Music news

• Ferne McCann's Loved Ones Are 'Worried' As She Deals With "The Immense Strain" Of The Father Of Her Child Being Arrested

  30-04-2017 19:51
  "She has lost a lot of weight and looks worn out"
  
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• Jeremy McConnell Has Left Rehab And It Sounds Like He Is Already Turning His Life Around

  30-04-2017 19:21
  
  The reality star has also jetted off on holiday with lover Stephanie Davis
  
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• LPO/Mauceri review – grand, radiant and moving in the extreme

  30-04-2017 16:10
  
  Royal Festival Hall, LondonA beautifully structured evening featuring arrangements of Bach by Schoenberg and Wagner by Stokowski revealed music’s unending capacity for renewalA raconteur as well as a conductor, John Mauceri introduces his programmes from the podium. “This is about belief and transformation,” he told the audience ahead of his concert with the London Philharmonic as part of the Southbank’s Belief and Beyond Belief festival. An examination of music’s c
  
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• Turandot review – Opera North show how you solve a problem like Puccini

  30-04-2017 15:10
  
  Town Hall, Leeds
  This semi-staged version of Puccini’s experimental, grandiose final opera makes it more like an oratorio, and puts a bloodthirsty chorus at the centre of the action
  It’s hard not to be slightly alarmed by the number of executions taking place at Leeds Town Hall. In 2005, Opera North staged Handel’s grand oratorio Saul here, which presented the grisly spectacle of Goliath’s head bleeding through a linen bag. A year later, Strauss’s Salome served the
  
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• Kendall Jenner Strips Topless In £3,500 Boots After Coming Under Pressure For Fyre Festival Disaster

  30-04-2017 14:12
  
  Maybe the reality star was trying to cause a distraction from the backlash?
  
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• One Direction Fans Fly Into Panic As Zayn Malik Is Spotted In A Wheelchair

  30-04-2017 13:54
  
  "WHAT HAPPENED WHY ARE U IN A WHEELCHAIR ARE U OKAY DARLING"
  
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• Chloe Ferry Vows She Is Now A Wine Sipping And Anger Free Woman

  30-04-2017 13:29
  
  The Geordie Shore star says she is turning over a new leaf
  
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• This Ancient Peru City Is Taking On Machu Picchu With A Cable Car

  30-04-2017 12:55
  
  Ancient ruin FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!
  
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• Selena Gomez Has Slammed Justin Bieber In A New Song Called Bad Girlfriend

  30-04-2017 12:51
  
  Is Selena hitting back at their well documented relationship drama?
  
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• Has Selena Gomez Slammed Justin Bieber In A New Song Called Bad Girlfriend?

  30-04-2017 12:51
  
  Is Selena hitting back at their well documented relationship drama?
  
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• Michelle Keegan And Mark Wright Hit Back At Claims Their Marriage Was Rocked By His Ex Lucy Mecklenburgh

  30-04-2017 12:29
  
  The husband and wife are perfectly happy, thank you very much
  
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• Kim Kardashian’s “Unairbrushed Bum” Photos Were Planned ‘Like A Military Operation’

  30-04-2017 12:04
  
  The reality star's candid moment had been skilfully managed
  
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• On my radar: Joe Mount’s cultural highlights

  30-04-2017 11:00
  
  The Metronomy singer on living in Paris, vintage curtains, and growing his own rhubarbBorn in 1982 and raised in Devon, singer and musician Joe Mount is the founder of the electronic group Metronomy. The 34-year-old’s interest in music began at school, where he played the drums in various bands. While studying at the University of Brighton he became involved in the local electronic scene, later performing as a DJ. Metronomy have released five studio albums, including the Mercury-nominated
  
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• No room for nostalgia as Bob Dylan keeps show on the road

  30-04-2017 11:00
  
  Singer who redefined rock’n’roll 50 years ago continues to confound expectations as tour brings him to London PalladiumBob Dylan is well into his sixth decade of confounding every expectation of him. The 1960s’ lightning rod, the voice-of-a-generation folk singer who then redefined rock’n’roll with his “thin, wild mercury sound”, achieved this status only by doing as he, and nobody, else saw fit.He has continued in that vein. He is 75 now, and controvers
  
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• Gorillaz: Humanz review – Albarn pulls his punches

  30-04-2017 10:00
  
  (Parlophone)
  Gorillaz’s on-trend party album brings reassuring strangeness and a clever use of collaborators, but little real-world clout“The sky is falling baby/ Drop that ass ’fore it crash,” chants Vince Staples on the nagging Ascension, the first song on Gorillaz’s soundtrack for a party at the end of the world. Billed as a nonstop, 125bpm-and-over playlist, the return of Gorillaz after seven years largely delivers on the promise of a rolling vibe – one wi
  
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• Future Islands review – not drowning but raving

  30-04-2017 10:00
  
  Barrowlands, Glasgow
  Future Islands’ Samuel T Herring is one of the most sweatily intense singers around, but it’s not just theatricsIt takes all of five songs for Samuel T Herring’s checked shirt to transition from ironed fabric to sodden dishrag. Future Islands’ frontman spends much of this first night of the band’s UK tour looking as though he has just crawled on to a beach after a boating accident – wild-eyed, gesticulating, drenched. To list Herring&rsquo
  
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• Wall: Untitled review – palpably fractious post-punk

