Latest news with #neosoul
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Leon Bridges at Iveagh Gardens in Dublin: Stage times, ticket information, support acts and more
American neo-soul singer-songwriter Leon Bridges is set to perform in Dublin this Sunday. Bridges achieved overnight stardom after releasing his debut album, the Grammy nominated Coming Home , in 2015. Since then he has continued to record and release music which blends elements of gospel, R&B, soul and country. He released his fourth studio album, Leon, which he described as his most personal album yet, in October last year. If you are heading to see Bridges this Sunday, here's everything you need to know. When and where is it? Leon Bridges is performing at the Iveagh Gardens on Sunday, July 20th. What time should I arrive? Doors for the gig open at 6.30pm, with the music expected to begin at 8pm. Iveagh Gardens concerts tend to be finished up by 10.30pm. Traffic and entry delays are inevitable, so make sure you give yourself a couple of hours' leeway getting to and from the venue. READ MORE Who is playing? Support for all UK and Ireland gigs comes from British band Gotts Street Park. What songs will Leon Bridges play? This is a recent set list performed by Bridges at the Spruce Meadows in Canada. It might give an idea of what to expect at the Dublin concert. When a Man Cries Panther City Better Man Flowers Laredo Coming Home That's What I Love Never Satisfied Mariella Steam Ain't Got Nothing on You Texas Sun You Don't Know Bad Bad News If It Feels Good (Then It Must Be) Hold On Can't Have It All God Loves Everyone River Peaceful Place Smooth Sailin' Lisa Sawyer Beyond How do I get to and from the gig? The venue is located right beside St Stephen's Green in the heart of Dublin city, so concertgoers are advised to use one of many public transport options to get to the venue. Travel by bus: A wide variety of Dublin Bus routes service the city centre. The 37 route, for example, runs along the northside of the quays and will drop you an eight-minute walk from the Iveagh Gardens. You can plan your journey with Transport for Ireland here . Travel by Luas: The St Stephen's Green Luas stop is a seven-minute walk from the venue. If you are heading southbound, take any green line Luas towards Sandyford or Brides Glen. If you are heading northbound, take any green line Luas towards Broombridge or Parnell. Travel by train: If you are arriving in Dublin by train, you can hop on the red line Luas from Heuston Station to Abbey Street. There, transfer to the green line Luas from the stop on Marlborough Street, hopping off at St Stephen's Green and walking seven minutes to the Iveagh Gardens. Travel by car: The closest car park to the venue is the Q-Park at St Stephen's Green. You can pre-book a parking space here , though it is recommended you use public transport as traffic delays before and after the gig are inevitable. Are there any tickets left? There are no tickets available but keep an eye out for resale tickets which can be purchased from Ticketmaster here . Remember to download your tickets to your phone in advance, as there may be internet or connectivity issues at the venue on the day. Do not rely on screenshots, as Ticketmaster often use live or dynamic barcodes that update regularly. What is security like? The event is for over-14s only, and under-16s must be accompanied by an adult aged 18 or over. Make sure to bring an official form of identification with you such as a passport, Garda age card or driving licence. Bags size A4 or more will not be permitted entry, and all bags will be subject to a search on arrival. Prohibited items include glass, cans, alcohol, garden furniture, umbrellas, flares, illegal substances or any item that could be used as a weapon. Recording and taking pictures using a camera phone is no problem, but professional recording equipment will not be allowed inside the venue. How is the weather looking? At the moment Sunday is forecast to be noticeably cooler than last weekend with highest temperatures of 17-21 degrees. Spells of sunshine are expected, along with isolated, heavy and possibly thundery showers.
Vogue
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
‘I'm Just Ready to Turn Up': Sudan Archives' Upcoming Album The BPM Is Her Biggest, Boldest Statement Yet
The album begins with 'Dead,' an exhilarating rollercoaster ride of a lead single, which features Parks crooning 'Did you miss me?' over swooping chords played by a string quartet before pummeling, four-to-the-floor beats and a whir of chopped-up vocals that sound almost like a siren come in—and things don't let up from there. The title hints at the direction she's heading in this time around: taking her distinctive sonic cocktail of neo-soul, R&B, and electronica and channeling it into 15 tracks of genre-defying experimental dance music. Even by Parks's already impressive standards, it's an extraordinary record: Where at moments Natural Brown Prom Queen felt like it was flexing to showcase the sheer versatility of her talents, on The BPM, her sprawling fascination with music history and maximalist instincts are still present, but feel laser focused—and firmly trained on the dance floor. 'I feel like I've got all my personalities in this album still, but it just feels a lot stronger,' she says. So how is she feeling as she prepares to unveil this new chapter to the world? 'I'm not nervous,' Parks says, after a pause. 'I always have a bit of anxiety, but that's normal. I'm just ready to go.' Part of the reason for Parks's excitement is that the album is very much a family affair. She explains that over the course of making it, she found herself reconnecting with her family's heritage—her mom is from Detroit and her dad is from Chicago—and the rich threads of dance music that are woven through the histories of both cities. 'I feel like my beats have always sounded a bit like where my parents are from, but this time it had this more experimental vibe to it, and I was very intentional about the fact that I wanted to make a dance record,' Parks says.
