Oxford's biggest student newspaper, produced by and for members of the University of Oxford, since 1991.
Mac Miller performing at Splash! Festival in 2012. Photo credit: Nicolas Völcker There is a sense of poetic closure to this album. It is far from an easy listen, a beautiful, tragic monument to the talented young rapper whose life was cut short. Initially intended as a companion album to 2018’s Swimming, Circles, released posthumously, […]
Continue Reading
Slick production, funky grooves and tasty solos: whilst these things may not be commonly associated with student bands, all can be found in plentiful supply on SNARP’s debut EP, All In. Consisting of current and ex-Oxford students, SNARP demonstrate the prodigious talent that can be found within Oxford’s jazz scene, which venues such as The […]
Continue Reading
The words ‘contemporary opera’ are enough to make the average person somewhat nervous; quite frankly, even the word ‘opera’ is. Conjuring images of overdramatised and inaccessible performances, reserved for the upper echelons of society, one would imagine that marketing contemporary opera would be far from the easiest job in the world. However, attending the second […]
Continue Reading
Fontaines D.C., to put it lightly, have had a dramatic year. Touring their Mercury Prize-nominated debut album ‘Dogrel’ across fifty different cities throughout Britain, Europe and North America, the band have truly charged into the post-punk scene. Yet, at the height of Summer, Ireland’s biggest band made the ‘difficult’ decision to cancel a string of […]
Continue Reading
‘What could be as lonely as love?’ asks Joe Keogh on Amber Run’s latest album Philophobia. The band’s third album is one full of classic indie bangers, interspersed with more ambient moments of tenderness: it is an album defined by tales of love, loneliness, and longing. In a dingy green room of Oxford’s O2 Academy, […]
Continue Reading
Friday night brought us a celebration of all things jazz and funk, with The Red Brick Jazz Sextet, The Donut Kings and Rough Edge Brass Band offering up an eclectic mix of jazz standards, pop arrangements and timeless classics. First off, The Red Brick Jazz Sextet brought us some upbeat numbers which featured two saxes, […]
Continue Reading
Above: Michael Kiwanuka A number one album in the UK charts and numerous awards and award nominations would appear enough to banish any musician’s notion of imposter syndrome. Yet, in an interview with The Guardian, Michael Kiwanuka talks about how he has only just learned to discard this feeling. There is no sense of this […]
Continue Reading
Above: Kanye West Finally! After a long 10-month period, Kanye first announced that he is dropping his ninth studio album‘JESUS IS KING’ on September 27th but after some delay, it is finally here! This year has been a rollercoaster for Kanye, from his political interest aligning with that of Trump’s, to his controversial statement […]
Continue Reading
At long last, Rex Orange County’s new album Pony has graced our Spotify playlists, our well-loved stack of CDs, our vinyl collections and finally, our hearts. Tender lyricism conjoined with a smug, wry cynicism characterise his indie pop, where equally mournful, self-deprecating lamentations can be (somehow) also quite the uplifting modern-day love songs. Within his […]
Continue Reading
Above: Lake near Nisswa, Minnesota My earliest memory of listening to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, his ‘Emperor’ Concerto is at my maternal grandparents’ house in Nisswa, Minnesota, a lakeside town in the Northern United States. That’s where my grandparents moved when Papa retired from his job with Ford Motor Company in 1994. My […]
Continue Reading
Above: Lana del Rey Weeks have passed since the release of Norman Fucking Rockwell!, Lana Del Rey’s 6th studio album. NFR! was reviewed glowingly by the likes of Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and with ‘Video Games’ being recently pronounced ‘Song of the Decade’ at the Q awards, it seems like Lana Del Rey has […]
Continue Reading
In certain instances, it is hard not to allow the life of an artist to cast a shadow over their creative output. Sometimes it’s impossible. With an album as deeply personal as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Ghosteen, released the 4th of October, the listener is obliged to confront the tragedy from whence its […]
Continue Reading
From their beginnings as a small university band in Dundee, to touring internationally, and releasing the most played song on UK radio of the 21st century, it seems fair to say that the Snow Patrol have done rather well for themselves. Ahead of the release of their eighth studio album, Reworked, marking twenty-five years as […]
Continue Reading
Who would come up in your mind when you think about rock bands? Queen, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Bring Me the Horizon, Vampire Weekend… All those big names from Europe and America that have thrilled generations and have dominated the global rock music industry, in which we can hardly find any Asian faces. Can you […]
Continue Reading
I caught up with The Murder Capital’s drummer Diarmuid ahead of their performance at Oxford’s own Ritual Union festival on 19th October. When I Have Fears is a staggering debut album for The Murder Capital. James McGovern (vocals), Cathal Roper (guitar), Damien Tuit (guitar), Diarmuid Brennan (drums) and Gabriel Paschal Blake (bass) haven’t been together […]
Continue Reading
(Image: The Leisure Society playing in London) Ahead of their gig at The Bullingdon on 20th September, I caught up with The Leisure Society’s frontman Nick Hemming to discuss their latest album, Arrivals and Departures, his biggest influences, and the creative process that shapes his songwriting. Currently on the second leg of their biggest tour, […]
Continue Reading
‘Wu-Tang is for the children’. This is what Wu-Tang’s Clan’s Russell Jones, better known by his stage name ‘Ol’ Dirty Bastard’, proclaimed at the 1998 Grammys. Now, over twenty years later, on May 4th 2019, Wu-Tang Clan have had their very own district named after them, in their hometown of Staten Island, New York. Recognising […]
Continue Reading
On first listen, the soft-spoken melodies created by Australian rapper Genesis Owusu (born Kofi Owusu-Ansah) don’t immediately ring as political. Yet, his creative pursuits in both music and fashion speak out against racial inequalities and misguided preconceptions of his culture, with his lyrics consciously stemming from his own upbringing as a black person in the […]
Continue Reading
We’re all living in it. Or some did. Here. Eton Alive, the newest album from Sleaford Mods, is a fearful listen. Not least because in it we hear the lacerations that constitute a musical evolution. This is the least ‘Sleaford Mods’ album yet, and for exactly that reason it succeeds in demonstrating a band autonomously undermining […]
Continue Reading