Music news

• Cardi B Embarks On Her First UK Tour

  16-04-2017 19:11
  
  Supported by: Tizzy and Brandz, Tempa, Lotto Boyzz , Ms Banks and Kojo Funds, she is about to tour the U.K for the first time..
  
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• 27 Amazing Minecraft Builds That Will Blow Your Mind

  16-04-2017 18:45
  
  From Bieber to Game of Thrones...
  
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• 13 Facts That Have Just Been Unveiled About Star Wars: The Last Jedi

  16-04-2017 18:01
  
  Here's everything we learned at Star Wars Celebration 2017.
  
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• Britten-Pears Orchestra/Alsop review – vivid Britten and Bartók

  16-04-2017 16:11
  
  Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh
  Marin Alsop inspired individuality and panache, and led a zinging European premiere of a special John Adams workLola Montez’s extraordinary story has been told in films, and could in itself be a whole opera, with characters including her lovers Alexandre Dumas, père, Liszt and Ludwig I of Bavaria. But American theatregoers feted her as a cabaret hoofer, and that’s the cameo John Adams gives her in his Girls of the Golden West, which will premiere at S
  
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• St John Passion review – Britten Sinfonia deliver no sermons, but plenty of feeling

  16-04-2017 15:24
  
  Barbican, London
  Mark Padmore resurrected the role of Evangelist in an experimental staging of Bach’s choral masterpiece that included compelling readings by Simon Russell BealeBach performed his St John Passion four times between 1724 and 1749, and on each occasion it was somewhat different, with sections included or left out. Nowadays, as with his other major choral works, interpretations come in all shapes and sizes. Large-scale performances with big choirs and orchestras, though, are a
  
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• A Past Winner Of The Voice Has Been Teaching Prince Harry How To Dance

  16-04-2017 14:43
  
  The 2014 champion has dance skills fit for a prince
  
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• Kylie Jenner And Tyga Go To Extreme Lengths To Avoid Each Other At Coachella Amid Rumours Of Growing Jealousy Over Travis Scott 'Friendship'

  16-04-2017 14:24
  
  More drama in the life of a Kardashian star
  
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• Liam Payne Drives Fans Absolutely Wild With Saucy Crotch Grabbing Selfie

  16-04-2017 14:03
  
  All eyes were on Liam's hand when he uploaded a suggestive snap
  
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• Lady Gaga Shocks Fans By Dropping Brand New Song 'The Cure' During Coachella Performance

  16-04-2017 13:40
  
  The singer has thrilled monsters all over the world with a new track
  
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• Lady Gaga electrifies Coachella 2017 – review

  16-04-2017 13:17
  
  As a replacement for Beyoncé, her newer tracks didn’t always land but she delivered the faultless crowd-pleaser expected of herFilling a slot that was once set to be occupied by Beyoncé is at best difficult and at worst utterly terrifying, her position at the very top of the industry uncontested. So when she had to drop out of headlining Coachella because of her pregnancy, organisers were stuck with the unenviable process of finding another performer to satisfy a disappointed
  
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• Sophie Kasaei Reveals She Wants To Dominate And Whip Her Boyfriend Joel Corry

  16-04-2017 13:12
  
  Her deepest S&M desires have been explained
  
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• Harry Styles Stuns Fans With Incredible Debut Solo Live Performance On Saturday Night Live

  16-04-2017 12:52
  
  The 1D superstar played two solo tunes
  
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• Stephanie Davis Declares Her Undying Love For Jeremy McConnell Calling Him Her "Soul Mate"

  16-04-2017 12:32
  
  She also called him her "nightmare"
  
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• Marnie Simpson Dresses As A Sexy Easter Bunny And Discusses The 'Karma' Of Her Relationship With Lewis Bloor

  16-04-2017 12:04
  
  The Geordie Shore lass is ready to deliver some Easter surprises
  
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• Hifi Sean: ‘I was consumed with guilt because I’d hurt people’

  16-04-2017 11:00
  
  After 90s success with the Soup Dragons, Sean Dickson moved to New York, came out and broke down. Now, as Hifi Sean, he’s ready for the spotlight againSean Dickson was scared when he made his first Hifi Sean track. “I’d not made music for nearly 15 years,” he says, “and I was terrified about it!” But everything is going swimmingly. Having just turned 50, Dickson has a bona fide hit with the gospel-house of Testify, which managed to be big both in Ibiza and on
  
