Music
Record Collector
The Collector
This month: musician/ producer Chasms
5 min |
August 2023
Record Collector
CANDID CANDI
The Southern soul, disco and gospel queen tells Ian Shirley about her acclaimed Fame recordings and how real-life pain helped her deliver those heartrending vocals
10+ min |
August 2023
Record Collector
Divine Intervention
Having conceded that “addiction took years off me” and spent much of the late 20th century in a personal and artistic limbo, Kevin Rowland is now making up for lost time with a revitalised Dexys. As they prepare to release their new album, The Feminine Divine, this soon-to-be-septuagenarian is keen to express an older, wiser worldview and put the finishing touches to a back catalogue he can be proud of. “We haven’t done that much, really,” he tells Rob Hughes.
10+ min |
August 2023
Record Collector
THUNDER BIRD
While the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal spawned plenty of globe-straddling rock superstars, some of its less high-profile names still made their mark, even if more in influence than record sales. Tyneside terrors Raven were one such pack of unsung heroes, but their reputation has been rightly rehabilitated since their reformation at the turn of the millennium, and as a new album is released they sound revitalised as they come off a triumphant anniversary tour. Murder of crows: Rich Davenport
10+ min |
August 2023
Record Collector
RENAISSANCE MAN
Keyboard supremo Lonnie Liston Smith is one of jazz’s pre-eminent sidemen, playing with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis. But it was as a leader that he came into his own, trailblazing a style that blended improvisation with soul and funk grooves. Spreading messages of peace and tranquility through positivist lyrics, albums such as Expansions, Visions Of A New World, Reflections Of A Golden Dream, and Renaissance proved crossover hits. Diversions into boogie followed before his renown among the rap generation led to his involvement in Guru’s groundbreaking project, Jazzmatazz. Tempted back into the studio by producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, the keyboardist’s first new album in 25 years rekindles the magic of his 70s recordings. He talks Paul Bowler through some of the key albums of his remarkable career.
10 min |
August 2023
Record Collector
HIGH FLYING BIRD
As the forbidding figure behind New York post-punk noise provocateurs Swans, Michael Gira spent the bulk of the 80s as the sworn enemy of conventional melody, until new creative partners and an unsatisfactory spell with a major label saw new influences come into play. More recently he has ventured back down that original avant-garde road armed with a bigger, more ambitious sound. “I write because I have to,” he tells
10+ min |
August 2023
Record Collector
SO NOIR SO GOOD
With The Cure’s US dates being hailed as the tour of the summer, Siouxsie cutting an imperiously witchy figure at festivals, everyone from Bauhaus to The Mission still active, various releases including a box set, a slew of books, and newspaper articles, Goth seems destined to outlive all other subcultures. The polymorphously perverse post-punk movement that began in a club in London has since seeped into all corners of modern life, from Batman movies to Billie Eilish – even Eurovision 2023 seemed inundated with goth sonics/imagery. Jeremy Allen casts a kohl eye over its origin story and speaks to goth prime movers.
10+ min |
August 2023
Record Collector
The Flaming Lips – "We like Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd"
Across four decades and countless madcap ideas, The Flaming Lips have evolved from indie noiseniks to purveyors of Disneyesque symphonia to multi-media art ensemble, each new album expanding the group's sonic world and conceptual ambitions. Accidental hits (She Don't Use Jelly; Do You Realize??) have pulled them into the mainstream on occasion, and yet the Lips have consistently refused to court commercial success and often seemed to actively shun it, with a string of extra-curricular projects, including a homemade sci-fi movie and a line in deconstructive covers albums, defying even the most hardened Lips fan to make sense of it all. Frontman Wayne Coyne tells Jason Draper why the extreme-embracing unit will always remain a "weirdo studio band".
10+ min |
July 2023
Record Collector
33 1/3 minutes with... Allan Clarke
Allan Clarke co-founded The Hollies with school friend Graham Nash. Between 1963, the year they started, and 1968 when Nash left to form Crosby, Stills & Nash, they notched up nine Top 5 singles including Just One Look, Here I Go Again and I’m Alive, their first of two No 1s.
6 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
NO LESS THAN HERO
To mark the release of Seven Psalms, an astonishing meditation on spirituality and mortality and his first album of new material in seven years, Paul Simon a giant of postwar American popular song matched only by Dylan - takes to Zoom for an RC exclusive to talk about (his) music with fan, friend and fellow master songwriter, Elvis Costello. Listening in: Terry Staunton.
10+ min |
July 2023
Record Collector
Oh, Sit Down!
We will if you stop playing those infectious big-venue anthems to alienation and belonging. But James can't help themselves, and they never could, whether in their early indie phase, during Madchester, with Eno, or any time since. Still on their singular path and in pursuit of the new, they're releasing an orchestral retrospective album, Be Opened By The Wonderful. Tim Booth, Saul Davies and Jim Glennie tell Kevin Harley about their choppy journey as perennial outsiders and the value of an open mind.
