dance music
Little Dragon, Shepherds Bush EmpireMonday, 05 December 2011
About a year ago, when I saw Gorillaz’ sensational show at the O2 Arena in London, one of the highlights of the evening was “To Binge”, the duet between Damon Albarn and Yukimi Nagano, the Swedish-Japanese singer with the Swedish band Little Dragon... Read more... |
CD: Korn - The Path of TotalitySunday, 04 December 2011
In the mid-Nineties, America had a bit of a moment with electronic dance music. The most emblematic sign of this was The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land topping the Billboard charts in 1997. The truth was, however, that despite inventing house music and... Read more... |
CD: Anchorsong - ChaptersSunday, 27 November 2011
It's understandable that people get put off leftfield dance music, given how much micro-genre delineation and dog-in-a-manger protectionism there can be in underground scenes. It can seem a shame sometimes, but then again, these are part and parcel... Read more... |
Fac.Dance: Celebrating the Beat of Factory RecordsThursday, 27 October 2011
New Order’s “Blue Monday” might be the bestselling 12” single ever. It might not be. Either way, Factory Records released it on the 12” format only and it was given dry runs by club DJs. Although Factory had an overriding visual aesthetic, it was a... Read more... |
CD: Erasure – Tomorrow's WorldWednesday, 28 September 2011
The 14th album from Vince Clarke and Andy Bell is supposed to herald a change, or so we are told by their people. Have they gone Goth? Have they discovered dubstep? Like heck. The only thing that has changed appears to be Andy Bell's eerily robotic... Read more... |
Go clubbing and running to support planting urban treesSunday, 11 September 2011
As artificial spaces, clubs struggle to embrace the organic environment. The music and arts collective Noise of Art are bridging the gap by working with the charity Trees for Cities, with DJs donating their time to raise funds for planting trees in... Read more... |
My Summer Reading: Musician MaximThursday, 08 September 2011
Maxim (b. 1967) who is known for, amongst other things, his mesmerising, somewhat unnerving stage presence (he has a penchant for cats-eye contact lenses and is not adverse to wearing a skirt) is a founder member of the electronic dance group The... Read more... |
CD: Santos - If You Have Meat You Want FishMonday, 29 August 2011
An awful lot of people involved in producing electronic dance music find a niche and stick to it. Many do this with a very po face. Speak to them about it and they may play you a track they think is "poppy" to demonstrate their range. It usually isn... Read more... |
CD: David Guetta - Nothing but the BeatWednesday, 24 August 2011
If you want the distilled sound of global hypercapitalism, David Guetta is your man. A genial, workaholic Frenchman, he has created the sound of superclubs from Miami to Dubai to Kuala Lumpur – the sort of clubs where the VIP section is bigger than... Read more... |
Outlook: four days in the sunshine and two fingers to the bigotsTuesday, 16 August 2011
At the start of September, the fourth Outlook Festival takes place in a 19th-century fort on the Croatian coast. Already this festival has become a vital point in the calendar for those involved with dubstep, grime and other UK underground scenes –... Read more... |
CD: Taranta Container – Nidi d’aracSunday, 07 August 2011
The title in part refers to the container ships that as well as bringing food stuffs etc, to many of the world’s ports, also bring people and their music. But this album is far from just another melting-pot fusion of all the usual styles - Balkan,... Read more... |
Attention for the neglected soul sound of Little Rock, ArkansasFriday, 05 August 2011
Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas, usually comes to mind in association with hometown boy Bill Clinton. Soul and funk fans, however, aren’t fussed with the sax-playing former governor and president and fixate on the city’s True Soul label,... Read more... |
