Music news

• Ben Affleck & Sienna Miller Reveal What It's Really Like To Shoot At Each Other All Day

  15-01-2017 23:39
  
  The stars of Live By Night reveal their behind the scenes secrets...
  
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• Kate Beckinsale Plays Would You Rather: UNDERWORLD Edition!

  15-01-2017 22:35
  
  Would the action hero rather date a werewolf or a vampire? WATCH AS ALL IS REVEALED!
  
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• BBCNOW/Rundell review – Great Brits go for the feelgood factor

  15-01-2017 16:59
  
  Hoddinott Hall, CardiffThe BBC National Orchestra of Wales put the emphasis on happiness and groove – rounded off by a lullaby – in the first of its series celebrating rebellious composers, including Sawer, Nyman and BryarsJeremy Bentham’s axiom, “It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong”, was invoked in this first of two BBC National Orchestra of Wales Great Brits concerts, featuring composers who ostensibly have re
  
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• The Last Supper review – Birtwistle's enigmatic millennial catchup with Christ

  15-01-2017 15:18
  
  City Halls, GlasgowThe disciples break bread with Jesus 2,000 years on in an intense drama semi-staged by the BBCSSO – which, like most meals, could have been more balancedThe Last Supper is Harrison Birtwistle’s intense and mysterious “dramatic tableau” — an opera, but more static and more stylised — with a libretto by the late Canadian poet Robin Blaser. It premiered in 2000 and was specifically a millennium piece: it deals with time, the weight we put on si
  
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• The B Street Band and other tribute acts who have come out of the shadows

  15-01-2017 15:00
  
  Trump can’t get the real deal, so he’s had to make do with a Springsteen tribute act playing at one of his inauguration balls. Which other cover artists have stepped into the limelightCover bands have all the fun. With less hassle and better pay than most third-tier gigging bands, from time to time, they can even achieve glory commensurate with their objects of imitation.So it has proved for The B Street Band, who will be taking on their third consecutive inaugural ball for Donald Tr
  
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• Olly Murs' Mum Expresses "Heartbreak" Over Fact His Twin Brother Ben Has Disowned The Family

  15-01-2017 14:45
  
  Ben fell out with the family after Olly refused to go to his wedding in favour of starring on The X Factor
  
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• Vicky Pattison And Lauren Pope Want To Take Their Boyfriends On A Double Date

  15-01-2017 14:23
  
  The reality stars approve of each other's current love choices
  
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• BBC Accidentally Re-Tweets Someone Calling Gary Barlow's Talent Show "Let It Sh*t"

  15-01-2017 14:05
  
  It all got a bit awks on social media on Saturday night
  
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• Selena Gomez Doesn't Care If Bella Hadid Is Upset That She's Dating The Weeknd

  15-01-2017 13:34
  
  There have been accusations that the 'girl code' has been broken
  
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• The Feud Between Louis Tomlinson And Zayn Malik Is Officially Over

  15-01-2017 13:09
  
  Louis only had positive things to say about his former One Direction co-star and his solo music
  
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• Written on Skin review – Hannigan is spellbinding in parable of beauty and violence

  15-01-2017 12:39
  
  Royal Opera House, London
  Soprano Barbara Hannigan revisits the role created for her in George Benjamin’s tale of sexual jealousy and artistic revelation, interpreted forensically by Katie MitchellMajor new operas have a habit of revealing their secrets over time. Written on Skin, George Benjamin’s chilling parable about the transformative potential of art, is receiving its first revival at Covent Garden since its UK premiere in 2013. Though Martin Crimp’s text, in which the pr
  
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• Bebe Rexha Reveals She Fought Off Sexual Harassment During Her Rise To Music Stardom

  15-01-2017 12:36
  
  The In The Name Of Love singer says it's important to call out abuse in the music industry
  
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• Stephanie Davis Says Her Life Is "Complete" As She Shares Adorable First Photo Of Her Baby Son

