing Ghost Town on Top of the Pops, three of us went to see [songwriter and keyboard-player] Jerry Dammers at his hous
  
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• ‘I’ve been sacked for asking for time off to tour’: the perils of being a musician with a second job

  04-12-2023 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Thanks to streaming, Brexit and Covid, it’s never been harder to make ends meet as a musician. Three acts with second jobs discuss juggling stadium tours with shelf-stackingThe first Musicians’ Census recently found that almost half of working UK musicians earn less than £14K a year from music. It’s fine for the lucky handful making millions, such as Ed Sheeran or Adele, but most are having to rely on a second job or similar side-hustle to support their income. We spoke t
  
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• Myles Goodwyn, frontman with Canadian classic rockers April Wine, dies aged 75

  04-12-2023 09:59 via theguardian.com
  
  The band had a string of US and Canadian hits in the 1970s and 80s, including power ballad Just Between You and MeMyles Goodwyn, who fronted the popular Canadian classic rock band April Wine from its formation in 1969 until earlier this year, has died aged 75. His death was announced by his publicist, who did not give the cause but heralded Goodwyn’s “distinctive and immediately recognisable” voice and prolific songwriting.Goodwyn formed the band in Nova Scotia, after suffering
  
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• The 20 best songs of 2023

  04-12-2023 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Voted on by over 30 Guardian music writers, we celebrate the year’s best tracks from Boygenius to Blur and beyondContinue reading...
  
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• Kiss unveil digital avatars at final ever show: ‘We can be forever young and forever iconic’

  04-12-2023 06:07 via theguardian.com
  
  A towering, high-tech version of Kiss took over from the band at Madison Square Garden, created by the team behind Abba VoyageWhen Kiss finally completed the final concert of their final tour on Saturday night – four years after it began, and more than two decades since their first “farewell” tour – they used their encore to debut their afterlife, courtesy of digital avatars.As Kiss walked off the stage at Madison Square Garden, each of the four band members were replaced
  
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• Can Spinal Tap sequel live up to film’s ludicrous legend, 40 years on?

  03-12-2023 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  It was the rock-mockumentary that set a standard for those that followed. Now Macca and Elton are joining the band for an encore. Will its lethal wit survive?Early next year, shooting starts for a sequel to the 1984 cult rock-mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. It stars the actors who played the perma-delusional UK rockers back then: Michael McKean as hair-tossing frontman David St Hubbins; Christopher Guest as guitarist, Nigel “one louder” Tufnel; Harry Shearer as bassist Derek Smalls
  
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• Love Minus Zero: L’Ecstasy review – Tiga and Hudson Mohawke unite on a high

  03-12-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Love Minus Communications)
  The Canadian and Scottish producers’ on-off partnership comes to fruition on this aptly titled, category-defying clubland setCollaborative tracks made by the unlikely duo of electronic producers Hudson Mohawke (Glasgow) and Tiga (Montreal) have been trickling out slowly since a banging rave track called Love Minus Zero first appeared in 2020 (a Bob Dylan song of the same name is not an obvious reference point). Despite being very different creatures – the
  
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• Soema Montenegro: Círculo Radiante review – an intoxicating journey around South American song

  02-12-2023 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Mais Um)
  This fifth album by the Argentinian singer, poet and shaman is a passionate celebration of Latin music – and the sunRaised on the margins of Buenos Aires, the young Soema Montenegro was drawn to wilderness rather than the Argentinian metropolis, later rejecting the European formality of her conservatory studies for folklore and improvisation. Gifted with a powerful, soaring voice, she has subsequently won international honours as a poet, shaman and social activist. This fifth alb
  
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• Ambrose Akinmusire: Owl Song review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

  01-12-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Nonesuch)
  The California-raised trumpet virtuoso provides a balming trio album to counter our information overloadThe news that Ambrose Akinmusire likes owls comes as no surprise once you start pondering the watchful patience and swooping accuracy of this California-raised trumpet virtuoso’s jazz creativity for the past 15 years. Showered with plaudits in that time (with comparisons with Miles Davis often among them), Akinmusire shares Miles’ belief that less is more. He called this
  
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• Dove Cameron: Alchemical: Volume 1 review – former Disney star’s goth-pop bid falls flat

