lefreeakblog

Following the  first part of my 2021 review, below is a breakdown of my ten favourite albums of the year as well as a quick overview of songs which I enjoyed: Favourite 10 Albums of the Year 1. Blank & Jones -   Relax Edition 13 At the forefront of the late-90s rise in trance, the German duo of Piet Blank & Jaspa Jones turned to ambient thereafter with the release of their Relax series. This is the latest, a double album of chillout, tasteful funky house and balearic beats and a much needed tonic for lockdown despondency in 2021 - my choice for best album of 2021. 2. St. Vincent -   Daddy's Home A concept album about her father's return from prison, this album's real treat though is how Annie Clark recalls the atmosphere of early seventies downtown New York, the sleaze, the dirt, the funk. A melting pot of Lou Reed, Bowie, Steely Dan even Beatles (on the psychedelic Sun King-esque Live The Dream). 3. Cleo Sol -   Mother The singer in the mysterious...

  IT was the year that a pandemic allowed geeks the chance to shine. Amidst a severe restriction on live performance,  super-fans were busy viewing, cutting and editing together film of their favourite artists and readying them for blockbuster release, funded  by an ever increasing demand and driven by competition from the streaming wars.       With time to kill, we were allowed to indulge ourselves in a number of gems, with Peter Jackson's "The Beatles: Get Back" , Questlove's  "Summer of Soul"  both on Disney+ and Todd Haynes'  "The Velvet Underground"  on Apple TV+ all released to great acclaim.       Each of these documentaries covered the late sixties, part of the analogue era when very little film was actually recorded, in sharp contrast to today where it is so ubiquitous. And it looks we will see more and more as super-fans endeavour to unearth rare footage and bring fans young and old upto date with classic ar...

We clapped for our NHS again recently and it got me thinking about the notion of heroes and conversely... of villains. People don't like villains, they never have. Well not really. Yes of course they're always exciting in sci-fi or fantasy film setting but in reality it's not something to preach about or sell. 'Bad boys' in the modern sense yes to a degree but never villains, the traditional term never gets a mention. When The Beach Boys released "Heroes and Villains" in 1967, it largely sunk without trace and never got stuck in the public consciousness like Bowie's "Heroes" did, who's anthemic call - "just for one day" - had become part of last summer's BBC Radio wide singalong and entered the British psyche, just like Captain Sir Tom Moore did, a gentleman, decorated war hero and astonishing philanthropist who single handedly raised a staggering £29m for the NHS. "Heroes" incidentally wasn't even a huge hit ...

Masks. They're everywhere! In my household, the latest series of The Masked Singer is proving a big hit, the latest series of a format that originally started in South Korea and spread to Australia, US and now UK and is basically reality tv featuring performers singing behind a mask and/or a costume and trying not be voted off (and thus having to reveal who you are). We're also now having to wear masks where we leave the house, enter shops etc as part of the pandemic restrictions which of course we should all be adhering to. But it was the  recent sad news of the passing of MF DOOM - a rapper who always wore a mask on stage - that got me thinking about them and in particular which musicians wore them as part of their act. So the following is a quick - I stress quick! - list of 10 artists that came to mind: MF DOOM: famed for his signature metal mask, that of Marvel Comics super-villain Doctor Doom, from whom he adopted the name. He rarely made public appearances without it. Ma...

So Q Magazine is no more, it's legs pulled from underneath it by the vicious and unprecedented Corona virus which has devastated the Entertainment industry as a whole. In my estimation, this premier glossy music magazine relied a lot on petrol stations and airport lounges and the like, and now people are not driving and not flying, sales have unsurprisingly plummeted.       It also sheds a light on its market position which like Select, Melody Maker and The Word before it all fell by the sword trying to cater for one and all. The equivalent in the film industry I imagine would be Empire Magazine but it has few rivals as most seem particularly niche (Sight And Sound for example) whereas Q had Mojo and Uncut. Or did it? These two magazines are relatively niche along with several others such as Classic Rock and Mixmag - I think it is fair to say that, though smaller, they know their target audience better and as such are able to pitch better to them and are rewarded with a...

Being in lockdown has given us an opportunity to explore the arts more and there has been a variety of things available for discernible listeners in music. We've had the One World: Together At Home concert, new album releases, new documentaries, various musicians playing online and #timstwitterlisteningparties. The Charlatans' lead singer Tim Burgess started hosting listening parties on Twitter whilst in self-isolation and they caught on:every day he picks an album and everyone listens together, with commentary from the chosen artist. What seems like quite a geeky exercise comes into its own in this current climate of self-isolation. So last Thursday I earmarked Oasis' third album  Be Here Now  as an ideal place to join in; how would it play 20 years later? As an event, it was really good fun and felt like a moment as thousands of people joined in. It reminds you of what listening to a whole album is like and also brings with it a sense of nostalgia, all great feeling...