If you’re going to pay homage to Prince, do it right. Janelle Monáe has nailed it (admittedly, with a little help from the Purple Genius himself). On the strength of this, ‘Dirty Computer’ will be one of the releases of 2018. Built around a guitar lick that nods in the direction of ‘Kiss’, and synth […]
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Prince
I can’t believe that I’m sitting here, writing a post about the passing of Prince. That’s like losing a limb. A really funky limb. Let me try to tackle this by taking a major detour to earlier in the week. To a time when Planet Earth was still graced by His Royal Purpleness. I shared […]
OK, while we’re all sitting around waiting for Radiohead to release their new music, already, let’s talk Prince and let’s talk Roman GianArthur. Covering Radiohead is a dangerous game. Unless you’re Prince. If you’re Prince, covering Radiohead is not dangerous at all. For evidence, just watch him covering ‘Creep’ at Coachella. Prince can literally do […]
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2014: Top ten albums
I’ve been posting an annual ‘best of’ list for a few years now – this is the fifth run through. I can honestly say that this is the easiest year by far. That isn’t a reflection on the scarcity of good material. Rather, the ten albums listed below stand head and shoulders out there as […]
Now this is a tough one. The spirit of the freethinking movement is to encourage conversation about music, to encourage opening your mind to new sounds. To encourage an opinion. The problem is, sometimes the opinion seems so totally at odds with ‘what’s right’ that I have to hold my hand up. Here goes… Over […]
Support bands at a Prince show have a rough old time. To be fair, people at a Prince concert are normally interested in one thing: Prince. For the performer, slogging through a support slot at a Prince show must be at once thrilling (‘my god – I am on the same stage that the wee […]
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Prince: Never Not Good
I like ‘Graffiti Bridge’. Not the entire album, as that would make me a freak, but there are flashes of brilliance. Flashes. I’d even say the same for ‘Emancipation’. And ‘Come’. ‘Graffiti Bridge’ isn’t all bad. The fact that all of those flashes are confined to one record (‘Thieves In The Temple’) is forgivable. Because […]
Can it be nearly five months since we started this? freethinking nyc, volume 1 took place in May. We’ve seen the summer through, and are about to kick into the full splendour of Autumn in New York. We’ve had some great nights, and the blog posts have been well received. We’ve brought you unheard tracks […]
How much unheard music is there out there? Rare, untapped gems, that are sitting on obscure releases – just waiting to be discovered. Hidden away on a dusty album, sitting at the back of a store filled with vinyl. Even sitting in your own record collection, on albums that you are yet to check out […]
The freethinking ethos was loud and clear during volume 3. Genuinely, I don’t know where else you would hear Run DMC, Heaven 17, Sade, Dizzy Gillespie, Friendly Fires and Delphic all in one night. Throw in a Nat Cole tune to close the evening, and I think you’ve got something special. Nat Cole’s ‘Sweet Lorraine’ […]