CDs/DVDs
Album: Laurie Anderson - AmeliaMonday, 02 September 2024
Laurie Anderson is what Leonardo da Vinci would have hailed as una donna universale: inspired by science and technology, she's wide-ranging artist, a writer, film-maker, and explorer. She has a remarkable gift for story-telling, and her latest... Read more... |
Album: Lee Scratch Perry & Youth - Spaceship to MarsSaturday, 31 August 2024
Lee “Scratch” Perry, Reggae’s dub emperor and all-round sound magician died in 2021, after a 60-odd year career that is rumoured to have produced something in the realm of 2,000 albums and numerous additional tracks. So, perhaps it isn’t such a... Read more... |
Album: Mercury Rev - Born HorsesFriday, 30 August 2024
After the client has settled on the analyst’s couch, the lights are dimmed. Music sets the mood. A wordless vocal is accompanied by chimes. Cool saxophone breezes in. Sparse piano lines ripple like heat haze. Drums are understated, yet oddly... Read more... |
Album: Galliano - Halfway SomewhereThursday, 29 August 2024
Some performers are born to perform. It seems obvious, but it’s not a given in the music world. Some just want to make sound, some want to compose, not all are in it to connect directly to an audience. Rob Gallagher, however, is all about that... Read more... |
Album: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Wild GodWednesday, 28 August 2024
There’s a specific vocabulary that attends the arrival of a new Nick Cave album in the 21st century. Words like redemptive, cathartic, stark, unsparing are a crucial part of his music’s terroir. They’re as inescapable as the figure of death,... Read more... |
Album: Miguel Zenón - Golden CityMonday, 26 August 2024
Miguel Zenón’s Golden City (Miel Music) is an ambitious album. Its ten tracks and a postlude seek to portray “the beauty and resilience that give San Francisco its soul”.The timing of the release is fortuitous, coming just eight days after Kamala... Read more... |
Album: Fontaines DC - RomanceSaturday, 24 August 2024
Whether it’s maturing or selling out, the tendency for rock bands to soften and smooth down their sound is understandable and, for fans, usually dispiriting – edge, purity, and strangeness evaporate as the dollars roll in. With their fourth album... Read more... |
Album: Jon Hopkins - RitualFriday, 23 August 2024
Jon Hopkins is on a journey, and we’re fortunate that he feels he can share the trip with us. His latest offering takes the listener beyond the paths opened up in Singularity (2018) and Music for Psychedelic Therapy (2021).There's a coherence in the... Read more... |
Album: Cassyette - This World Fucking SucksThursday, 22 August 2024
The music of Brit alt-rocker Cassy Brooking, AKA Cassyette, comes from the emo school of pop-metal. Her 2021 debut single was, appropriately, called “Dear Goth”, she’s much-hyped by Kerrang, and has been tour support for both Bring Me the Horizon... Read more... |
Album: Susanna - Meditations on LoveWednesday, 21 August 2024
For a record whose subject matter involves unfaithfulness, ageing, loneliness, fear of death, darkness, sorrow, battles, haunting, sleeplessness and struggling to breathe, this is a lot of fun. But then Susanna Wallumrød has always leavened... Read more... |
Album: Illuminati Hotties - PowerMonday, 19 August 2024
From time to time, we all come across a band name that’s new to our ears and that raises a smile and the hope of some wild and original sounds. Illuminati Hotties is such a name.However, Illuminati Hotties isn’t really a band – being the solo... Read more... |
Album: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - WoodlandSaturday, 17 August 2024
Named after the duo’s Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, badly damaged in a 2020 tornado and restored by them, Woodland Studios is Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ first album in four years, when All the Good Times won the Grammy for Best... Read more... |
