Fur - Witches: Review

The internet isn’t a great harvester of scenes. In the past, bands balked at being associated with other likeminded artists due to an intrinsic desire to stand alone, to make something special, that didn’t bear all the hallmarks and trappings of anyone else’s work. But secretly, they knew that riding a popular wave, whether it was grunge or Britpop or some other fly-by-night scene du jour, was just about the best thing that ever happened to them. Scenes help people turn a blind eye to the paucity of original thought in most music, to allow all the ne’er-do-wells a chance to hitch a ride on the bandwagon until it falls apart and they go back to work in banks or pet shops or real estate.

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Cluster- Qua: Review

It’s unlikely any contemporary band would be able to navigate the same Byzantine career turns that Krautrock legends Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius have mapped out over the years. This will be the sixth decade in which they’ve operated as Cluster, or Kluster, as they were originally known. They began with a record deal struck with a religious group who insisted some appropriate sermonizing was included on their recordings, to which Roedelius and Moebius respectfully agreed, then took in collaborations with Brian Eno, Holger Czukay and Michael Rother (in their Harmonia guise) along the way. The third part of the original Cluster triumvirate, Conny Plank, is sadly no longer with us, but the two core members have soldiered on to record Qua, their first album in over a decade, released in the year that the sprightly Roedelius will celebrate his 76th birthday.

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Screaming Females and JEFF the Brotherhood at Bowery Ballroom

You know you’re doing something right when fans start chanting your name before you’ve even struck a note. So it was on Saturday night when Nashville’s JEFF the Brotherhood took to the stage at the Bowery Ballroom, mid-way through a seven-band bill assembled to celebrate the mighty Don Giovanni Records.Singer Jake Orrall began the set dressed in leather and teetering on the top of a stack of amps, ending it 30 minutes later amid the sinewy limbs of sweaty stage divers and an exuberantly bludgeoned mosh pit. In between, we got bone-gnawing riffage, never-ending smiles from Jake’s brother Jamin, on drums, and a set of songs that are surely about to propel their quirky take on Neanderthal rock tropes to a wider audience. Judging from the front row here, that process is already well underway.

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JEFF the Brotherhood Interview

Jake Orrall fixes the crowd with a piercing stare from beneath his bowl haircut, brandishes his guitar in front of him like a sword and then steps into the throng like a medieval jouster about to spear an opponent. A meaty guitar riff billows out from Jake’s amp behind him while his younger brother, Jamin Orrall, pounds away at his drum kit, unable to wipe the fixed grin from his face.This is the scene at Pianos during a sweat-drenched CMJ show in October 2009, just one of many appearances at the festival by Nashville two-piece JEFF the Brotherhood. It was during this time that innumerable people were converted to the cult of JEFF, having been won over by the sunbaked ’70s rock riffage and Jake’s affinity for donning leather trousers and dangling a raccoon tail from his guitar strap.



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Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here: Review

It’s been a long, hard road to redemption for Gil Scott-Heron, the influential musician, poet and author, whose last full-length album, Spirits, was released 16 years ago. In the interim, he’s been in and out of jail on various drug-related offences, his taste for narcotics sapping the creative impulses that once burned so brightly. Scott-Heron’s saviour came in the unlikely shape of XL Records boss Richard Russell – the man responsible for rave classic The Bouncer by Kicks Like a Mule – who offered to produce an album by the singer during his stint in Rikers.

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