Asher Roth: Asleep in the Bread Aisle
Features
Given the excitement surrounding Eminem's imminent return, it's easy to forget that his rise was not greeted with untrammelled delight by the hip-hop community. Indeed, some suggested his success might effectively signal the end of hip-hop as we know it. Once the music industry found a million-selling white rapper, it was bound to search out others and promote them at the expense of their black counterparts. Honky was going to go on one of his periodic musical mission creeps; hip-hop would be annexed as thoroughly as R&B had been by skinny kids from Richmond and Newcastle in the early 1960s.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 17, 2009
Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Books I & II; Angela Hewitt
Features
Angela Hewitt made her first recording of the 48 Preludes and Fugues in the late 1990s, as part of her Hyperion cycle of Bach's keyboard works. Her return to them seems to have been prompted by a sense of greater familiarity with the music itself, matured over 10 years of playing the pieces in recital. In fact, not a great deal about her performances has changed, though the piano itself has: for Hewitt now prefers the pearly glow of a Fazioli to the greater assertiveness of the Steinway. In some preludes, her rhythms are far more unbuttoned than before - a result, she suggests, of getting to know more music by French baroque composers such as Couperin and Rameau. But only occasionally does she take more liberties with expressive rubato than the music can stand. What shines through her playing most of all is a sovereign control of touch, texture and dynamic, so that every line is perfectly characterised and distinct. This is by no means the only approach to playing Bach's masterpiece on
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 17, 2009
Bleep of faith
Features
It's one of the UK's greatest independent labels, responsible for introducing the world to Aphex Twin, LFO, Boards of Canada and Squarepusher. But the origins of Warp Records, which celebrates its 20th birthday this year, were much humbler. The track that would inspire a revolution in UK dance music was conceived in a teenager's bedroom.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 17, 2009
Hail, Hail, Rock'n'Roll
Features
It began quietly enough, with a late-night hankering to hear again the demo version of the Lemonheads' Bit Part. Several hours later, however, I found myself sitting in my kitchen feverishly downloading Vanessa Paradis's Joe le Taxi, Taylor Dane's Tell It to My Heart, and searching YouTube for the video to House Arrest by Krush, just to see if it was how I remembered it to be.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 17, 2009
Intergalactic FM: a hotbed of 80s electro
Features
In my quest to escape my addiction to Five Live, I'm spending entire weeks listening to radio stations I've never heard before. I was drawn to Intergalactic FM by its name (who wouldn't be?) and a banner promising listeners "the west coast sound". That's nice, I thought. I like west coast sounds - the Byrds, the Beach Boys, Fifth Dimension. The reality is though that the west coast Intergalactic is referring to isn't California, it's the "west coast sound of Holland". I didn't even know the Netherlands had a west coast, let alone a sound unique to it, but it does and it's as far removed from 12-string guitars and songs pining for chestnut mares or beautiful balloons as it is possible to get.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 17, 2009
Messiah
Features
On paper, this Messiah promised rewards indeed: a historically informed performance with distinguished soloists and a celebrated choir on the 250th anniversary of his death, in the building in which he is buried. Hard to beat, one might think.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 17, 2009
Miss Kittin and the Hacker: Two
Features
No one does blank, bitchy fashionista ennui quite like Miss Kittin, with her trademark blend of menace and melancholy. On last year's sleek Batbox, she proved there was life in a shtick that, by rights, should have burned out half a decade ago in the dying embers of electroclash. But even as she pulled it off against the odds, one sensed the line between success and failure was being cut ever finer; and, in hooking up with her original partner in crime, the Hacker, Kittin has fallen on the wrong side of it. His skeletal beats have barely progressed since their debut, seven years ago; they certainly haven't inspired Kittin to move out of autopilot. Party in My Head is an exception, enveloped in nostalgia for halcyon nights and propelled by driving bass, but the nadir comes with a rote, depressingly predictable cover of Suspicious Minds.
Source: Guardian Unlimited
Date Published: April 17, 2009
