There’s a lot to be said for more brevity in hip hop; whilst a few premier high-end talents can get away with an 80-minute odyssey – and plenty more try – the sometimes relentless nature of it can feel like a listening battle of wills.…
Up there on Dove Street, nothing much changes.
In a corner of rural, seaside Fife the locals call the East Neuk, although you can’t reach out and touch the reasons why, life is slower.
The cobbles still receive the downpours stoutly whilst the gulls …
At times it feels overwhelming.
Thanks admittedly to the pressures artists are put under to be omnipresent across social they can seem to be in always your face, so much so that it doesn’t feel unreasonable to suspect a few of them might …
It’s easy to think of David Holmes in the guise of composer, scoring movies like Ocean’s Eleven or hit TV show Killing Eve, a content man in his fifties who mixes with entertainment royalty and has the gold statuettes to …
Recently the yin and yang of America’s city vs. country identity crisis bubbled up musically into something uglier but Jack Tatum – AKA Wild Nothing – has embraced the effect somewhat in reverse during the run up to the release of …
Things don’t always go well for those recognised by the BBC through their annual Sound of…award.
Designed to satisfy the industry and public’s voracious appetite for new talent, when Sampha came fourth in the 2014 version he lost out to eventual winner Sam Smith, …
It’s well known to some but for new potential acolytes, Goat’s semi-mythical back story is well worth recounting.
Allegedly forming in the tiny Swedish hamlet of Korpilombolo, the three main members of the group – only a Christian Johansson has been …
You suspect hubris is not an accusation levelled at Sufjan Stevens very much, so let’s do some of the heavy lifting here for him.
In a career that’s often been punctuated by left turns, idiosyncrasy and background speculation about his …
Whisper it quietly, but writing about a 20th anniversary edition of an album is a pretty straightforward gig normally.
In the streaming era your audience now almost certainly has a passing knowledge of the material, whatever artist history there is probably is also …
First impressions usually go a very long way.
Live4ever’s introduction to Animal Collective came in the form of a long piece by the much-cherished writer Simon Reynolds published in the middle of the noughties. It’s opening line was: “Animals, anthropomorphism and …
When you’ve been around as an artist for some time – maybe a decade, maybe more – one thing becomes more inevitable as the years pass: that of the writing and delivery of the ‘DARK ALBUM’.
These can …
It didn’t used to exactly be frowned upon, but couples – even more so married couples – were always viewed as incompatible with a life in the music industry; from Ike and Tina onwards.
Yet now there are seemingly more instances. Take Alaina …
Like the claim that there are only so many subjects you can build a joke around, similar limitations it’s reckoned apply to songs.
A recent online post identified twelve, although the topics over and underlapped as you might expect; on the …
The Eden Project, Cornwall, 2004. As part of the scientific park’s summer gig series, L4E (before they were L4E) is in attendance to see Gallic dream poppers Air, but via a mischievous piece of scheduling, supporting them are the Super Furry Animals.
Preparing …
It’s so trite these days it’s almost not worth writing it down, but punk rock was never supposed to be a durable vessel.
It was meant to be angry, dirty, confrontational and raw; men still playing punk rock into their late 60s …
In his recently published book The Art Of Darkness, veteran musician and writer John Robb traces the origins of the goth movement, citing the formula: “If you did a chemical equation of goth, it’s kind of Jim Morrison plus David …