  01-12-2023 09:30 via theguardian.com
  
  (Disruptor/Columbia Records)
  The gen Z contender’s debut album attempts a kind of manufactured deviance but is hampered by blunt and anonymous songwritingThe Disney-star-to-pop-star pipeline is still in full swing a good 30 years after Britney, Christina and Justin shot from the Mickey Mouse Club to astronomical real-world fame. Leading the pack of gen Z’s contenders is legitimate generational icon Olivia Rodrigo; trailing, but on-the-rise, is the ribald, outrageously fun Sabrina Car
  
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• ‘There was no way that I wasn’t going to do whatever was asked of me’: Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt on making the Barbie soundtrack

  30-11-2023 18:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The producing duo got more than they bargained for when they signed up to the biggest film of 2023. Originally slated to record two tracks, they ended up making the whole soundtrack – the most successful film score this century“In the very beginning,” says Mark Ronson of what proved the most marathon effort of his musical career, “there were only going to be two songs.”Ronson, the artist and producer best known for his work with Amy Winehouse and the chart-smashing
  
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• Peter Gabriel: i/o review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

  30-11-2023 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Real World)
  The legendary prog-turned-pop star started work on his new album in the mid-90s and has drip-fed its songs to fans, but it is anything but disjointedPeter Gabriel’s tenth studio album of original material has been compared to both the Beach Boys’ Smile and Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy. These were two records with legendarily elephantine gestation periods, although the latter seems an inadequate yardstick: Chinese Democracy came out 15 years after Guns N&r
  
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• ‘Elvis kept following me!’ Country singer Mimi Roman on her all-star life – and playing live again at 89

  29-11-2023 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  ​S​he went from rodeo queen to right-hand girl of the King – but a confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan made her shy from the spotlight. Now she’s finally ready to take her bow‘Oh good, they didn’t send me the photograph of me and Elvis to sign.” Mimi Roman is opening mail in the kitchen of her Connecticut home on an autumn afternoon. “I get three or four fan letters a week and they all send me that picture of me and Elvis to autograph. I just hate
  
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• Leona Lewis review – walking in a decidedly surreal winter wonderland

  29-11-2023 13:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham
  Singer recasts herself as a Christmassy Ella Fitzgerald as she renders seasonal staples in a range of musical styles – not all of them successfulThe 2006 X Factor winner’s career could hardly have got off with more of a bang: No 1 in 35 countries with her first single Bleeding Love, and two UK chart-topping albums. Since then, though, Lewis has split with mentor Simon Cowell and in 2016 pulled out of a Broadway production of Cats citing an autoimmune co
  
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• Van Morrison review – gently shakes, rattles and rolls back the years

  28-11-2023 12:08 via theguardian.com
  
  O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
  The 78-year-old’s voice is still strong but his reworkings of early rock’n’roll tunes are more wily than wildVan Morrison has always ploughed a contrary furrow and as he heads into his twilight years, he’s bringing it all back home. His new album, Accentuate the Positive, finds him going back to songs that he first played in Belfast bar bands as a teenager a full 60 years ago. Morrison has said that he had been intending to re-engag
  
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• The Charlatans review – 90s faves feel the love in spiritual second home

  27-11-2023 15:47 via theguardian.com
  
  Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
  Tim Burgess and co play to a devoted crowd with a high-spirited set that includes fan-favourite album Between 10th and 11th‘Glasgow is where it all began,” announces Tim Burgess – singer, listening party host, burgeoning national treasure – from the stage of the city’s iconic Barrowland Ballroom, where his band the Charlatans are playing their 16th show since 1992. Though they hail from Northwich in Cheshire, Glasgow is the only city on
  
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• ‘It was written for a Nosferatu musical’: how Bonnie Tyler made Total Eclipse of the Heart

  27-11-2023 14:17 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘We shot the video in a gothic former asylum that was very frightening. The guard dogs wouldn’t set foot in the downstairs rooms, where people had been given electric shock treatment’I’d just signed to Sony and wanted to change from country rock to rock. I’d seen Meat Loaf on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test doing Bat Out of Hell, so I told Muff Winwood at Sony that I wanted to work with Jim Steinman, who wrote for and produced Meat Loaf. Muff looked at me like
  
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• Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Christmas Kitchen Disco review – the festive season starts here

