Reviews

What you have here is the world’s most famous Jazz/Big Band ‘king of swing’ Benny Goodman and other legendary Big Band leaders like Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey rubbing their boldand brassy, jitterbugging breaks and beats up against urban graffiti villains like Brooklyn’s Kool Kojak Commandante, spy-chasing, cross-tempo duo Thunderball and the smooth, classic chill-out of the Worldwide Groove Corporation. In a seamless conflation of styles and approaches ‘Big Band Remixed and Revisited’ just about manages to Continue Reading

‘It is simply the reflection of an era in continual mutation, where a number of ‘initiates’ have decided that the time has finally come awaken consciousness’. Bollocks, more like. I would be letting you down if I was to describe this release as anything other than a monstrous cash-in on Dan Brown’s equally spurious and ill-conceived book “The Da Vinci Code“ (now a full-on blockbuster Hollywood epic starring the affable Tom Hanks) and I would be disappointing you still if Continue Reading

‘The east coast girls are hip and the mid-west farmers daughters really make you feel alright.’ It sounded exotic then and it still sounds exotic today. Even in an era of cheap flights and tacky package holidays, Brian Wilson and his chums still manage to make the warm, sandy dunes of Califronia sound like another world. Ever dig a French bikini on Hawaii island? A palm tree in the sand? No me neither, but somehow it felt like we ought Continue Reading

It would have given me immense satisfaction to have announced that this was likely to be the second time that the 32 year old Roy Kerr was apt to have been issued a ‘cease and desist’ order; the first being for his cheeky, chart-seeking mash-up of the Strokes’ ‘Hard To Explain’ and Christina Aguilera’s ‘Genie In A Bottle’ and the second for the slightly awkward, identity switching ego trip, ‘Waiting For Clearance’. ‘Cease’, I could have shouted. ‘Desist’, I could Continue Reading

As the sleeve-notes freely confess, compilations featuring sassy soul sisters are hardly a new concept but this Stateside compilation mercifully leaves out all the usual tampon-rattling sister statements you’d naturally expect. There’s no sign of Aretha Franklin’s penis-lopping ‘R.E.S.P.E.C.T’, no sign of the Weather Girls, no ‘Sisters Doing It For Themselves’ nonsense, just all the husky, earthy, uplifting sixties soul joy that labels like Blue Note, Liberty, Veep and Roulette heaped upon us in sweet delicious spoonfuls back in the Continue Reading

The Futureheads’ 2004 debut was packed with pop gems. Racked to the rafters with the bloody things which shot by at thundering pace, in formation, like zippy chimney-chipping low level flypasts by the Red Arrows. Four rough-round-the-edges lads from the North East brandishing guitars and corrugated iron voice-boxes, made glorious noise, left vapour trails. Yet it took a novelty cover to get anyone to pay them any serious notice. Still, it was one of the great modern pop re-interpretations, and Continue Reading

The success or failure of this record depends on two things; if the record is intended to bring a diverse collection of world sounds and artists together in one place then it hardly compares to the jitterbugging, cross-continental bloom of eclectica raffled by the likes of David Byrne’s Luaka Bop. If on the otherhand it’s only objective was to compile a record of perfectly affable and palatable lightly electronic pop music from a score of odds and ends and misfits Continue Reading

Every so often, all you really need is some solid, honest-to-goodness, lip-smacking power-pop. And just to satisfy our craving God occasionally casts down the likes of Bob Mould and Sugar, the Teenage Fanclub, the Lemonheads, Foo Fighters and the Boo Radleys, planting a big fat buzzing chorus atop of a Velcro hook, some big, bright jangling guitars, some impossible, reckless optimism and the kind of nutmeging, dummying lyrical runs they could quite easily qualify for a place in the Brazilian Continue Reading

If we had a pound for every album we reviewed by a ‘DJ at the top of their game’, we’d have £37.50; that’s £30 pounds for actually being ‘at the top of their game’ and £7.50 for any additional benefits we accrue from them being ‘one of the world’s leading DJs and producers’ on top of it.  Just how many leading DJs and producers can ye have for heaven’s sake? That’s a bit like having all 338 teams in your Continue Reading

Long before K.D Lang became the ranch-hopping poster-girl for lesbian chic, the Costa Rican born singer, Chavela Vargas was dressing as a man, smoking cigars, drinking heavily, carrying a gun and seducing female audiences with throaty-voiced Mexican Rancheras – lusty, ribald tales about heartbreak and experience traditionally sung by men – allegedly gaining her trademark limp from jumping out of a window because a woman disappointed her in love. Sounds like the kind of thing you’ve seen every week in Continue Reading