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Black Country, New Road For the first time Debut LP from the most exciting band in the country FORMING FROM the ashes of previous band Nervous Conditions after their singer was accused of sexual assault, Black Country, New Road are seven friends from Cambridge whose friendship shine through on this excitingly fresh debut.       Opening with the klezmer esque-Instrumental seems apt, given the musicianship on display here, saxophone, violin, shuffling hi-hats all feature along with the more obvious bass and guitar. Recent single Athens, France follows, perhaps the most conventional track here, which introduces to us singer Isaac Wood and his nervous, self-deprecating style which is often more spoken word than singing and which is coincidentally not too dissimilar from bassist Tyler Hyde's father Karl Hyde's stream of consciousness as part of his group Underworld. Science Fair is up next and the first clue that folk plays a central role in their sound, with Wood describing a...

I got into trip hop by accident. Brought up on Britpop, I'd never heard any until I randomly won Time Out's Best Albums of The 90s competition which included Massive Attack's 1991 classic  Blue Lines . Having belatedly thought I'd 'got it', I recently decided to explore it again to actually understand what happened and what I hadn't envisaged was just how vital a role women played in its creation and so to celebrate Mother's Day and International Women's Day (belatedly in true Bristolian fashion!), I'm going to showcase what Neneh Cherry and the ladies that followed did for the most exciting musical development to come out of Britain in the nineties. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away... existed The Wild Bunch, Bristol's most pivotal music group or rather posse - in the hip hop sense - were formed by (above from left) Grant Marshall (now Massive Attack's Daddy G), rapper Willy Wee, Nellee Hooper  and DJ Milo Johnson, after being in...

It's testament to their standing and legacy that Daft Punk could release a video of themselves self-destructing without ridicule and disdain. If 'art is everything that you don't have to do' as Brian Eno succinctly defined it, this was the artiest thing I've seen in a long time and the coolest way for Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo to sign off, a marked difference from most groups: And they were different, from the moment they did a u-turn and exchanged guitars for synths - and Darlin' became daft punk - from the moment they swapped ad hoc partial face covers for futuristic robot helmets, to the moment they raised the spectacle of what dance music could look like; these differences coupled with a huge passion and respect for their musical heroes -  Teachers  lists early inspirations - meant as Bangalter said their music could always be "honest and true and naive". But why did Daft Punk strike a chord with so many? What made them sta...