<em>Lioness: Hidden Treasures</em> tells you a lot about Winehouse, albeit sometimes unwittingly.
<b>Lloyd Gedye</b> rounds up his favourite albums of the year.
Twenty years on, Lloyd Gedye revisits the druggy highs of Primal Scream’s acid house masterpiece <i>Screamadelica</i> with the live DVD.
Not surprisingly, Washed Out, aka Ernest Greene, had been around for all of three years before he made it to South African iPods.
The default comparison for Farryl Purkiss, favoured by lazy music journalists, is Jack Johnson. A rerelease inspires more interesting comparisons.
The latest offering from the Arctic Monkeys is a bit of a disappointment.
Steve Mason and the late Gil Scott-Heron are on the receiving end of two essential new dub albums.
I’m sure that more than a few fan held their breath when they heard that Lucinda Williams’s new album was called <em>Blessed.</em>
When it comes to American roots music, you don’t get two names much bigger than Steve Earle and T Bone Burnett.
Singer-songwriters Alela Diane and Grey Reverend have reimagined the rich musical heritage of the United States.
Justin Vernon, the bearded, plaid shirt-wearing genius behind 2008’s <em>For Emma, Forever Ago, </em>has finally released his difficult second album.
Thomas Mapfumo’s <em>African Classics</em> is a 14-track capsule of the history and journey of Chimurenga music
It’s hard to categorise Simphiwe Dana’s music, but her latest live album is sure to become a classic.
Releasing a new Skunk Anansie album nearly a decade after their last is almost certainly a recipe for disappointment.
How Shadowclub returned from the dead to record one of the finest South African rock albums of 2011.
<i>Ishumar 2</i> is another stellar compilation of Tuareg desert blues.
This seven-piece band of young Tuaregs show that they are intent on picking up the legacy of the Tuareg’s most famous export, Tinariwen.
Niger’s Tuareg rocker Bombino has recorded an album drenched in the pain and suffering of the Tuareg rebellions, but it also offers hope
for peace.
Lupe Fiasco’s third commercial album, <i>Lasers</i>, is a real treat.
Think Gogol Bordello meets the Tiger Lilies with a touch of Beirut and you will have a fair idea of the wacky world sound of Mr Cat and the Jackal.
Sometimes an album just blows you away, and this compilation of archival rhythm and blues and early soul tracks is one.
You start to suspect that jazz in Jo’burg might really be dead when players start penning elegies for it. That’s exactly what Marcus Wyatt has done.
Taxi Violence have taken their early material and given us a masterclass in how a band can grow, learn and become best of breed.
It has been more than three years since we last heard from Ella Joyce Buckley.
Chance brings two of Zimbabwe’s leading musicians, Oliver Mtukudzi and Thomas Mapfumo, together to share their thoughts and feelings
Finally one of South Africa’s most important punk albums has been re-released so that a new generation can be exposed to it.
Chris Roper reviews Mrs B’s <i>The Milkshake Revolution</i>.
Lloyd Gedye reviews Tim Hendricks’s debut solo album, <i>Shadow of Your Imagination</i>.
Lloyd Gedye reviews Lithium’s David Beretta Owens’s new solo album, <i>The Order of Things</i>.
Johnny Cradle’s self-released EP can be described as a sound indebted to Bristol but rooted somewhere else.
Die Heuwels’s second full-length offering is a marked improvement on 2009’s eponymous debut.
<i>Hot Sauce Committee Part Two</i> hit the streets last week to much fanfare and justifiably so.