I've just mentioned to Elvis Costello the publicity stunt he pulled on his first trip to Japan in 1978. "Ah, our attempt to get ourselves in the papers," Costello recalls over the phone from his Vancouver home. It had seemed like such a fiendishly provocative ...
Two years ago, Underworld duo Karl Hyde and Rick Smith had an epiphany. After more than three decades of working together — through some unremittingly lean early years; an epoch-defining, mega-selling turn in the 1990s; soundtracking the London Olympics opening ceremony, and a fractured ...
As far as I can tell, Brian Wilson is in a good mood. Speaking from his Los Angeles home, the legendary Beach Boys mastermind certainly sounds upbeat, laughing when his dogs interrupt us, and seems enthusiastic about bringing "Pet Sounds," his opulent masterpiece, to ...
Sitting in his favorite East London cafe, Jamie Smith is nervous. Tonight, he will headline his biggest ever show as Jamie xx at Brixton Academy. "I'm enjoying playing live on my own," he says, "but it’s stressful. People are there to watch to me as ...
"Sometimes years go by, it seems," Jonathan Donahue sings within seconds of Mercury Rev's ninth album, "The Light in You," giving the first snapshot into the mental state of a band that has returned from the brink. Seven years, in fact, had passed since ...
'Music gives people hope." Nile Rodgers understands this statement better than most. The 63-year-old grew up the son of drug-addicted parents, dragged from pillar to post across the East Coast of the United States, but it was his love of jazz and rhythm and blues ...
'I'd never seen anything like it!" says Ride frontman Mark Gardener as he recalls the first time the recently reformed shoegaze pioneers stepped foot on Japanese soil. "We touched down at the airport and there were 300 people there, all with daffodils, chocolates, toys and ...
When London indie-rock foursome Wolf Alice makes its Japan debut at the Summer Sonic festival this weekend, it will be three years, two EPs, one debut album and countless incendiary live gigs since it first sent alternative music blogs into a frenzy with a ...
It doesn't take much to set Noel Gallagher off. We are sat in a backstage portacabin at London's peculiarly ragbag Clapham Calling festival, and I've just mentioned to the former Oasis songwriter that "Chasing Yesterday," the second solo album under his High Flying Birds ...
"I've tried to immerse myself in Japanese culture," says Charli XCX, international hit maker and Britain's next big pop-star-in-waiting. Of course, that's the sort of comment you might expect the 22-year-old to make on the eve of her first headline shows in the country ...
