Album Review: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Winterland (BBC Music)

What can you say about Jimi Hendrix that hasn't been written already? Well, with four CDs of live recordings from the man's legendary 1968 shows at Winterland, you'd think it might inspire one or two new observations. Find out whether that's true here.

"Even the most hardened of cynics cannot deny the power of performances that robbed Eric Clapton of his reputation as the world’s best guitarist..."

Album Review: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Winterland (BBC Music)

Album Review: Art Of Noise - Who's Afraid Of The Art of Noise (BBC Music)

There's a short entry in my 1986 diary about how badly I want to get hold of The Art Of Noise's latest single, 'Moments In Love'. A quarter of a century later, I find myself reviewing a deluxe reissue of the very album from which it came for the BBC. You can't read my diary, but you can read the review here.

"Remarkably, this debut was accessible enough to spawn hit singles, including Close (To the Edit), arguably the only record ever to include the sound of a VW Golf stalling as its central motif..."

Album Review: Art Of Noise - Who's Afraid Of The Art of Noise (BBC Music)

Feature: Wings Of Desire: An Interview With Dustin O'Halloran (The Quietus)

My ongoing obsession with the neo-classical scene continues thanks to Dustin O'Halloran, who's branched out from his solo releases for a collaboration with Stars Of The Lids' Adam Wiltzie. A stunning collection of melodic piano work shrouded in mists of ambience, A Winged Victory For The Sullen is one of the year's most beautiful albums. It's nestling quietly http://thequietus.com/articles/06985-dustin-o-halloran-winged-victory-interview.

Feature: Wings Of Desire: An Interview With Dustin O'Halloran (The Quietus)

Feature: After The Flood: Talk Talk's Laughing Stock 20 Years On (The Quietus)

Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden remains the record I value above all others, with the band's final album, Laughing Stock, also a special favourite. I'm far from alone in this opinion, as the constant name-checking of both records by musicians confirms. The story behind both records is long and complicated, however, and, on the 20th anniversary of the latter's release, The Quietus invited me to examine the story. Containing interviews with manager Keith Aspden and studio engineer Phill Brown, as well as some fairly exhaustive research and comments by other fans of the record - including Wild Beasts and James Lavelle (Mo'Wax, UNKLE) - After The Flood: Talk Talk's Laughing Stock 20 Years On is online here.

Feature: After The Flood: Talk Talk's Laughing Stock 20 Years On (The Quietus)

Feature: A Musician vs The Music Industry: A Conversation (The Quietus)

"In late May, The Quietus published a story entitled ‘How The Music Industry Is Killing Music And Blaming The Fans’.... Despite its considerable length, the piece went on to become the most read story the site had published to date, provoking a stream of comments and also a slew of private messages. Amongst them was a mail from Joe Cardamone, who turned out to be the singer of The Icarus Line. Some three weeks later, a promotional copy of the band’s new album, Wildlife, arrived... I suggested we pick up our communication once again to discuss the issues raised in more detail. What follows is an edited version of a candid exchange, beginning with Joe’s original message sent a few days after the original feature’s publication."

Feature: A Musician vs The Music Industry: A Conversation (The Quietus)

Album Review: The Waterboys - An Appointment With Mr Yeats (BBC Music)

He's been promising it for years, but finally Mike Scott and his Waterboys have 'teamed up' with William Butler Yeats for an album. The BBC sought my opinion, and I was happy to offer it here.

"It could have been a risky concept – accusations of pretension are never far from anyone who undertakes to put poetry to music – but Scott’s conviction, alongside his years of preparation, ensures that this is a genuinely successful experiment."

Album Review: The Waterboys - An Appointment With Mr Yeats (BBC Music)

Album Review: A Winged Victory For The Sullen - A Winged Victory For The Sullen (Uncut)

4/5
Piano minimalism meets orchestral ambience

It’s been a prolific year for former Devics man, Dustin O’Halloran, with a studio album, live album and film soundtrack to his name. Now he pairs up with Stars Of The Lid’s Adam Wiltzie for seven elegiac tracks of almost oppressive beauty. Like labelmate Ólafur Arnalds or Jóhann Jóhannsson, the duo prioritise atmospheric soundscapes, but features like O’Halloran’s poignant piano melody, immersed within slow moving strings and drifting guitar textures on ‘We Played Some Open Chords’, set this project apart, while the twelve minute ‘A Symphony Pathetique’ is unapologetically moving. Another triumph for the post-classical scene.

Album Review: A Winged Victory For The Sullen - A Winged Victory For The Sullen (Uncut)

Album Review: St Vincent - Strange Mercy (BBC Music)

Annie Clark, you've rocked my world for a while, but I'm not so convinced any more. Find out why here. But, as a quick hint, allow me to say that Strange Mercy is "full of ideas but struggling to find a coherent voice..."


