Alex Zhang Hungtai handles every aspect of his music project Dirty Beaches: performance, production and even PR. Born in Taiwan and raised in Canada, he has spent the past decade releasing a mixture of EPs and full length albums. “The best cities are where you can hone your craft and work minimum hours per week, Iike Montreal, Berlin, and Lisbon” he says, commenting on his own wanderlust. “They are all different and bring forth different qualities in me as a person”. Having joined his first band at 19, he started Dirty Beaches “probably around age 25, after I quit working in real estate”, although it only became a full-time job in 2011 when he was able to support himself. “It requires a lot of backing, and dedication and passion, to sustain itself as an operation,” he says, regarding his decision to run an entirely independent operation. “But I’m not in a hurry, I’m slowly learning the ins and outs of the business, but there are many things waiting to be learned.”

Dirty Beaches’ signature sound is quite unlike anything else. The characteristic combination of loops, samples, distortion and guitar riffs is an experience in itself. And it is an experience which is meticulously crafted – “A lot of research goes into the albums,” he laughs, “anything from fi lm to dance, personal experience, literature, life and love”, but his live performances are “like a revolving evolution that change with time, and have to be sharpened and maintained”, while the records “a frozen documentation much like the idea of a time capsule that is set in stone”. His influences are similarly drawn from a diverse pool – “Films and auteurs have the capability of creating a world in which viewers can dive into. I find that aspect very inspiring.”

Profound indeed for a musician who has a reputation for not caring about perceptions or pretence. “It’s as important as you let it be,” he says when I ask him about the importance of image. “It’s man made, so it can be sculpted. It’s important to remember that when constructing one’s image to remain human. Aesthetics are just like fashion, they are the surface. They all expire over time. Not everyone looks good in a leather jacket, it’s the man that makes the jacket. A snake might shed its skin, but it will always be a snake.” As well as his sophistic insights into essence over superficiality, he doesn’t mind other artists imitating him. “They say imitation is the best form of flattery: what other people do is not my business, and I have no right to judge them, as I’ve imitated other artists before me.” However, regarding DRM, he says that while he wants things to be as open as possible, there is a fine line, citing a fan who had crossed the line by “improving” one of his tracks.

It is his nonchalance, genuine character, and honesty about his past and future which mark him out. “For people like us sent away as kids overseas, the idea of a country can seem severely distorted, outdated even. I’m learning more and more of my own culture and history as I grow. I hope to make films one day, or just write film scores as a living, to be a loving husband and father, son, brother, friend to the people I love, and to support them. I’m not too greedy, that’s all I want in life.”

The line between porn and musical artistry has always been a fine one for Vengaboys, but now it’s very fucking clear. Boobs. All the boobs. All the nipple tassels. I am referring of course to the Vengaboys’ latest single, released just this month, entitled ‘2Brazil!’ in honour of the upcoming polo tournament or something. Some ready meal pap music plays in the background, whilst a hypnotising video shows different clips of breasts swirling in circles with a vibrant array of nipple tassels adding some colour.

After releasing debut The Party Album! (twice) and then The Platinum Album, Holland’s greatest Eurodance group, who brought us great tracks such as ‘We’re Going to Ibiza’ and ‘Boom Boom Boom Boom!’ decided to change line-up and shortly disband in 2002. But unfortunately for us, they were “missing the stage and the applause” in 2007, and decided to reform. Since then, they’ve gone on to release  ‘Hot Hot Hot’, “one of their favourite summer jams” according to the website, in 2013, and now, the nipple jiggling of ‘2Brazil!’. Holland, stick to the tulips. 

How to Train Your Dragon 2 is the latest film score from acclaimed British composer John Powell. A protegé of Hans Zimmer, Powell has collaborated with Harry Gregson-Williams on the soundtracks for Chicken Run and Shrek, and has composed original scores for films as diverse as the Bourne sequels, Hancock and F. Gary Gray’s 2003 remake of The Italian Job.

In 2011, his scoring of the computer-animated fantasy How to Train Your Dragon was nominated for Best Original Score at the 2011 Academy Awards and for Best Original Music at the BAFTA awards of the same year. Clearly then, his music for the sequel (due to be released on the Relativity Music Group label later this month) has a lot to live up to. Like the original, How to Train Your Dragon 2 is set in a fictional Viking world. Powell puts forward a rustic character with folk instruments (including a bagpipe ensemble called the ‘Red Hot Chilli Pipers’) alongside a 120-piece orchestra and a 100-piece choir, instilling the traditional, lush Hollywood string sound with a Celtic undertone.

‘For the Dancing and the Dreaming’, brings this style to the forefront, by featuring a harp, an accordion accompaniment, and folk-style violins and pipes. Its slow, thoughtful opening soon gives way to an up-tempo folk dance which would sound more at home in a céilidh than on record.

Bringing the Viking lands to Hollywood, the music of Nordic classical composers Sibelius and Grieg are another heavy influence on Powell’s soundtrack. This is especially clear in the romantic wind solos of ‘Together We Map the World’ and ‘Valka’s Dragon Sanctuary’. In the latter, the main character (a young warrior called Hiccup) discovers a huge cavern filled with dragons of all shapes and sizes. Powell’s choral accompaniment visualises the scene’s otherworldliness and magic with ease.

This score’s use of folk influences is a breath of fresh air for the fantasy genre, which all-too-often relies on traditional, romantic orchestral sounds. Overall, Powell’s score is an effective follow-up to a hugely successful original soundtrack. 

Jack White has had a rocky few months. First he calls Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys) an “asshole” and then labels ex-wife, and ex-drummer of The White Stripes, Meg White a “hermit”. Both events have inadvertently raised the profile of new record Lazaretto, released on White’s own label Third Man Records with XL Recordings and Columbia. 