  30-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Wharf Cat)Since recording their debut, Wall have already split. The New York punks won’t say why, but clues may lie in Untitled, which is pricklier than their absurdist self-titled 2016 EP. Mining no-wave and hardcore, Wall lurch from soured melodies to stabbing guitar as Elizabeth Skadden and Sam York castigate climbers (High Ratings) and climate change (Everything in Between), and fantasise about killing catcallers (Turn Around). A Morricone twang makes Wounded at War into a leering wes
  
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• Sylvan Esso: What Now review – purposeful pop bangers

  30-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Loma Vista)Though Sylvan Esso’s eponymous debut was a charming indie-dance diversion from the day job – Amelia Meath in Appalachian a cappella trio Mountain Man, Nick Sanborn in psych-folkers Megafaun and as spectral laptop experimenter Made of Oak – the duo’s excellently named second album seems much more sure of its purpose. On it, they gave themselves, Meath says, “full permission to just make bangers”, and there are three stellar examples: the driven, pul
  
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• Mark Lanegan Band: Gargoyle review – a career high

  30-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Heavenly)Always keen on collaborations – he has previously worked with Soulsavers, Queens of the Stone Age, PJ Harvey, Moby and Isobel Campbell, among others – much of Mark Lanegan’s 10th solo album was composed with British musician Rob Marshall, the rest with longtime foil Alain Johannes. The results represent a career high, the synths, Krautrock rhythms and flashes of electronica (witness the drum’n’bass loop anchoring Drunk on Destruction) first introduced on 2
  
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• Lisa Knapp: Till April is Dead – A Garland of May review – fearless folklore

  30-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Ear to the Ground)Lisa Knapp completes a trio of extraordinary albums with a celebration of May Day, its songs, dances, fertility rites and wyrdlore. The songs are traditional, but dressed in the artful arrangements of Knapp and partner/producer Gerry Diver. Acoustica, electronica, birdsong and speech interweave among whirring clocks and chimes, dropping us through time. Staines Morris comes from 17th-century theatre, Bedfordshire Carol, a duet with Mary Hampton, is Sunday school Edwardiana. Kn
  
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• Feist: Pleasure review – an atmosphere that really breathes

  30-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Polydor)Feist’s pared-back new album isn’t one of those ladylike confessionals that too many female singer-songwriters put out. Combining the creak, hiss and slamming doors of near-DIY recording with the unexpected rattle of early PJ Harvey (on standout tracks like Pleasure), the Canadian artist spends 11 songs examining her recent past, sidestepping easy cliches. That’s not to say that the album isn’t accessible – I Wish I Didn’t Miss You packs a chorus and
  
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• Charlie Watts Meets the Danish Radio Big Band Review – serious jazz from Stones drummer

  30-04-2017 09:00
  
  (Impulse)Should you need convincing that the Rolling Stones drummer is also a serious jazz musician, spend some time with these seven tracks, which find him quite at home in some very fast company indeed. Jamming is one thing; finding oneself in the midst of one of Europe’s top jazz orchestras is something else, and Charlie Watts handles it with aplomb. The music, arranged and conducted by trumpeter and fellow Brit Gerard Presencer, is taken from a live concert. Naturally, there are three
  
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• Mary J Blige: Strength of a Woman review – a steady return

  30-04-2017 08:59
  
  (Universal/Island)Following a widely publicised divorce, R&B queen Mary J Blige has chosen a telling title for her latest release: this is not an album that seethes or despairs; rather, it grapples with insecurity and ultimately revels in determined power. Strength of a Woman bursts to life with previously released opener Love Yourself (a Kanye-featuring, brass-heavy jam), while clever guest spots bring a fresher sound: Quavo, DJ Khaled and Missy Elliott on Glow Up are channelling trap-lite,
  
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• Delius, Elgar: String Quartets CD review – zest and passion

  30-04-2017 08:24
  
  Villiers Quartet(Naxos)Elgar’s only string quartet, a masterpiece of the chamber music repertoire premiered in 1918, is well established. That of his contemporary Delius, dating from a year earlier, is more of a rarity. The composer was discontented with his first (three-movement) attempt and reworked the opening movement and the wistful “Late Swallows” slow movement. Both versions are included here, each characterised by boundless melody, unexpected major-minor shifts and rhyt
  
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• The Edge of Time: Palaeolithic bone flutes of France and Germany CD review – from cave to Cage

  30-04-2017 08:20
  
  Anna Friederike Potengowski (bone flutes), Georg Wieland Wagner (percussion)
  (Delphian)The earliest music is lost in the mists of time; we can never recapture what it must have been like. But we do have some precious instrument survivors, none more remarkable than bone flutes from 40,000 years ago found in cave sites in southern Germany. These flutes have now been reconstructed as part of the European Music Archaeology Project and are here treated with real imagination, in conjunction with natur
  
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• Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett: ‘We fight over everything’

  30-04-2017 08:00
  
  As Gorillaz release their new album, Humanz, the duo discuss Brexit, predicting dystopia, and how they made up after not speaking for three yearsOn the top floor of his west London studio, “13”, Damon Albarn is sitting at a small wooden table that his dad made sometime in the 1970s. In front of him are a glass of nettle tea, some freshly squeezed juice in a union jack mug and a single cigarette. He’s in a good mood, and he is talking about Gorillaz, the cartoon band that he for
  
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