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• Little Dragon: Season High review – an overdue day in pop’s sun

  16-04-2017 10:00
  
  (Because)
  Having seemed on the verge of a breakthrough for so long, Sweden’s eccentric electronic four-piece finally indulge in pure musical pleasureThe worst thing a reviewer has said about Little Dragon is that they make the kind of music you hear in Urban Outfitters. The second worst thing is that they were the band that almost made it.It’s true that the Swedish four-piece’s breakthrough album six years ago, Ritual Union, may have been the fashionable synthpop you’d&nb
  
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• Beth Ditto review – a joyous comeback

  16-04-2017 10:00
  
  Omeara, London
  Pop has been duller without former Gossip singer Beth Ditto’s outspoken politics and powerhouse voiceIf ever there was a good time for a “fat, feminist lesbian from Arkansas” to return to the fray of pop music, it feels like now. This was how Beth Ditto used to disarmingly describe herself in her mid-00s heyday when, as lead singer of the band Gossip, she pushed herself, and her body, to the forefront of attention, appearing naked on the covers of NME and Love ma
  
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• Tinie Tempah: Youth review – lots of hooks, not enough Tinie

  16-04-2017 09:00
  
  (PARLOPHONE)It’s easy to forget that the only British male soloist with more number one singles than Tinie is Cliff Richard, and Cliff had 50 years’ head start. Youth won’t extend Tinie’s run, although it’s more poppy than 2013’s excellent Demonstration. Only the title track really delivers that charming mix of self-lacerating honesty and boastful sass which made him a star. Elsewhere, it’s a generic, efficient album engineered for Spotify. Too many song
  
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• Spoek Mathambo: Mzansi Beat Code review – lightening up for the dance floor

  16-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Teka Records)Littered with crude synths, vulgar lyrics and migraine-inducing basslines, Spoek Mathambo’s music is known for being dark, twisted and often brilliant. On his latest record, however, the Soweto-born producer opts for glossier, club-friendly house beats better suited to the dancefloor than to attentive, repeated listens. Incorporating everything from Zulu folk to caffeine-jittery township tech, Mzansi Beat Code offers a varied, vibrant selection of South African styles, but Ma
  
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• Splashh: Waiting a Lifetime review – winning tunes from the Anglo-Aussies

  16-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Cinematic Music Group)If not likely to generate as much interest as the Beach Boys’ Smileor Neil Young’s Homegrown, Honey + Salt, the album Splashh recorded then aborted last year, does at least furnish Waiting a Lifetime with an odd backstory. The Anglo-Australian quartet had been talking of a radical shift away from the commercial garage rock of their debut to more experimental, synth-based electronica. But very little evidence of that genre detour survives – only Look Down
  
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• Duke Ellington: An Intimate Piano Session review – always striking the right note

  16-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Storyville)Unearthed from Duke’s legendary stockpile of private recordings, this dates from 1972 – just him and a grand piano, occasionally joined by Anita Moore and Tony Watkins, his vocalists at the time. Duke may not have been a virtuoso pianist (at one point he’s heard to murmur, “This piano’s too honest; it shows all my flaws!”), but he had the composer’s gift of conjuring a mood with a simple phrase, or surprising you with a sudden shift in the ha
  
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• Angaleena Presley: Wrangled review – country feminist mixes tough and tender

  16-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Mining Light/Thirty Tigers)Her 2014 debut, American Middle Class, put the late-flowering Kentucky songwriter on the map – “ a 10-year overnight sensation”, as she puts it here – and this follow-up delivers more sharp-eyed social vignettes: the teen pregnancies of High School, the search for salvation on Only Blood and Motel Bible. Much of Wrangled, though, is a caustic commentary on Presley’s path through a chauvinist music industry, especially on Country, a femini
  
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• Actress: AZD review – electronic maverick gets playfully deep

  16-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Ninja Tune)Banishing the spectre of retirement raised on 2014’s Ghettoville, Wolverhampton-born electronic producer Darren Cunningham returns with his Actress persona revamped and his sound reanimated by such typically high-flown inspirations as chrome, universal consciousness and the art of James Hampton. Rather than arcane and austere, though, his fifth album is by turns bleakly beautiful and playfully rampant: X22REME’s fast and funky techno disports itself with snorting minotaur
  
