Miles Ahead: ‘Bitches Brew’ Hits 50
At the end of this month we celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘Bitches Brew’ by Miles Davis. So what, you may ask. But the answer is emphatic. So everything. The record is one of many apogees of the jazz idiom,…
Author Archives: Jason Holmes
ALBUM: Psycho Comedy ‘Performance Space Number One’
Perhaps this is the sound to listen for in these new days of notional freedom, coming as it does from Liverpool, a city of poets and rebels, and the birthplace of a certain beat combo that best expressed the hopes…
The Sound of Silence: What’s Become of the Protest Song?
If the past three years haven’t been sufficient to drive home the point, then perhaps it needs restating. We live in compelling political times, the reality starker than before, the populace engrossed by the ongoing national conversation. It’s been an…
INTERVIEW: ALEX LIPINSKI “The less the ego is in control, the more you develop”
“I’ve been gigging here there and everywhere, all over the country, mainly solo,” says Alex Lipinski, perched on a stool in the subterranean sanctum of Clerkenwell’s Betsey Trotwood pub. Down here we’re both content to leave the ghosts of the…
INTERVIEW: ARGH KiD “My ambition was always to put poetry to music”
From the latter-day saints of rock to the anodyne poseurs of the Later With… green room, mainstream music in this country some time ago began to wash around our ears like so much weak tea. And at the same time,…
ALBUM: Pixies ‘Beneath The Eyrie’
‘Beneath The Eyrie’ by the Pixies comes at you like a wave – twenty feet high, drenched from the players’ exertions and all American. It’s an important record right now because it helps explain what has happened to rock made…
LIVE: MOTHER EARTH at the 100 CLUB, 27.6.19
From the Mayor of London’s office come dubious missives promising a halt to the capital’s cultural drain, but that the office continues to oversee the closure of live venues across central London means that all musicians – and that means…
ALBUM: PAT DAM SMYTH ‘The Last King’
If music hadn’t found him and permitted him self-expression, Pat Dam Smyth would have excelled as a performance poet, the curious fervency of his voice long nourished by the proselytising city in which he made his musical bones. The Northern…
ALBUM: PRIMAL SCREAM ‘Maximum Rock ’N’ Roll: The Singles’
If Vincent Price had dropped out, tuned in, bought a drum kit and then eschewed a barber, he might, just might, have turned into Bobby Gillespie, the Glaswegian’s lugubrious, feline face looking at and through the lens of every camera…
INTERVIEW: the men behind SMOKE RAINBOWS @ STUDIO 2, ABBEY ROAD
“People ask me, how the hell did you wangle a week in Abbey Road?” says Chris Sheehan over a coffee in the ‘canteen’ down the corridor from Studio 2. We’ve just witnessed Pat Dam Smyth put the finishing touches to…