Tag: Review

Festival review: Wild Life 2017

Three years in, Disclosure and Rudimental’s south coast weekender continues to show just how much music organisers can cram into a minute airfield, even if it does start to feel like three festivals in one.

Originally published in The Edge

Boarding a train to Shoreham-by-Sea whilst running on about two hours of sleep and with only two-thirds of a malt loaf for company, it’s fair to say that the only tangible spurs of any modicum of festival spirit within me on the way to Wild Life were the bizarrely resplendent south coast weather and the promise of the musical goodness to be found within its fenced-off portion of Brighton City Airport. Eventually, mid-afternoon merriment did make itself known – many a Corona-grasping young person joined the service to the point that I assumed the beer bottles were the festival’s answer to wristbands, and within five minutes of walking from the station the more wild side of the crowd had made itself known by urinating into four separate bushes – but where the festival spearheaded by Disclosure and Rudimental flourishes is certainly in its performance offerings, fitting four substantial stages into a very compact layout. Continue reading “Festival review: Wild Life 2017”

Album review: alt-J – RELAXER

Fancy a concoction of grandiose orchestral beauty, boisterous horns with a fair dose of bite, and assertive commentary on the Radiohead-shaped comings and goings at a sex hotel? alt-J’s third record may be their least coherent but it’s certainly their sharpest.

Originally published in The Edge

On the eve of first seeing alt-J live in a sold-out O2 Arena, the song I played most frequently was ‘Taro,’ the bhangra-flavoured account of the death of war photographer Robert Capa in 1950s Vietnam that closed An Awesome Wave. Of course, it took me a while to realise this was the case – as a band named by Fine Art students after a keyboard shortcut, it’s only natural for things to be a little bit cryptic in the lyrical structure and delivery alike. With RELAXER, a record named after a “cool”-sounding hair product before you fall into the trap of expecting a soothing experience, this formula is very much accentuated: no ‘Intro,’ no fleuron-titled interludes; over its eight tracks, they’re far too busy telling tales of seaside Yorkshire threesomes, stabby pool parties, and ogle-prone Tasmanian devils. Continue reading “Album review: alt-J – RELAXER”

Festival review: Thursday at The Great Escape 2017

Reporting from new music Narnia.

Originally published in The Edge

To an early Great Escape performer caught in a light drizzle performing to a non-existent audience on a stage so makeshift that it was just four stickers on the ground opposite the Theatre Royal, in passing I heard five demoralising yet crucial words: “Do it for the art.”

Brighton, for all its multicultural wonder, is not the most thrilling place at 12:45 on a Thursday afternoon after all, even if it is hosting the start of festival season. Sure, some things are new – posters congratulating the Albion on Premier League promotion, dodgy phone shops flogging fidget spinners, the retail outlet long home to my questionable CD purchasing undergoing a rebirth as Victoria’s Secret, a chap on a bench by the station swearing at the floor with The Sun in his pocket – but the closest anything gets to the traditional brand of summertime debauchery is someone slumped in the doorway next to a bank-turned-Wetherspoon with a two litre bottle of Blackthorn. It was at this point that a man from SoundCloud gave me a bloody delicious marshmallowy ice cream from their branded van, a who’s who of industry folks that I might have emailed once congregated in a queue for the conference portion of it all, and I picked up a wristband from an Airstream trailer in time to completely miss the first of Raye’s three sets of the weekend. In pondering, I decided to take a punt on Crimsons – a band the festival app likened to Jimi Hendrix – as they were on at the first obvious venue I see. Naturally, it’s at capacity, so it’s chicken katsu curry time with Lorde on the radio to plan my next move to. (And yes, to confirm your ridiculous ideas of Brighton, the venue in question was indeed one that sells vegan barbeque from a caravan in the corner of its pub portion. I love this city.) Continue reading “Festival review: Thursday at The Great Escape 2017”

Single review: Calvin Harris feat. Frank Ocean & Migos – ‘Slide’

Harris’ first step to making you feel fucking incredible? A pleasant bass-led loop and realisation of your financial inadequacy.

Originally published in The Edge

“All my songs in 2017 have been sonically designed to make you feel fucking incredible,” tweeted Calvin Harris shortly before dropping the least Calvin Harris thing since the transition from chicken-lobbing synth-parading goofball to Vegas-dwelling chiselled Adonis, now decorated in the facial hair department with a veritable forest, commenced after 2009’s Ready For The Weekend. As such, it is only fair that we disregard Harris’ decade of pop heritage when assessing ‘Slide,’ which invites elusive carpenter and emotional maven Frank Ocean to lead the crooning whilst Quavo and Offset of ‘Bad And Boujee’ ad-libbers Migos squeak through augmentation and their oh-so-evident riches for a verse each, and instead consider how fucking incredible it can make one feel. Continue reading “Single review: Calvin Harris feat. Frank Ocean & Migos – ‘Slide’”

Live review: Raye at XOYO, London

Still 19, the Londoner proves her star quality in a hometown sellout.

