In Conversation with Maisha
It is no understatement to say that Maisha are one of the hottest new outfits in Jazz, comprised of some of the most in-demand instrumentalists from the London scene. Before…
Mr Bongo 30th anniversary – Moses Boyd leads the way in eclectic celebration of music
It is safe to say Brighton-based record label Mr Bongo has earned its name as the best champions of diverse music in town. Director of Operations Graham Luckhurst asserted that…
Brighton Festival: 30 Years Of Mr Bongo preview
Back in the heyday of 1989, when Tina Turner and Kylie Minogue dominated the charts, and Prince was is his Batman-score phase, something else was brewing on Berwick Street in…
Hyphenated Identities: Internationality in the ‘Hostile Environment’
If there is anything the last three years of political near-phantasmagoria has proven, it is that British society, whatever or wherever that is, is obsessed with identity. We establish who…
Nubya Garcia live at Komedia: Encapsulating, undulating tones
Before the band has come on, I survey the crowd. As with most jazz gigs the crowd resembles a loaf of sourdough, a fluffy and fresh centre with a hard…
Fyre Festival: What can the music industry learn?
Last month, Netflix released its latest original documentary, ‘Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened’. It interrogates the story of Fyre Festival held (if you can say it was held…
James Blake – Assume Form review
Arriving in to Brighton’s The Islingword on Queens Park Road, as I ordered a pint and briefly squinted to see the football score before sitting down, I heard something genuinely…
Oscar Jerome at The Hope and Ruin
The young star is often a tricky title to navigate. There are the big names, who explode into the world with noise, bright light, a big record deal, but rare…
Stand Up & Slam review
Sometimes the best experiences are those you initially question. Stand Up & Slam is one such idea, for it is a resounding triumph of an evening. Hosted in the downstairs…
Stand Up and Slam preview
It is the nature of recent times that many things no longer exist solely in the categories we give them. The concept of genre has progressed from the home artists…
GoGo Penguin at Concorde 2: Jazz in the mainstream?
Jazz music today exists in a peculiar space of seemingly both simultaneous loss and revival. The not-original-but-now-renewed crossover of jazz and rap music, and the successes of film phenomenon La…
Wolf Alice review: A band of quiet confidence at the Dome
The state of indie rock today presents a densely packed field of artists, each one trying to make more noise than the last; trying to hang on to the coattails…
Grammys 2017: Judges keep on defying the critics
Last week the elusive Frank Ocean took to his Tumblr account to criticise the Grammys for both the seeming exclusion of black artists, similar to the Oscars in previous years,…
VANT: No frills rock ‘n’ roll at its finest
The Haunt is a sticky place to say the least, and then Vant initiate their first of 16 unrelenting songs, ‘The Answer’ – a scrappy, post-Strokes track that has enough…