Music news

• Paul Buckmaster obituary

  19-11-2017 19:44
  Music arranger and orchestrator who worked with David Bowie and Elton JohnArrangers and orchestrators have often been pop’s anonymous heroes, but the name of Paul Buckmaster, who has died aged 71, was frequently top of the list for many of the most successful musicians of the past five decades. A classically trained cellist, he was on course for a future as a soloist on the international concert circuit before his life was transformed by rock’n’roll.His leap into popular music
  
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• Looks Like Gemma Collins And Arg Could Be Getting Back Together After All

  19-11-2017 17:18
  The on again off again romance would appear to be on again. Again.
  
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• Marnie review – Nico Muhly's psycho thriller sounds beautiful but fails to thrill

  19-11-2017 17:14
  Coliseum, London
  The central relationship is compelling and there is some tremendous writing for the ENO chorus, but Muhly’s stylised opera lacks Hitchcockian suspenseGiven its world premiere by English National Opera, Nico Muhly’s Marnie is drawn from Winston Graham’s 1961 novel of the same name, famously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. The subject, Muhly argues, “screams out for operatic treatment”, and his heroine – a thief and liar acting out of compul
  
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• Looks Like Sam Thompson Will Be Trying To Get Over Tiff Watson Via Celebs Go Dating

  19-11-2017 17:05
  Can the Made In Chelsea star find love again?
  
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• Details Of Taylor Swift And Joe Alwyn's Romance Revealed (And It All Sounds So Perfect)

  19-11-2017 16:55
  These two really do sound made for each other
  
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• Musical bliss: the London jazz festival pays tribute to Alice and John Coltrane

  19-11-2017 16:48
  Ten years after her death, the LJF climaxed with concerts recreating the ecstatic, devotional music heard in Alice Coltrane’s ashram, and the cosmic free jazz of her saxophonist husband It seems astonishing now, but Alice Coltrane’s music was not always taken seriously. Jazz histories didn’t mention her, and the gatekeepers of the jazz canon would often sneer at what they regarded as her patchouli-scented, orientalist exotica; her soft-headed dabbling in Indian and African them
  
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• Riverdale Fans Are So Happy That This Character Is Bisexual

  19-11-2017 14:16
  The LGBT community is being represented pretty brilliantly in the hit teen drama
  
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• Kylie Jenner Sparks Speculation She Is Having TWINS After Keeping Her Body Concealed

  19-11-2017 14:00
  It seems the less fans see of Kylie, the crazier the pregnancy rumours get
  
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• Queens of the Stone Age review – gonzoid riffage and hellacious swagger

  19-11-2017 13:33
  Wembley Arena, London
  Tearing up the rulebook, rock’s last remaining outlaws create a visceral, vast and heavy sound that is scoured of machismo and full of wit You really don’t wanna make Josh Homme angry. But overzealous Wembley staff, training spotlights on an overexcitable audience, have only gone and done it tonight. “Security, these people can do whatever the fuck they want,” he drawls like John Wayne, if Wayne were 6ft 4in of hard-living rock hero, puffing on an il
  
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• Love Island's Kem Cetinay Wants Everyone To Know He And Amber Are Still Having A LOT Of Sex

  19-11-2017 12:54
  Overshare?
  
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• Holly Hagan Just Shared An EPIC Throwback Pic That Has Made Everyone's Jaws Drop

  19-11-2017 12:20
  Is that really you, Charlotte Crosby?
  
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• Vicky Pattison And John Noble Are Having A Totally Romantic Weekend

  19-11-2017 12:03
  The wife-to-be is enjoying her 30th birthday weekend in style
  
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• Chuck D: ‘Hip-hop is about being who you are’

  19-11-2017 10:30
  The Public Enemy founder on the importance of rap’s history, losing his father and how the Trump era might play outRapper, author, producer and activist Chuck D was born Carlton Douglas Ridenhour in Queens, New York in 1960. As leader of the rap group Public Enemy, he helped to bring politically conscious hip-hop into the mainstream; Public Enemy’s albums, including It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) and Fear of a Black Planet (1990), stand as some of the most impor
  
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• War on Drugs review – fifty shades of blue

  19-11-2017 10:00
  Alexandra Palace, London
  Adam Granduciel’s melancholic rockers combine improvisation with intimacy at their biggest ever UK showLast week on The X Factor, a contestant performed a slow version of George Michael’s Fastlove, which was pleasant yet utterly pointless. The song’s genius is that its form – joyful music hiding lyrical pain – so perfectly matches its function: someone trying to smother misery with ephemeral pleasure. Turning it into a Christmas advert balla
  
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• Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: Soul of a Woman review – songs of love, woe and overcoming

  19-11-2017 10:00
  (Daptone)
  The late-blooming soul star’s posthumous album is righteous, dramatic and rooted in the pastIt is tempting to overpraise the recently departed. But the late – and, arguably, great – Sharon Jones was not discovered via a TV talent show or hothoused at a fame school. Her voice clawed its way out of obscurity through sheer force of will.Before she had a late-life recording career, Jones sang in church and worked in jobs that risked life and limb – as an armoured va
  
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• Tove Lo: Blue Lips review – clubwise and candid

  19-11-2017 09:00
  (Island)Known for her nihilistic, drug-fuelled bangers, Swedish singer Tove Lo’s last album explored sexual gratification of the intense and immensely candid kind. Blue Lips – presumably a female equivalent to the frustration of “blue balls” – is a continuation, undulating with clubland heat, raw desire and forthright lyrics. “Nipples are hard, ready to go,” Lo refrains in robotic yet sensual tones on lead single Disco Tits. The rest of the album follows
  
