by Laurie Tuffrey
Tuesday 8th February 2011, 21:55 BST
Clicking through the music blogoshere this weekend pointed to a lot of excitement about the line-up of American festival Sasquatch! being announced, which is, admittedly, eye-wateringly good, with Wilco, Modest Mouse, Yeasayer, Beach House, Deerhunter and many more suitably rich pickings set to rock the Pacific Northwest. First thought was to turn a wan eye to the bank account and then curse Sasquatch! for being a) in May, right about the time Ea...
Continue Reading
by Laurie Tuffrey
Tuesday 1st February 2011, 00:22 BST
Brace yourselves. Blue have been announced as the UK’s entry for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Yes, that’s right, one of the original crotch-grabbin’, Elton-John-collaboratin’, stepping-up-from-the-stool-for-the-key-change(-in’), boybands have booked their flights to Germany to sing ‘I Can’ in the hopes of raising the UK’s results above nil point, walking the walk where Radiohead and Morrissey could only talk the tal...
Continue Reading
by Laurie Tuffrey
Tuesday 18th January 2011, 23:06 BST
2011 looks set to be a year for music regaining its sense of space. Not so much music about space-though it’s about time Babylon Zoo’s evergreen raver classic ‘Spaceman’ enjoyed a revival-but artists like James Blake and Jamie Woon, whose silence-flecked sounds, employing swathes of space and breathy pauses, are currently enjoying some time in the critical limelight.
Dubbed ‘microstep’, the genre takes its lead from post-dubste...
Continue Reading
by Laurie Tuffrey
Sunday 12th December 2010, 15:24 BST
It’s sad to say, but sometimes a little restraint does no harm. And I’m not about to launch into a polemic against Yuletide excess. Watching It’s A Wonderful Lifeand reaching for a Quality Street every time it gets sentimental is a treat no one should be without this festive season.
No, I’m talking about sitcoms. In this week’s first Quotation From A Less-Than-Reputable Source, Walt Disney left us with these wise words: ‘always le...
Continue Reading
by Laurie Tuffrey
Friday 26th November 2010, 15:16 BST
The user comments underneath the Guardian’s review of Kanye West’s latest album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy provide an interesting complement to the all-out rapture that’s greeted the release of West’s fifth LP. While EyeSeeSound2 goes for the jugular, ‘Listen properly to this album and it sounds like it was made by a 15 year old as a youth club project’ and jiggyjay1985 goes for the irreverent, ‘cracker ass CRACKER!!’,...
Continue Reading
by Laurie Tuffrey
Friday 19th November 2010, 15:20 BST
It’s strange how certain bands and artists become associated with particular times of the year. For me, the end of Michaelmas term is Sufjan Season, a time to immerse myself in Stevens’ world of Illinois, colonial American reference points and gently-plucked banjoes. Maybe its because I had Seven Swans playing on loop when I made my (bemused) way around the UL in my first term or because Stevens’ own brand of indie folk is simultaneously w...
Continue Reading
by Laurie Tuffrey
Friday 12th November 2010, 15:35 BST
50 Cent, rapper, former drug dealer and sometime investigative interviewer, recently made headlines by posting homophobic comments on his Twitter account. His posts attracted a huge amount of media coverage, so much so that he was forced to make a statement claiming his tweets were intended as a joke. While there’s little humour to be found in the messages themselves, the fact that one of the rapper’s defences on the site was ‘Access h...
Continue Reading
by Laurie Tuffrey
Wednesday 30th November -0001, 00:00 BST
You might be catching some of the buzz about The Vaccines. They’re the current flavour of the month band, emergent NME darlings and procurers of a rather tasty, if a little overdone, brand of Jesus and Mary Chain-esque new wave. They’re massively hyped, mainly because their songs are tiny bursts of punk-tinted indie (their entire recorded output currently stands at just over 7 minutes), a cheekily bite-sized reaction to the folky bombast of M...
Continue Reading
