Temple’s film is aimed at middle-aged armchair warriors, like himself, and clumsily manipulates the moving image to reinforce left wing stereotypes. Churchill was BAD. Thatcher was BAD. Ken...
It's a very different sound from their dynamic electric live shows, but great as Heather Findlay can be in full rock mode, the acoustic sound is a very good match for the natural warmth of her voice....
Bowie may have snubbed the closing ceremony, Fatboy Slim may have been caught miming by the second loop of the supposedly live soundtrack, and the faint strains of the Sex Pistols may well have been...
Now call me old-fashioned but I do believe that some musical styles should not be combined. Reggae, funk and folk are all great genres of music, but like tequila, bourbon and cherry cola, some...
'a form of discourse between the band and their instruments'. Coo! Does it count if it's just the keyboardist shouting at the pitchbend wheel for being sticky?
The rest of the description...
You could criticise the festival bill for relying on unashamed nostalgia acts as headliners, and especially for the way more forward-looking acts like Maschine, Winter in Eden, Kyrbgrinder or Panic...
'The night started with what appeared to be an Irish folk band taking the stage – Drunken Balordi comprised a singer/acoustic guitarist wearing an Irish pub t-shirt, bass guitarist, violinist,...
In an age where (a little sadly) aesthetics are as important to the hardcore scene as musical ability, Feed The Rhino cover all of the bases – as one hipster said to another, “we’ve gotta catch...
The genre obsessions have to stop, I guess something is going right when everyone becomes the great ‘opinionizer’, but I think that’s what can be exciting about music, take something out of the...
After what I experienced at Bloc I have to admit that I and thousands of others were completely taken in by the promise of a professionally-run event in an innovative new venue with an incredible...
'Although during the first few songs, they came across as your standard four-piece doomy metal band with powerful vocals and formulaic song structures, when their turbaned tabla drums player joined...
Although I may not accept the central premise of Chrysalis, there is no denying that Mariana Taragano’s ability to harness the talents of others and use a collaborative approach in choreography and...
New Order. Their set is fuelled by absence’s tension from the outset but Bernard Sumner is making light of this. After the group are introduced he quips “apparently we’re New Order, we’ll do...
When your guitar feedback section is so long that your guitarist has time to have a crafty check of his iPhone, maybe it's time to just get on with the song already.
HEVY Festival is HUGE. This...
Rather than understanding Matmos as a quirky part of the nineties electronica wave, maybe we should actually be interpreting them as a continuation of a much older tradition of musical comedy, albeit...
We choose to play happier stuff! You have to hold back your money shot and focus on strong songwriting. At first listen the songs sound simple but they’re much deeper than that – Lew...
Despite the 'small is beautiful' ethical basis of the festival where buying a branded plastic bottle contributes to a distant solution, offering an option to feel good without getting personally...
once the Five Ring Circus leaves, Stratford will be stripped of its Olympic flourishes and left behind to slowly rot once more, loomed over by a cold, distant Canary Wharf and scarred by poverty and...
Opening with Derek Jarman's Journey to Avebury the scene was gently set. A super 8 movie. Almost a travel document. A visual diary, a diary which continued throughout the night, for this wasn't a...
Would the Queen of Rockabilly be able to satisfy expectations or would it be a case of your granny’s sister grabbing the microphone at your cousin’s wedding after one too many glasses of fizz? ...
The song depends upon a shock impact that was spent twenty-odd years ago with The Prodigy's 'Smack My Bitch Up', the video has less visual impact than Spoek Mathambo's 'She's Lost Control' (which was...
The Overcoat is a Finnish Play, at the Pleasance Theatre in London, produced by the Scottish theatre company ACE. It was performed at Edinburgh Festival last year and is part of a project to bring...
In some respects a English version of Georg Grosz, Edward Burra's art is more personal, less political. And very sexy. Burra, a master of colour and the human form, places one in a...
