Music news

• Moon Duo: Occult Architecture Vol 1 review – spare and austere space rock

  02-02-2017 23:45
  
  (Sacred Bones)Orbiting a parallel earth, where Spacemen 3 are bigger than the Beatles and no song can legally be shorter than four minutes, are Moon Duo. Over seven years and four albums the Portland pair have rarely wavered in their commitment to exploring the outer edges of space rock and psych, and taking in influences as diverse as Silver Apples and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their latest effort, Occult Architecture, is a pair of albums inspired by gnostic literature and hidden patterns in the sea
  
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• Japandroids: Near to the Wild Heart of Life review – emo-rock for grownups

  02-02-2017 23:45
  
  (Anti-)Few others do gorgeous distortion like Vancouver’s Japandroids. Previous records had a lo-fi garage edginess to them – skittish drums, lyrical yelps, cavalcades of crunch – but Near to the Wild Heart of Life, their third album, is so luxuriously gnarled it roars out of the speakers like the Revenant bear. The duo have nailed the art of the crunching, life-affirming crescendo. The title track has rousing get-in-a-moshpit-and-hug-your-mates choruses but it’s also ple
  
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• Ten Fé: Hit the Light review – Madchester meets Springsteen

  02-02-2017 23:15
  
  (Some Kinda Love)London-based duo Ben Moorhouse and Leo Duncan, AKA Ten Fé, are fresh-faced enough to pull off beards and long hair without looking as if they’ve been sleeping in an alley, but musically they’re indebted to much earlier generations. Madchester and Springsteen have left their mark on Hit the Light, to the point that it’s hard to identify what Ten Fé themselves bring to the party. Perhaps it’s the deftness with which they blend it all together.
  
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• Allison Crutchfield: Tourist in This Town review – uplifting pop with tension beneath

  02-02-2017 23:00
  
  (Merge) The first minute of Alabama singer-songwriter Allison Crutchfield’s debut album is sung a cappella. It’s an intimate experience, hearing her multitracked voice without accompaniment, and when the band kicks in it’s quite a surprise – not least because the dominant sound is 80s analogue synthesisers, a specialty of producer Jeff Zeigler. There are cooing backing vocals, buzzsaw new-wave guitars and one-finger synth patterns. Crutchfield’s lyrics are conversat
  
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• 'Game of Thrones' music comes to a stage near you

  02-02-2017 22:48
  Any fan of the HBO fantasy television series "Game of Thrones" will tell you that the show enthralls right from its opening title sequence accompanied by a foreboding instrumental piece played using drums and violins. Later this month, Ramin Djawadi, the composer for the show who wrote this catchy title track, takes a production of music from "Game of Thrones" on a live performance tour across Canada and the U.S. Three years in the making, the "Game of Thrones Live
  
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• Fufanu: Sports review – middling second outing by Icelandic post-punk revivalists

  02-02-2017 22:45
  
  (One Little Indian) There’s something slightly irrational about a lot of post-punk revivalism. Apparently unable to capture the sense of instability, the intensity of emotion, and the sheer levels of dissonance that poured forth from the likes of Public Image Limited and Joy Division, bands instead tend to mimic their hammering rhythms and grey guitar sound – qualities you can’t help feeling post-punk triumphed in spite of, not because of. It’s an aesthetic that Icelandic
  
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• Surfer Blood: Snowdonia review – Floridian surf-rockers return with sunny, scrappy pop

  02-02-2017 22:30
  
  (Joyful Noise/Secretly Canadian)Floridian rockers Surfer Blood’s name has come to be associated with trouble and tragedy. John Paul Pitts’ arrest for domestic violence in 2012, after which he accepted a “plea and pass” deal, triggered a backlash. Then last year their guitarist Thomas Fekete died of cancer at just 27. (During his illness, Kickstarter funds raised to help with his treatment were stolen from the band’s van.) Their fourth album is a tribute to Fekete, a
  
