funk
CD: Beverley Knight – Soul UKTuesday, 28 June 2011
Most of the arrangements on this collection of covers of Eighties and early-Nineties UK soul tunes actually have more of a mid-Seventies live band feel to them. This proves to be an excellent way of rescuing the material from the often stultifying... Read more... |
CD: The Bo-Keys - Got to Get Back!Sunday, 19 June 2011
When I put together my book Rock Shrines, about places music fans go to pay tribute to their dead heroes, I was particularly struck by the story of Ben Cauley. He was trumpet player in Otis Redding's band, The Bar Kays, and the only person to be... Read more... |
CD: Owiny Sigoma Band - Owiny Sigoma BandFriday, 06 May 2011
When Western musicians add their bit to traditional African music it can be disastrous: a programmed beat awkwardly forcing sinuous, sensual music to conform to its rigidity, or some dreadful rock vocalist doing a Bono all over some exquisite... Read more... |
Jamiroquai, O2 ArenaSaturday, 16 April 2011
This was one of the funkiest shows I’ve seen for a long while; perhaps even since Prince’s peerlessly funky residence at the same venue in 2007 (though nowhere near as brilliant). There came a moment, on "Deeper Underground", when everything just... Read more... |
CD: Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 - From Africa With Fury: RiseFriday, 01 April 2011
Alarm bells went off when I learnt that Brian Eno was co-producer of Seun Kuti’s second album. The last thing the son of the legendary Fela Kuti needed was his personal brand of Afrobeat to be given a distancing sheen, or diluted by some space-age... Read more... |
Iron & Wine, RoundhouseWednesday, 09 March 2011
Beards, beards, beards: at the Roundhouse, they seemed to be everywhere, sprouting from the chins of hundreds of chaps in the audience. Perhaps, though, I was just looking out for them, what with the luxuriant growth on the face of the man they... Read more... |
Lenny Henry, TouringMonday, 21 February 2011
It takes a certain something to make a roomful of white people get their funk on. I feel I have dispensation to make that ridiculous generalisation because Lenny Henry, famously born in Dudley to immigrant Jamaican parents, addresses the whiteness... Read more... |
CD: Toro Y Moi - Underneath the PineTuesday, 08 February 2011
A lot of hum and crackle about hypnagogic pop has passed through the ether in the last 18 months, much of it concerned with Toro Y Moi. Coined for a small raft of mainly American musicians that recast half-remembered pop from their youths, the... Read more... |
CD: Joan As Police Woman - The Deep FieldFriday, 28 January 2011
There’s a story doing the rounds that, while good, Joan Wasser’s latest fails to hit the highs of her other albums as Police Woman. Don’t believe it; it’s pure snobbery. In a world of MP3s this is a gorgeous warm album that will sound forever vinyl... Read more... |
Gang of Four return - exclusive video contentMonday, 17 January 2011
A freezing winter of discontent, a Labour party hell-bent on making itself unelectable, controversial warmongering and record levels of inequality. It may sound like yesterday’s papers but these themes were also addressed by iconoclastic post-punk... Read more... |
Cheikh Lo, The ScalaFriday, 14 January 2011
As part of my homework before last night’s gig at the Scala I played Senegalese singer Cheikh Lo’s latest album Jamm over and over again, waiting for some of its tunes to lodge in my mind - waiting to be compelled rather than feel duty bound to play... Read more... |
The new funk: Belleruche exclusiveWednesday, 27 October 2010
Here, we present the exclusive first showing of a new video by the Brighton/London band Belleruche. This clip for “Fuzz Face” is highly arresting, an ingenious and slightly disturbing collision of hi and low-tech, made using thousands of photocopies... Read more... |
