mon 30/06/2025

New Music Features

theartsdesk in Brussels - jazz, openness and youth at the start of the cultural year

Sebastian Scotney

“Brussels – The Cultural Guide” for 2020 is a very substantial book. It consists of 212 tightly-packed pages in a quite small font. The message is that there is indeed a lot going on culturally in Belgium’s capital city.

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10 Questions for Techno Musician Carl Craig

joe Muggs

In the eight years since theartsdesk last spoke to Carl Craig, a lot has happened. He moved from his native Detroit for a sojourn in Barcelona (partly for ease of access to his summer DJ residencies in Ibiza), then recently returned.

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Is this Jimi Hendrix’s greatest posthumous release? Producer Eddie Kramer talks about a legendary live album

Tim Cumming

This week, one of the finest gems in the entire Hendrix catalogue finally sees the light of day in its full unedited glory – Songs for Groovy Children comprises all four sets from the Band of Gypsys New Year’s Eve 1969-70 residency at the Fillmore East in New York City.

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theartsdesk in Hamburg: Reeperbahn Festival 2019 review

Kieron Tyler

Hatari’s 10th placing in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest hasn’t done them any harm. Neither did ruffling the feathers of the European Broadcasting Union and host nation Israel with their stance on Palestine.

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Bob Dylan Special - theartsdesk Q&A: Scarlet Rivera

Tim Cumming

As Martin Scorsese’s new feature film, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, hits Netflix and cinemas, and a new 14 CD boxed set enters the official Bootleg Series, ...

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Bob Dylan Special - Rolling Thunder Revue, Netflix

Tim Cumming

Tomorrow, Martin Scorsese delivers, via Netflix, two hours and 22 minutes of screen time devoted to Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, following on from the release last week of the latest Bootleg Series boxed set, 14...

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First Person: Sam Lee on singing with endangered nightingales

Sam Lee

Every spring for the last five years, we have gathered around a camp fire in hidden locations in a wood in Sussex, to join the nightingales and to “re-wild” ancient folk ballads. We walk in silence through the forest at night, with no torches, reawakening our aural senses. These meditative pilgrimages give people permission to be in a state of communion with nature, to be silent to hear the birds.

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theartsdesk in Zanzibar - behind the veil

Andy Morgan

Damn exotica.

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Keith Flint, 1969-2019

Thomas H Green

It is hard to absorb the news that Keith Flint of The Prodigy has been found dead at his home in Essex. Keith Flint! The guy with the double Mohican and panda eye-liner who terrified Middle America in the video for “Firestarter”.

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theartsdesk Q&A: Shirley Collins - 'There was no way I could ever sing to be popular'

Kieron Tyler

When Shirley Collins appears at The Roundhouse next week, it will be 50 years since she last played there. On 30 May 1969, she and her sister Dolly were on a bill promoting their then label Harvest Records. When she plays there on 31 January, she is the main event.

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