Author: Sean Keenan

Sean Keenan used to write. Now he edits, and gets very annoyed about the word ‘ethereal’. Likely to bite anyone using the form ‘I’m loving….’. Don’t start him on the misuse of three-dot ellipses. Divides his time between mid-Spain and South-West France, like one of those bucktoothed, fur-clad minor-aristocracy ogresses you see in Hello magazine, only without the naff chandeliers. Twitter: @seaninspain
A picture of Peru Maravilloso

Peru Maravilloso [Album]

08/11/2013

If the material is jaunty and lacking in nose-flutes it is because this is a reflection of Peruvian popular music in the 60s/70s, not some anthropological/musicological quest for an imposed...

Read More
A picture of The Presence LDN

The Presence LDN : Interview

23/10/2013

I won’t use a computer to make music ever again. Those things lead to a shiny but soulless place in the heart....

Read More

Black History Month : Interview

17/10/2013

There is a tension in Black history that makes it all the more interesting.That is to say, it highlights the many struggles and centrality of people of African descent in making the modern world....

Read More
A picture of The Best of Drugstore

Drugstore : The Best of Drugstore

16/10/2013

Maybe it's musical Marmite, inspiring only deep devotion or outright contempt. Drugstore are not static enough to pin a genre upon....

Read More
A photo of Douglas Dare by Dusan Kacan, Erased Tapes, singer

Douglas Dare : Seven Hours [EP]

12/09/2013

Devoid of histrionics, of 'emotional' treatments, and of cloying sentimentality. Dare's presentation of the songs is instead factual, crisp and resigned....

Read More
A picture of Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney RIP

30/08/2013

Few Nobel laureates make visits to state schools to discuss poetry. Heaney did....

Read More
A picture of Joel Sarakula

Joel Sarakula : The Golden Age

05/06/2013

The nostalgic waft of times past may be enough to propel Sarakula into the playlists of the nation's barbeque evenings. ...

Read More
Shaking Sensations

The Shaking Sensations : Start Stop Worrying

25/04/2013

This is an album to induce a trancelike post-rock euphoria, rather than one to focus on. ...

Read More
Ian McCulloch

Ian McCulloch : Holy Ghosts

13/04/2013

Mac's voice has aged with the same sweet languid complexity as an oak-barelled Sauternes....

Read More

Gangsters and Gunslingers : The American Museum in Britain

23/03/2013

Los Angeles was the last Western boom town – a place where elderly cowboys mingled with celluloid stars on Hollywood backlots. Wyatt Earp ended his days there. Gangsters and Gunslingers, at the...

Read More
Sheet music

Counterpoint : Reich Bach at Ya!

01/03/2013

The truth of music in 2013 is that we don't really need a masterpiece right now. We need a higher grade of ordinary....

Read More
Nhoah , Tangowerk

Nhoah : Tangowerk

28/02/2013

Nhoah's reappraisal of Tango is painted in bold strokes, dappling the Argentianian rhythms and Iberian histrionics with electronica and sequenced beats, rather than vice versa....

Read More
Sundark and Riverlight

Patrick Wolf : Live, Teatro Lara, Madrid

05/02/2013

'Sometimes I'm a fuckup', he explains, 'but I kinda think that's what you like about me'....

Read More

Salif Keita : Talé

01/02/2013

Salif Keita 's voice is outside of time, although steeped in place(s). If you wish to call someone, he once stated, call them with music. In present-day Mali, that's got to be worth a try....

Read More

Becoming Picasso : Courtauld Gallery

28/01/2013

Picasso responded immediately to the art and culture that surrounded him in Paris – in the first part of 1901 he devoured the sights and excitement of the city and its artists. In the second part...

Read More
caper plant

Spaghetti Whores and Tasty Capers

18/01/2013

Along with almost every highly-flavoured or highly-priced delicacy man has ever put to his lips, capers have been thought to have aphrodisiac properties...

Read More
artscanteen

Hanging Offence: Arts Canteen

14/01/2013

Arts Canteen is a new UK-based arts venture that explores intercultural artistic relationships between the Middle East and the UK. Trebuchet meets Kelvin De Veth, curator and link-maker....

Read More
Goat

You’re Kidding! Portuguese Goat Stew [Recipe]

11/01/2013

Just taste it. A warming hug of a stew, but with all of the ornery attitude, cunning, fastidiousness and bravado of the animal that went into it....

Read More

Claudio Parentela

04/01/2013

The rigidity of conventional responses to sexual imagery takes a beating in Parentela's collages - their brutal exposition of the flawed humanity beneath and beyond the adland exterior is made...

Read More

Albums of the Year: Editor’s Picks

25/12/2012

If Lana Del Rey, Flying Lotus or Grimes aren't on any Trebuchet lists this year, it's certainly not because we haven't heard them (indeed, how could we miss them?). And we're not coming over all...

Read More

The Zolas: Ancient Mars

29/11/2012

Piano/organ builds, picked guitar melodies, crunching riffs, and a lyrical approach that constructs vivid narratives using thematic language. It's funny, and fun, as well as being an almost perfect...

Read More

Apples & Eve: Dionysus

23/11/2012

Genre-adjectives for the four-track will congregate around the word 'folk', mostly because there's a violin in there. Or a fiddle. Call it what you will. ...

Read More

Can ‘Khan’ Oral – Angels of Disguise

15/11/2012

As a jumping-off point for facetious gasbagging of just about any moral, political, religious or personal viewpoint, pornography is a gift to the commentator in love with the sound of his or her own...

Read More

DELS: Black Salad [EP]

10/11/2012

The 'puttin' a bitch on the corner from the time I wuz fourteen, chill wit' my niggas, emceed my way up from the gutters' narrative that still, incomprehensibly, provides mid-west cornfed WASPs with...

Read More

Cedric de Smedt: Illustrator

19/10/2012

Cédric De Smedt illustrates torment and despair without flinching....

Read More

One Mile an Hour [Album]

04/10/2012

Perhaps the music should be taken in the context of entertainment to fill six months of darkness with little more than cod heads, limpets and puffin broth for sensual pleasures. ...

Read More
Dylan Mondegreen

Dylan Mondegreen [Album Review]

02/10/2012

A soft-voiced collection of slick popsongs in the fey, beta-male mode...

Read More

Redrails [Album]

12/09/2012

Challenging, Redrails most certainly is. Rewarding, in equal measure. Intriguing, and destined to be the source of many hours spent, headphones on, grasping to find the mental setting in which it all...

Read More

Constellation des Carpates: Eglise de Seignosse le Penon [Live]

03/08/2012

Writing about live music on the Capbreton-Hossegor-Seignosse strip of South-Western France has the tendency to become a 'What I did On My Holidays' essay. An essay featuring more blonde-dreadlocked...

Read More

Peter Broderick: These Walls of Mine

23/07/2012

‘…composing and playing music is just a pretty sophisticated way to do those things we do, but why? Because we were separated in the big bang – and are now endlessly trying to find...

Read More

Our weekly newsletter

Sign up to get updates on articles, interviews and events.

↑