Will you ever forgive me...?

Album Review: St Vincent - Strange Mercy (BBC Music)

Feature: "A Long Tradition Of Pessimists": Roll The Dice Play Ball (The Quietus)

Sweden's Roll The Dice make dark, dark music. That should be reason enough to chat with them. So I did. Find out what happened here.

"For all its bleak augury, In Dust convinces us that, although its creators have allowed it to be created mechanically, they're constantly pulling at the levers trying to ensure that it maintains some sense of humanity..."

Feature: "A Long Tradition Of Pessimists": Roll The Dice Play Ball (The Quietus)

Feature: A Scenic Highway To Hell: Ppartying At The Pstereo Festival (The Quietus)

And so it's time to return to Norway for the Pstereo Festival in Trondheim. If you want a breakdown of who was hot and who was not, try other journalists. But if you want to know what happened when I was let loose on the streets of that Norwegian city for a couple of nights, then this should do the trick.

"My heart's bruising my ribs, I'm losing the feeling in my left leg and my blood's pumping so ferociously that I'm expecting my hands to fly from my wrists like fireworks..."

Feature: A Scenic Highway To Hell: Ppartying At The Pstereo Festival (The Quietus)

Feature: Pursuing The Obel Arts - An Interview With Agnes Obel (The Quietus)

"The music journalist has an hour in which to unlock the secrets of the musician's work and make it interesting to readers, and the musician in turn needs to communicate enough to intrigue the journalist or else the promotional opportunity will have been wasted. Another day in the life…"

Agnes Obel - almost a neighbour of mine, it turns out - is neither shy or especially reserved, but she's about as far from the tired cliché of both a depressed singer songwriter and a mouthy wannabe indie rock star as one could hope. You can find an unusually down-to-earth discussion of what it's like to watch your music go from 0-250,000 in the space of just a few weeks here...

Feature: Pursuing The Obel Arts - An Interview With Agnes Obel (The Quietus)

Album Review: Archers Of Loaf - Icky Mettle (Uncut)

4/5
Chapel Hill’s cult college rockers revisited

Despite the preposterous name, Eric Bachmann’s quartet were, for a short time, close to mainstream acceptance as US indie rock looked set to take over the world. Their 1993 debut, remastered by Bob Weston, treads similar ground to Crooked Rain-era Pavement - if less self-consciously clever - with dissonant, spiky guitars piercing surprisingly melodic college radio favourites like ‘Web In Front’ and ‘Wrong’. Bachmann’s Jagger-esque drawl perfectly matches the slacker-punk vibe of absurd, crowd-participation favourite ‘Toast’ - “There’s something wrong with my toast!” – and bonus tracks include the atonal fury of ‘Audiowhore’ (from the Greatest Of All Time EP).

Album Review: Archers Of Loaf - Icky Mettle (Uncut)

Album Review: Googoosh - Googoosh (Uncut)

3/5
Rare Persian pop from ‘Iran’s Daughter’

Actress and singer Faegheh Atashin aka Googoosh was an Iranian heroine silenced by the 1979 revolution until her emigration to the US in 2000. This enlightening collection of lesser-known songs recorded in the 1970s reveals a pre-Khomeini world of Persian traditions and western influences – in 1971 she even recorded in French. The passionate, string-laden lament of ‘Digeh Geryeh Delo Va Nemikoneh’, the sultry, disco-inflected charms of ‘Talagh’ and the Middle Eastern chanson of ‘Mano Gonjishkaye Khooneh’ may be an acquired taste for indie-trained ears, but no one can deny the potent romance of Googoosh’s voice.

Album Review: Googoosh - Googoosh (Uncut)

Album Review: Various Artists - True Soul Volumes 1&2 (Uncut)

3/5
Crate-digging heaven for soul funk fans

While its most famous son Bill Clinton was busy not inhaling, Arkansas’ True Soul label – run by record store owner Lee Anthony – was documenting the thriving local soul and funk scene. Though its output rarely troubled the charts, these 32 tracks, compiled by Stones Throw label manager Eothen Alapatt, are packed with an abundance of righteous grooves and crazily titled gems, especially the pysch-funk of York Wilson’s ‘Psychedelic Hot Pants’. Memphis may have hogged the spotlight, but John Craig’s effortless ‘Doing My Own Thing’ and the laidback shuffle of Thomas East’s ‘Funky Music’ prove Little Rock had a big heart.

