Category: Music
Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners/Ensemble Klang review – anarchic energy
‘A home for the promiscuous music lover” is how the London contemporary music festival (LCMF) describes itself, but in fact it is a festival that [more…]
Madison Cunningham review – complex new tunes from a folk singer with a knack for a twist
Sat with her back to the audience, Madison Cunningham is performing an eerie, unreleased ballad, her white dress mirrored in a glossy black upright piano. [more…]
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy: ‘With music, we give ourselves up. It’s when we’re allowed to be ourselves’
One afternoon in Los Angeles in 2000, only seven years after he began releasing records, Will Oldham met two people who would “stay in my [more…]
A Complete Unknown review – Timothée Chalamet radiates charisma in evocative Dylan biopic
It’s a remarkable performance. Star of the moment Timothée Chalamet inhabits the loose-limbed, live-wire physicality of the young Bob Dylan and makes an impressively good [more…]
Nils Frahm: ‘Using a chainsaw gave me strength in my fingers for piano’
Music was everywhere when I grew up, not just on the stereo. My mother had a piano. My father played guitar and collected percussion instruments: [more…]
Ex-Vöid: In Love Again review – all of indie rock is here
Almost exactly a decade ago, I reviewed a tremendous band playing live in a basement in Dalston, east London; a venue so off-piste that condensation [more…]
Singer-songwriter Betty Boo looks back: ‘I was very naive in the 90s. It was only years later I realised people were on loads of drugs’
Born in 1970, Alison Clarkson, AKA Betty Boo, is a singer-songwriter, rapper and producer. She grew up in west London with her Scottish mother, Malaysian [more…]
Victoria Canal: Slowly, It Dawns review – a musical promise fulfilled
With two Ivor Novello awards for songwriting and a mentorship from Chris Martin that landed her on the Pyramid stage last year during Coldplay’s record-breaking [more…]
‘She couldn’t walk, she couldn’t talk’: music therapy helped Joni Mitchell recover from a stroke – could it ward off depression and dementia too?
In 2015, Joni Mitchell suffered a catastrophic stroke. According to her friend, the musician and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, “when she got back from the hospital, [more…]
How have the California wildfires affected Hollywood?
The California wildfires have to date killed at least 25 people, destroyed or damaged more than 12,000 structures and put about 300,000 people on evacuation [more…]