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• Duke Garwood: Garden of Ashes review – slow and sleazy desert blues

  02-02-2017 22:15
  
  (Heavenly)It won’t surprise you to learn that Duke Garwood is a collaborator of Mark Lanegan, such is his gravel-raked voice and penchant for syrupy, swampy folk (perhaps Lanegan only works with people who sing as if they’ve likewise been licking cacti). The Londoner’s sixth solo album gives the impression that he has been stocking up on Nick Cave films and hanging out in Joshua Tree: it has an otherworldly, heady quality suggesting sun-baked desert days, croc-skin boots and a
  
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• Elbow: Little Fictions review – as fine an album as they have made

  02-02-2017 22:00
  
  (Polydor) After Elbow’s 2014 The Take Off and Landing of Everything, singer Guy Garvey got married and drummer Richard Jupp left the band after 25 years. Such developments give their seventh album a mild air of reinvention. Songs are built around loops or percussive pianos; electric guitar motifs replace strummed acoustics and Garvey is audibly a man in love, although the results are more uplifting than gooey. With the big man’s vocals at his most crooning and elegiac, Magnificent (S
  
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• Will be true to my beliefs during Super Bowl show, says Gaga

  02-02-2017 21:48
  By Steve Keating HOUSTON (Reuters) - Lady Gaga revealed few details on Thursday of what viewers can expect from her much anticipated Super Bowl halftime show, but the outspoken singer assured she would remain true to her beliefs and passions. An advocate for lesbian, gay and transgender rights and a champion for inclusion, Lady Gaga's 13-minute concert on Sunday has generated speculation over whether she might use the spotlight to rebut U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial appointments an
  
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• Readers recommend: share your songs about unity

  02-02-2017 21:00
  
  Make your nomination in the comments and a reader will pick the best eligible tracks for a playlist next week – you have until Monday 6 February If you can think of a song that unifies or is about unity, we want to hear it. You have until 11pm on Monday 6 February to post your nomination and make your justification. RR contributor Sarah Chappell (who posts as AFictionHabit in the comments) will select from your recommendations and produce a playlist of favourites, to be published on 9 Febr
  
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• The Nile Project: Jinja review – easygoing and accessible African fusion

  02-02-2017 20:00
  
  (Nile Project)The Nile Project is an intriguing collective of musicians from the countries along the river and its tributaries, from Egypt down to Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi. They get together to explore musical connections, give workshops and concerts, and in the process have become something of a model for African cooperation on issues such as water conflicts. They have also created an accessible African fusion style, as they show with their first studio album. There’s an easygoing, bl
  
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• Eliza Carthy & The Wayward Band: Big Machine review – furious, timely folk

  02-02-2017 19:45
  
  (Topic/Proper)Four years ago, Eliza Carthy assembled a folk big band of distinguished friends to help promote her Wayward Daughter project. They gave some memorable concerts, and now – at last – all 12 have recorded an album together. It’s remarkable as much for the quality and range of her singing as for the inventive arrangements. Most of the songs are traditional, and include a furious, edgy treatment of Devil in the Woman, a story of domestic abuse now driven on by brass an
  
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• Seamus Blake: Bridges review – a jazz conversation outside of the mainstream

  02-02-2017 19:30
  
  (AMP)Seamus Blake, the Mingus Big Band saxophonist, is a contemporary jazz artist firmly rooted in the mainstream, but he likes conversations with people who aren’t. This refined set was made in Oslo with a young Norwegian group featuring the Kenny Wheeler-influenced trumpeter Hayden Powell and sleek pianist Espen Berg. The Norwegians are low-key but intimately bonded, and the ensemble sound has a graceful polyphonic warmth throughout, with some understated edginess in Blake’s Wayne
  
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• Trichotomy: Known-Unknown review – dreamy jazz trip into electronic territory