10+ min |
July 2023
Record Collector
BREAKING THE WAVES
A going concern since 1976, first in The Hague and since 2006 in Rotterdam, the annual North Sea Jazz Festival returns this summer with a stellar lineup including Janelle Monáe, Seal, Stormzy, Little Simz, Lizzo, Duckwrth, Snarky Puppy, Tom Jones, Van Morrison, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Jill Scott and more. It showcases the best contemporary jazz-influenced acts while attracting the biggest names. Photographer Paul Bergen has been capturing images from the festival for nearly four decades. He talks us through some of his favourite shots from previous years...
4 min |
July 2023
Record Collector
KINGS OF THE WORLD
Fifty years ago, imams of immaculacy and avatars of the acerbic, Steely Dan, were jazz pop's cool rulers. They had under their belts a debut album, Can't Buy A Thrill, that wasn't so much hesitantly promising as fully-realised, supremely accomplished. Clearly, on a roll, the follow-up, issued in July 1973, was, if anything, even better: their second - and, some would say, finest - album of cutting perfection (ism), Countdown To Ecstasy. Max Bell evaluates its razor buoyancy.
10+ min |
July 2023
Record Collector
WIND OF CHANGE
It is 1974 and the Bee Gees haven't had a hit for a while. Nor are they enjoying the critical respect of the heavenly-harmony \"B\" boys: Beatles, Beach Boys, Byrds. Into this commercial and critical lull enters producer Arif Mardin. In this extract from his book on the brothers Gibb, Bee Gees: Children Of The World, author, RC writer and pop musician Bob Stanley finds them midway through Phase 2 of their transition from late 60s orch-popsters to late 70s disco behemoths.
10+ min |
July 2023
Record Collector
POP ART
Numerous rock'n'pop artistes have proven dab hands with other artforms over the decades. RC artist Paul Bowler paints a picture of some of those who work on other canvases
6 min |
July 2023
Record Collector
The days of his life
Freddie Mercury's unseen personal collection set to be exhibited and auctioned, darlings!
2 min |
July 2023
Record Collector
Label of Love
Q & A | AV8 RECORDS – Eastbourne/London
5 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
Lost and Found
In the 80s, the UK had The Smiths – America had The Smithereens: an emblematic fourpiece 60s-referencing college radio/alt-indie band combining elements of girl group pop and beat-era rock; melodic with hints of mayhem. And, as Bill Kopp reports, New Jersey’s forgotten heroes are still out there, doing it…
10+ min |
May 2023
Record Collector
Present Tense
Songs for old-timers: veteran singer-songwriter mixes anguish and tenderness.
5 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
Higher Power
Folk icon continues to bridge the past and the present.
4 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
Homeward Bound
Belief and beauty explored with rare grace.
4 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
Above And Beyond!
Big brother triumphs by reminding everyone he knows how to write giant tunes.
6 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
Wish List
A half-speed master holds off time as it waits in the wings.
2 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
Kick Out The Jams
Brilliant compilation celebrating Liverpool’s cultural heritage.
2 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
Movers And Shakers
A new box set chronicles the “saxophone Colossus”’s late 50s California sojourn.
3 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
Weeping Beauty
Anniversary edition of an angst classic, in an atmospheric new mix.
5 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
DREAD ALERT
The dub poet and activist Linton Kwesi Johnson is publishing his first book of prose, a fine addition to his impressive CV that includes music journalist, label owner and punk and post-punk reggae avatar. Man free-lance: Rich Davenport
9 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
SHAKIN ALL OVER AGAIN
Even a heart attack in 2010 couldn’t deter Welsh rock’n’roll institution Shakin’ Stevens from returning to fight the good fight. Now, at 75, he has made another highly personal record that might confound those expecting him to fall back on the vintage covers and 50s stylings that made him such a ubiquitous presence on the 80s pop scene. “A lot of people are going to be shocked,” he warns Jack Watkins.
10+ min |
June 2023
Record Collector
RELATABLE CONTENT
Evolving from blues-rock through prog and several different points in-between, East Midlanders Family perhaps don’t get the recognition they deserve these days, possibly because of such wilful refusal to stay in one musical lane. With a clutch of reissues ready to prompt a revision of that reputation, Roger Chapman tells his side of a tortuous tale to Michael Heatley.
10 min |
June 2023
Record Collector
EUROPEAN UNION
One is the daughter of a psychedelic rock hero, the other played bass in The Clash. As Galen Ayers and Paul Simonon unite for a duets album, Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?, Kevin Harley hears about how they wore their pasts lightly while drawing inspiration from continental adventures and great male-female duos of the past…
10+ min |