P.Viktor

(3.5/5) Spanish singer-songwriter Alondra Bentley’s debut album is largely indebted to Feist, whose staple use of banjos, handclaps, acoustic guitars and shimmering vocals on The Reminder are very much in evidence here...

(2.5/5) Lene Marlin’s fourth album poses the problem facing many folk-pop singer-songwriters today – how to stand out in the ever increasing crowd of carbon-copy musicians...

Modern Art Oxford hosted a private view last week of two exhibitions - Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Polaroids” and Silke Otto-Knapp’s “Present Time Exercise”...

Florence and the Machine finally release their eagerly anticipated album Lungs next week, and Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) precedes it as a single...

Punting on the CherwellWhether you’re a student at the University of Oxford, a local resident, or a tourist visiting the city for the first time, one activity you must partake in while you are here is punting...

The Oxford Playhouse is currently hosting the Agatha Christie Theatre Company and their production of Spider’s Web, a comedy thriller from the pen of one of the greatest mystery writers of our times...

(4.5/5) On listening to electro-pop duo La Roux’s debut album one might be mistaken for thinking that it was 1982 again...

Punting on the CherwellWhether you’re a student at the University of Oxford, a local resident, or a tourist visiting the city for the first time, one activity you must partake in while you are here is punting...

Without doubt my favourite song from the recent Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, It's Blitz, Heads Will Roll is the perfect blend of punk and disco that made Ladyhawke a star and which Gossip are desperately trying to emulate with their latest album...

Michael Jackson’s death yesterday had the eerie quality of being a total shock while at the same time being completely expected...

(4/5) There are some artists that various people, judging on what they know of your musical tastes, insist you listen to. Sometimes you immediately take to the recommendation and end up thanking them repeatedly for introducing you to the splendours of such music...

Although I consider myself to be a political person, I do not normally post about political events on my blog (unless they are significant world events, such as Barack Obama's election)...

This week I have been very excited about the new Regina Spektor album Far (is just me, or is this proving to be an excellent year for music thus far?) Although Spektor may have lost some fans along the way, especially after her poppy last album Begin to Hope (2006) - the point at which I finally...

A new feature starting this week will be my Oxford Social Diary, which will be an extension of the weekly column I write for Oxford Magazine and will feature more detailed reviews of the events I have attended in the past week...

Another day, another review I'm writing for Wears the Trousers. This time for the Art of Time Ensemble featuring Sarah Slean, a Canadian artist with her orchestral group covering songs by Canadian songwriters. I have been listening to this album today and I have to say a rather like it...

According to NME, the long gestating Courtney Love album, Nobody's Daughter, has now been turned into the new Hole album. Although Eric Erlandson has been replaced by Micko Larkin (from Larrikin Love), Melissa Auf Der Maur is reportedly back on bass and backing vocals...

I spent some of the weekend writing a review of Ohbijou's new album Beacons for Wears the Trousers magazine, a Canadian band that I had never heard before but based on their new album, really like...

I really do love The Gossip's new single Heavy Cross, which is the lead single from their new album Music For Men. Tight guitars, perfect melodic architecture, and tons of attitude from lead singer Beth Ditto. Who says a song has to have dance music pretensions to warrant being played in a club...

For all those who like their Sci-Fi smart and scary, you may want to check out a new film by first time director Duncan Jones, starring Sam Rockwell. It is set on the moon, where the lead character, Sam Bell, is contracted to live on there alone for three years while he is mining a natural gas...

Oh sweet patience, she knows your song.It is almost like silence, though not quite, for silence often ends, but waiting does not.This white-walled apartment slides shut,closes the mind off from the bright world.The shirts hang from the artificial floor,newly-laundered, blank as arraignmentsnot...

(3.5/5) It has been almost six months since Little Boots topped the BBC’s Sound of 2009 Poll, and longer still since she appeared on Later With Jools Holland where she performed Meddle, bedecked with Bjork-like hair and make-up, playing a piano, Stylophone, and introducing the world to the...

Only a grain of salt could niggle like this,as between two lips of skin, a paper-cut,or between clean sheets and taut mattress.It is an unexplained stain on a valance – semen turned crystalline, from his navel,to your navel, found in our white bed.All of this was by the crudest invitation;the...

I am currently listening to the new Little Boots album, Hands, which is out this week, and one song that immediately jumped out at me was Symmetry, an eighties dance-number, full of expansive synths and featuring Phil Oakey from The Human League...

Patrick Wolf - The Bachelor (3.5/5)Patrick Wolf has always been on the periphery of my consciousness as someone that I really ought to be listening to but have had neither the time nor the impetus to sit down and listen to his music...

La Roux makes it a hat trick with her soon to be released new single Bulletproof...

For anyone who likes horror films, going to the cinema of late has been a rather embarrassing experience.  In amongst all the hapless remakes such as Halloween (1978 & 2007) The Omen (1976 & 2006), The Wickerman (1973 & 2006), The Amityville Horror (1979 & 2005), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974...

Patrick Wolf channels his inner Björk in the video for his new single Hard Times, from the new album The Bachelor, out this week. All neon glow and Viktor and Rolf-esque outfits make for a cross between Possibly Maybe and Hunter...

I have several friends who have been trying to get me into the music of Patrick Wolf, and have become as fanatical about him as I over Tori Amos, so I thought I would give his new album, The Bachelor (out this week) a listen...

When the time comes to assess the greatest British bands of all time, I have no doubt that in amongst Radiohead, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Pink Floyd, Manic Street Preachers will certainly be in the top-ten...

It is always wonderful to suddenly discover that there is music out there that you somehow missed when it was originally released. As my last blog post showed there were plenty of albums that somehow managed to pass by my radar unseen, and frankly I was the poorer for it...

It seems kind of incredible that I was writing about Lady GaGa's new album The Fame way back in November 2008, an album that has effectively been out since the summer of that year, but here we are now in May 2009, and GaGa appears to have taken over the whole world...

Before Lady Gaga there was Robyn, who features on the new Royksopp single The Girl and the Robot, which may just turn out to be a huge summer hit. The cool video that accompanies this song shows Robyn cavorting with a very Daft Punk robot...

A Tale of Two Tori's (4/5)As Tori Amos drops her tenth album this week, the somewhat clunky-titled Abnormally Attracted to Sin, it comes with the long overdue acceptance that there are in fact two distinct Tori’s...

I really like this song - old school Basement Jaxx, getting back to what they do best (Red Alert anyone?). Plus, considering the weather we have been having recently the lyrics are completely appropriate...

Wolfram Alpha was launched yesterday and sent the Twitterverse into a tailspin, being one of the top trending topics for most of the day. For those not in the know, Wolfram Alpha is a new kind of search engine...