A couple of songs into the Fuck Buttons set, as part of their European Slow Focus Tour, and thanks to the pulsating rhythms and a brilliantly simple but mesmerising combination of video projections and lights, it feels like we’ve been transported to a strange and unfamiliar landscape. It’s a stunning live show. Geography and landscape […]
Torres is the stage name of Mackenzie Scott, a hugely talented twenty-three year old singer-songwriter from Macon Georgia. Torres is also the name of her debut album, which, independently released, has won deserved critical acclaim with its ten tracks that display a rare talent and maturity. Jayson Greene, reviewing the album for Pitchfork, wrote of the […]
What are the ramifications of the widespread electronic surveillance undertaken by the United States’ National Security Agency, as revealed by Edward Snowden? How does knowing that your online activities (social media, email, search engines etc) could be monitored affect how you discuss and research sensitive topics? How does widespread surveillance affect how journalists and writers […]
An international team of scientists today released results of their tests on the bones of exhumed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Officially Neruda died of heart failure – brought on by advanced prostate cancer – on the 23rd September 1973 in Santiago’s Santa María Clinic, twelve days after the military coup that crushed Salvador Allende’s left-wing […]
Songwriter David Gray has announced a special Irish tour, focussing on small venues, in part to return to his roots [Gray first found an audience in Ireland, before his massive hit album White Ladder] and in part to try out new material from his next album. While the tour has been announced – in a […]
Billy Bragg‘s debut album, Life’s a Riot with Spy vs Spy, gets the anniversary re-issue treatment this month. Cooking Vinyl release a remastered version of the original album and live recordings from Bragg’s London Union Chapel show in June 2013. The album comes out as a CD, housed in a snazzy replica vinyl card sleeve, […]
Irish singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow has made available a track, Cavalier, from his forthcoming second album Post Tropical (due for release in January 2014). Blessed with an unforgettable voice coupled to a unique songwriting vision McMorrow is a firm favourite with the Monkeys, and this slow building soulful track bodes well for the new album. […]
Danish band Efterklang, since forming in 2001, have produced consistently critically acclaimed, exciting and adventurous albums (including Tripper, Magic Chairs, and Parades), collaborated with film-makers and orchestras, and have driven pigeon-hole-placers demented; their music has been variously described as post-rock, dream pop, neoclassical dark wave, electronic, glitch, ethereal wave or even indie-folk-pop all of which […]
Ed Kowalczyk, as former front man of the American rock band Live, has been responsible for some of the biggest and best known rock anthems of the ’90s. Songs like I Alone, Selling the Drama, Lightning Crashes, and Lakini’s Juice brilliantly mixed hard rock, melody and a lyricism that struck a chord with a generation. […]
Nobel laureate for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa is interviewed in the weekend edition of Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper, on the occasion of the Italian publication of his book La civilización del espectáculo (in Italian La civiltà dello spettacolo). His short book/pamphlet – not to be confused with Guy deBord’s The Society of the Spectacle – warns in […]
