tue 15/07/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Laraaji

Kieron Tyler

 

Laraaji Ambient 3 Day of RadianceLaraaji: Ambient 3 – Day of Radiance

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Bob Dylan, Royal Albert Hall

Tim Cumming

Two years ago, Dylan played his best concert in years here at the Royal Albert Hall, the dim stage circled by vintage movie studio lights, and circling Dylan a band seasoned enough to bottle its own oil, delivering a new kind of quiet, late-night music. The broad unpredictability may have had gone, but so had those too-common troughs in quality and penchant for urban barns in Wembley. Could this new quality – forget the width – be sustained?

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Beardyman, Old Market, Brighton

Thomas H Green

Standing in front of a table filled with small consoles, Beardyman reaches into a blue bucket for an audience-suggested title to the next song he’ll create live, from scratch, in front of us. “The Muppets on Trial” is what he ends up with.

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Herbert & Kode 9, Abbey Road Studios

joe Muggs

There's a new kind of forum for electronic musicians. Certainly not a rave, and not just a recital to earnest nerds, built on a kind of patronage, but a long way removed from a standard corporate gig where you're just providing the interchangeable soundtrack to X or Y product launch.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 10 - Fela Kuti, Simple Minds and more

Thomas H Green

Let’s not get carried away. The news, announced at the end of September, that vinyl sales generated more money than the combined income of Spotify, Vevo and YouTube’s free services sent waves of celebration through the record-loving community. $166 million vs. $222 million – yaaaaaay! Vinyl sales up 52% on last year and now accounting for a third of all physical sales – yaaaaaay again!

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Little Bob Story

Kieron Tyler

 

Little Bob Story Off the Rails + Live in ‘78Little Bob Story: Off the Rails + Live in ‘78

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Get The Blessing, Rich Mix

Matthew Wright

You would expect a galactically-themed album like Astronautilus to blast off into extra-terrestrial airiness. The fifth album from west-country jazz-rock space cadets Get The Blessing scorched some earth at its launch in Shoreditch last night, yet the battery of horns, bewitching, asymmetric drums and repeating patterns of surging melody felt grounded and earthy.

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Ride, O2 Academy Brixton

Barney Harsent

Back when this was the plain old Brixton Academy, before Britpop, before New Labour, before the world wide web had weaved its way into our homes, before the war on terror, before the nebulous notion of ‘content’ had yet to ruin everything and devalue everyone, I saw Ride play a gig here. It was ace.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Georgie Fame

Kieron Tyler

 

GEORGIE FAME THE WHOLE WORLD’S SHAKINGGeorgie Fame: The Whole World’s Shaking – The Complete Recordings 1963–1966

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Alan Broadbent & Georgia Mancio Songbook, Watermill, Dorking

Matthew Wright

Fashions in art and music come and go in less time than it takes to read a Buzzfeed list. So there was something uncannily satisfying about star pianist Alan Broadbent’s admission that he’s been working on last night’s collection of entirely new songs for the past 50 years.

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