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Articles by Juni Habel
Northern Winter Beat 2024 review: Julie Byrne, Alabaster DePlume, Deerhoof and Mary Ocher triumph in Denmark
You’re here. I’m so happy you’re here. You’re alive. You’re doing so well. Living is so hard. We’re alive. Have you suffered? When we’re alive, we suffer. We suffer to be alive. You must have suffered. Paraphrasing Alabaster DePlume’s on-stage discourse alludes to its disconcerting quality. It takes a while to get used to it. At first, it is perplexing. He looks surprised to see the audience yet speaks directly, initially saying he does not know anything.
Music Reissues Weekly: Klar!80 - celebrating Düsseldorf’s early Eighties underground
In this spirit, Klar!80 - Ein Kassettenlabel aus Düsseldorf 1980-1982 digs so deeply into Düsseldorf’s post-punk musical underbelly that the names collected are mostly unfamiliar: Blässe, Ralph & Ernie, Und Piloten are amongst the 11 combos assembled. Strafe für Rebellion, though, ended up with the UK’s Touch label. CHBB were an early vehicle for Chrislo Haas and Beate Bartel, founder members of Liaisons Dangereuses.
Album: Erol Josue - Pelerinaj (Pilgrimage)
t="_blank" title="Rock on theartsdesk">Little Richard, all ordained prelate of the Voudou religion, into which he embarked on a long initiation into its priesthood before emigrating to Paris, and later to America, where he refashioned himself as an R&B singer in Florida before relocating to Brooklyn, New York, where he released his debut, Regleman, and forged his "electro-voudou" club sound.
Album: William The Conqueror - Excuse Me While I Vanish
Ruarri Joseph is not a household name but in a Sliding Doors scenario, he might have been. Scottish, raised in New Zealand, and based in Cornwall, he signed to Atlantic in 2007, and had the same management as Damien Rice and David Gray. His output was, however, too early for the folk micro-boom engendered by Mumford & Sons, and his songs weren’t whiney enough for mass 21st century tastes in singer-songwriters.
WOMAD Festival 2023 review - the party for the whole World spreads good vibes and almost escapes Soggy July
Fortunately, Thursday was a day with enough sunshine and wind to dry the ground reasonably well and apart from the odd mud puddle, things weren’t too bad. However, once we’d consumed a welcome beer and started snacking on the fantastic food that was on offer, everything felt even better. At last year’s festival, there had been a discussion session that had involved Peter Gabriel and other movers and shakers of this world-famous event to discuss how things had changed over the years.
Album: Girlschool - WTFortyfive?
Despite contemporary cultural zeitgeist fair zingin’ with reappreciation of under-celebrated female artists of previous eras, Girlschool haven’t been much shouted about. This is partly because they’re a metal band. The music media ignores most metal. But it’s also likely because Girlschool have never had much interest in actively espousing doctrinaire feminism, despite their whole career being a feminist statement.
Judy Collins, Cambridge Folk Festival review - celebrating a seminal sixties' album
By the time she recorded Wildflowers in 1967, Collins had already become the woman whom Stephen Stills would immortalise in song (“Chestnut-brown canary/ Ruby-throated sparrow/ Sing a song, don’t be long/Thrill me to the marrow”). Stills would play on her 1968 album, Who Knows Where the Time Goes, the title song of which put Sandy Denny on the map, just as Wildflowers established both Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen as major songwriting talents. Collins was the first to record them both.
Album: Maria Wilman - Dark Horse
Although Dark Horse is Maria Wilman’s first album, it feels as though it’s the latest entry in a string of releases. The songs are fully formed. The delivery is assured. The overall character of what’s heard is cohesive, suggesting the person who recorded these 12 tracks draws from previous experiences with framing what they want to express, and how it should be expressed. But there it is, Dark Horse is a debut.
Music Reissues Weekly: Glenda Collins, Heinz, David John & The Mood - the latest treasures from Joe Meek's Tea Chest Tapes
It’s the same with previously unheard versions of Heinz’s “Movin’ In” and “I’m Not A Bad Guy,” the next tracks heard on The White Tornado - The Holloway Road Sessions 1963-1966. In a different form, these two became his last single, issued in June 1966. Again, that fevered guitar. Heinz issued 11 singles, two EPs and one album between 1963 and 1966. Just over 40 tracks. The five CD box set The White Tornado collects 131 tracks – 100 of which have not been heard before.
Album: Peter Culshaw - Music from the Temple of Light
It’s an absorbent and contemplative representation of forces rarely seen and beyond our control, and there’s a strong golden thread of the contemplative and of forces from beyond embedded in the album’s music, and its sacred edge. Peter Culshaw is one of the founders of this website, and a veteran and widely travelled music writer.
'The music business was created for people like me who are not criminal enough to go to jail, and not mad enough to go to the nuthouse'. Sinéad O'Connor, 1966-2023
Morrissey was not the only one to point out the lack of support for her art for the last 30 years from mainstream companies and media. Now that she has passed she can safely be made a saintly legend. “In the middle ages, I would have been burnt as a witch” she told Peter Culshaw in their 2013 interview, republished below.
Album: Dexys - The Feminine Divine
Their latest, is similarly constructed, albeit around a different theme. Anyone who enjoyed One Day I’m Going to Soar will likely find much to like. Dexys mainstay Kevin Rowland gives us a suite of songs that ponder the intoxicating essence of womankind, and, in relation to that, what it is to be a man, untethered and spiritually, sexually free, all eventually tinted with sub/dom ritual (Female voice on “Goddess Rules”: “You serve me, and I do what I want, when I want, alright?” Rowland: “Yes”).
Julie Byrne, Juni Habel, Kings Place review - finely tuned evening balancing dark with light
Looking for signals of what’s within at this London show by the US singer-songwriter is inevitable. The completion of Byrne’s recent album The Greater Wings was interrupted by the death of her collaborator, partner and producer Eric Littmann. At this concert, she mentions Littmann – “you may have read about him” – and speaks to the audience about consciously being aware of people who are no longer here: those who have been lost. Littmann is an unseen presence.
Sinéad O'Connor, Roundhouse
The cover of her new album, I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, has Sinéad O’Connor sporting a black wig and latex dominatrix dress, a glammed-up guitar wrapped in her arms. Well, at least she made the effort. On stage at the Roundhouse she launched her fine new album sans latex or hair, in black t-shirt and trousers, still the shaven-headed siren of unbidden passions and complicated yearnings.
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