Music Reissues Weekly: Motörhead - The Manticore Tapes

MUSIC REISSUES WEEKLY: MOTORHEAD - THE MANTICORE TAPES Snapshot of Lemmy and co in August 1976 proves fascinating

Snapshot of Lemmy and co in August 1976 proves fascinating

Manticore was owned by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and their manager. The organisation provided the name for the band’s label. Apart from ELP and its individual members, the best-known signees to the imprint were Italian prog-rockers PFM and former King Crimson member Pete Sinfield. Despite this new album’s title, Motörhead were not with Manticore.

Album: Barry Can't Swim - Loner

★★★★ BARRY CAN'T SWIM - LONER Dive in to some sizzling summer dance music

Dive in to some sizzling summer dance music

Despite being Mercury nominated, Bazza’s hardly a household name. Nevertheless, his debut album When Will We Land was highly praised by those in the know. I am definitely not in the know and am more or less a stranger to electro stuff – it can often leave me cold (Guetta can get off, quite frankly). But I know a good tune when I hear it.

Glastonbury Festival 2025: Five Somerset summer days of music, controversy and beautiful mayhem

GLASTONBURY 2025 Five Somerset summer days of music, controversy and beautiful mayhem

The full, brain-frazzling, immersive deep dive into Worthy Farm's music and arts spectacular

MONDAY 30th JUNE 2025

“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by dark brown rings. He looks peaky.

“Why?” I enquire. Sweat nodules down my face, my body, everywhere. So saline-intense it leaves powdery white steaks.

“My eyes,” he replies, “They’re wobbling about.”

We pull over in Cannards Grave, a Somerset hamlet named for a thieving 17th century publican hanged here. Every third car passing contains battered detritus from the annual Worthy Farm pilgrimage.

Album: Kesha - .

★★★ KESHA - . After a decade of tribulation, a new beginning matches stadium heft to club-pop bounce

After a decade of tribulation, a new beginning matches stadium heft to club-pop bounce

“I’m, like, pop star when I have to pop star, and then I’m, like, naked hippy when I can naked hippy.” So Kesha explained recently on the Jennifer Hudson Show, going on to say she spent most of her time romping in the woods and chasing butterflies. A far cry, then, from the trailer trash Gaga guise she adopted when she exploded in 2009 with global chart-topper “Tik Tok” (“Brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack”!).

Album: Claudia Brücken - Night Mirror

★★★ CLAUDIA BRUCKEN - NIGHT MIRROR An album of elegant, varied grown-up pop

The Propaganda singer returns with an album of elegant, varied grown-up pop

German singer Claudia Brücken has had a long and busy career, initially defined by her role in Propaganda. They were a cult 1980s band on ZTT Records who laced their opulent synth pop with an appealingly morbid Teutonic sensibility. Decades later, it seemed they’d been forgotten until Brücken and fellow Propaganda singer Susanne Freytag released an album in 2022 as xPropaganda. It scooted up the UK charts.

Album: Mocky - Music Will Explain (Choir Music Vol. 1)

Is the Canadian polymath hiding behind his exquisite production and arrangement skill?

Dominic “Mocky” Salole has had a long career in which the tension between authenticity and pastiche has been a constant. Toronto-born, of English and Yemeni heritage, he came of musical age in the Bohemian hotbed of 1990s Berlin with a close-knit bunch of other Canadian ex-pats, including Peaches, Chilly Gonzales and Feist.

Album: Brìghde Chaimbeul - Sunwise

A singular sonic auteur reshapes traditional Celtic music

The first five-and-a-half minutes of Sunwise’s opening track “Dùsgadh / Waking" are taken up by a drone. Played on the Scottish small pipes – a form of bagpipes – this is in due course supplemented by a series of individual notes played in clusters. What’s heard symbolises the arrival of winter and the activities of Cailleach Bheurr who, in Celtic folklore, wanders moors and summons the elements to conceal any greenery, so winter’s blanket is absolute.

Music Reissues Weekly: Rupert’s People - Dream In My Mind

How ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ transformed a London mod-pop band

Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was an instant phenomenon. Recorded in April 1967 and issued as a single on 12 May after pre-release play on pirate station Radio London, it topped the UK charts four weeks later. Globally, it hit big on most pop markets and was integral to launching the classical music/pop hybrid which evolved into prog rock.

Album: JF Robitaille & Lail Arad - Wild Moves

★★★ JF ROBITAILLE & LAIL ARAD - WILD MOVES A set of graceful, wry melancholy from an Anglo-Canadian singer-songwriter duo

A set of graceful, wry melancholy from an Anglo-Canadian singer-songwriter duo

Around eight years ago, London singer-songwriter Lail Arad started releasing one-off tracks with Canadian singer JF Robitaille, once of Montreal indie outfit The Social Register (Arad’s own 2016 album The Onion is an undiscovered diamond that should be sought out).

Album: Lorde - Virgin

★★★ LORDE - VIRGIN Sombre self-examination and scratchy cellos fail to ignite

Sombre self-examination and scratchy cellos fail to ignite on the New Zealander's new LP

Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of Pure Heroine to the similar but more grandiose production of Melodrama was a linear progression, but then came the acoustic guitars and organic percussion of Solar Power.