Music news

• Lights Out

  23-04-2017 20:30 via mtv.co.uk
  
  Lights Out
  
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• Liam Payne's Ex-Girlfriend Sophia Smith Gushes Over His New Baby With Cheryl

  23-04-2017 16:35
  
  Everyone is happy for Chez and Liam's bundle of joy
  
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• Rihanna Amuses Fans By Posting Saucy Photoshopped Photos Of The Queen To Help Celebrate Her 91st Birthday

  23-04-2017 16:16
  
  Queen Riri and The actual Queen together as one
  
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• Orkesta Mendoza review – indie-mambo party starters revel in the unexpected

  23-04-2017 16:05
  
  Rich Mix, London
  Mixing electronics, hip-hop, ska and 60s rock styles with traditional Latin stompers, the US-Mexican fusion band are both experimental and rousing Orkesta Mendoza are a rousing and experimental Latin fusion band based in Tucson, Arizona, but dominated by two musicians who were born in Sonora, Mexico. At the front of the stage is Sergio Mendoza, a multi-instrumentalist, producer and composer, best known for his work with Calexico, and next to him is the dapper, furiously energeti
  
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• Demi Lovato Has Set Instagram On Fire With Her Latest Sexy Swimsuit Selfies

  23-04-2017 15:52
  
  The Confident singer is definitely still confident!
  
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• Lucy Mecklenburgh Hits Back At Body-shaming Trolls Who Accused Her Of Photoshopping Selfies

  23-04-2017 14:15
  
  The reality star has had enough of the unfair criticism
  
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• Ed Sheeran Planning On Quitting Music For Good At The End Of His Divide World Tour?

  23-04-2017 13:51
  
  Ed could be gone from the charts for 5 years, 10 years, or... FOREVER
  
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• Kylie Jenner Goes Public With Travis Scott - While Kendall Jenner Confirms ASAP Rocky Romance

  23-04-2017 13:29
  
  Love is all around
  
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• Charlotte Crosby Says She Wants To Start Having Babies With Stephen Bear Within The Next Three Years

  23-04-2017 13:10
  
  Baby joy for the reality pair could be coming soon
  
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• Ferne McCann's Boyfriend Arrested For "Attempted Murder" Amid Reports She is "Pregnant With His Child"

  23-04-2017 12:23
  
  Arthur Collins was arrested by police on Saturday in connection with an acid attack in London
  
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• Send us your questions for Liam Gallagher…

  23-04-2017 12:00
  
  Got something to ask the former Oasis singer? Here’s your chance, ahead of his summer tour and debut solo albumHe loves a set-to, does Liam Gallagher; he talks a good fight. Out on tour soon, he’ll be playing festivals to promote his forthcoming debut solo album, As You Were. “Some super sweet sounds,” he trailed last year. And: “Be afraid you so called troubadours and you plastic rock n rollers give your paper crown 1 last cuddle coz I’m on my way.”So i
  
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• Charli XCX review – sugar, smut and smart pop philosophy

  23-04-2017 10:00
  
  Jazz Cafe, London
  The world-beating British songwriter distils pop down to its shiny, pulsating essenceOne of the most significant pop stars in the world is crammed into a tiny venue, clasping sweaty fingers with her most proactive superfans. Her “creative director”, AG Cook, unleashes shrill sounds from under a cowl. You imagine his settings are labelled things like “latex mosquito”, or “helium apocalypse”. Charli XCX, meanwhile, has come dressed as a Formula
  
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• Woods: Love Is Love review – defiant American optimism

  23-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Woodsist)Woods’ latest album was written and recorded in response to the US election. At first, its loose elegance seems as inappropriate as a waltz around the slaughterhouse, but gradually these six songs accumulate power from their stubbornly sunny defiance. Jeremy Earl’s songwriting is as strong as on last year’s City Sun Eater in the River of Light, and his psychedelic folk-pop band manage to sound forward-looking. Baleful horns add notes of horror to the wide-eyed optimis
  
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• Steps: Tears on the Dancefloor review – unashamed sugar-rush

  23-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Steps Music LLP)
  There’s something almost moving about returning 90s pop mainstays Steps’ refusal to change. Their fifth album sounds exactly how you remember (or imagine) a Steps album to sound; second-tier Abba choruses (not an insult); heavily signposted, Eurovision-grade key changes, and a sense of fun. Lead single Scared of the Dark is fabulously dramatic; You Make Me Whole is high-energy dance-pop JLo would kill for, while the brilliant Happy encases a devastating breakup in l
  
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• Ray Davies: Americana review – Kink’s Stateside almanac

  23-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Sony/Legacy)
  The Kinks frontman’s first album of new material in a decade draws on his 2013 memoir, taking as its theme the huge part the United States has played in his life. It’s no sentimental journey. The opening title track may be bathed in a warm country glow, but The Invaders recalls the hostile reception the band drew there in the mid-60s (they were banned from performing by the American Federation of Musicians for four years); and if The Deal is wide-eyed at the outset, it&
  
