Music news

• Musical heroes and sporting legends | Letters

  10-09-2017 19:12
  George Butterworth | Theresa May’s Boycott | Towpath terrors | Countdown to Ecstasy | Speedy SuguruHow sad that The guide, Somme (Travel, 9 September) merely registers that Butterworth Farm, Pozières, “is named after a missing British soldier”. That soldier was George Butterworth, one of the outstanding composers of his time, great friend of Vaughan Williams and best known for his pieces The Banks of Green Willow and the musical setting for Housman’s poem The Shrop
  
  Read more

• EU flags at Last Night of the Proms anger Farage

  10-09-2017 17:53
  Former Ukip leader accuses concertgoers who waved flags of being in denial after remain campaigners hand out thousandsNigel Farage has accused concertgoers who waved European Union flags at the Last Night of the Proms on Saturday of being in denial about Brexit, as remain campaigners claimed a publicity victory when BBC TV pictures showed a sea of blue and gold stars at the traditionally patriotic event.
  Anti-Brexit activists claim they handed out around 7,000 free EU flags to ticket holders and
  
  Read more

• THIS Character Will Be The Main Focus Of Stranger Things Season 2

  10-09-2017 16:52
  Get ready to return to the Upside Down
  
  Read more

• Love Island's Olivia Attwood Is Basically Just As Posh As Camilla Thurlow

  10-09-2017 16:27
  The blonde reality babe had a very good (and expensive) education
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• The Last Night of the Proms review – a postcard from a country that never existed

  10-09-2017 16:25
  Royal Albert Hall, London
  Inflatable bananas, singalongs and a sea of union jacks. But what has the ‘traditional’ closing concert of Proms season got to do with Britain today?‘Are you ready?” a woman shouts, sprinting up the stairs. “Ready for the madness?” Her companion yells back: “I’m pumped.” Five minutes to get back to our seats and the ballgowns are necking their schooners of sauvignon blanc, the boating blazers are setting their game f
  
  Read more

• Rogan O'Connor Starts The Fighting Talk As He Prepares To Face Dan Osborne In Celeb Boxing Match

  10-09-2017 16:10
  The Ex on the Beach hunk will fight the Towie star in October
  
  Read more

• Erased Tapes Is Ten review – Record label toasts first decade with industrial bass, a bearded mystic and bird whistles

  10-09-2017 15:38
  Southbank Centre, London
  This two-day event celebrating the avant-garde record label brought a piano-playing mystic, rib-quaking Icelandic electronica and austere Irish ballads‘Now let’s turn the Royal Festival Hall into a rave!” In all my experience of concert-going at the Southbank Centre, this was a first. Most of the audience were already on their feet, but the prompt from Ólafur Arnalds – a composer and one half of Icelandic techno duo Kiasmos – had peop
  
  Read more

• A Real Housewives Star Has Just Threatened To Punch Out Stephen Bear

  10-09-2017 14:58
  Fighting talk from an unlikely reality star
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Is Megan McKenna About To Quit Towie And Sign A Record Deal?

  10-09-2017 14:24
  A huge record deal is heading her way, according to reports
  
  Read more

• Made In Chelsea's Louise Thompson Says Exercise Is Better Than Sex

  10-09-2017 14:09
  Oh - and she never loved Spencer
  
  Read more

• Sam Smith Opens Up About Mental Health Battle Endured Following His International Success

  10-09-2017 13:30
  The star says he struggled after being thrown into the spotlight
  
  Read more

• Stephen Bear Has Shared Some Terrifying Details About The Ghosts That Haunt Charlotte Crosby's House

  10-09-2017 13:01
  We are officially freaked out
  
  Read more

• EU flags and union jacks flutter at Last Night of the Proms - in pictures

  10-09-2017 12:47
  Promenaders fill the Royal Albert Hall for the annual classical music event after pro-EU activists hand out European flags Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• John Legend review – soul's starry-eyed charmer imparts irresistible rhythms

  10-09-2017 12:25
  Hydro, Glasgow
  The velvet-voiced superstar had to work to win over an initially restrained crowd, but over two hours his twirling showmanship earned a rapturous ovationHis beguiling 2016 album Darkness and Light may not have made a dent in the UK charts – it was released, rather bizarrely, amid the retail overload of December – but neo-soul superstar John Legend somehow seems bigger than ever. It is not just because of the 10 Grammys, an extended cameo in La La Land or his best song
  
