Once upon a time, the main currency of jazz was a soloist’s improvisational flow; today, it’s all about collective vibe. That principle plays out in handsomely chill fashion on the debut from new all-star ensemble R+R=Now, which doubles as a statement of purpose for a new generation of jazzers. If …
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Sidi Touré, Toubalbero|★★★ 1/2BKO, Mali Foli Coura | ★★★1/2Tal National, Tantabara | ★★★★Imarhan, Temet | ★★★ With American rock bands looking to forward-thinking EDM and elsewhere for genre rejuvenation, African electric guitars and traditional instruments alike are once again yawping, screaming and blurting with new intensity after something of a …
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Producer-DJ-vocalist-raconteur-et cetera Moby‘s most satisfying works in recent years have been those where he plunges into gloom headfirst.Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt, his 15th album, is another dip into the pool of melancholia. Lush and haunting, Everything applies the Moby ideal of soulful vocals and big beats to the …
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Belle and Sebastian might not be able to solve all our problems (as the title of their latest implies), but they can handle the ones that involve a lack of witty, tuneful indie-pop. This 15-track set offers a tasting menu of the Scottish band’s strengths. Would you like a bittersweet …
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No period in David Bowie‘s career is more curious than the trilogy of albums he recorded in the late Seventies while living in Berlin’s artsy Schöneberg district. They’re defiantly uncommercial, stacking soundtrack-y, atmospheric soundscapes alongside pop songs, and they’re bizarrely endearing – “The hin-ter-land, the hin-ter-land/We’re gonna sail to the …
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