WARRIOR SOUL, the band fronted by legendary singer Kory Clarke, will release its new studio album, titled "Back On The Lash", on December 1 via Livewire/Cargo Records UK.
There aren’t many artists whose personal life overshadows their musical output but Serge Gainsbourg wasn’t like most artists. His early career was spent smoking Gitanes, lurching between love affairs with various screen sirens and drinking his way through the nightclubs of Paris. Later he would become a dishevelled regular on French television, setting fire to a 500 franc note and drunkenly declaring his wish to bed Whitney Houston, before dying of a heart attack at 62. It’s little wonder that, apart from a bar of heavy breathing in ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’, history can’t handle Gainsbourg’s musical accomplishments and some of the singer’s best work remains largely forgotten.
Gordon Koang is a fountain of warmth and joy, immediately accepting any stranger who strays into his presence. With a beaming smile that is unfettered by blindness, a condition he has lived with since birth, Gordon welcomes any and all around him, encouraging them to sit for a while and chat, maybe even to share a song.
OMD's first full album won as much attention for its brilliant die-cut cover - another example of Peter Saville's cutting-edge way around design - as for its music, and its music is wonderful. For all that, this is a young band, working for just about the last time with original percussionist Winston; there's both a variety and ambition present that never overreaches itself. The influences are perfectly clear throughout, but McCluskey and Humphreys would have been the last people to deny how Kraftwerk, Sparks, and other avatars of post-guitar pop touched them. What's undeniably thrilling, though, is how quickly the two synthesized their own style. Consider "Almost," with its dramatic keyboard opening suddenly shifting into a collage of wheezing sound beats and McCluskey's precise bass and heartfelt, lovelorn singing and lyrics…