New Music CDs Round-Up 3
Tom Waits, Kraftwerk, Miles Davis and the Pope battle it out for our critics' affections.
This round-up of the freshest new music and most well-ripened classics we could find in November features everything from Miles Davis to Kraftwerk, Norah Jones to the actual Pope, via Toms Petty and Waits, Dubstep and related bass-driven electronica from Portugal, Angola, Denmark and Tanzania, and the soundtrack to Life On Earth. Our reviewers this month are Robert Sandall, Peter Culshaw, Adam Sweeting, Joe Muggs, Thomas H Green, Howard Male and Marcus O'Dair.
Singles and Downloads 2
This month's bumper crop, from Rihanna to the Astral Social Club
Rihanna, Russian Roulette (Mercury)
I strongly suggest anyone who believes the sound of US mainstream pop is somehow homogenised and safe take another look at the current charts. Standing over them like android colossi are Lady Gaga and Rihanna - who not only look exactly as pop stars were always going to look "in the future", but sound apocalyptically insane. This song is in the standard melodramatic modern power-ballad style of writer/producer Ne-Yo, but the combination of Rihanna's piercing voice and the lyrics that circle in the non-specific manner of nightmares around death, obsession, loyalty and points of no return - with (no shit, Sherlock) a heavy whiff of sado-masochism - make it an incredibly harrowing but addictive listen. The flip side to "Umbrella"'s promise of protection, it's scary pop music for scary times. "Russian Roulette" on Amazon. "Umbrella" on Amazon. (JM)
Trouble Tune: Bass Clef, Geiom, London Improvisers Orchestra
Electronic-improv collaborations deftly avoid pitfalls
There are occasional days when the Royal Festival Hall really feels like the people's palace it was always meant to be – and yesterday, with its free concert of live improvisation mixed with dubstep and electronica in the RFH bar, was absolutely one of them. Rave kids, pensioners, parents with babes in arms and some particularly energetic school-age children all proved that given the right context music the border between “challenging” music and entertainment is more porous than some might like to believe.
The xx, Village Underground, Shoreditch
Young indie-electro band prove more powerful than they appear
Browsing through various past reviews of The xx, two adjectives which occur time and again are “fragile” and “tentative”. These are wrong – but understandable.
2562 album launch, Corsica Studios SE1
Dutch bassbin-abuser just trumped at his own album launch by young British talent
For some people, dubstep has an identity problem. Its suburban origins and recent global spread, its propensity for hybridity, the relatively genial nature of the scene, and perhaps worst of all its popularity with – whisper it – students lead some commentators to regard it with suspicion.
theartsdesk Q&A: DJ Kode 9
The philosopher-king of UK bass muses on five years of Hyperdub
Glasgow-born, south London resident Steve Goodman – better known to discerning lovers of modern music as Kode 9 – has a unique and privileged position in relation to the ever-shifting UK dance music underground. In the mid 90s he formed part of the slightly cultish Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) founded by Sadie Plant and Nick Land at the University of Warwick, where he gained a PhD in philosophy.