  Read more

• On my radar: Stuart Braithwaite’s cultural highlights

  10-09-2017 11:00
  The Mogwai guitarist on true-crime podcasts, horror movies, New York’s best vegan restaurant, and a Tuareg songwriter to see before you dieBorn in South Lanarkshire in 1976, Stuart Braithwaite fronted band Deadcat Motorbike and drummed for Eska before forming post-rock band Mogwai in Glasgow in 1995. The band, known for their slow-building instrumental tracks and use of distortion, were championed by John Peel and recorded seven Peel Sessions between 1996 and 2004. Their last album, Rave T
  
  Read more

• The National: Sleep Well Beast review – a study in midlife angst

  10-09-2017 10:00
  (4AD)The acclaimed US band’s seventh album ramps up the complexity – and the self-flagellationBy now, most listeners will probably have a take on the National, originally out of Brooklyn via Cincinnati, now residing as far apart as LA and Copenhagen. Two pairs of multi-instrumentalist brothers and a lanky, lugubrious frontman, they deal in literate rock that presents at first as artily sombre, and eventually as one of the most nuanced 21st-century iterations of what used to be known
  
  Read more

• Zola Jesus: Okovi review – a perfect hybrid

  10-09-2017 09:00
  (Sacred Bones)Returning to long-term label Sacred Bones after a sojourn at Mute for 2014’s relatively poppy Taiga, Nika Roza Danilova has perfected her hybrid of industrial electronics and gothic power balladry on her fifth album. Bearing aloft a forensic inquiry into mortality and loss on the wings of her formidable voice, she soars from the shuddering strings and chilly wails of Exhumed to the trip-hop grandeur of Soak and the sweeping romanticism of Witness, via Siphon’s warm assu
  
  Read more

• Willie Watson: Folksinger Vol 2 review – no one makes old songs sound fresher

  10-09-2017 09:00
  (Acony)The canon of blues, country and gospel that fired up the 60s folk boom is currently inspiring a host of Americana acts, though none make the old songs sound fresher than Willie Watson. His second solo outing since quitting the Old Crow Medicine Show brings vivacity to some well-worn standards – The Cuckoo Bird, When My Baby Left Me, John Henry – thanks to a voice that’s young but weathered, strong but eerie, and comes backed by intricate banjo and guitar picking. Produce
  
  Read more

• Neil Young: Hitchhiker CD review – intimate return to a lost night in 1976

  10-09-2017 09:00
  (Reprise)Recorded one evening in August 1976, Hitchhiker is one of Neil Young’s “lost” albums, capturing the Canadian at his most intimate – just him, slightly stoned, his acoustic guitar and the odd burst of harmonica. Eight of the 10 tracks crop up on later sets, though Powderfinger (1979’s Rust Never Sleeps) and Hitchhiker (2010’s Le Noise) are very different songs from their better-known versions, the former particularly affecting when stripped back. Elsew
  
  Read more

• Lunice: CCCLX CD review – doesn’t quite add up

  10-09-2017 09:00
  (Lucky Me)In the five years since electronic duo TNGHT – Hudson Mohawke and Canadian producer Lunice – released their self-titled EP before announcing an indefinite hiatus, Mohawke has worked with artists such as Kanye West; Lunice has taken a more low-key route. Unfortunately, his debut solo album is largely underwhelming, especially for what’s described as a “theatrical showcase”. It’s industrial, but somehow not abrasive enough; ominous, but in an almost ch
  
  Read more

• Cyrus Chestnut: There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit review – mellow piano that flies by

  10-09-2017 09:00
  (High Note)It runs for exactly an hour, but there’s so much variety here, packed into what is essentially a piano trio album, that it seems over in half the time. There are jazz pieces by Monk, Miles Davis and others, an improvisation on a prelude by Chopin, a Stylistics soul classic, an original or two, and so on. And they all flow together quite naturally under the mellow influence of Cyrus Chestnut’s piano. Vibraphonist Steve Nelson joins in brilliantly on three numbers, with Ches
  
  Read more

• Alvvays: Antisocialites review – alluring, nuanced jangle pop

  10-09-2017 09:00
  (Transgressive)In the UK, the appeal of jangle pop has often lain in its rough-hewn execution, despite the pristine heights to which its practitioners aspire. Tune into the second alluring album by Alvvays, Toronto’s two-girl, two-boy jangle sensations, however, and – as with their most obvious predecessors, Best Coast – it’s like stepping into a parallel universe. All the cutie derivatives are present: punky perkiness (Your Type), blithe melodies, or odes to the Jesus &a
  
  Read more

Follow @MusicUKnws on Twitter!