It’s fair to say the music hasn’t been plain sailing either. The opening two tracks ‘Three Women’ and ‘Lazaretto’, though, both have astonishing guitar riffs as well as his trademark punchy vocals, seemingly picking up where 2012 Blunderbuss left off. 

However, it’s naïve to think this record is imitating its predecessor. White clumsily explores an acoustic sound. ‘Temporary Ground’ sounds like it fills an empty space, with ‘Alone in my Home’ akin to a forgettable campfire ballad. 

That being said, White does sometimes get it right. The meandering ‘Would You Fight For My Love?’ is excellent. He does, though, remain most potent doing what he knows best: producing raw rock songs with searing vocals, best shown on ‘That Black Bat Licorice’. 

On Lazaretto, Jack White is stuck awkwardly between greatness and mediocrity. It remains to be seen, with a huge Glastonbury Pyramid slot to come, how live audiences will react to this deviation from his usual imperiousness. 

The Leicester band’s last effort Velociraptor! showed that they still hadn’t managed to escape the shadow of West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, so 48:13 (both the name and running time of the album) is out to settle scores, and shake off the ‘lad-rock album’. the opening ‘(Shiva)’ is one in a series of synth instrumentals, before descending straight into the headbang-worthy ‘Bumblebee’ and its chorus “When we’re together I’m in ecstasy”. ‘Stevie’, descends from its promising double bass intro to yet another lad anthem, while ‘Doomsday’ aims for ska and settles for circus music, despite some fun guitar riffs.

The old Kasabian comes out in ‘Treat’, which is perhaps a welcome regression, before a cameo from Suli Breaks on ‘Glass’ tries to branch out from the formulaic into new territory. Shame about the lyrics. The most pleasant surprise on the album is ‘Eez-eh’. With slapdash lyrics, it seemed to be a portent for worse to come when it was released as the lead single. Strangely enough, it seems to work better within the album.

While it isn’t earth-shaking, Kasabian’s 5th studio album deserves credit for being broad and entertaining. It’s cringeworthy, but worth a chance.

It is hard to imagine, sometimes, if there can be anything new to be said about the First World War. It has become a cipher in our literature, and our society; for war as senseless destruction and meaningless loss of life; for young working class men used as cannon fodder in a war conducted by upper class generals. Despite this, with the centenary of the war’s outbreak now upon us, the familiar events are being re-examined through a number of media, one of these being Mametz, a new play written by Owen Sheers and directed by Matthew Dunster.

Mametz mediates elegantly between the familiar and the fresh. We are accustomed to associate the Great War with its poets, and whilst Mametz focuses partly on two writers embroiled in the conflict, they are Llewellyn Wyn Griffith, author of the memoir Up to Mametz, and David Jones, a modernist poet, whose writing exploits the later movement’s potential for fragmentation to evoke the shattering effect of war on the places and people it impacts. Though its subject matter is now a century old, Mametz feels absolutely and immediately contemporary, thanks to both the innovative staging and intelligent, affecting writing.

One of the play’s thematic strands deals with the wartime obstacles to the dissemination of Einstein’s theory of relativity, and this ingenious choice aids in the piece’s flattening of the distinction between past, present and future as discrete categories. It disrupts and re-evaluates the idea of remembrance, and of the war as an atrocity isolated in an unrepeatable historical moment.

This much-needed shift in perspective is careful, however, never to eclipse the significance of the ordinary lives that are so tragically and irreparably marred by the conflict. We are reminded of the importance of individuals in the form of the men of the Welsh battalions, movingly brought to life by the young actors, and of each unique existence that is in some way permanently scarred by war.

The play is long; perhaps necessarily so, as the extended time brings with it a deeper involvement and understanding on the part of the audience. This length is only really noticeable as the play draws to a close, where there are several possible end-points before the actual conclusion. This is, however, never really a problem, as the action does not cease to touch and compel. We are reminded that always in history we are witnessing a birth as well as a death. Mametz Wood is a site of destruction and of creation, it is a mass grave, but in both literary and scientific terms it is the cradle of the modern world, a birth taking place amid blood and mindless destruction, but a birth nonetheless.

The undertaking of György Ligeti’s Lux Aeterna by any choir is no mean feat. With complex rhythms, dense, clashing chords, and using the extremes of vocal range, it is no wonder that this piece is so rarely performed. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to see it in the programme for Schola Cantorum of Oxford’s most recent concert in Keble College Chapel.

The chapel’s incredibly resonant acoustic posed a challenge for the 30-strong choir, making it difficult to convey the subtleties and intricacies of Ligeti’s music. However, the performance had impressive clarity, and the high, sustained soprano vocal lines were executed confidently – the audience were left in stunned silence before their extended applause.

The rest of the program was characterised by alternations between Renaissance music and more recent works. This cleverly outlined their similarities whilst emphasising the more modernist features of pieces such as Michael Tippett’s Plebs Angelica, which featured some stunning tenor moments from Will Anderson and Oliver Kelham.

Lassus’ Aurora Lucis Rutilat was a strong opening to the concert, with the choir handling the delicacies of music effectively, without being too overpowering as a result of the doubling of parts.

The middle of the concert explored themes of tragedy and hardship. James MacMillan’s A Child’s Prayer, composed as a tribute to the victims of the 1996 Dunblane School Massacre, provided a striking moment of poinancy and stillness at the heart of the concert, while Weelkes’ When David Heard, and Howells’ Take Him, Earth, For Cherishing were directed expressively by Ed Whitehead, Schola’s conducting scholar.

Following the Ligeti, the concert closed with Martin’s Mass for Double Choir, another incredibly difficult work. The performance demonstrated Schola Cantorum’s technical accomplishment as well as that of their conductor, James Burton. It was the perfect conclusion to an enjoyable and professional concert.