  02-02-2017 19:15
  
  (Challenge)The much-admired Australian piano trio Trichotomy (a band with Esbjörn Svensson Trio associations but independent compositional interests and a distinctive group feel) are launching their fifth album – an advance into more electronic territory without sacrificing their rugged, hooky themes and savvy pacing and drama. The trio’s punchy grooving – under pianist Sean Foran’s fluent lines and powerful chordwork, along with bassist Samuel Vincent’s light
  
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• Craig Taborn: Daylight Ghosts review – deep jazz insights

  02-02-2017 19:00
  
  (ECM)However far from familiar paths the American pianist Craig Taborn strays, he sounds surefootedly convinced of his route, and however private his music, it emits a vivid intensity. Daylight Ghosts – a superb quartet set with Chris Speed on reeds, Chris Lightcap on bass and the Bad Plus’s Dave King on drums – operates in Taborn’s favourite free-floating manner: changing fragments of melody rather than dominant themes come and go, steadily transforming th
  
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• Beyonce bares all in pregnancy photo shoot

  02-02-2017 18:51
  Pop superstar Beyonce on Thursday released a slew of photos of herself posing pregnant and nude, a day after announcing she was expecting twins with her husband, rapper Jay-Z. The photos, posted on the 35-year-old singer's website, beyonce.com, included a black-and-white nude photo, several topless shots and others in which she wears lingerie. The caption on the photos is "I have three hearts." The pictures, including some with the couple's 5-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy, were accompanied by poem
  
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• Maggie Roche obituary

  02-02-2017 18:42
  
  Singer who brought alto harmonies and quirky songwriting to the folk-pop family trio the RochesMaggie Roche, who has died aged 65, was the eldest of the trio of singing sisters the Roches, whose songs bridged the gap between American folk and pop styles. Maggie brought her low alto voice to the harmonies she wove with her sisters, Terre and Suzzy, in her quirky, often funny but always heartfelt songs.Maggie received her first big break when she and Terre attended a songwriting course led by Paul
  
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• AJ Tracey Wins MTV Brand New For 2017!

  02-02-2017 18:00
  
  The 'Buster Cannon' MC is "stoked" to win this year's title...
  
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• Confessions Of A Muslim Millennial: Travel Ban

  02-02-2017 17:55
  
  One moment I’m disgusted with my country, and the next I’m inspired.
  
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• Dave East Shares Video For 'It Was Written'

  02-02-2017 17:52
  
  Check it out here
  
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• Ty Dolla $ign And Wiz Khalifa Drop Visuals For 'Brand New'

  02-02-2017 17:49
  
  Check it out here
  
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• Scotty T Hits Back At Sexist Allegations With Statement After Jodie Marsh Compared Him To Donald Trump

  02-02-2017 17:26
  
  Scotty T hits back at Jodie Marsh.
  
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• Maisie Williams Talks Game of Thrones S7 & Her Arya Stark Spinoff!

  02-02-2017 17:13
  
  WE WANT TO SEE THIS RIGHT NOW.
  
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• ‘The music industry is brutal’: Rag’n’Bone Man and RAY BLK on being 2017’s most hotly tipped

  02-02-2017 17:06
  
  They’re both facing the pressure of massive expectation – so what can the winner of the BBC Sound of … and the Brits Critics’ Choice learn from each otherThe winner of the 2017 Brits Critics’ Choice award and the winner of the BBC Sound of 2017 have never met before today. In some senses, Rory Graham, 32, better known as Rag’n’Bone Man, and Rita Ekwere, 23, better known as RAY BLK, make for an intriguing study in contrasts. He hails from the small town
  
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• This Woman Got Her Pet Snake Stuck In Her Earlobe

  02-02-2017 17:00
  
  Sounds dirty but is mainly just plain weird.
  
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• 21 Weird Things People Have Used In A Period Emergency

  02-02-2017 16:57
  
  A SOCK?!
  
