In 2004 Florent de La Tullaye and Renaud Barret encountered Leon “Ricky” Likabu playing music on the streets of Kinshasa. A victim of poliomyelitis, he was joined by fellow wheelchair-bound musicians and street youth. Together, with old beat-up or hand-made instruments, the group played what could only be described as folk music: honest, heart-felt...
At England’s annual Big Chill Festival, an outdoor music event in a charming wooded park in Herefordshire, the London band Chrome Hoof blitzed the audience with a 40-minute arsenal of their trademark metal disco. The ten-piece ensemble’s sound is unmistakably jittery and spacey, combining 1970s funk with electronica and metal. Their look sets them...
“No One Knows About Persian Cats” is a film directed by Bahman Ghobadi, an award-winning Kurdish-Iranian film-maker. Mr Ghobadi first came to prominence with “A Time For Drunken Horses,” a film about smuggling across the Iran-Iraq border. “Persian Cats”, which won the Special Jury Prize in the “Un Certain Regard” section at the 2009...
Camden Crawl bears some similarities to the music portion of Austin’s South by Southwest festival, in that dozens of up-and-coming bands perform at multiple sites, all day long, in one concentrated area. And at the Crawl, as at SXSW, expect long lines for the bathroom, and lots of noise and beer. But also expect...
London retro-soul music fans may remember the Dap-Kings as the American band that recorded and toured with Amy Winehouse. But the band’s Wednesday night performance at Koko with their original front woman, Sharon Jones, was an entirely different affair. The full review, on the recent Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings performance at Koko in...
For about six years, the New York-based three-piece band has won over audiences–and driven some away–with an ample supply of volume. The New York Times credited them with “reviving the ominous, feedback-drenched drones of the 1980s”, while the Washington Post described them as “the most awesome, ear-shatteringly loud garage/shoegaze band you’ll ever hear.” At...