Hôpital Caroline, Marseille 5 July 2015 Festival MIMI has been bringing all kinds of innovative, avant, experimental or just plain far-out music to Marseille for thirty editions to date, and for the last fifteen years its annual home has been in the splendid isolation of the ruins of the Hôpital […]
live reviews
487 posts
London 4 July 2015 And did those feet, in ancient times, walk upon England’s mountain green? And was the holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen? Whilst my marginally less ancient feet are walking up Olympic Way once more (a mere ten after having last done so), the […]
The Barbican, London 27 June 2015 88 cymbal beaters, five drummers, four bassists, four guitarists and one EYƎ, an ensemble that literally dwarfed the stage bathed in super-real colours. Right from the start this felt more like a ritual than a show — an invocation even. From its early referential […]
London 24 June 2015 I’m shuffling through the Wembley sand, but my head’s in Mississippi. It’s been a long time since I was last at Wembley Arena. Twenty-two years ago this month, in fact, lured like a Hamelin rat by the strange and, ultimately, ill-fated second coming of The Velvet […]
London 16 June 2015 There is a German proverb which reads, “Jede Leiter fängt mit der untersten Sprosse an und nach der obersten kommt nur noch freier Fall.” We might possibly translate this as, ‘Every ladder begins at the lowest rung, but after the highest the only way is down’. […]
London 10 June 2015 It is good to remember why you came. How the reverberation of the bass through every cell is like the lift of a wave that carries you. How each staccato re-teaches your heart to beat. Percussion is life, rhythm is the first language and with it […]
The Jazz Café, London 30 May 2015 A couple of years ago I had the very great pleasure of interviewing New Model Army‘s angry yet affable front man Justin Sullivan for this esteemed organ (matron!), and we got to talking about venue sizes. “All of us”, said he, “when we […]
Bristol 6 June 2015 Henry Collins’ — formerly known as Shitmat — Morris Meets the Bikers (after the ZX Spectrum arcade game?) were up first. They were having so much fun that they were oblivious to the fact that only five people were actually watching, which was a shame for […]
London 28 May 2015 Tucked away in the heart of London’s St Pancras is St Pancras Old Church, one of the oldest sites of Christian worship in the country, and in whose grounds is buried Mary Wollstonecraft. Grounds that were at one point dug up by a young Thomas Hardy […]
The Dome and Boston Music Room London 24 May 2015 I have to admit that I’ve never been to Raw Power before. Every year, more than any other festival, there are always an amazing bunch of bands that I have wanted to see, or at least witness again. So even […]
London 22 May 2015 Fortis Green, north London. A place of fertile musical soil. Back at the turn of the Sixties, Fortis Green was the manor of brothers Ray and Dave Davies, whose combination of gifted lyricism, overdriven Vox amplifiers and almost unrivalled songwriting ability saw them take the output […]
London 21 May 2015 – The Conscious Pause – It is daunting to write about a show that was attended by so many Freq contributors because I know they’ll all read this and I am sure they will all have things to add (or deny). But what does that matter? […]
Bristol 20 May 2015 Sadly, I only caught the end of Okkyung Lee’s set — a real pity as that scraping reverberation of cello was curving some lovely tonal mirages. It wasn’t long before the Swans gradually graced the stage (sometime around 8.37pm). First Thor Harris, who brewed a lovely […]
London 15 May 2015 Friday night at The Roundhouse, and the faithful are gathered for what promises to be a night of epic heaviness — four bands culminating with the mighty Electric Wizard are set to compete for our hearts, minds and ultimately, souls. However, due to a rubbish London […]
London 12 May 2015 Ozric Tentacles gigs now seem like a celebration. They are the meeting of the multi-coloured clothed tribes come together in one place and celebrate the wonderful psychedelic sounds of the Ozrics. The fact that the band are now 31 years along their long strange trip to […]
London 2 April 2015 A spectre is haunting Camden, and that spectre is the spectre of Spectre, Laibach‘s most recent and sublimely poppy album. On the face of it, you’d think Laibach’s “foregrounding the totalitarianism inherent in pop music” schtick would have worn thin really fast, like a one-joke Damien […]
Église Saint-Merri, Paris 9 April 2015 Paris’s historic Église Saint-Merri is the scene for the more sedate concerts in Sonic Protest‘s busy festival schedule of gigs which take place across the city and its environs over a very long weekend. The music which unfolds beneath the multi-coloured illuminations that scatter […]
1 April 2015 The word “Hoxton” to me is like the word “Mordor” to hobbits — a terrifying place whence flows all the evil plaguing London. So tonight I’m deep in the heart of enemy territory to see Bo Ningen, and you know what? It ain’t that bad. There are […]
Bristol 2 April 2015 Pohl were an epic, hard and ultimately satisfying display of heavy riff-based shenanigans. A mighty three piece whose ranks boasted Hugo of Bristolian psyche monsters The Heads fame, who supplied some seriously grunged-up basslines whilst the (Buddy Holly look-a-like) singer stabbed at them with octave grates […]
London 13 March 2015 Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. H G Wells – The Time Machine […]