Life hey? It comes with ups and downs, smiles and frowns (don’t worry I am not planning some sort of weird poetry thing here), peaks and valleys, thrillingly novel events and beige banal moments, and all manner of helter-skelter what-the-hell emotions in and around it all. Articulating how all of Continue Reading
Music
Now this is music #46: ALA.NI, MONOGEM, Marika Hackman, Stonefox, Great Lake Swimmers
There is something utterly wondrous about losing yourself in music. Cut loose from the biting concerns of the everyday, music, particularly the clever, beautiful kind made by the following five artists, is a refuge from a world that sometimes forgets that our souls need to be courted every bit as Continue Reading
The smart sounds and bright colours of Faded Paper Figures
It seems to have been a recurring pattern in my music-appreciating life that the bands I fall for most heavily and with the most passion are the ones that seemingly come out of nowhere. It’s been the case with artists as diverse as Bombay Bicycle Club, who I came Continue Reading
Now this is music #45: Hunny, Steve Aoki and Moxie, Violet Skies, Royal, Anna O
No one ever said being a member of the human race was an undertaking for the fainthearted. Possessed of emotions richly-diverse and maddeningly contradictory, we rarely take the straightforward path through life, seesawing between happy and sad, angry and calm, content and agitated, often all at once. That’s why Continue Reading
You want 20 TV theme songs in two minutes? Daniel Koren can help you with that!
I stand impressed. It is one thing to create a medley mashup of TV theme songs with each segueing reasonably neatly into the other and make them sound like they kind of sort of belong together. But talented New York musician Daniel Koren has managed to not just weave Continue Reading
Waltzing glittery Matilda! Australia to compete in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest
Fetch me a kangaroo in spandex! A coterie of bowls-playing grandmothers making scones. A phalanx of surfers atop waves made from pure glitter. Pyrotechnic displays that recall the burning cane fields of Broadwater, New South Wales. And a key change as big as the Australian Bight! Australia, yes Australia, Continue Reading
Now this is music #44: Young Ejecta, Oh Wonder, Aurora, salute feat. Vanessa Elisha, Electric Wire Hustle
Life is a curiously complex thing. Euphorically up one moment, desperately down the next, and a confused hot mess in-between, it is never less than utterly unpredictable even when it feels like it’s stuck in some sort of bland sameness. These five artists, who hail from quite divergent parts Continue Reading
Now this is music 43: Nao, Totemo, Lade, Banff, Stax Osset
Another year beckons and with it an amazing selection of new songs and talented artists to provide with the soundtrack it will need. As has been the case with past years, the artists stepping forward to give us these songs are a diverse bunch but one thing remains clear Continue Reading
Re-play the music please maestro: The 10 songs I loved most in 2014
Henry Wordsworth Longfellow once observed that “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Never has that been truer than in the second decade of the 21st century where digital technology has allowed music artists across an ever-splintering multiplicity of genres, whether they be an emerging band in Brooklyn or Continue Reading
On the 10th day of Christmas … I listened to Idina Menzel’s Holiday Wishes
There’s no doubting the sheer awe-inspiring talent of the voice of Frozen, Tony Award-winning Broadway veteran Idina Menzel. She has a voice straight from the gods, one that combines fearsome power and delicate beauty, the sort of stage presence money cannot buy, and the kind of vibrant personality that has Continue Reading