Best of 2017

Never mind Black Friday – here’s the Sex Pistols Indecency Trial! When I did some investigative work earlier this year and discovered that 24 November 1977 was a very special date in Nottingham’s music history, I knew we had to celebrate it here on the Rockhaq Community. A special shout out to Nottingham Libraries for having this brilliant archive material to hand. And it’s all free, dammit.
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I’ve written in some length about the many career paths of Donald Glover. To sum up, it seems like no matter what creative project he turns his hand to he’s consistently great at it, which is as infuriating as it is spellbinding. Under his alter ego Childish Gambino, Glover has enjoyed some success as a rapper with seven mixtapes, 2 EPs and a trio of studio albums under his belt. It’s on his third full-length album Awaken, My Love that Gambino reinvents himself.
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Pink Floyd are the beating heart of ’70s progressive rock. Easily the genre’s strongest songwriters and sincerest lyricists, Pink Floyd dialled down prog’s more pretentious tendencies to huge success. Iconic albums such as The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall secured the band a place in rock history rivalling The Beatles. This review, however, is set a little earlier. The year is 1967, long-time frontman David Gilmour won’t join the band until 1968 and experimental guitarist Syd Barrett – alongside bassist Roger Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason – is revolutionising rock music.
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In 1997, I had not yet been born. I will never live in a world where everything – from schools to houses to pockets – isn’t filled with computers. Still, I’m no stranger to techno-paranoid media. Film, TV and music still love to warn us about tech, from Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror to Arcade Fire asking “what if the camera really do take your soul?” on their 2013 album Reflektor. The difference is, now we consume it through devices that know our favourite restaurants, daily commutes and exact location. In other words, Radiohead’s third album OK Computer may be 20 years old, but in 2017, it’s more relevant than ever.
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There’s no question that when Depeche Mode released their visionary album Violator in 1990, it firmly established four boys from Basildon as one of the most influential electronic groups in the world. The technical masterclass that was displayed in their predecessor would present Depeche Mode with the colossal task of trying to deliver something as innovative for their sophomore album; Songs of Faith and Devotion.
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Music For The Jilted Generation came two years after The Prodigy’s debut album, Experience. Although it was a debut very much of its time, Experience has so many layers and facets to it, so much awareness of the type of samples used, that you cannot just dismiss it as ‘kiddy rave’. AC/DC mingles with LuLu, Kate Bush with Aswad, Run DMC and Arthur Brown. It’s all chaotic, hyper experimental and very, very British. The large succession of single releases from Experience meant that critics did write it and the band off though.
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As soon as I typed out the name ‘Babymetal’ in my word document, I immediately realised the amount of constructive criticism that I was going to receive from my Rockhaq peers. Babymetal are a Japanese pop metal group composed of Suzuka Nakamoto (Su-metal), Yui Mizuno (Yuimetal) & Moa Kikuchi (Moametal). The trio have somewhat grown to become a peculiar phenomenon within the metal community due to their controversial approach to the genre. Metal Resistance is the sophomore album to their self-titled record Babymetal.
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It’s hard not to be a little jealous of Donald Glover, A.K.A. Childish Gambino. The Atlanta born rap artist, actor, writer and former YouTube star has experienced a meteoric rise to fame in an incredibly short amount of time.
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