In 1570, a few years before he became preoccupied with alchemical quests, heretical visions and attempts to divine the language of angels, Dr John Dee was commissioned to write a government report on the state of England.
After undergoing emergency open-heart surgery in 2010, Simone Felice appears to have taken solace in first principles. Having stepped away from the Felice Brothers in 2009 and put The Duke & The King on hiatus, his solo debut is simple and earthy, leaning on little more than organ, warm acoustic guitar and his wondrous singing, every note carrying the betraying quaver of a man who feels a little too much.
Among the residents of Treme, David Simon’s HBO drama series about the inhabitants of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, you’ll find a character called Delmond. Delmond, a talented jazz trumpeter, is a deeply conflicted individual. In the person of his father, he is tied to the ruined city, its historic music and its obscure ritual cultures. And yet, he is drawn to the East coast, where the ensemble in which he plays is in considerable demand.
On the generally acclaimed Let England Shake, Harvey gave her music a bony, volkish edge, flaying it back to strummed autoharp, electric guitar and crude drums, mongrelising it with awkwardy intrusive sampling of Middle Eastern singers, dub interjections and huntsmen’s horns. Seamus Murphy’s cinematography complements this approach perfectly: not storyboarded, but collaged from various journeys around the island made during 2011, from the remotest hedgerows to the heart of London.
Former Libertines man Pete Doherty has received a damages payment from the publishers of the now defunct newspaper the News Of The World after it admitted hacking his phone.
A strange night at St Giles-In-The-Fields with Tim Hecker, which turned out to be something more like a real-time sound installation rather than a concert. This, I guess, is not a new problem with organ recitals: Hecker is sat in the organ loft, playing the church’s venerable instrument while the audience sit below, with their backs to him, in complete darkness, looking at the altar, and the silhouettes of two large speaker stacks.
