Latest Issue

A Whole New Thing

Alice Echols

Alice Echols tells the forgotten story of the daring, cross-racial experimentation that happened across rock, funk and disco during the 1970s.

Arthur Russell, cellist and composer, was born in 1951. In 1973, he moved to New York City and lived in the same East Village apartment for almost twenty years. A recent revival of interest in his music has manifested itself in several recordings, a film documentary and a biography entitled Hold On To Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973–1992 by Tim Lawrence. Here, Lawrence tells the story of the composer’s final work, World of Echo. Russell died of AIDS on 4 April 1992.

Don’t Upset the Rhythm

Matthew Jordan

When innovative music is seen as a moral threat to society

Have a Little Faith

John McLachlan

Promoters of art mislead audiences by suggesting that there is meaning where there is none. Sometimes you just have to trust the artist, writes John McLachlan

The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson

Peter Rosser

The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, Edited by Mark Fisher, Zero Books, Hampshire, England

After Franco

Kasongo Musanga

From the 1950s until the 1980s, Franco Luambo Makiadi and his TPOK Jazz orchestra profoundly shaped the sound of African music across the continent, and subsequently the popular music of the world through artists such as Paul Simon and Talking Heads. Yet Franco is little known outside Africa and his 1,000 compositions are hardly represented on recordings. Now just over twenty years since Franco’s death in 1989, Kasongo Musanga tells the story of ‘The Sorcerer of the Guitar’, from whose shadow Congolese music is still emerging.