Archived magazine 2013 August

AUGUST 2013 ISSUE

A sneaky peak of just some of what is in the August 2013 issue

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McKoy

Is there really a UK soul renaissance in the summer of 2013? If we’d posed the question at the beginning of the year, surely there wouldn’t have been many answers in the affirmative: the metaphorical tumbleweeds were blowing across an almost deserted music scene for the genre. Yet here we are halfway through the calendar and suddenly all is activity.

After Omar, Bluey Maunick, Brand New Heavies and Don-E, here comes Noel McKoy and his family band McKoy, back in stride as both a live act – the quartet’s first gig back was a high profile support to Kool & The Gang last November….

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Don-E

When Don-E was only 15 years old [and known, more prosaically as Donald McLean], the then internationally famous Junior Giscombe visited his school in South London. Don-E remembers him performing his big hit, Mama Used To Say and chatting to students afterwards.

“I went up to him and said, ‘I’m into music too. One day I’m gonna catch you up!’”

And so it has proved. On Don-E’s new album for Dome Records…

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Swindle

It’s not often you see grime and jazz side by side, but producer Swindle seems out to change that. ‘Seems’ because while his debut album Long Live The Jazz looks like it’s designed to do for grime what Roni Size’s New Forms did for drum & bass, the 26-year-old Londoner is quick to put it into perspective. He doesn’t see it as a new horizon in opening the genre up to musicality. Swindle – modestly and perhaps wisely – just views it as a particular furrow he’s happy to explore alone. One that can sit side by side with all the other side-roads other grime producers are already exploring.

“Looking at what I’m doing now, Roni Size is quite an obvious comparison, but I never really noticed until people asked me about my connection with him,” he says. “I guess we had similar aims, just at different times and in different years, so it’s not so much a conscious thing…

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UB40

Not many established bands succeed in reinventing themselves whilst appeasing their original fan base, but that’s something UB40 have perfected in recent years. In late 2007, lead singer Ali Campbell left after criticising the band’s financial arrangements, despite the Inland Revenue giving them a clean bill of health. He was then replaced by his older brother Duncan, who’d been the band’s initial choice as lead singer back in the late seventies and has a vocal style that’s so similar to Ali’s, hardly anyone’s noticed the difference. Five years later, the group is still touring all over the world, and sound rejuvenated in the studio after rediscovering the joys of recording as a “live” band once more.

Their latest project is an album of country songs called Getting Over The Storm, named after the George Jones’ hit. Of the 13 tracks, only seven are covers – saxophonist Brian Travers having written the remaining songs, any of which would grace…

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