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• The Black Angels: Death Song review – a menacing return to form

  16-04-2017 08:59
  
  (Partisan)Given their name and their ongoing fixation with how the Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray encapsulated the dark side of the 1960s, perhaps the biggest surprise surrounding Death Song is that it has taken Texan psych-rockers the Black Angels five albums to finally hit upon that title. Pleasingly, following a hit-and-miss attempt to incorporate more whimsical strains of psychedelia into their sound on 2013’s Indigo Meadow, their fifth album marks a return to the threatening dr
  
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• Easter Oratorio; The Musical Offering; Holy Week festival – review

  16-04-2017 08:30
  
  Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden; Kings Place; St John’s Smith Square, London
  The Gabrieli Consort and Players excel in Bach’s often overlooked Easter Oratorio. And Rheinberger rocks…Early in 1725 Bach wrote a cantata about nymphs and shepherds for the birthday of a local duke for performance in his court or royal hunting lodge. Some five weeks later, those pastoral archetypes – Doris, Sylvia and their swains – had become the disciples, Mary Magdalene and the other Mar
  
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• Bach: Trios CD review – Ma, Thile and Meyer in perfect harmony

  16-04-2017 08:24
  
  Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer(Nonesuch)The virtuoso mandolinist and guitarist Chris Thile is that rare being: an all-round musician who can settle into any style, from bluegrass to classical. Here he has collaborated with two other consummate multitaskers, and friends, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and bass player Edgar Meyer. It took a few tracks to get used to the clipped, precise sound of the mandolin, at times evoking lute or harpsichord, but by the time these three fine musicians tackled the Fu
  
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• Monteverdi: Madrigali and Selva morale CD review – a fascinating overview

  16-04-2017 08:20
  
  Les Arts Florissants/Christie
  (Harmonia Mundi)As we begin 450th anniversary celebrations for Monteverdi, what better way to encounter the range of his astonishing genius than in this four-CD overview of his madrigal and small-scale dramatic output by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants. Recorded over several decades from 1980, the fresh voice of Guillemette Laurens (so moving in Lamento della Ninfa) has given way to younger singers in the Selva morale, recorded in 1986, and then the mini o
  
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• John Joubert: Organ Music CD review – essential 90th birthday celebration

  16-04-2017 08:15
  
  Tom Winpenny (organ)
  (Toccata Classics)John Joubert, 90 last month, was steeped in the rich musical tradition of the Anglican church when at school in his native Cape Town. This release celebrates some fine examples of his contribution to that tradition, appropriately recorded on the impressive Harrison and Harrison organ at St Alban’s cathedral, site of the execution of St Alban, the subject of a 1969 cantata which in turn provided material for his dark yet consolatory Reflections on a Ma
  
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• Coachella 2017: Saturday acts Bon Iver, Future, Drake and more reviewed

  16-04-2017 08:07
  
  The annual music festival’s first weekend continued in California with a surprise appearance from Drake and impressive outings for Thundercat and Warpaint Continue reading...
  
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• Benjamin Britten’s idyll under threat as festival plans car park

  16-04-2017 08:00
  
  Musicians campaign to protect views around historic Snape MaltingsThe trill of a skylark darting above the reedbeds shatters the early morning silence, as Teresa Cook looks out across the field where she grazes her sheep towards the world-famous Snape Maltings concert hall, home of the Aldeburgh festival.So far so pastoral. But storm clouds loom over this beauty spot in east Suffolk, where the unspoiled landscape once inspired the music of composer Benjamin Britten, one of the founders of the fe
  
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• Talking about a new generation … festivals ditch the ‘heritage acts’

  16-04-2017 01:05
  
  Why the rock gods of the past are headlining elsewhere as they are dropped from line-ups at US music eventsCoachella, the spring rite of passage for tens of thousands of California teenagers, kicks off this weekend with the familiar components: a superb desert vista, a funfair, stages for music, tents with DJs, celebrities and fashion.As a festival it could hardly be described as counter-cultural, yet this year there has been a minor revolution: after years of promoting re-formed oldies acts as
  
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