  15-01-2017 12:18
  
  The former Celebrity Big Brother star became a first time mother on Friday
  
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• Laurie Anderson: ‘I see Lou all the time. He’s a continued, powerful presence’

  15-01-2017 12:00
  
  Over seitan and tofu in New York, the avant-garde performance artist talks about her Buddhism and loss and love – for her mother and her late husband Lou ReedLong after she’s left, I’ll still be thinking about Laurie Anderson’s pumpkin-coloured jacket. I see it through the window of the restaurant, this big daub of colour amid all the greys and blacks of a New York winter. Then that colour is inside and here, emerging from it, is Laurie Anderson – 69 years old, smal
  
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• Chloe Ferry Enters The Celebrity Big Brother House And Immediately There Is Already 100 Times More Action And Drama

  15-01-2017 11:52
  
  The Geordie Shore babe is making the CBB house even more entertaining than it already was
  
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• The Outlook Orchestra review – a glorious symphonic soundclash

  15-01-2017 10:00
  
  Strings and brass meet the cream of bass music old and new for Outlook festival’s 10th birthdayBritain styles itself as a small island, punching well above its landmass in musical influence. Spare a thought, then, for Jamaica, whose culture of sound systems, and its singers and toasting MCs, can be heard in everything from the rawest of east London grime to Justin Bieber’s recent restyle into “tropical pop”.Bieber is not on hand tonight to sing with the 20-piece drum&rsqu
  
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• The brave new world of the xx, pop’s brooding perfectionists

  15-01-2017 10:00
  
  Solo success, confronting grief, sobering up… the feted London trio talk frankly about how the events of the past four years informed their new album, I See YouThe three members of the xx cross from Poland into Lithuania overnight, trying to sleep inside a bus that judders and lurches along an uneven border road. It is December, an unforgiving time to be touring eastern Europe, and snow that was coming in committedly when they left Warsaw still falls when they arrive in Vilnius, the Lithu
  
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• You Me at Six: Night People review – punchy, glossy and generic

  15-01-2017 09:00
  
  (Infectious)The Surrey rock crew have built a steady success since their 2008 debut, finally topping the UK album chart with their last effort, Cavalier Youth, and this punchy, glossy fifth album is sure to cement their success among fans of Foo Fighters and Biffy Clyro. Unlike those bands, however, You Me at Six still seem to have little originality or depth to offer. The meaty, swaggering title track and the racing Plus One are exhilarating, but moments of passing interest are few among the ge
  
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• The Flaming Lips: Oczy Mlody review – ponderous synth psychedelia

  15-01-2017 09:00
  
  (Bella Union)While continuing in the subdued, synth-heavy vein of 2013’s The Terror, the 15th album from Oklahoma psychedelicists the Flaming Lips is at least less lyrically bleak, its conceptual arc encompassing freely defecating green-eyed unicorns, sleep and futuristic drugs. Rich in interesting R&B-influenced textures, its songs too often fail to engage, particularly on a ponderous second half. And there’s still no solution to the recurring problem they’ve had since dit
  
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• Mike Westbrook: Paris review – reflections on a lifetime’s work

  15-01-2017 09:00
  
  (ASC)Recorded live in Paris last year after his 80th birthday, this solo piano set finds Mike Westbrook reflecting on a lifetime’s work as a composer. As well as instrumental jazz, this has included everything from music-theatre to brass bands, mostly written in collaboration with his wife, Kate. Themes from some of these, such as Citadel/Room 315, The Ass and Paintbox Jane, appear among 20 short pieces, along with favourites by Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith and others. Westbrook’s st
  
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• Julie Byrne: Not Even Happiness review – a voice of rare elegance

  15-01-2017 09:00
  
  (Basin Rock)Julie Byrne’s 2014 debut had a tiny release but spread far afield through word-of-mouth: here, among a sea of folk sirens, was someone really worth tuning in to. A self-taught fingerpicker, this peripatetic American has a voice of rare elegance, pitched low and misty, and plenty of gentle significance to relay. On her second album, it glides across landscapes both external (Sea As It Glides) and internal (All the Land Glimmered), picking out detail others might not perceiv
  
