New releases on CD & DVD
Blu-ray: Golem
Tuesday, 18 February 2025
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an inanimate clay figure, brought to life when a magic word is placed inside its mouth. Piotr Szulkin’s dark 1979 film debut makes reference both to this legend and to Gustav Meyrink’s unsettling 1914 novel, moving the action forward from the latter’s fin-de-siècle Prague to a geographically non-specific dystopian future.
Album: Tim Hecker - Shards
Monday, 17 February 2025
The question of personality in abstract and ambient music has always been a fascinating one. Without conventional signifiers of expressiveness, and especially in the age of AI, it’s easy for people to think “a computer could have done that”. Indeed, there’ve been plenty of musicians from Brian Eno levels of prominence on down who have played with this, using algorithmic generation, anonymity and so forth as part of the project.
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