Month: July 2008

It’s probably a testament to the input of the then virtually unknown singer, Martina Topley Bird that the belligerent and handsomely wayward Tricky has had to employ the services of not one replacement but five for his eagerly-awaited follow-up to 1995’s, ‘Maxinquaye’ album. Yeah, I know it’s not a follow-up in the strictest sense of the word. There was the interesting, but vaguely short-changing collection of demos that made-up the ‘Nearly God’ album in 1996 (more notable for its collaborations Continue Reading

Regularly taking place at roof-top, terrace locations like Canvas in London, this well loved club event may no longer be the closely guarded secret it was, but it’s still a fiercely independent and innovative night packed to the beams with all manner of crazy and obstreperous techno and house heads. No not the kind of floor filling, club friendly crap you’re likely to find down your end of pier discos, but the more sparse, adventurous, trans-international fare traditionally dished up Continue Reading

He arrived in our imaginations a posturing glam-punk hybrid, high on amphetamines and squeezed into a pair of leopard skin trousers – and that’s kind of where he stays. The misty-eyed affection for Marc Bolan and John Lennon are patently still there in heaps, not least in the glittery kick-beats of unruly album opener, ‘Wannamama’, the faux electric orchestra of ‘You Don’t Gonna Run’ and the shameless sugar melt of ‘Semi-Babe’ and ‘Fountain of Lies’ but replacing the bluesy, rock Continue Reading

It seems it is the burden of every acoustic carrying youth to have their strumming hand branded with a hot-iron inscribed with the two most inevitable words in the English musical lexicon: Nick Drake. Of course, the name has long since carried any direct resonance or weight of its own, to the extent of now representing anything ‘not plugged in’. The name has become a byword for ‘folky, an epithet for introversion and a convenient sandwich ‘wrap’ for anything remotely Continue Reading