CDs/DVDs
Nick Hasted
Detroiters razed sections of their own city as surely as Rome did Carthage, during five summer days in 1967. It took, amongst others, the 101st Airborne – victors at the Battle of the Bulge, then just back from Vietnam – to crush America's worst race riot of the decade. Forty-three people were killed, and empty lots scarred the still devastated city a half-century later, when Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow made the week’s worst atrocity her subject.Though Bigelow has gained her greatest acclaim for claustrophobically sombre work torn from the headlines in The Hurt Locker and Zero Read more ...
joe.muggs
If you see any list of greatest living drummers and the Australian Jim White isn't on it, you should look at it askance. Since he started Dirty Three in the early '90s, White has played with the cream of global alt-rock musicians: the Nick Caves, PJ Harveys, Cat Powers and Will Oldhams. But he's way, way more than a sideman, and the closer he is to the front of the stage, the more interesting the music will be.His playing is uniquely conversational and interactive, locking into and rolling around whatever foil is presented to it, often making him closer to a free jazz player than a rock Read more ...
Javi Fedrick
The Go! Team have been unrivalled in the world of euphoric hip-pop after their samplerific debut, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, blasted its way onto the 2005 Mercury Prize shortlist. Since then, founding member Ian Parton has utilised everything from typewriters to gospel choirs to songs about milk in his quest to be a “cheerleader for a better world”. Their new album, Semicircle, takes this tradition of innovation and fun to new heights.One of the most striking things about the album is the instrumentation. Parton and his merry band of musicians (including Sam Dook, Simone Odaranile, and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As well as creating a true American musical phenomenon, led by from the front by Nirvana, the early-to-mid-Nineties grunge explosion opened a window of opportunity for multitudes of bands on its furthest fringes. South Carolina punk-metallers Corrosion of Conformity hit a career peak at the time, mingling an old-school hard rock sound with something bluesier and spacier, the whole thing marinated in the guitar and vocals of Pepper Keenan. He left to concentrate on his role in metal supergroup Down, featuring members of Pantera and others, but now returns for his first album since 2005 with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ilmamõtsan’s centrepiece is “Linnaitk”, a disconcerting vocal-only composition playing distress-permeated chants off against a keening wordless melody line sounding as much an expression of grief as a call for support. The language is Estonian and “Linnaitk” translates as “City Lament”. It is written to capture the feelings of a mother whose daughter has left the village for the big city. As urban populations grow, rural settlements shrink, and personal losses are accompanied by irreversible changes in the fabric of society.While not all of Ilmamõtsan is this overtly affecting, the album Read more ...
peter.quinn
From newcomer Jazzmeia Horn to the Grammy-winning elder statesman Alan Broadbent, this round-up of favourite jazz releases represents just the tip of a huge iceberg of activity in 2017.A strong year for UK label Edition Records included Denys Baptiste’s The Late Trane, a beautiful deep dive into late period Coltrane by the outstanding British tenor player, plus the whiplash-inducing gear changes of Phronesis’s The Behemoth, which saw the Scandinavian/British trio’s back catalogue cast in dazzling big band arrangements. For ECM, US pianist Craig Taborn followed his solo debut Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Eindhoven art punks Radar Men from the Moon have been around since 2010 with a sound that has knitted together space rock, strange electronics and shoegaze flavours with a psychedelic view point. Subversive III: De Spelende Mens, however, is a double album that marks a considerable sonic change, with the band largely dropping the rock elements of their sound, favouring instead a darker electronic approach that charts similar territory to last year’s Death in Vegas Transmission album and The Bug vs Earth Concrete Dessert collaboration. More experimental and less groove-oriented that 2016’s Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There are albums that reveal themselves to you, their hidden depths become apparent over time as familiarity helps one to acclimatize to the terrain. David Crosby’s Sky Trails was one such release and has stayed with me since its release.There are albums that burn with incandescent light from the get-go, albums that leave you smiling with glee as they bring warmth to your world and add light to your day. Indeed, in this category were two that, in any other year, would have been shoe-ins for my album of the year slot. The sparse, electronic experiments of Autarkic’s I Love You, Go Away Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Following in the footsteps of its predecessor lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar (2014), where Robert Plant was also accompanied by his current band the Sensational Space Shifters, Carry Fire has been assembled from ingredients culled from virtually every continent. There are Indian and Arabic drones, spiralling 12-string guitar arabesques which bridge the gap from San Francisco to Katmandu, and drum and percussion patterns from various African locations, alongside shots of blues and folk and a haze of electronica. “Bones of Saints” could almost be called a pop song.Plant no longer positions Read more ...
Matthew Wright
All things considered, there aren’t many criteria by which this album, however cosmopolitan its influences, sensitive and precise its vocals and supple its rhythms, is really the best of the year. I’ve had a few sleepless nights recently over the growing suspicion that, for example, Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN, and several contemporary jazz recordings – to mention only what I’ve been following closely – do more that’s landmark-constructingly novel. It’s unlikely, come 2042, that Cubafonia will feature in one of those vox-pop retrospectives that populate the BBC Two schedules with such Read more ...
joe.muggs
From his days as a session musician in mid-Seventies Tokyo through global mega fame in Yellow Magic Orchestra and on, Ryuichi Sakamoto has always had a Stakhanovite work ethic. And that's still the case, even at the age of 65, and despite the fact he was not long ago given the all-clear from throat cancer. This year, Sakamoto has released the soundtracks to two South Korean movies, The Fortress and Rage, and performed two live commissions: one for Oslo's Ultima festival with dancer Min Tanaka and “fog sculptor” Fujiko Nakaya, and a live improvisation with long-time collaborator Alva Noto at Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Punk-blues veteran Jim Jones has been around since the mid 80s, but this year brought the debut album release by his newest combo, the Righteous Mind, and a record that may come to be regarded as Jones’ defining moment. Super Natural is shot through with gritty rock’n’roll, fuelled with fire and brimstone. Swaggering and sleazy tunes like “Aldecide” and “Boil Yer Blood” are urged on by Jones’ yelps and howls, Malcolm Toon’s screaming guitar, and Phil Martini’s voodoo beat. It’s incendiary stuff that goes straight for the guts with its raw and giddy ambience.2017 was generally a good year for Read more ...