Album review: Prince – Piano & A Microphone 1983
Prince’s people have finally opened his famous Vault for the first of surely a long line of posthumous releases. But, as Piers Barber writes, this first effort – an intimate, tantalising stripped […]
Category Archives: Reviews
Live review: Carl Craig’s Synthesizer Ensemble – Barbican, Friday 6 April 2018
Carl Craig and his lucrative Synthesizer Ensemble tour certainly lacks a certain sparkle, but, as Piers Barber argues, smug music journalists have no place criticising those who prefer to enjoy […]
Rating all The Rolling Stones live albums
After rapidly selling out yet another UK and Europe stadium tour, now feels as good a time as any to rule the roost over the multitude of Rolling Stones live […]
Live review: Wild Beasts – Hammersmith Apollo, 17th February 2018
Last September, long time Music Factory-favourites Wild Beasts decided that the time had come, after five albums of precious indie art-rock, to draw their career to an elegant close. Piers Barber is in the […]
Book review: Stuart Cosgrove’s Young Soul Rebels
Piers Barber enjoys Stuart Cosgrove’s personal history of northern soul, the enduring and often mythologised youth culture which rescued forgotten stomping soul records from America’s black inner-cities and blasted them out […]
Live review: Radiohead – Old Trafford Cricket Ground, 4th July 2017
Piers Barber heads up north to catch Radiohead’s rearranged super-gig at Old Trafford cricket ground. Despite some serious sound issues, a triumphant final hour makes it just about worth it. […]
Album review: AZD – Actress
The charismatic Actress returns with AZD, his fifth album apparently inspired by the material of chrome and obscure outsider art. But look past the lofty theorising, advises Piers Barber, and you’ll […]
The Music Factory’s Favourite Albums of 2016
2016 saw the release of some of memorable new music, including important albums that challenged conventions, reinvigorated established styles and enshrined burgeoning reputations. Here, Phil Smith and Piers Barber present a run down of the Music […]
Live review: Spiritualized – Barbican, Tuesday 8th November 2016
Piers Barber is left dumbstruck by a rare in-full performance of Spiritualized’s vital cosmic masterpiece Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space at London’s Barbican. It’s a rare and personally unprecedented […]
Classic albums: Global Communication – 76:14
Following the release of Mark Pritchard’s mighty Under The Sun LP, Piers Barber invents a new feature in order to pen an ode to one of the pioneering producer’s finest moments to date: […]