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• This Is Everything You Need To Know About VANT...Sort Of

  02-02-2017 16:50
  
  Guess which member of the London band's fave album is The Smurfs Go Pop!...
  
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• Thommessen: The Hermaphrodite CD review – lusty, intense and strung-out

  02-02-2017 16:45
  
  Oslo Sinfonietta/Eggen(Aurora)Olav Anton Thommessen is something of an elder statesman of Norwegian contemporary music, with a prolific back catalogue and august institutional connections. He also has a pedigree in early experimentalism. Fellow composer Nigel Osborne remembers: “Olav played the cello and something that looked like a meat cleaver, which he would beat the floor with like an angry troll.” Thommessen’s ballet-opera The Hermaphrodite dates from the 1970s and uses te
  
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• Coldplay throw support behind refugee and migrant charity

  02-02-2017 16:39
  
  Band becomes patron of Migrant Offshore Aid Station and Chris Martin sings a capella song on new fundraising filmColdplay have thrown their support behind a charity which has saved the lives of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants fleeing war and persecution in the Middle East.The band, which has a long history of support for a range of charitable causes, has become a long-term patron of Moas (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), which operates professional search and rescue missions in the Medi
  
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• Party Monster [Explicit]

  02-02-2017 16:32 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Party Monster
  
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• Debussy/Hosokawa: Etudes CD review – a pianist with an immaculate touch

  02-02-2017 16:30
  
  Momo Kodama(ECM)Debussy looked east for inspiration, enthralled by Javanese gamelans and Japanese woodcuts. Toshio Hosokawa, born in Hiroshima in 1955, writes wispy music rooted in the western tradition. Pianist Momo Kodama grew up in Osaka and studied in Paris; her first ECM album paired Takemitsu with Ravel and Messiaen. You can guess where this is going: a programme that alternates piano studies by Debussy and Hosokawa, intended to illuminate the cross-cultural influences of music written 100
  
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• This Is What It Was Like To Be At Harry Styles’ 23rd Birthday Party

  02-02-2017 16:28
  
  We've just reached a new level of nosey.
  
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• It's National LGBT History Month!

  02-02-2017 16:23
  
  And we've got all the info.
  
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• Bloch/Dallapiccola/Ligeti: Cello Suites CD review – melancholy vignettes and beautiful melodies

  02-02-2017 16:15
  
  Natalie Clein
  (Hyperion)The lone cello has played gateway to many a composer’s soul. Bach and Britten, most famously. Ernest Bloch wrote his three solo cello suites in the 1950s, near the end of his life, and they are fleeting and strange. As performed by Natalie Clein, their small scale is poignant – melancholy little vignettes, intimate and tender, as if she’s playing while flitting through troubled memories. She builds a programme with two other thrawn and candid postwar pie
  
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• Sampha: Process review – an unlikely star is born | Alexis Petridis' album of the week

  02-02-2017 16:00
  
  (Young Turks)
  The British producer-singer who’s worked with Beyoncé, Drake and Kanye releases a powerful debut album of experimental R&B about death and griefPop history is filled with backroom figures who were desperate to transcend their supporting role: from Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who somehow cobbled together a solo career despite being, as one commentator perceptively noted, “tone deaf and rhythmically challenged”, to Timbaland, ever eager to race o
  
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• Monteverdi: Madrigali Vol 3: Venezia CD review – a joyous celebration of the composer's range

  02-02-2017 16:00
  
  Les Arts Florissants/Agnew(Harmonia Mundi)After discs devoted to the madrigals that Monteverdi wrote in Cremona and Mantua, the final part of Les Arts Florissants’ anthology includes pieces from the Seventh and Eighth books. Published in Venice in 1619 and 1638 respectively, they were the last such collections to appear in the composer’s lifetime, and the 51 numbers (29 in book seven, 22 in book eight) include some of Monteverdi’s greatest music.Selecting a single disc of music
  