Originally published in The Edge

With piercing strobe panels and chorus of rousing sirens seeping through what little space a packed XOYO had to offer by 9pm on a Thursday, ‘Shhh’ provided a startling jolt to commence proceedings in Raye’s latest one-off sell-out. The ominous single from August’s SECOND EP is one she highlighted as “the most fun to make” from it, and the follow-on from its lyrical density, peppered with trembles of the vocal power within, gifted a welcome reality-beckoning breather not five minutes into the set. As queueing down Cowper Street had been so in vogue, she told of how she teared up at footage her manager had captured before beaming and bobbing her way through a collection of excursions into heartbreak, disenfranchisement, and outright pop gold. Continue reading “Live review: Raye at XOYO, London”

Live review: Porter Robinson & Madeon at O2 Forum, London

The electronic superduo brings the Shelter tour to the UK for one night only.

Originally published in The Edge

It’s often said that you should quit while you’re ahead, however for the two-man electronic supergroup of Porter Robinson and Madeon their farewell-cum-introductory tour feels more than a tad premature. Both twentysomething producers of vibrant electronic music that feels more significant and coherent than anything else you’d tend to find on a festival main stage, the Shelter era follows their respective debut album cycles – Robinson across Worlds, Madeon on an Adventure – and, when launched with the track of the same name last August, it became all the more baffling that they hadn’t consummated the partnership any earlier in the decade or so since meeting on production forums whilst most others their age were still in potty training. Continue reading “Live review: Porter Robinson & Madeon at O2 Forum, London”

Album review: Bon Iver – 22, A Million

In praise of Justin Vernon’s cryptically-coated latest.

Originally published for The Edge’s album of the year countdown

Justin Vernon‘s storied process behind 2007’s For Emma, Forever Ago – rambling from reality into a remote crevice of Wisconsin, setting up residence in a cabin in the woods, waving bears away from stew in nothing but his pants, spending three months putting together a gorgous debut album, etc. – is one that has at many points throughout 2016 looked rather appealing. Moreso in a year that has shown a relentless determination to quash all that is comforting and hopeful, his sincerely warm songwriting provides assurance, and 22, A Million strays from his frostbitten products of seclusion by venturing from normalcy towards experimention in every facet imaginable. Continue reading “Album review: Bon Iver – 22, A Million”

EP review: The Chainsmokers – Collage

Another brief compendium that fails to convey the melodic character apparently lost in their year-long remix drought, Collage sees The Chainsmokers grate their way into your eardrums and out of your hearts.

Originally published in The Edge

What ‘#SELFIE’ did to promote The Chainsmokers across the globe, it counteracted by ruthlessly haemorrhaging their credibility. Before, they were merely two dudes – Alex Pall and Drew Taggart – making bad jokes in the SoundCloud descriptions of tender (and thoroughly enjoyable) amplifications of tracks by alt-indie luminaries like Jónsi, Phoenix, and The Killers. Then, one gimmicky pissabout signed by Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak label later, they had a string of club dates and festival appearances, a hilariously dreadful American Idol performance, and millions of new listeners who looked forward to their next move much as they did with DJ Ötzi and the Crazy Frog. Somehow, having resettled themselves with an official mix for Bastille, they began again, building up to 2015’s original EP Bouquet and global chart residency over the twelve months that followed. Continue reading “EP review: The Chainsmokers – Collage”

Live review: LANY at Heaven, London

The synthpop band finds Where The Hell Its Friends Are.

Originally published in The Edge

Particularly in this age of vehement digital obsessions, it’s not tricky to observe obsessive teenage mentalities from a relatively safe distance or even unintentionally kick a nest of Beliebers, whose attempts to insult me were as unimpressive as his music at the time. Yet, that idea of swooning over a heartthrob figure is a phenomenon that has taken a while – almost two decades, in fact – for me to fully appreciate. Even though my own teenage years contained sporadic and prolonged infatuations with particular artists and their outputs, these were built on foundations of what was to me groundbreaking musicianship, not through bleary-eyed desire.

All that changed when I found myself, perhaps foolishly, spending a night before a far-from-out-of-the-way spring coursework deadline at a LANY show. Smitten with ‘ILYSB’ after hearing Zane Lowe suffering from the same sentiment on Beats 1 the previous autumn, their night off from arena shows with Ellie Goulding and John Newman took them to Camden’s Assembly (then Barfly), where a quaint capacity crowd was treated to an intimate and sweaty performance of, at that stage, the band’s entire discography. As frontman Paul Klein spoke modestly about the band’s feeling of overwhelm by the love they were receiving through his matted mane of flowing locks, almost everyone hung off and echoed every one of his words, even though new single ‘WHERE THE HELL ARE MY FRIENDS’ was just three days old. Continue reading “Live review: LANY at Heaven, London”

Album review: Izzy Bizu – A Moment Of Madness

Although occasionally lacking in both clarity and lyrical depth, its jazzy flares and spritely voice form a thoroughly enjoyable set of tracks.

Originally published in The Edge

There’s something remarkably refreshing about a 22-year-old who is as comfortable orchestrally covering Edith Piaf records from 1957 as she is talking to interviewers about enjoying worm-laced tequila. Izzy Bizu’s sound is a gorgeous homage to that bygone era of soul, with backing tracks built for the roar of a big band with their precise jazzy flickers and sporadic bursts of substantial percussion. Even in the moments that feature utterly indecipherable vocals – whether through dropped syllables on ‘Naïve Soul’ and ‘What Makes You Happy’ or because, like ‘White Tiger,’ the sounds she’s making are nothing more than vague attempts at actual sentences – the package feels well-rounded and zesty. Continue reading “Album review: Izzy Bizu – A Moment Of Madness”