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Heaven must be like this: D'Angelo's greatest songs – ranked!
For an artist no one could describe as prolific, D'Angelo has contributed a surprising number of exclusive songs to films. Good songs too, as evidenced by this, from the Space Jam soundtrack: a fine, funky, faintly Stevie Wonder-ish, mid-tempo example of his initial retro-yet-somehow-modern approach to soul. Questlove compared D'Angelo's third album Black Messiah to the Beach Boys' Smile. More people heard Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On in its murky, moody sound, but Another Life was a relatively bright closer, a lovely hybrid of vintage Chicago and Philadelphia soul, decorated with sitar. D'Angelo is better known as a songwriter than an interpreter of others' material, but – quite aside from demonstrating his exquisite taste in vintage soul – his version of the Ohio Players' 1974 slow jam is magnificent: live-sounding, respectful, but not too cowed by the original to prevent the singer injecting his own identity. D'Angelo's debut was the album for which the term neosoul was literally invented (as a marketing tool), but it offered more than merely harking back to a golden era. Alright is resolutely a product of the mid-90s – the harmonies are lush, but they're set against a crackly sampled rhythm and subjected to dub-like echo. D'Angelo made his love for Prince explicit early on – covering She's Always in My Hair – and his spirit hangs over The Charade, both melodically and in its hybrid rock-influenced style. But the sound is too smeared, distorted and strange to count as homage; its lyrics about the 'systematic maze' of racism are glowering and powerful. D'Angelo's second album Voodoo took four years to make. Collaborator Questlove described the sessions as a 'left of centre Black music renaissance', but there's a potent note-to-self quality about The Line's lyrics, as if D'Angelo is urging himself to get the album done: 'I'm gonna stick to my guns, I'm gonna put my finger on the trigger, I'm gonna pull it'. The most recent D'Angelo track – released seven years ago! – was brooding, atmospheric and produced by U2 collaborator Daniel Lanois. It's understated but fabulous, carrying a hint of swampy New Orleans soul in its rhythm. If he can come up with something this good for a video game soundtrack, what might a fourth album sound like? Inspired by the birth of D'Angelo's son – and co-written with his then-partner, the late Angie Stone – Africa meditates on fatherhood and Black consciousness. It's resolute lyrically but low-key, introspective and somehow fragile musically, its electric piano sounding fractured over the rumbling funk of Questlove's drums. The overall effect is really moving. The perfect example of what one critic called the 'controlled chaos' of Black Messiah with funk so slippery the constituent elements feel as if they're on the verge of sliding out of sync entirely. D'Angelo laments the state of the world in falsetto: 'Tragedy flows unbound and there's no place to run.' The loverman side of Voodoo later gave D'Angelo pause – he was deeply uncomfortable with his sex-symbol status – but it's pretty irresistible on this cliche-free slow jam. The vocals are reverb-free and mixed forward, as if he's singing very close to you, the music moves drowsily along, the whole thing sounds like it's dripping with sweat. From the opening torrent of dextrous jazz guitar to the bumping hip-hop beat (from Chubb Rock's 1992 track The Big Man) via the meandering keyboard lines that suggest a band jamming live and the fine, but unshowy vocal, Smooth defines the new route for R&B laid out on D'Angelo's debut. It's also just a great song. If Black Messiah is the 21st-century There's a Riot Goin' On, maybe Sugah Daddy is its goofy Spaced Cowboy moment, its Princely lubriciousness undercut by its quirky tap-dancing rhythm, sudden key changes and warped swing-era evoking horns and backing vocals. The main piano and bass groove, meanwhile, is utterly, joyfully contagious. A collaboration with producer DJ Premier (who originally intended its beat to go to fleetingly famous rapper Canibus), Devil's Pie is also liberally sprinkled with magic by an uncredited J Dilla. Its attack on hip-hop materialism is stripped-back, bass-heavy and strafed with vintage electronics (sampled from Pierre Henry). Idiosyncratic and marvellous. The great D'Angelo cover. Smokey Robinson's original 1979 quiet-storm-classic is an incredible track but this version might be even better: a touch faster, a little more raw, the lush orchestration set over