sat 21/06/2025

New Music Reviews

Reissue CDs Weekly: Motorpsycho

Kieron Tyler

 

motorpsycho demon boxMotorpsycho: Demon Box

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Alice Russell, Jazz Café

Thomas Rees

You know what really grinds my gears? Bands that only have one. One gear, one level of intensity. For a good hour of last night’s set, diminutive diva Alice Russell, the voice behind countless Quantic hits and that cover of “Seven Nation Army” that no one would shut up about back in 2005, was guilty of just that.

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Nicola Conte, Ronnie Scott's

peter Quinn

Gloriously feel-good, unashamedly retro, uniformly urbane, the Nicola Conte Combo presented a set that was bursting with fantastic melodies last night at Ronnie Scott's.

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theartsdesk on Vinyl: Volume 2

Thomas H Green

Did you know that Jack White’s Lazaretto album sold nearly 87,000 copies on vinyl last year? Sales continue to rise all over with European manufacturing facilities running at full tilt. Given the demand for vinyl has risen 800% in the last decade, that’s not so surprising. Dance music, as ever, lauds the format, with the massive Tomorrowland rave/festival in Belgium this July announcing a vinyl-only stage to be headed up by long time aficionado, Sven Väth.

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Jessie J, Eventim Apollo

Matthew Wright

The echoes of last summer’s number one hit “Bang Bang” had hardly faded when Jessie J’s third album Sweet Talker was released to a largely positive reception last October. She’s been on the road on and off ever since, and though her act never seems short of either energy or self-belief, you might expect to see some signs of flagging after such a relentless display of girl power. Not a bit of it: her all-action show hit Hammersmith last night.

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Ghostpoet, Village Underground

Katie Colombus

Ghostpoet – aka Obaro Ejimiwe – released his first album Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam in 2010. He has since been named as The Guardian’s New Band of the Day, nominated for a Mercury Prize and toured the festival circuit with the likes of Metronomy. His third album Shedding Skin, due to be released on March 2nd, was the focus of Pias Nites at Shoreditch’s Village Underground.

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Julian Cope, Glee Club, Birmingham

Guy Oddy

While Julian Cope’s albums are usually fairly expansive affairs which employ a vast array of instruments, an audience with the Arch Drude is a more intimate affair these days. There’s no backing band and the man takes to the stage armed only with a 12-string acoustic guitar, a microphone and a few effects pedals. There’s also a big bass drum set up on stage with “You can’t beat your brain for entertainment” written on the skin – but that’s just a prop and doesn’t get played.

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Jan Garbarek Group, Stormen, Bodø

Kieron Tyler

Norway’s celebrated jazz colossus Jan Garbarek hadn’t played the north Norwegian city of Bodø for 15 years. Moreover, he and his group took the stage of the spanking new Stormen concert house as the openers of Bodø Jazz Open, the city’s four-day festival of all that is and isn’t strictly jazz. If there was any pressure, it didn’t show. Resolutely composed during his hour and three-quarters on stage, Garbarek also said nothing.

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Tyrannosaurus Rex

Kieron Tyler

 

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Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, October Gallery

Tim Cumming

There have been Throbbing Gristle reunions at Tate Modern, and Psychic TV last played in London at the now-demolished Astoria in 2008 – the band in nurse’s uniforms, playing psych garage rock over projections of medical procedures and sex scenes – but it’s a long time since Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was in London.

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