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• One to watch: HMLTD

  23-04-2017 09:00
  
  This guitar band with a taste for the avant-garde are the latest outfit to be hailed as rock’s savioursIn a windowless room in Old Street, east London, a female mannequin presides over an alarmingly sharp-looking knife, an overflowing ashtray and two types of fake blood. Pink velvet is draped on the walls, a labyrinthine mesh of cables obscures the floor. Crammed in this recording studio, six extravagantly attired 20- to 22-year-olds spend 10 hours a day, six days a week, concocting an ele
  
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• Maximo Park: Risk to Exist review – tub-thumping with soul

  23-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Cooking Vinyl)“I will attempt to articulate what’s wrong/ Even if there’s not much to say,” asserts Maximo Park’s Paul Smith on I’ll Be Around. Sure enough, the Newcastle quartet throw themselves into the political mire with vim on the likes of build-and-release Farage broadside Get High (No, I Don’t) or the title track, which berates lack of empathy for refugees over a chopping riff and vamping organ. Smith’s lyrics, crystal clear to the point of
  
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• Kasai Allstars: Around Félicité review – Kinshasa brought to vibrant life

  23-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Crammed)Film-maker Alain Gomis’s award-winning feature Félicité is a portrait of Kinshasa’s vibrant music scene told through Félicité, a single mother struggling to make it as a bar singer. It presumably helps that her backing band is played by the Kasai Allstars, the city’s most famous and inventive outfit, and that her vocal parts come from the group’s lead singer, Muambuyi. The soundtrack is a showcase for the Allstars’ dazzling mix o
  
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• Georgia Mancio and Alan Broadbent: Songbook review – uplifting

  23-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Roomspin)It’s rare to find a songwriting and performing partnership so well matched, yet this is the first album of their joint compositions. Alan Broadbent’s lucid melodies and Georgia Mancio’s delicately evocative lyrics already have that inseparable feeling. There’s a quiet elegance, too, in the blend of her voice and his piano, not singer and accompanist so much as the mutual expression of the same idea. A mildly sad, autumnal air drifts through most of these 11 piec
  
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• Gas: Narkopop review – austere and immersive

  23-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Kompakt)
  Last year, the storied Cologne label Kompakt released a box set of Gas’s ambient, techno-derived works: Box. With hindsight, that well-received retrospective now seems like a palate-cleanser for this first new Gas album in 17 years, from Kompakt co-founder Wolfgang Voigt, who releases under many aliases. Narkopop consists of 11 typically unnamed but numbered tracks of austere, saturated electronic polyphony. Ambient is an even more subjective genre than most, so depending on your
  
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• Franck, Szymanowski, Fauré CD review – performances to savour

  23-04-2017 08:25
  
  Tasmin Little (violin), Piers Lane (piano)
  (Chandos)The selling point here may be the Franck Sonata for violin and piano, but the less familiar repertoire – Fauré’s Romance Op 28 and three works by Szymanowski – makes its own case in these impassioned performances by violinist Tasmin Little and her regular pianist Piers Lane. All their discs for Chandos include duo works that deserve to be better known. Szymanowski’s Sonata Op 9 (1904), expansive and romantic
  
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• Handel: Water Music CD review – Cummings makes the music dance

  23-04-2017 08:20
  
  FestspielOrchester Göttingen/Cummings
  (Accent)Royal patronage has rarely produced music as wonderful as Handel’s Water Music, which was played 300 years ago on 17 July 1717 for George I’s journey on the Thames. Bursting with life and a rather English sensibility, its subtlety of scoring is splendidly explored in this new recording from the Göttingen Festival Orchestra. Laurence Cummings makes the music dance and sing: touches like leaving the perky wind trios without contin
  
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• William Petter: Ablaze With Light CD review – an outstanding tribute

  23-04-2017 08:15
  
  The Rose Singers/Foggitt, Paul Plummer (organ)
  (Novum)British choral music lost a rare talent in 2016 with the untimely death of William Petter at the age of 34. This outstanding recording, made by singers who loved and respected him (and who name themselves after his daughter, Rose), makes an uplifting and poignant tribute to a musician who plainly still had so much to offer. There is a timeless quality to his writing, whether it be his moving setting of the Lord’s Prayer or his triumphan
  
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• Kendrick Lamar: Damn review – another dial-shifting release

  23-04-2017 01:05
  
  (Top Dawg/Interscope)
  More than drugs, crime or gynaecology, greatness is arguably the meta-theme of all hip-hop, and Lamar both tells and shows his pre-eminenceFor all Kendrick Lamar’s supernatural prowess as a rapper, he did not rise again last Sunday. Rumours had been circulating that Damn, the Compton lyricist’s fourth album, was only the first half of an Easter two-parter, with the second half following the Good Friday release – an Ascension, of sorts.As it is, we just hav
  
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