echoey funk. And D'Angelo's unruffled falsetto may be the best vocal he's ever recorded. Around Voodoo's release, D'Angelo described modern R&B as 'a joke'. The ensuing album was his alternative, 'the natural progression of soul', a description that fits Send It On perfectly: over the sample loops and elastic bass, the lovely song at its centre could easily have been sung by Otis Redding or Sam Cooke. When it comes to D'Angelo's biggest hit, take your pick from the original – a slow jam with a killer bassline courtesy of Raphael Saadiq – or the DJ Premier mix which is more hip-hop facing, with a guest verse from Nas-affiliated rapper AZ. Both are superb, carrying a faint undercurrent of darkness alongside declarations of love. At the heart of Voodoo's sound is incredible, virtuosic live-in-the-studio playing by D'Angelo and his fellow Soulquarians. It never sounds more incredible than the intricate, writhing groove of Spanish Joint: constantly shifting, always funky, the perfect backdrop for D'Angelo's vocals (and the Afrobeat-influenced horns) to glide around. A slow-burning dream of a song, its gorgeous, cyclical melody stunningly orchestrated and decorated with flamenco guitar: an arrangement so imaginative it makes you realise how unimaginative most pop arrangements are. The mush-mouthed vocal adds an odd sense of intimacy, as if you're hearing D'Angelo singing to himself. Untitled's video was simple – a naked D'Angelo singing direct to camera – and perhaps too effective. Subsequent attention from female fans disconcerted the singer into derailing his own career. But the song itself is amazing, a rule-breaking Prince-inspired bedroom ballad that slowly builds to an astonishing psychedelic climax. D'Angelo's catalogue might be slender, but it's rich, so much so that it feels almost unfair to pick his debut single as his best song. Doing so doesn't imply that it was all downhill from there – all of his albums are equally good – but there's no getting around the fact that Brown Sugar is a spectacularly great track. An ode to marijuana disguised as a love song, you could work out the real meaning just from its heady sound – like mid-70s Roy Ayers in a fog of smoke, plus snapping beats, ultra-cool organ, disorientating murmuring voices and a vocal with the rhythm of a rapper's flow.
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Heaven must be like this: D'Angelo's greatest songs – ranked!
For an artist no one could describe as prolific, D'Angelo has contributed a surprising number of exclusive songs to films. Good songs too, as evidenced by this, from the Space Jam soundtrack: a fine, funky, faintly Stevie Wonder-ish, mid-tempo example of his initial retro-yet-somehow-modern approach to soul. Questlove compared D'Angelo's third album Black Messiah to the Beach Boys' Smile. More people heard Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On in its murky, moody sound, but Another Life was a relatively bright closer, a lovely hybrid of vintage Chicago and Philadelphia soul, decorated with sitar. D'Angelo is better known as a songwriter than an interpreter of others' material, but – quite aside from demonstrating his exquisite taste in vintage soul – his version of the Ohio Players' 1974 slow jam is magnificent: live-sounding, respectful, but not too cowed by the original to prevent the singer injecting his own identity. D'Angelo's debut was the album for which the term neosoul was literally invented (as a marketing tool), but it offered more than merely harking back to a golden era. Alright is resolutely a product of the mid-90s – the harmonies are lush, but they're set against a crackly sampled rhythm and subjected to dub-like echo. D'Angelo made his love for Prince explicit early on – covering She's Always in My Hair – and his spirit hangs over The Charade, both melodically and in its hybrid rock-influenced style. But the sound is too smeared, distorted and strange to count as homage; its lyrics about the 'systematic maze' of racism are glowering and powerful. D'Angelo's second album Voodoo took four years to make. Collaborator Questlove described the sessions as a 'left of centre Black music renaissance', but there's a potent note-to-self quality about The Line's lyrics, as if D'Angelo is urging himself to get the album done: 'I'm gonna stick to my guns, I'm gonna put my finger on the trigger, I'm gonna pull it'. The most recent D'Angelo track – released seven years ago! – was brooding, atmospheric and produced by U2 collaborator Daniel Lanois. It's understated but fabulous, carrying a hint of swampy New Orleans soul in its rhythm. If he can come