  27-11-2023 12:20 via theguardian.com
  
  City Hall, Newcastle upon Tyne
  With pantomime boos, bad cracker jokes and joyous Christmas hits, Ellis-Bextor channels pure showbiz in this enjoyably merry spectacleEvery Friday night during the first Covid-19 lockdown, Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Disco helped bring the nation back together with streamed home live performances, sequinned dresses and a disco ball. Now, the Christmas Kitchen Disco takes that spirit on the road with festive bells on. The singer, bassist husband Richard Jone
  
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• Kevin ‘Geordie’ Walker, influential guitarist with Killing Joke, dies aged 64

  27-11-2023 12:02 via theguardian.com
  
  Guitarist celebrated by Jimmy Page and Kevin Shields for his intense, multi-layered sound suffered a stroke over the weekendKevin “Geordie” Walker, guitarist with industrial band Killing Joke whose ringing, richly textured tone influenced generations of musicians, has died aged 64.The band wrote in a statement on Sunday: “It is with extreme sadness we confirm that at 6.30am on 26th November 2023 in Prague, Killing Joke’s legendary guitarist Kevin ‘Geordie’ Wal
  
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• Jean Knight, soul and funk singer who had hit with Mr Big Stuff, dies aged 80

  27-11-2023 10:55 via theguardian.com
  
  New Orleans singer reached No 2 in the US with 1971 hit, and was nominated for a GrammyJean Knight, whose irrepressibly funky and disdainful song Mr Big Stuff was a major hit in 1971, has died aged 80. Her publicist confirmed she died from natural causes, with her friend Bernie Cyrus, executive director of the Louisiana Music Commission, also confirming the news to Rolling Stone.Knight was born Jean Caliste in New Orleans in 1943, and cut her first demo recording in 1965, a cover of Jackie Wilso
  
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• André 3000: New Blue Sun review – immersive and out there

  26-11-2023 16:00 via theguardian.com
  (Epic)On his first album in almost two decades, the Outkast rapper re-emerges with a collection of flute-led instrumentals that are characteristically otherworldly“Earth to André 3000” was the title of a GQ Style interview with Outkast rapper André Benjamin, and it captures how his fans envision him: a black-star wanderer orbiting our dull, sublunary planet. So, having avoided releasing an album for 17 years, a largely improvised instrumental set on which he’s lea
  
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• Joan Armatrading world premiere review – how did a brilliant pop melodist produce such a baffling mess?

  26-11-2023 13:14 via theguardian.com
  
  Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
  Armatrading’s first symphony, premiered by Chineke! conducted by Andrew Grams, was underdeveloped and dull. Neither composer nor ensemble come out well from thisEven pop geniuses have a patchy record when it comes to writing for an orchestra. For every success (a Jonny Greenwood or a Randy Newman, for instance) there is at least one dud (a Paul McCartney, a Sufjan Stevens, a Deep Purple). Sadly, on the evidence of the world premiere of her first symphony, Joan
  
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• One to watch: Zooey Celeste

  25-11-2023 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The California singer’s supremely confident debut album is inspired by surfing and the psychedelic novel he’s writingWith only two releases to his name, LA-based singer-songwriter Zooey Celeste has already been through as many musical guises. Starting out with wispy, whispered intimacy, his 2019 self-titled debut EP gestured towards the gentle music of indie stalwart Sufjan Stevens. Four years on, he has been searching for a new, more grandiose sound. Spending his time surfing big wa
  
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• ‘We were like a perfect match on a date’: Grup Şimşek’s multicultural musical magic

  24-11-2023 13:48 via theguardian.com
  
  With roots in Turkey, Germany, France and South Africa, and their style traversing soul, folk and psychedelia and beyond, this thrilling band are refreshingly resistant to pigeonholesThe first time singer Derya Yıldırım met keyboarder Axel Oliveres and bassist Antonin Le Gargasson, she was sceptical: “I wasn’t sure if these guys were maybe just taking the piss.” They were two French hipsters living in east London; she was the classically trained daughter of Turki
  
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• You Are Wolf: Hare // Hunter // Moth // Ghost review | Jude Rogers's folk album of the month

  24-11-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Firecrest)
  With Sam Lee and Robert Macfarlane guesting, Kerry Andrew shows a knack for experimentation, deploying playground rhymes, birdsong and even their radiatorSo many folk songs are about moments of metamorphosis between worlds or identities, full of peculiar magic and possibility. Composer and novelist Kerry Andrew’s third album as You Are Wolf is a joyful celebration of those transformative experiences, inspired by their recent experiences of debilitating chronic illness and comin
  
