Stijn and Steven Kolacny are getting tantalisingly close to earning a place on that list of famous Belgians. Even if you haven’t yet heard of the classically-trained brothers from Flemish Aarschot and the all-female choir they formed and called Scala, you’ll have heard their ghostly covers of rock classics ever more frequently. Their sound, mostly…
As the clock strikes midnight on December 31, Kasabian will be rocking the 02 Arena. The Leicester rabble-rousers are headlining London’s biggest New Year’s Eve party and they’re thinking outside the box. “You want to grab people and take them to outer space,” says songwriter and guitarist Serge Pizzorno. “You don’t want people just stood…
The more successful a musician becomes, the more demands on their time there are to prevent them from being creative. Tours, interviews, general promo work, all hold back the vital task of making new songs. Be thankful then, for the British Council, whch is currently sending some of our best songwriters on extended trips to…
Ever wondered what Roman Abramovich gets up to when he isn’t looking grumpy at Chelsea games? He’s standing a few yards away from me against a wall at Strelka in centralMoscow, a riverside culture and education hub a bit like a smaller Southbank Centre or a cooler ICA. And he’s not the only person of…
While its gigantic party in the park gets all the attention, Radio 1 has been busy with a project that will leave something far better than 100,000 crushed beer cups behind in Hackney. Together with its sister urban music station 1Xtra, it has spent this month turning Hackney’s Picturehouse cinema into an academy offering young…
She has been number one in America for the past eight weeks and was number one here for five weeks not long ago with the biggest selling single of 2012. But while you’ve certainly heard Kimbra, chances are you haven’t heard of her. Now the female voice on Gotye’s world-eating hit, Somebody That I Used…
She has appeared on stage with classical musicians and live insects and composed the soundtrack to an opera performed by puppets, so when you hear that Mira Calix is now involved with rock music you know it’s going to be a bit different. I am in the cavernous workshop of a set design company near…
Leading the field with four Brit Award nominations in the pocket of his scruffy jeans after last night’s announcement, Ed Sheeran’s year as a very singular British Male is getting official recognition. The 20-year-old from Framlingham inSuffolkwas at the Savoy Hotel last night, playing his next single, Give Me Love, to the music industry’s great…
If you looked up the word “contentment” in the dictionary, chances are there wouldn’t be a picture of Slash. Sitting somewhere beneath giant shades and shaggy black curls, with his nose ring, arms littered with tattoos and a black T-shirt that has pretty much all the swearwords printed on it, the former Guns N’ Roses…
As I write this, the YouTube view count sits at 45,405,285. By the time you check out Gotye’s video Somebody That I Used to Know today, another millon will probably have been added to that giddy figure. TheMelbournemusician’s single only sits at number 36 in our official top 40 this week, but by any standard…