CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
People Just Do Nothing is a mockumentary BBC TV series, now ended, about fictional Brentford pirate radio crew Kurupt FM. It’s also a comedy based entirely on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, in that the humour derives from the worldview of all the key characters – tawdry, hopeless garage MC/DJ chancers – being confidently blinkered to the point of absurdity, while all else points to their utter uselessness. The twist is that Kurupt FM’s debut album is often musically sprightly and enjoyable.Since the series ended in 2018, Kurupt FM have made major festival appearances, and a feature film has Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
For a man who didn’t know the alphabet until the age of 28 (apocryphally – it was probably 26), Ryder’s lyrical dexterity is remarkable. He only discovered that he had ADHD and dyslexia at the age of 40, having been addicted to heroin for 20 years (“I felt like I had me underpants on back to front. Drugs made me feel normal”). Now approaching 60 and clean for the last two decades, he has unearthed an old album, found "down the back of the sofa". Recorded in LA in 2010, just before he went into the celebrity jungle, it has now been revived on the suggestion of Alan McGee. Remixed by Sunny Read more ...
mark.kidel
The shadow of the Holocaust and the horror of the camps haunts literature and the cinema: from The Reader to The Night Porter, from Schindler’s List to Son of Saul. For some, the subject was beyond authentic representation – and perhaps only a poetic masterpiece such as Paul Celan’s “Death Fugue”, with its sombre and recurring images could come close to making the violence and tragedy in some way true.Sydney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, which tells the story of a camp survivor whose wife and children were murdered by the Nazis, manages the challenge through the very intense performance of the lead Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s almost 25 years since Alabama 3 unleashed their “sweet, pretty country acid house gospel music” on an unsuspecting world with Exile on Coldharbour Lane – one of the finest records of the late 20th Century. 12 albums later and with their first since 2016’s Blues, the band are still very much rooted in a world of urban weirdos and misfits, and this is all to the good.Step 13 is a largely up tempo, toe-tapping antidote to a Covid-damaged, post-Brexit Britain that doesn’t shy away from commenting on the political landscape, but nor does it hammer Alabama 3’s views down anyone’s throat either Read more ...
Liz Thomson
The release into a world in lockdown of Bob Dylan’s first original album in almost a decade caught everyone by surprise last year. Rough and Rowdy Ways drew widespread and universal praise. Its coming was heralded by a single, “Murder Most Foul”, a lengthy song, released without fanfare, addressing the Kennedy assassination which was, of course, the subject of great textual exegesis.When Pretenders guitarist James Walbourne sent it to Chrissie Hynde, she was immediately hooked. “Listening to that song completely changed everything for me. I was lifted out of this morose mood that I’d been in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hinged ends with “Moment,” a vaporous mood piece where a reflective voice lightly floats over and weaves between two, three-note keyboard arpeggios, occasional Gamelan-style percussive interjections and odd bubbling sounds. “Moment of clarity” are the final words.Earlier, “A Feast” is rhythmically more unyielding but the directness is offset by a vocal where phrases phase in and out as if being subjected to Doppler effect. Again though, a sense of otherness suggests that what appears to be electronic music is rooted in the organic: an apartness placing what’s heard between two worlds. The Read more ...
joe.muggs
The UK is currently in the middle of a jazz, funk and soul renaissance. Homegrown, grassroots talent is producing an abundance of glorious music both retro and forward facing, in a way not seen since the combined influence of Soul II Soul and the acid jazz scene created a wave of groove in the early-mid Nineties. A lot of it has a powerful contemporary political edge too, taking cues from Black Lives Matter and incendiary Stateside releases by D’Angelo and Solange in the last decade – from SAULT to Shabaka Hutchings, Jorja Smith to Joel Culpepper, this is music with heart, brains and Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Do we undervalue artists who are just consistently good... who know what it is that they do exceptionally well? Singer/pianist Patricia Barber sings and plays songs her own thoughtful way. She and her regular band have a Monday night residency at the Green Mill in Uptown Chicago where they hone and refine their craft. Every word in every song is flawlessly enunciated, weighted, savoured. And her piano playing always has what the Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich calls “bracing elegance.”Her albums are made in familiar surroundings too. She goes to the studios of the Chicago Recording Company on Read more ...
graham.rickson
There’s much to enjoy in Running Against the Wind: Jan Philipp Weyl’s contemporary Ethiopian epic is a visual treat, with excellent performances from its two young leads. And how often do we get to see a film in Amharic with English subtitles?We first encounter Abdi and Solomon (played first by Ashenafi Nigusu and Mikias Wolde) as children playing in their remote village. Abdi has a talent for running, while Solomon is intrigued by visiting western aid worker Tino’s digital camera. He takes the boys on a two-day trip to Addis Ababa, where Abdi is enraptured by a glimpse of the Berlin Marathon Read more ...
Saskia Baron
A lot has changed in the 40 years since Blow Out was first released. In 1981, American critics from Pauline Kael to Roger Ebert praised to the heavens Brian De Palma’s homage to assorted Hitchcock thrillers and his script’s mash-up of 1970s conspiracies. Certainly this handsomely restored print does justice to Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography. Not since Vertigo has a hotel bedroom been so artfully saturated in sickly red neon and ghastly green.But in 2021, what’s also striking is De Palma’s inability to film an actress without wanting to strip her or stick her with a knife. It’s Read more ...
peter.quinn
This second full-length album from South Korean 10-piece Golden Child moves seamlessly from pop balladry to anthemic EDM without ever losing its footing.With ghostly, submerged bell noises, ominous-sounding low brass, joined by strings and pounding drums that reaches a riotous crescendo, the pithy opener “Game Changer” certainly packs an incendiary charge, a figurative grabbing of the listener’s lapel which nicely sets up the dynamic rhythmic power of “Ra Pam Pam”.Incorporating 1980s-style power guitar riffs, cowbell hits and a squiggly synth line embedded into its chorus, “Bottom Of The Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Billie Eilish was shot through fame’s looking glass with increasing force right through her teens. A girl’s hopeful artistic dreams exposed her to infinite judgement of her body and soul, social and mass media magnifying every blemish and stumble. This sequel to her 2019 debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? transmutes the disorientation into a kaleidoscopic consideration of this self-described “trauma”: the crafted meta-autobiography of an adolescent mega-star. Rather than a cry for help in the Cobain meltdown mode that its lyrics suggest, it’s a 19-year-old’s sophisticated Read more ...