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• Harp: Albion review – former Midlake frontman traipses through twilight

  24-11-2023 09:30 via theguardian.com
  
  (Bella Union)
  Tim Smith’s first album with Kathi Zung takes inspiration from William Blake and the Cure to create a landscape of 80s reverb and ghostly vocalsHeavy with quiet, Harp’s debut album invokes Sussex fields to muse on creative loss, loneliness and bittersweet new love. Inspired by William Blake, Herstmonceux Castle and the Cure’s Faith – possibly the Crawley band’s most desolate record – Tim Smith and Kathi Zung craft a barren landscape out of 80s-in
  
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• Stock Aitken Waterman’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!

  23-11-2023 12:42 via theguardian.com
  
  As a musical featuring the British production trio’s songs tours the UK, we list their best tracks – from Divine to Dead or AliveNot a great record, but as a mad act of provocation designed to upset as many people as possible in three minutes, I’d Rather Jack – a song that dismisses not just Fleetwood Mac, but the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, heavy metal and indeed all “music from the past” – is unbeatable. Continue reading...
  
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• One to watch: Montañera

  18-11-2023 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The London-based Colombian singer-songwriter and composer travels through space, time and genres with her trusty Korg synthesiserCities can be lonely places until you find your footing, especially if you’ve travelled from another continent. But María Mónica Gutiérrez has created her own choir to keep her company. The singer-songwriter and composer layers her vocals to ethereal effect, recalling the delicate layering of Imogen Heap but also the music of her motherland,
  
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• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and singer Cassie settle abuse lawsuit one day after filing

  18-11-2023 05:30 via theguardian.com
  Settlement to their ‘mutual satisfaction’ announced in a statement released on Friday evening without details being disclosedSean “Diddy” Combs and singer Cassie said on Friday that they have settled a lawsuit containing allegations of beatings and abuse by the music producer.Combs, a hip-hop icon and the founder of Bad Boy Records, was accused of rape and abuse in a major lawsuit filed by Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, that alleges he used his powerful net
  
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• One to watch: Baby Queen

  11-11-2023 15:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The South African singer-songwriter’s bright, piercing pop – a favourite on TV series Heartstopper – now finds her wrestling with her quarter life crisisAt 18, South African singer-songwriter Arabella Latham moved to London from Durban to become a pop/rock star. She couldn’t instantly emulate her heroines Taylor Swift and Courtney Love: for years, Latham didn’t release anything, ambition waylaid by drugs, time-sucking social media and heartbreak. But by 2020, as Bab
  
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• Jazz rulebreaker Hiromi: ‘The piano is a plane that can take me anywhere’

  10-11-2023 14:30 via theguardian.com
  
  As she arrives in the UK for London jazz festival, the Japanese pianist explains how she subverts expectations to appeal to highbrow listeners and rock fans alikeThere aren’t many jazz performers like Japanese pianist Hiromi Uehara. With her hair artfully piled almost a foot above her head, the 44-year-old launches into muscular assaults that traverse everything from fast-paced bebop to contemporary classical, monumental power chords and prog-fuelled excursions on the synth: a maximal soun
  
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• Lyrics to be introduced as evidence in trial of rapper Young Thug

  10-11-2023 12:22 via theguardian.com
  
  Judge says he isn’t attacking free speech, but practice of using lyrics as evidence has been widely denounced by major record labels and stars including Jay-ZA judge has said lyrics will be admissible as evidence in the trial of star US rapper Young Thug, a controversial practice that has been decried by free speech groups and other stars such as Jay-Z and Coldplay.Known for his distinctive vocal timbre, Young Thug, real name Jeffery Williams, is one of the most successful and critically a
  
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• Beirut: Hadsel review – joyously positive healing hymns

  10-11-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Pompeii Records)
  The ‘unfathomable beauty’ of a remote Norwegian island has inspired Zach Condon to create a triumphant celebration of lifeZach Condon’s musical odyssey has previously taken the New Mexico singer-songwriter from brassy Balkan folk to French and Hispanic music. Along the way, he’s made albums everywhere from his teenage bedroom, a log cabin in upstate New York and the Italian town of Gallipoli. His sixth album as Beirut was conceived while he was living in
  
