CDs/DVDs
Album: Orange Goblin - Science Not FictionMonday, 15 July 2024
Orange Goblin have been flying the flag for exuberant biker rock for the best part of a generation. Yet, somewhat incredibly, their latest and 10th album, Science Not Fiction may come to be viewed as a career high for these hard rock lifers.Coming... Read more... |
Album: Chris Cohen - Paint a RoomSaturday, 13 July 2024
Paint a Room is idiosyncratic, but it is an absolute joy. Accessible too. Permeated with a summery vibe, its 10 songs glisten like the surface of lake catching the setting sun’s rays. There’s a lightness, a buoyancy which instantly fascinates.Chris... Read more... |
Album: Catherine Russell and Sean Mason - My IdealFriday, 12 July 2024
Voice and piano. The combination can have a simplicity, a conversational freedom, a rightness about it, as it does here. “My Ideal” (Dot Time), with its eleven songs from the early days of jazz up to the 1950s, is already being placed alongside... Read more... |
Album: AJ Lee & Blue Summit - City of GlassThursday, 11 July 2024
In the world of popular music, tangential connections to success are profile-raising. They offer an immediate connection to an artist. It is beholden on me, then, despite not knowing it when I first enjoyed this album, to mention that rising Grammy... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Merry-Go-Round (Körhinta)Wednesday, 10 July 2024
There’s a lot to unpick in Zoltán Fabri’s 1956 film Merry-Go-Round (Körhinta). Take leading man Imre Soós’s disarming resemblance to a young Peter O’Toole, and a central love story which plays out like a Hungarian take on Romeo and Juliet with some... Read more... |
Album: Joe Goddard - HarmonicsMonday, 08 July 2024
Joe Goddard’s torrent of creativity rarely fails to amaze. As well as eight albums as a crucial part of Hot Chip, he has made two in the 2 Bears duo with Raf Rundell, one as Hard Feelings with Amy Douglas, and there’s been various other... Read more... |
Album: Kiiōtō - As Dust we RiseSaturday, 06 July 2024
As Dust we Rise ends with “Quilt,” a percussion-driven lamentation bringing to mind the New Orleans stylings of Dr. John. The album begins with “Hem,” where stabbing piano and strings interweave with a pulsing, wordless chorale. After a while, a... Read more... |
Album: Kokoko! - ButuFriday, 05 July 2024
Kokoko! hail from the Democratic Republic of Congo (formely Zaire), and specifically from Kinshasa, a source over the years of a great deal of irresistible dance music. On their second album, more electronic than the last (Fongola -2019), traces of... Read more... |
Album: Enter Shikari - Dancing on the FrontlineThursday, 04 July 2024
For a band as creative as St Albans’ own electronic-hardcore-rock fusion pioneers, Enter Shikari, the last thing you would expect them to do is sit on their hands.And that’s exactly what’s come to pass, as only a year after achieving their first UK... Read more... |
Album: Kasabian - HappeningsWednesday, 03 July 2024
Great bands’ output can, famously, be predicated by the intense interaction between members, often between a central creative pairing. This can be a harmonious mutuality but, more often, music is built from tension, from difference, from the frisson... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-Ray: Back to BlackTuesday, 02 July 2024
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic Back to Black, written by Matt Greenhalgh and starring Marisa Abela (Industry) as Amy Winehouse, has been criticised for its soft-focused approach.And its sympathetic portrayals of Blake Fielder-Civil (a punchy Jack O’... Read more... |
Album: Jeff Mills - The EyewitnessMonday, 01 July 2024
Jeff Mills has always been a musical sophisticate. Even in the early 90s when he was best known for derangedly pummelling techno DJ sets in the most insalubrious of sweat-pits, and even though his minimalist production style back then was used as a... Read more... |