up with something this good for a video game soundtrack, what might a fourth album sound like? Inspired by the birth of D'Angelo's son – and co-written with his then-partner, the late Angie Stone – Africa meditates on fatherhood and Black consciousness. It's resolute lyrically but low-key, introspective and somehow fragile musically, its electric piano sounding fractured over the rumbling funk of Questlove's drums. The overall effect is really moving. The perfect example of what one critic called the 'controlled chaos' of Black Messiah with funk so slippery the constituent elements feel as if they're on the verge of sliding out of sync entirely. D'Angelo laments the state of the world in falsetto: 'Tragedy flows unbound and there's no place to run.' The loverman side of Voodoo later gave D'Angelo pause – he was deeply uncomfortable with his sex-symbol status – but it's pretty irresistible on this cliche-free slow jam. The vocals are reverb-free and mixed forward, as if he's singing very close to you, the music moves drowsily along, the whole thing sounds like it's dripping with sweat. From the opening torrent of dextrous jazz guitar to the bumping hip-hop beat (from Chubb Rock's 1992 track The Big Man) via the meandering keyboard lines that suggest a band jamming live and the fine, but unshowy vocal, Smooth defines the new route for R&B laid out on D'Angelo's debut. It's also just a great song. If Black Messiah is the 21st-century There's a Riot Goin' On, maybe Sugah Daddy is its goofy Spaced Cowboy moment, its Princely lubriciousness undercut by its quirky tap-dancing rhythm, sudden key changes and warped swing-era evoking horns and backing vocals. The main piano and bass groove, meanwhile, is utterly, joyfully contagious. A collaboration with producer DJ Premier (who originally intended its beat to go to fleetingly famous rapper Canibus), Devil's Pie is also liberally sprinkled with magic by an uncredited J Dilla. Its attack on hip-hop materialism is stripped-back, bass-heavy and strafed with vintage electronics (sampled from Pierre Henry). Idiosyncratic and marvellous. The great D'Angelo cover. Smokey Robinson's original 1979 quiet-storm-classic is an incredible track but this version might be even better: a touch faster, a little more raw, the lush orchestration set over echoey funk. And D'Angelo's unruffled falsetto may be the best vocal he's ever recorded. Around Voodoo's release, D'Angelo described modern R&B as 'a joke'. The ensuing album was his alternative, 'the natural progression of soul', a description that fits Send It On perfectly: over the sample loops and elastic bass, the lovely song at its centre could easily have been sung by Otis Redding or Sam Cooke. When it comes to D'Angelo's biggest hit, take your pick from the original – a slow jam with a killer bassline courtesy of Raphael Saadiq – or the DJ Premier mix which is more hip-hop facing, with a guest verse from Nas-affiliated rapper AZ. Both are superb, carrying a faint undercurrent of darkness alongside declarations of love. At the heart of Voodoo's sound is incredible, virtuosic live-in-the-studio playing by D'Angelo and his fellow Soulquarians. It never sounds more incredible than the intricate, writhing groove of Spanish Joint: constantly shifting, always funky, the perfect backdrop for D'Angelo's vocals (and the Afrobeat-influenced horns) to glide around. A slow-burning dream of a song, its gorgeous, cyclical melody stunningly orchestrated and decorated with flamenco guitar: an arrangement so imaginative it makes you realise how unimaginative most pop arrangements are. The mush-mouthed vocal adds an odd sense of intimacy, as if you're hearing D'Angelo singing to himself. Untitled's video was simple – a naked D'Angelo singing direct to camera – and perhaps too effective. Subsequent attention from female fans disconcerted the singer into derailing his own career. But the song itself is amazing, a rule-breaking Prince-inspired bedroom ballad that slowly builds to an astonishing psychedelic climax. D'Angelo's catalogue might be slender, but it's rich, so much so that it feels almost unfair to pick his debut single as his best song. Doing so doesn't imply that it was all downhill from there – all of his albums are equally good – but there's no getting around the fact that Brown Sugar is a spectacularly great track. An ode to marijuana disguised as a love song, you could work out the real meaning just from its heady sound – like mid-70s Roy Ayers in a fog of smoke, plus snapping beats, ultra-cool organ, disorientating murmuring voices and a vocal with the rhythm of a rapper's flow.
