fri 12/09/2025

New Music Reviews

EFG London Jazz Festival, first weekend review - Jeff Goldblum a jazz musician?

Sebastian Scotney

The choice of what to go and hear in the London Jazz Festival can be bewildering: this first weekend of its 10-day run presented over 120 events.

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Florence + The Machine, Genting Arena, Birmingham review - flying the flag for a hopeful future

Guy Oddy

Many established artists, when out on tour, can get all a bit bashful about their new material. In fact, it’s not unusual for bands to hide a couple of new tunes in the middle of their live set with embarrassed mumbling about “you don’t really want to hear the new stuff anyway” before launching into a note-perfect rendition of a tune that was a hit several years previously.

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The Ballads of Child Migration, St James's Church, Clerkenwell review - into the heart of darkness

Liz Thomson

What adjectives best describe a performance of The Ballads of Child Migration? None of those you’d normally expect to see applied to an evening of superlative music-making, for the song cycle chronicles the deprivations suffered by child migrants sent from Britain over the course of one hundred years.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl 44: Thom Yorke, Primal Scream, Elvis, Noisferatu, R.E.M., Bauhaus, Mo'Wax and more

Thomas H Green

Enough hyping! This month, without further ado, let’s head straight to the reviews…

VINYL OF THE MONTH

LOR Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (Lo Records)

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Jazz on a Summer's Day

Kieron Tyler

When Jazz on a Summer's Day was first seen in American cinemas in March 1960, it showed that seeing popular music live could be a leisure activity akin to watching high-end sports. Indeed, director Bert Stern intercut the musical performances he captured on film with footage of yachts trying-out for 1958’s America’s Cup.

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The Prodigy, Brighton Centre review - a proper bangin' night out

Thomas H Green

“That’s what we fucking do!” So says Maxim at the concert’s very end, surveying the sweating, raving carnage of 4,500 souls before him. One of The Prodigy’s two frontman, he stands still finally, after spending the rest of the gig pacing and rushing up and down the lip of the stage like a caged panther. We all know what he means.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: John & Beverley Martyn, Mott The Hoople

Kieron Tyler

Although John & Beverley Martyn and Mott The Hoople were both signed to Island, the connection went further than being with the same label. When Guy Stevens conceived the band he named Mott The Hoople, the producer saw them as uniting the essence of Bob Dylan with that of The Rolling Stones.

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Caro Emerald, Royal Albert Hall – an injection of sunshine for the weary soul

Ellie Porter

“We will be taking you on a journey,” promises Caro Emerald at the start of tonight’s return to the Royal Albert Hall, which she last played back in April 2017 – and for the next 90 minutes, that’s what jazz-pop queen Emerald and her slick seven-piece...

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Slow Moving Clouds, Purcell Room review - a new take on folk

Tim Cumming

The young Dublin folk trio fuse vocal harmonies with superb acoustic musicianship, primarily on cello, fiddle and Nyckelharpa. They bring together Irish and Nordic – specifically Finnish – folk traditions, building them to dizzying heights on a foundation of acoustic drones and group interplay.

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Corrosion Of Conformity & Orange Goblin, O2 Institute, Birmingham review – international gang of veteran rockers get drunk and get wild

Guy Oddy

Winter came to Birmingham this weekend but fortunately, so did a modern-day, multi-national Viking band of rockers, consisting of Corrosion Of Conformity and Orange Goblin, ably assisted by Fireball Ministry and Black Moth.

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