Showing posts with label cairo360. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cairo360. Show all posts
Thursday, 9 October 2014
Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Sunday, 29 December 2013
New review on Cairo360: Queens of the Stone Age
In late 2011, Queens of the Stone Age front-man, Josh Homme, went in for a routine knee surgery and, because of some freak medical complications, nearly didn't make it out alive. He was hospitalised for thirteen days, then bed-ridden for four months. Unusually involved in a number of musical projects at a time, the busy musician reportedly fell into depression, even going as far as to announce that didn't even feel like making music anymore.
Read the full review here.
Monday, 2 September 2013
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Sunday, 28 July 2013
Sunday, 2 June 2013
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
New book review: Sex and the Citadel
Since 2011, much has been written about the Arab Spring and Egypt in particular. Most have covered politics, history, the east-west paradigm, or religion, but Canadian-Egyptian writer Shereen El Feki chose a very different point of departure. In her book, Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World, she explores sexuality in the Middle East and the taboos and customs that go with it.
"If you really want to know a people, start by looking inside their bedrooms", El Feki says, explaining her interest in the topic. And she's got a point; insight into the rites and rituals surrounding people's attitudes and behaviour towards sex indeed provides a wealth of knowledge about their culture.
Friday, 3 May 2013
New review for Cairo360: Cortigiano - Big Italian fare in Dokki
"Italian restaurants in Cairo are a dime a dozen and even when there is no specialised 'ristorante' around, most regular eateries feature pizza and pasta as a staple on their menu. Despite that, good affordable Italian food remains a bit of a holy grail in this crazy city, as most medium-priced restaurants attempt to satisfy their customers with uninspired, bland favourites of the Italian cuisine.
Cortigiano is a chain of Italian restaurants, with branches in Dokki, Nasr City, Heliopolis, Maadi and even one in Alexandria. Their branch in Dokki is a stone's throw away from the Shooting Club on Michel Bakhoum and can easily be spotted by the leafy green plants outside and the soft yellow awnings."
Read the full review here.
Friday, 19 April 2013
New review for Cairo360: The Black Angels - Indigo Meadow
Brian Eno once famously commented that the Velvet Underground might only have sold 30,000 records while they were still together, but "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band". In the case of Texas four-piece band, The Black Angels, they didn't only start a band, they named themselves after the Velvet Underground's 'The Black Angel's Death Song' and use a high contrast negative of occasional vocalist, Nico, as their logo.
With those references, it should come as no surprise that The Black Angels' sound is highly inspired by the Velvet Underground and some of their contemporaries. Lead vocalist Alex Maas' voice has the same characteristic nonchalance as that of Lou Reed, while Stephanie Bailey's dry and often primitive drums are in line with Maureen Tuckers' bare rhythms.
Read the full review here.
Friday, 12 April 2013
New music review on Cairo360: Ed Harcourt - Back Into The Woods
There comes a time in everyone's life when it's time for reflection; time to escape the rat race and go back to basics. Usually, this time is spent at some desolate place, like a cabin in the woods or some far away beach on a desert island; somewhere one can fully recharge and shift their focus back to what's really important.
English singer-songwriter, Ed Harcourt, seems to have done just that on his new record Back into the Woods. But instead of a cabin in the woods or a tropical beach resort, Harcourt went back to basics at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London. The nine songs were written in a month and recorded in just six hours.
The end result is melancholic, but utterly beautiful, in all its naked simplicity. There's a piano, an electric guitar and his wife on the violin, but that is all Harcourt has taken with him to create this record. The use of dubbed vocals on a handful of tracks, and an organ beefing up the bare framework of the song 'Brothers and Sisters', is as frivolous as this album gets.
Read the full review here.
Saturday, 6 April 2013
New music review on Cairo360: How To Destroy Angels - Welcome Oblivion
For his new project, How to Destroy Angels, Nine Inch Nails mastermind, Trent Reznor, has teamed up with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, his long-time musical partner in crime, Atticus Ross, and Nine Inch Nails' art director, Rob Sheridan.
With How to Destroy Angels' DNA so closely linked to that of Nine Inch Nails, it should come as no surprise that the groups, at first hearing, sound quite similar. The easiest way to describe this album – or this new band, for that matter – is to say that it sounds like a light version of Nine Inch Nails; less angry and aggressive. But the new foursome wanders into plenty of other musical corners to justify their new musical explorations.
Read the full review here.
Monday, 1 April 2013
New music review on Cairo360: Mogwai - Les Revenants
"What do you get when you take the noisy guitars out of Mogwai? Well, you get the Scottish five-piece band's soundtrack made for French TV-series, Les Revenants, conveniently also called Les Revenants.
Post-rockers Mogwai doing a soundtrack is something to get excited about; they created a near masterpiece with the film score to the documentary, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, and delivered excellent work collaborating with Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet on the soundtrack to Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain.
The Revenants is an eight-episode long zombie TV-drama that aired on French cable TV. It revolves around a small mountain village, not unlike David Lynch's Twin Peaks, where the dead keep re-appearing."
Read the full review here.
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Monday, 10 December 2012
Friday, 23 November 2012
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Tuesday, 13 November 2012
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
New review on Cairo360: Two Door Cinema Club - Beacon
They substituted 'crack' for 'ecstasy pill' and edited out my last sentence, which said something along the lines of 'remember kids, drugs are bad'. Still pretty proud of myself for getting a bunch of drug reference in a music review on a big Egyptian website though.
Read the full review here.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
New review on Cairo360: The xx - Coexist
'Indie pop band, the xx, were the musical revelation of 2009 with their debut album xx. A foursome barely out of their teens, the Londoners arrived onto the music scene with a very grown-up sound that somehow managed to marry the characteristics of Joy Division and American crooner, Chris Isaak, into a new genre.
In eleven songs, they built a unique sound that you couldn't quite put your finger on: slow beats dressed in austerity, accompanied by enigmatic lyrics and lone wondering guitars. With a Mercury music prize under their belt and almost every music critic at their feet, they started work on their sophomore album. '
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