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• Thandi Ntuli with Carlos Niño: Rainbow Revisited review | Ammar Kalia's global album of the month

  10-11-2023 09:30 via theguardian.com
  
  (International Anthem)
  With delicate arrangements, the South African vocalist and pianist conveys everything from longing to ecstasy, as Niño adds light touches of percussion and productionSouth African jazz has taken a maximal turn in recent years. Artists such as the collective Spaza and drummers Tumi Mogorosi and Asher Gamedze have each released records that channel free jazz to produce a collective cacophony of sound. It is a social statement as much as a sonic one, an effort to conne
  
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• ‘I was really hard to work with’: rapper Danny Brown on reaching rock bottom – then beating addiction

  10-11-2023 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  He’s one of the most distinctive voices in US music, but got lost in drink, drugs and depression. Brown explains why he poured his pain into new album Quaranta – and now dotes on his chihuahuasEarlier this year, Danny Brown entered rehab. “My aunt had died, and my family was asking me for the money to put on a funeral,” he says. “But I didn’t have the money, and I didn’t know how to tell them. They knew I’d had the money. But I’d just pissed
  
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• Dua Lipa: Houdini review – vanishing-act anthem destined for total ubiquity

  10-11-2023 00:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Warner Music)
  Co-produced by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and PC Music alumnus Danny L Harle, Lipa’s comeback is insistent, opulent disco with another indelible lyrical conceptAt first blush, the notion that Dua Lipa named her comeback single after shorthand for pulling a vanishing act is a bit eyebrow-raising. Since she released her second album, Future Nostalgia, in 2020, the 28-year-old British-Albanian pop star has been an omnipresent multimedia poly-threat. Beyond that album&rsqu
  
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• Yoko Ono: her 20 greatest songs – ranked!

  09-11-2023 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As her album Feeling the Space turns 50, we appraise the best of a bold and often underestimated artist“I felt like soldiers were dying next to me,” said bassist Klaus Vormann of the scourging Ono-led improvisation that ended the Plastic Ono Band’s set at Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival. An endless, agonised torrent of wailing feedback and screaming, it’s as confrontational as anything late-60s rock produced. Continue reading...
  
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• Giggs & Diddy review – potent chemistry unites Peckham and NYC

  08-11-2023 13:21 via theguardian.com
  
  Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London
  Flashy dad-dancing music mogul Diddy and growling south London rapper Giggs energise the crowd with a relentless string of hits and guestsIf you’d have predicted 15 years ago that Peckham’s Giggs and US rap mogul Diddy would one day share a stage in Shepherd’s Bush, you might have received some strange looks. Road-rap legend Giggs half-talks quintessentially British bars (“Walk in the party sporting Armani / half of the crowd’s a
  
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• ‘You couldn’t make it up’: Barbra Streisand on taking on Hollywood, her pal King Charles and cloning her dog

  07-11-2023 17:28 via theguardian.com
  
  She’s the Hollywood megastar who’s sung for everyone – and looked to science when her beloved pet died. In an exclusive extract from her new memoir, the singer and actor shares some tales from an extraordinary life – including a spooky encounter with a mediumIn the winter of 1968, a package arrived at my New York apartment. Inside was a copy of a short story called Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. I didn’t know Singer’s work and I didn’t
  
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• ‘It will change the way we think about their story’: mythical archive of ‘first Beatles historian’ comes to light

  07-11-2023 12:45 via theguardian.com
  
  Mal Evans neglected his family life to go on tour with the Beatles, amassing a priceless trove of ephemera and diary entries. Long after his untimely death, a new book has finally uncovered itBehind every creative genius, there often stands a cast of supporting players. “I don’t care if you’re Charlotte Brontë, James Joyce, or Steve Jobs,” says writer Kenneth Womack. “Nobody does it alone.” He should know, having spent the last three years delving into th
  
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• ‘We’re like a frat house’: meet Gob Nation, south London’s oddball music collective

  07-11-2023 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Living in an old care home, recording in a disused police station and constantly playing in each other’s bands, could the likes of the Tubs, Ex-Vöid and Suep have stumbled upon a new model for struggling musicians?“Benefit fraud,” someone jokes when I ask what it takes to sustain a music career in 2023. I am huddled in a flat overlooking south-east London’s Surrey Quays docks with a small cross-section of Gob Nation – the collective name for a universe of bands
  