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• Michael Chapman: the man who connects Elton, Bowie, Nick Drake and Sonic Youth

  02-02-2017 15:57
  
  This cult guitar great’s career stretches from smoking joints with Drake to inspiring Thurston Moore to form a band – plus at least one gig with a drunk bearIn a muddy windbreak atop the Pennines, three fields over from Hadrian’s Wall, stands a 19th-century stone farmhouse where Michael Chapman has lived with his partner, Andru, “happily unmarried”, for the past 45 years. It is a dark winter night, and in their crimson-walled parlour, faces lit by the roaring fire,
  
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• Vicky Pattison Thinks Kim Woodburn Is 'Worse Than Everyone On Geordie Shore Put Together'

  02-02-2017 14:15
  
  Vicky Pattison hits out at Kim Woodburn.
  
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• Neighbours' Ryan Moloney Reveals If Toadie Should Be Suspicious Of Dee Bliss's Return 13 Years After Her 'Death'

  02-02-2017 13:55
  
  Yeah she drove off a cliff, but that doesn't mean she's dead, 'k?
  
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• Gemma Styles: Things I've Learned About White Feminism

  02-02-2017 13:22
  
  "Listen to people who have different backgrounds and experiences than yours."
  
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• Organizers lament cancellation of Timbuktu music festival

  02-02-2017 13:17
  ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — The last-minute cancellation of a well-known music festival in Timbuktu that had drawn thousands of foreigners to the remote Mali city marks a missed opportunity to bring hope to a former tourist hub struggling to recover after years of extremist threats, organizers said.
  
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• Evelyn Glennie/Trilok Gurtu review – a feelgood percussion feast

  02-02-2017 13:17
  
  Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
  Two big musical personalities celebrated Indian independence in hurried east-meets-west scratch project, rescued by Glennie and Gurtu’s conviviality and skill
  This was a one-off Celtic Connections commission to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian independence and featuring two of the world’s most famous percussionists. The programme – called The Rhythm in Me – was part improvisations, part reworkings of existing material by Glennie and Gurtu, an
  
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• Have Charlotte Crosby And Stephen Bear Just Confirmed Their Relationship?!

  02-02-2017 13:15
  
  Is it on? Is it not?!
  
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• RLPO/Petrenko – breathtaking agility of dazzling Daniil Trifonov

  02-02-2017 13:04
  
  Symphony Hall, BirminghamThe Russian piano virtuoso occupied the spotlight without flaunting his brilliance, though Petrenko and the Liverpool orchestra could have brought more dramaThough it has never achieved anything approaching the popularity of its two predecessors, Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto has never lacked great interpreters, from the composer himself onwards. As his performance with Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic showed so vividly, Daniil Trifonov is
  
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• Readers recommend playlist: songs about cheating

  02-02-2017 13:00
  
  A reader picks a playlist from your suggestions taking in duplicitous lovers and sporting indiscretions – Fela Kuti, Squeeze and the Clash all make the cut
  Here is this week’s playlist – songs picked by a reader from your suggestions after last week’s callout. Thanks for taking part. Read more about how our weekly Readers Recommend series works at the end of the piece.We start the playlist with Wild Man Fischer, who tells it like it is in Don’t Be a Singer; advice I
  
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• Taylor Swift’s Famous Best Album Speech Recited In Powerful Grammys Ad

  02-02-2017 12:51
  
  How do you visualise a speech? Like this...
  
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• Celebrity Big Brother 2017: Jedward Shock Viewers After Scrubbing Each Other Down Naked

  02-02-2017 12:37
  
  Jedward have a naked body scrub.
  
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• As Beyonce Announces Her Pregnancy The Celebrity World Has Lost Their Actual Minds

  02-02-2017 12:03
  
  *frantically checks Kimye's twitters*
  
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• Hailey Baldwin Just Threw Actual Shade At Selena Gomez And The Weeknd

  02-02-2017 11:56
  
  This is not a drill, people.
  
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