CDs/DVDs
Album: Morcheeba - Escape the ChaosSaturday, 24 May 2025![]() Morcheeba reach their 30th anniversary this year. The 1990s band, a unit once synonymous with phrases such as “trip hop” and “chill-out”, are up to album number 11. Their multi-million-selling oeuvre is based around a hazy combination of low-slung... Read more... |
Album: Ammar 808 - Club TounsiFriday, 23 May 2025![]() Ammar 808 is the high octane vehicle for the Tunisian-born producer Sofyann Ben Youssef, now based in Denmark. His first album Maghreb United (2018) struck hard and fast in a field already well-populated by the fusion of traditional Arab sounds and... Read more... |
Album: Sports Team - Boys These DaysThursday, 22 May 2025![]() How do you solve a problem like Sports Team? Taking them at face value, they’re a living metaphor for the slow music biz relegation of the working class in favour of the privileged, a bunch of snarky ex-Cambridge University students who make smug... Read more... |
Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal FilmWednesday, 21 May 2025![]() Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points – French, German and Brazilian psychedelia, Radiophonic Workshop sound effects, 1960s library music – which... Read more... |
Album: Robert Forster - StrawberriesMonday, 19 May 2025![]() “Tell me what you see” invites Robert Forster during Strawberries' “Tell it Back to me.” The album’s eight songs do not, however, necessarily say what Forster actually sees. These vignettes about encounters between characters come across as... Read more... |
Album: Rico Nasty - LETHALFriday, 16 May 2025![]() Rico Nasty’s new album LETHAL signals a shift in direction, but whether it is a bold evolution or a step towards something less distinct is up for debate. Known for her fiery rage-rap and punk energy, Rico tones things down here, trading some of her... Read more... |
Album: Billy Nomates - MetalhorseThursday, 15 May 2025![]() Metalhorse is a concept album that uses visions of a dilapidated funfair as a metaphor for life’s various ups and downs. It especially seems to concentrate on the downs though, especially when it employs opening lines like “My best friend’s dying”... Read more... |
Album: MØ - PlæygirlWednesday, 14 May 2025![]() Danish singer MØ is a paradox. Initially she appeared to be another Scandi electro-pop princess of the bangers. The monster 2015 hit “Lean On” with Major Lazer jacked her profile, briefly, through the roof, but, while she’s worked with everyone from... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Slade in FlameMonday, 12 May 2025![]() Over the years Slade in Flame has been hailed as one of the greatest rock movies (albeit rarely seen or screened), up there with Perfomance and That’ll Be The Day.Like those films, it has grittiness running through it like barbed wire through a... Read more... |
Album: Peter Doherty - Felt Better AliveSaturday, 10 May 2025![]() Following on from an impressive set with the Libertines – last year’s No 1 album All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade – Peter Doherty returns to the fray with his first solo album in nine years. In youth renowned for opiates, crack and chaos, and... Read more... |
Album: Sleep Token - Even In ArcadiaFriday, 09 May 2025![]() It has never been an exact science understanding when something will capture lightning in a bottle and go viral. Even less expected is for an anonymous metal band to become a social media sensation, but in early 2023 that's exactly what happened for... Read more... |
Album: Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - Tall TalesThursday, 08 May 2025![]() I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and songwriting, and that a lot of people find his anguish cathartic, but the more he goes for it the more I... Read more... |