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• Manchester Unspun: How a City Got High on Music by Andy Spinoza – from Cottonopolis to Manc-hattan

  07-11-2023 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  A hugely entertaining account of the city’s resurrection over four decades, relayed by a well-connected former journalist, focuses on the catalytic role of Factory Records and the HaçiendaSome years ago, when a national newspaper editor headed north to view the property boom that is transforming Manchester’s city centre and its skyline, Andrew Spinoza was entrusted with the job of tour guide.“I put him on a Metrolink tram outside his hotel to Salford Quays,” writes
  
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• Indie band the Night Café ‘devastated’ by sudden death of lead singer Sean Martin

  06-11-2023 23:53 via theguardian.com
  
  Frontman’s Liverpool bandmates and fellow touring band the Wombats post tribute message and pictures onlineThe indie band the Night Café have said they are “devastated” as they announced the sudden death of their lead singer, Sean Martin. The group, from Liverpool, announced the news on Instagram: “We are devastated to share the sudden passing of our best friend Sean.“Words can’t describe the pain we are feeling right now. We’re still struggling t
  
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• ‘Doubt is exciting’: cellist Mabe Fratti on chaos, curiosity and climbing volcanoes

  06-11-2023 17:59 via theguardian.com
  
  An acclaimed new voice in experimental music, the Guatemalan cellist swapped scaling literal and creative peaks for a more exploratory mindset, finding community and fertile collaborations in Mexico City’s improv sceneWhen Mabe Fratti turned 18, she decided she wanted to celebrate by climbing a volcano in her native Guatemala. “I had climbed a couple of small ones and I wanted to climb a slightly bigger one,” says Fratti, now 31. On the ascent, she and her friends got robbed. &
  
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• ‘I had to fax the lyrics to the gospel choir’s pastor’: how the Soup Dragons made I’m Free

  06-11-2023 15:30 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘We were indie kids but suddenly we found ourselves at a party, chatting with Dennis Hopper as Jon Bon Jovi walked past and Madonna had just left the building’The early Soup Dragons were a psychedelic punk rock band, but by 1988 there was more energy in the underground acid house scene than the indie scene. We used to go to this club in Glasgow called UFO that looked like the 1960s party place in Midnight Cowboy. It was all oil lamps and psychedelic lighting, but they played Detroit
  
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• God is a DJ: the Jesuit priest who runs avant garde electronica nights

  06-11-2023 10:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Father Antonio Pileggi is a former composer who found his calling running a festival dedicated to ethereal and spiritual expressions of electronic, ambient and experimental musicOn a windy evening in late October, Father Antonio Pileggi’s flock are queuing up under the portico of the 15th-century Jesuit church on Milan’s San Fedele Square. The theme of tonight’s congregation at the San Fedele Cultural Centre, however, is not evangelism but electronic noise.The 57-year-old Jesui
  
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• Jung Kook: Golden review – BTS star searches for his own sound

  05-11-2023 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Big Hit)
  The K-pop boyband star nods to Craig David, Justin Timberlake and more on a solo debut that’s best when his dreamy falsetto soarsWith the three eldest members of K-pop boyband phenomenon BTS currently on military service in South Korea, their youngest recruit, 26-year-old Jung Kook, is free to continue finessing his solo career. Things are off to a good start: this debut album features one US chart-topping single – the excellent, UK garage-esque sex diary Seven – and
  
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• Bar Italia: The Twits review – back to mid-90s alt-rock

  05-11-2023 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  (Matador)
  There’s a swagger to the best songs on the indie trio’s second album in six months – until the tempo dropsThe fact that the release of The Twits comes less than six months after Tracey Denim, Bar Italia’s debut for Matador (and third album in all), suggests that this is a band in a hurry. And yet the latest batch of songs from London-based trio Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton doesn’t feel like any great progression. Their reference points
  
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• ‘I always wanted to be David Attenborough’: Björk on protecting salmon, going on strike and magical mushrooms

  05-11-2023 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The singer and activist is releasing a single with Rosalía to support action against intensive salmon farming. She talks about being a guardian of Iceland’s wilderness and how young people will make real changeIt is hard to think of anyone as symbolic of their nation as Björk. The singer has lived away from Iceland over the years – in London and New York, and is often on tour – but when she’s been away she has always felt, she says, like she is “holding
  
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