The small theatre inside London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts on this particular night felt like the place to be. The crowd’s collective level of interest in jazz, dubstep, electronica, hip hop or IDM was irrelevant. Similar to the way ageing punks proudly claim they “were there” to see the Ramones at one of their first CBGBs shows, many of us will be glad we witnessed Flying Lotus and Infinity when it was happening, in the moment, in the flesh.
The full blog post, on the August 18 Flying Lotus and Infinity show at London’s ICA, is at INTELLIGENT LIFE
“The majority of music is easy to follow, but we give people something to think about,” says Milo Smee, who created the band ten years ago with his brother Leo Smee, originally as a bass-drum duo. “We have no rulebook. And I don’t really care what people think about it.”
The full blog post, on the London-based band Chrome Hoof, is at MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE.
The Economist: How accurately does your film portray the music scene in Tehran? Are there really young people wearing Strokes T-shirts and Vans backpacks?
Bahman Ghobadi: Yes. I have not changed anything in that film; all people are real, all the locations and clothes are real. I think of Iranian culture as a beauty veiled by the black ugly chador of politics, and in my film I have tried to unveil this beauty.
My full interview, with “No One Knows About Persian Cats” director Bahman Ghobadi, is at the ECONOMIST.
Camden Crawl bears some similarities to the music portion of Austin’s South by Southwest festival, in that dozens of up-and-coming bands perform at multiple sites, all day long, in one concentrated area. And at the Crawl, as at SXSW, expect long lines for the bathroom, and lots of noise and beer. But also expect to see a lot of bands up close in small settings: NME, the British music magazine, called the festival “Camden’s annual chance to be even drunker and indier than normal.”
The full blog post, on the 2010 Camden Crawl music festival, is at the NEW YORK TIMES.
London retro-soul music fans may remember the Dap-Kings as the American band that recorded and toured with Amy Winehouse. But the band’s Wednesday night performance at Koko with their original front woman, Sharon Jones, was an entirely different affair.
The full review, on the recent Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings performance at Koko in London, is at the DAILY TELEGRAPH.
A recent live performance by Vampire Weekend at the Garage in North London as part of their current UK tour was a reminder that not all bands embrace the element of surprise.
Vampire Weekend played through a set that included songs from their 2008 eponymous first release, a massive hit released on the UK-based independent label XL Recordings that sold 28,000 copies in its opening week but has since sold 498,000. Time Magazine named it the fifth best album of 2008 and Rolling Stone included them in their top 100 best albums of the decade (two slots above Danger Mouse’s the Grey Album).
The full blog post, on Vampire Weekend’s tour stops through London, is at the DAILY TELEGRAPH.
For about six years, the New York-based three-piece band has won over audiences–and driven some away–with an ample supply of volume. The New York Times credited them with “reviving the ominous, feedback-drenched drones of the 1980s”, while the Washington Post described them as “the most awesome, ear-shatteringly loud garage/shoegaze band you’ll ever hear.”
At the 2008 SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, the band ended its set with a ten-minute-plus sonic meltdown that surely inflicted some hearing loss.
The full Q&A, with A Place To Bury Strangers, is at INTELLIGENT LIFE.
Introducing is a talented, Oxford-based nine-piece band with a very specific goal. Every show they perform is essentially the same. With the exception of slight variations in their encores, the set never changes. Their mission? To perform DJ Shadow’s first LP, “Endtroducing”, in its entirety, from start to finish.
In the final room of the exhibition are several large journals full of hand-written dedications to Jackson. Most entries are addressed directly to “Michael” and written much like high school yearbook entries. “You are the meaning of life,” wrote one fan. Most thank Jackson for helping them in some way. “You were a childhood hero and inspired a million things in me,” wrote another.
The full blog post, on London’s official Michael Jackson exhibit, is at the NEW YORK TIMES.
Long before we debated what real punk-rock was, what true hip-hop was, or what made indie-rock authentic, jazz heads grappled with what is and isn’t jazz music. Now, the debate is whether jazz is dying off or not.
America’s jazz audience is not only shrinking, it’s aging. Attendance at jazz performances has dropped 30% since 2002. The median age of concert patrons in 2008 was 46; in 1982 it was 29.
But jazz is not dead, yet. Among other groups, Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet is proof:
The full blog post, on the status of Jazz in 2009, is at INTELLIGENT LIFE.