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• T-Pain: Oblivion review – tasteless rap ballads

  19-11-2017 09:00
  (Nappy Boy/RCA)It’s been 30 years since LL Cool J was widely side-eyed for writing hip-hop’s first pop crossover ballad, I Need Love. Yet its gauche, wordy earnestness is Shelleyan compared to T-Pain’s feeble seduction raps. Slack lyrics can work with a little leavening humour, but when your main feature is the loathsome assaulter Chris Brown you need to do better than threatening your “bitch” that your technique is so good “the neighbours gon’ think I&r
  
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• Paloma Faith: The Architect review – once more with issues

  19-11-2017 09:00
  (RCA)After perfecting her mildly kooky retro-soul sound across three albums, The Architect messes with the Paloma Faith formula, lyrics-wise at least. Gently pulsating lead single Crybaby, for example, is about fragile masculinity; the title track is a typically dramatic ballad sung from the perspective of planet Earth addressing humanity, while the doo-wop stylings of WW3 deal with impending catastrophe. For the most part these more outward-looking conceits are housed in familiar musical settin
  
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• Mavis Staples: If All I Was Was Black review – inspirational work

  19-11-2017 09:00
  (Anti-) Related: Mavis Staples: ‘I often think what would have happened if I’d married Dylan’ With gospel legends the Staple Singers, Mavis Staples was wailing anthems of pride and defiance back in the civil rights era. For her third collaboration with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Staples eschews standards and revivals in favour of 10 new songs by Tweedy that form a state of the nation address. It’s no angry rant, however. Love is Staples’s weapon of choice, and &ldqu
  
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• Johnny Griffin and Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis Quintet: At Onkel Pö’s Carnegie Hall review – full-on, sweaty stuff

  19-11-2017 09:00
  (Jazzline)Johnny “Little Giant” Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis: a pair of alpha-male tenor saxophonists intent on blowing each other off the stage. That was the act, anyway. When this double CD was recorded in 1975 they’d been doing it, on and off, for 15 years and were the best of friends. Their styles are easily distinguishable: Griffin fast, sharp and witty, Davis gustily rhetorical. It’s full-on, sweaty stuff – intense, swinging and spiced with ou
  
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• Morrissey: Low in High School review – mixed messages and misfires

  19-11-2017 08:59
  (Etienne)Morrissey’s 11th solo album finds him on his own label, squelching with newfound keys on songs like Spent the Day in Bed, and riffing on favoured themes: loneliness and world affairs. As ever, the messages are mixed, on many levels. Bodily pleas for comfort – “I just want my face in your lap” runs In Your Lap – vie with come-ons. “Wrap your legs around my face”, invites Home Is a Question Mark. It all goes south, however, on the orchestral maria
  
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• Quartet for the End of Time; Meta4 and Alasdair Beatson; Belongings – review

  19-11-2017 08:30
  St John’s Smith Square; LSO St Luke’s, London; Glyndebourne, LewesAn awesome foursome hold their own in Messiaen’s cataclysmic masterpiece. Plus, an intense Finnish-Scottish flingBirdsong at dawn, a celestial rainbow, whispered piano chords in shades of “blue-orange”, light, stars and the things of heaven. What does it all mean? Without knowing a note of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (1940-41), its title indicates its grandeur. The composer’s ow
  
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• Shostakovich: The Gadfly (Original Score) CD review – a lively curiosity

  19-11-2017 08:24
  Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/Fitz-Gerald
  (Naxos)This is a real novelty, celebrating Shostakovich’s life-long devotion to writing film music. His orchestral concert work The Gadfly Suite, Op 97a, from his score of the 1955 film, was assembled by fellow Soviet composer Levon Atovmyan. Much was cut and forgotten. The full, eclectic soundtrack has now been reconstructed, with a fantastic display of serious scholarship, passion and practical musicianship by Mark Fitz-Gerald: all
  
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• Brahms, Duvernoy, Koechlin, Kahn: Horn Trios CD review – an engaging set

  19-11-2017 08:20
  Felix Klieser (horn) Andrej Bielow (violin), Herbert Schuch (piano)(Berlin Classics)The combination of horn, violin and piano is so unusual that only Brahms’s masterpiece is a familiar repertory piece. But the enterprising horn soloist Felix Klieser has sought out some companion works and created an engaging sequence. Frédéric Nicolas Duvernoy’s two amiable, flowing trios from the earlier 19th century are not going to change the world, but Charles Koechlin’s quirk
  
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• Howells: Music for Clavichord CD review – a virtuoso showcase

  19-11-2017 08:00
  Julian Perkins (clavichord)
  (Prima Facie, 2 CDs)The influence of English Tudor music runs like a silver thread through the compositions of Herbert Howells (1892-1983), nowhere more so than in this most esoteric of recordings, his complete works for the intimate voice of the clavichord. His first collection, Lambert’s Clavichord (1928), is modelled on the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and dedicated to fellow musicians and friends, with pastiche titles such as Fellowes’ Delight and Wortham
  
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• AC/DC co-founder Malcolm Young dies aged 64

  19-11-2017 06:24
  Eddie Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne among many rock icons paying tribute to Young, who developed dementia about 10 years agoThe “driving force” behind rock band AC/DC, Malcolm Young, has died, aged 64. Related: Malcolm Young obituaryContinue reading...
  
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