Tag: jazz
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Jamie Lawson: Happy Accidents
Lawson, who is 42, was the first artist to be signed by Ed Sheeran’s record label Gingerbread Man Records. He and Ed were mates back in the day. Top marks to Sheeran for loyalty but he’s never going to sign a death metal band: his acts are going to sound like him. (As far as…
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To Kill a King: The Spiritual Dark Age
The cover art and the lyrics (“poetry about serotonin and dopamine”) shout “Arcade Fire!” and To Kill A King attempt the same trick: Deep and Meaningful lyrics coupled with danceable music. But they’re just an indie band with high ambitions and, in the Arcade Fire stakes, fall short. But it’s solid, albeit overly polished in…
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Neil Young: The Visitor
Young’s 39th album is another partly political one, this time with an electric band. It’s typical Young at his loosest, a little sprawling and all over the shop but still good. Clearly Trump gets some stick (“I’m living with a game show host / Who has to brag and boast” but he addresses other topics,…
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Michael Korstick: Dmitri Kabalevsky, Piano Sonatas and Sonatinas
The sleeve notes say Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky, born in St Petersburg on 30th December 1904, achieved international success with music such as his Second Symphony (1934). He came behind Prokofiev and Shostakovich and along with Khachaturian in the “big four” of Soviet music. The First Sonata (1927), which opens this CD, is among Kabalevsky’s earliest…
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Dream Wife
This debut album from Dream Wife is solid rather than anything new, but it’s a solid solid, and as they seem to be cool, we predict big things for this. Dream Wife are an all-woman trio (Rakel Mjöll on lead vocals, Alice Go on guitar and Bella Podpadec on bass), not named after an old…
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Django Django: Marble Skies
Django Django have a distinctive sound, the percussion and vocals at least as important as the quirky melody; drummer David Maclean writes and produces. The sound is novel, and their debut was quirky, catchy and appealingly different. But it’s a sound you’d not make a career of, and this new album seems them go off…
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Terry Riley: Palmian Chord Ryddle
Eventually we’ll get a classical CD that fans of more popular music can walk straight into; this is nearly it, but not quite. It’s interesting, though. Riley is associated with the minimalist school of composition (interlocking repetitive figures) and is influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, both of which are clearly on display here.…
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Ducking Punches: Alamort
Ducking Punches deserve to do well with this rather decent album; they’ve played 1,000 gigs say the Press notes, which is good going, and explains the tight sound. They play high energy and melodic indie rock, veering towards pop punk in places, and with enough quirkiness to make it appealing. The title is taken from…
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White Room: Eight EP
You know it’s a tight budget when your review copy is a CDR with hand-written track titles, but we can’t see the White Room being that cash-strapped for long. They don’t do anything original, but they do it well. The sound is somewhere between the dance-rock of Kasabian and the more recent psychedelic pop of…
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Echoes of Swing: Travelin’
Joyously cliched in places, this is a loving tribute to the old swing tunes, all with a travellin’ theme: Orient Express opens, with the piano and snare making a passable train impression before easy listenin’ sax comes in. As John Lewis nearly has it, this is never knowingly over-demanding and overall the quartet has the…
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