| Stewart Ford |
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• Much effort has clearly gone into this slight, self-pitying selection: precise production, solid musicianship, thoughtful song titles. Plaintive paean ‘A List’ has a certain mild-mannered, defeatist charm. Sadly, as positives go, that’s about it. This is listless aural drizzle for people who find Keane a bit too dramatic. From the maudlin ‘Open Wound’ onwards, gentle guitar twirls like a fussy hostess around an unobtrusive rhythm section as Stew wrings out his pessimistic ponderings above. If singer-songwriters were salad leaves, Nick Drake would be something delicate and a little odd, like lollo rosso. Elliot Smith – dark pepperiness, like watercress and balsamic; Morrissey a ribbed, bitter, beautiful radicchio. Stewart Ford is an iceberg: dependable but utterly innocuous. (Mike White)
Copyright Mike White 2011
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THE BIG GIG
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Gary Numan
Mike White muses on the missing link between Kraftwerk and NIN. The same year as ‘Alien’, three years before ‘Blade Runner’, awkward, acne-ridden 21-year-old Gary Webb wrote a song called ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’. It sounded…23.04.2012 READ MORE -
Philharmonia/Ashkenazy
You have to feel sorry for any young pianist braving a Chopin concerto under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy. Poacher turned gamekeeper, Ashkenazy’s glittering career as a pianist was kick-started by success at the Warsaw Chopin…23.05.2012 READ MORE


‘Silence is Golden’ (LP, self-released)




















































































































































































