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• Brandon Can’t Dance: Graveyard of Good Times review – joyful and triumphant

  15-01-2017 09:00
  
  (Lucky Number)Philadelphia native Brandon Ayres, AKA Brandon Can’t Dance, rattles through styles and influences so readily that on first listen this ramshackle, self-produced collection feels like an arch experiment in mimicry. So Deep, So Tortured, So Freak’s Marilyn Manson-isms are gloriously OTT, while A Greyhound Named Chelsea expertly apes Elliott Smith-esque singer-songwriter woes, rhyming the title with “chalice of ecstasy” in a tongue-in-cheek list of basic needs.
  
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• Baba Zula: XX review – a heady Turkish brew

  15-01-2017 08:59
  
  (Glitterbeat)“They might not like us but no one can say we’re not original,” declares Osman Murat Ertel of the group he helped found 20 years back. He’s right – Baba Zula are a one-off, their “Istanbul psychedelia” offering an often madcap brew of Anatolian folk, krautrock and reggae. XX is in part a “Best Of” collection, although it chooses remixes and live tracks over the originals, and adds another disc of dub cuts for good measure. It&rsq
  
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• Cello Unwrapped: Alban Gerhardt, Aurora Orchestra; Christophe Coin – review

  15-01-2017 08:30
  
  Kings Place, London
  The year-long Cello Unwrapped season got off to an exhilarating start with Alban Gerhardt and Christophe CoinThe big “what ifs” of music are mostly to do with loss. What if Mozart had not died young, Beethoven had kept his hearing, Chausson hadn’t ridden that bicycle into a wall? Occasionally a chance gain, if of a more isolated kind, grips our imagination. Had the Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) not been medically unfit for milita
  
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• Tchaikovsky: Symphonies 3, 4 and 6 CD review – depth and rapture

  15-01-2017 08:25
  
  Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Petrenko(Onyx) (2 CDs)The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and their Russian chief conductor Vasily Petrenko have an instinctive rapport, audible in the electrifying first volume in this series (Symphonies 1, 2, 5). It’s evident again here, importantly in the much-loved No 6 (“Pathetique”). From the soulful opening bassoon solo, warm strings and alert woodwind detail, this is a reading of depth and passion rather than surface angst.
  
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• The Florilegium Series: Medieval and Renaissance CD review – a treasure trove

  15-01-2017 08:20
  
  (L’Oiseau Lyre) (50 CDs)This richly rewarding collection brings together music across the centuries, from plainsong and the Carmina Burana to the late Renaissance, touching the early baroque of Monteverdi. It is also a celebration of a period of wonderful creativity in the British early music scene around the 1980s. Almost all the artists were from this country, nurtured and supported by the record industry: the piercing, simple eloquence of Anthony Rooley’s Consort of Musicke in mad
  
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• Kodály and Dohnányi: Chamber Works for Strings CD review – Hungarian passion

  15-01-2017 08:15
  
  Simon Smith, Clare Hayes, Paul Silverthorne, Katherine Jenkinson
  (Resonus)Zoltán Kodály appears to have deliberately deprived himself of the pleasure of writing for the cello, his favourite instrument, when composing his string Serenade, Op 12 in 1920. Scored for two violins and viola, the texture is light and airy but the sonority rich and inventive, despite the lack of a conventional lower register. Like the Duo for Violin and Cello, Op 7, the Serenade abounds with acer
  
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• Wiley: The Godfather review – he’s back with a banger

  15-01-2017 08:00
  
  The godfather of grime’s delayed album is a rattling tour de forceScheduled to come out last September, Wiley’s 11th album was cancelled shortly before release, the motive still unclear. “Pointless I reckon,” tweeted the man himself – a routinely embattled, Eeyore-ish presence in a genre whose go-to emotion is menace. (“Various reasons,” stated a PR earlier this week.)Wiley’s clipped monotone continues to be a thing of wonder Continue reading...
  
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