Album Review: Various Artists - True Soul Volumes 1&2 (Uncut)

Feature: The Q&A: Anne Müller, cellist (The Economist / More Intelligent Life)

As this review for the BBC testifies, I'm a fan of Nils Frahm and Anne Müller's album, 7 Fingers, so it was a pleasure to interview Ms Müller - who also performs live with Agnes Obel - for The Economist and More Intelligent Life. "My older cousin played cello," she explains, "so my mother asked him to convince me to learn, too. He showed me one and said I’d look very good with it. He was my hero, so of course I had to play..."

Read the full Q&A here or here.

Feature: The Q&A: Anne Müller, cellist (The Economist / More Intelligent Life)

Feature: Tim Burgess On Loving Lawrence & Felt, "Birmingham's Best Band" (The Quietus)

Now this was unexpected, and unexpectedly fun. Tim Burgess of The Charlatans decides to join me on a drive from London to Essen to see KORT, Cortney Tidwell and Kurt Wagner's collaborative project, as I finally drive my entire record collection from London to Berlin. A conversation about Felt ensues, and upon my return we pick up the threads and turn it into a formal interview. The Quietus has it all here.

"I remember walking down Parkway in Camden. I was walking on the street and Lawrence pulled me onto the curb and actually shouted at me. 'A rock star can not be killed by a black cab or a mini cab!'"

Feature: Tim Burgess On Loving Lawrence & Felt, "Birmingham's Best Band" (The Quietus)

Feature: Beyond The Pleasuredome - Frankie's 'Liverpool' 25 Years On (The Quietus)

Having previously written at length about Frankie Goes To Hollywood's debut album, which - for me, at least - represented a Never Mind The Bollocks for the 1980s generation - The Quietus allowed me to wax at length about its follow-up, Liverpool. It's odd that a reader's comment should perhaps nail why I felt the urge to write about this critically and commercially disappointing record, but "I've never read such a fantastically written essay on such a crap album" made me grin a great deal.

"The day-glo colours and the sense of fun and mischief at the heart of their debut had disappeared, replaced by an often monochromatic vision, a seething anger and a raw sense of injustice. This wasn't the Frankie we expected, five cheeky lads in leather waving plastic guns at us and revelling in sexual innuendo, the gang to whom we'd given our hearts wrapped in baggy T-shirts."

The full story is here.

Feature: Beyond The Pleasuredome - Frankie's 'Liverpool' 25 Years On (The Quietus)

Album Review: Felt - Bubblegum Perfume (Uncut)

4/5
Collector’s compilation of cult band’s Creation albums

The kind of band beloved by 80s indie fans who considered The Smiths too mainstream, Felt’s ten albums combined Lawrence (no surname)’s erudite lyrics and Tom Verlaine intonations with ornate instrumentation, often provided by keyboardist Martin Duffy (now of Primal Scream). This 1990 compilation of their time on Creation boasts a revised tracklisting, but highlights the fragile beauty of ‘Be Still’ (from the ‘Space Blues’ EP), the instrumental cocktail jazz of ‘Book Of Swords’ (from ‘Train Above The City’, for which Laurence only named songs) and 86’s breathless, claustrophobic but joyous ‘Ballad Of The Band’ 7”.

Album Review: Felt - Bubblegum Perfume (Uncut)

Album Review: Digitalism - I Love You, Dude (Uncut)

3/5
Hamburg duo get nostalgic for the 90s

Like Delphic, Jens Moelle and Ismail ‘Isi’ Tuefekci share a love for late twentieth century ecstasy-fuelled euphoria, and their second album sounds at times like the Mancunian quartets’ update of New Order, especially on ‘2 Hearts’ and the Julian Casablancas collaboration, ‘Forrest Gump’. Elsewhere, the Kitsuné endorsed duo lean heavily on The Prodigy for ‘Reeperbahn’ and The KLF for ‘Antibiotics’, while the low-slung crunch of ‘Miami Showdown’ gives Jan Hammer a Chemical Brothers rubdown. It’s far from original, but nonetheless highly effective, and the sweaty, lad-friendly nature of the title betrays its inherent good humour.

Album Review: Digitalism - I Love You, Dude (Uncut)

Album Review: Gonzales - The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales (Uncut)

4/5
The musical prankster goes symphonic

Amidst a flurry of one-liners – one track is titled ‘Shut Up And Play The Piano’ – Gonzales relocates his rhymes to an orchestral setting for his ninth album. What could be a novelty record is transformed into a deeply satisfying and intelligent experiment thanks to the Canadian’s charm, with ‘Self Portrait’ riffing on Dorian Gray references and ‘Rap Race’ a confessional look at his motivation. Frequently self-referential and flippant, he skewers hip hop’s excesses – “No, I haven’t said the ‘n’ word yet” – against a melodramatic backdrop composed by his brother Christophe Beck, albeit more in the style of Danny Elfman than Gustav Mahler.

Album Review: Gonzales - The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales (Uncut)