CDs/DVDs
Graham Fuller
From The Steel Helmet (1951) through The Big Red One (1980), Samuel Fuller has shown more empathy for US Army infantrymen in combat than any other filmmaker, including Oliver Stone. During the making of Fixed Bayonets!, Fuller’s second gripping Korean War film of ’51, he had Lucien Ballard’s camera pore so closely over the grimy, unshaven “dog faces", it’s clear he was memorialising the real soldiers they represent and those he fought alongside in World War II. The film is set in the winter of 1950 shortly after Mao had mobilised the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army to protect North Korea Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The boisterous trio of Noah Lennox (drums, vocals, samples), David Portner (guitar, samples) and Brian Weitz (electronics, samples) have now released ten albums as Animal Collective. They also work individually under their aliases, Panda Bear, Avey Tare, and Geologist (are those all animals?), respectively. Previous albums have included Strawberry Jam (2007), and Centipede Hz (2012), but this latest has a higher-minded angle, concerned, say the band, “with art (Cubism, Dadaism, and the distorted way those artists viewed the world) and the human experience”.Aside from the opener, “ Read more ...
joe.muggs
The career of the Gran Canaria-born musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa seems to work in an accelerated time-frame, speeding through decades and eras as he develops his sound. Though he has always worked with digital technology, his early work sounded archaic, its massed carnival percussion and traditional melodies roaming around the Afro-Latin diaspora.Then, on 2008's Pop Negro, he embraced modernism, albeit still with a retro twist, rigorously examining and adopting the high-gloss production and songwriting techniques of the biggest mainstream American and Latino pop acts of the mid-1970s to mid-'90s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Paris Sisters were a look and a sound. Slightly different but still peas in a pod, Albeth, Priscilla and Sherrell Paris united to make often moodily minor-key music always suggestive of angels stamping their feet. Otherwordly. Yet hard-edged. The defining vocalist was Priscilla, whose slightly husky, ever-intimate mid-tone evoked the wind whispering its secrets. No one had sounded like her before and, at her best, only Saint Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell has come close to Priscilla’s vivid union of the languorous and yearning.Albeth (1935-2014), Priscilla (1945-2004) and Sherrell had been Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The flip side of the apocalyptic evolution-and-destiny concerns of Prometheus, Ridley Scott's previous foray across the Last Frontier, The Martian is a feelgood take on the theme of space travel. Having landed the first astronauts on Mars in 2029, NASA is pursuing its Ares programme to establish a self-sustaining colony on the Red Planet. However, a calamitous storm forces the NASA crew to evacuate, leaving behind botanist Mark Watney, seemingly killed by flying debris.But Watney is Matt Damon and he's the star of the show, and has better luck this time than he did as the stranded astronaut Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The burden of expectation on Jack Garratt is somewhat unfair. Among the accolades he’s picked up over the past year are Critics Choice Brit Award 2015 and top slot in the BBC Sound of 2016. The latter puts him in the company of previous winners Years & Years, Sam Smith, Jessie J and Ellie Goulding, pop big hitters all. Clearly the music biz is expecting Garratt to make them a lot of money. They will sell him to us any which way they can – credible but pop, electronic underground but viable for the teen-girl fan market, etc. This makes churlish old dogs like me bridle but, really, it's Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fidelio: Alice's Journey can literally be described as relating a journey of self-discovery. A mechanic on the Marseille-registered freighter Fidelio, the equally titular Alice navigates the seas with an all-male crew and explores who they are while investigating her own sexuality.She’s left her cartoonist boyfriend Felix (Anders Danielsen Lie) on dry land and tells him to use “C” for cock and “P” for pussy in their e-mails to disguise what they’re discussing. Soon, things become more complicated. The ship’s captain Gaël (Melvil Poupaud), turns out to be her first great love. Alice (Ariane Read more ...
mark.kidel
The Malian music scene has always been dominated by the griot caste, the jalis who serve as historians, praise-singers and guardians of the tradition. Rokia Traoré, like Salif Keita, isn’t a griot, but a member of the nobility. She is not bound by the same rules and expectations, and is free to take liberties that the servants of the great Manding heritage are not.This is the second of her collaborations with producer John Parrish, the Bristol-based musician who has been both inspiration and studio helpmate to PJ Harvey for many years. Thankfully, and unlike some other producers who have Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It would be easy to write off The Jezabels’ third album as style over substance. The gaudy, synth-heavy gloom-pop of Synthia seeks to catch you off guard with its sexualised sighs, sinewy rhythms and liquid melodies. It’s only on repeated listens that its wider themes emerge: gender roles and identity; desire and disgust and, in “Smile”, a devastating put-down of the everyday street-harasser.It begins with “Stand and Deliver” – an immersive, seven-and-a-half-minute synthesised dream sequence during which frontwoman Hayley Mary transforms from wide-eyed ingenue into high priestess of electro- Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If these decisions were made on the back of quality and creativity rather than marketing muscle, Barry Adamson wouldn’t just be taking care of the next Bond theme tune, he’d be scoring the whole film. Unfortunately, media and record company politics will ensure that we get another substandard cruise singer instead, and it’ll be everyone’s loss. Adamson’s soulful lounge jazz with grit and filmless soundtracks often suggest the legendary Lee Hazelwood fronting post-jazzers Get The Blessing with plenty of dark comedy, and Know Where To Run shows that after a 30-year solo career, there’s plenty Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In the latter half of the 1980s, Wendy James’s band Transvision Vamp created quite a stir. Their music, including a chart-topping second album, was fizzing, bright-coloured, punky power pop and James was a pouting, hissy-fit of a frontwoman, emanating urgent wannabe-famous sexuality. She disappeared from view in the Nineties, turning up again in the new millennium, first with a band, Racine, and then solo.The second and final Racine album and James’s 2010 solo effort, I Came Here to Blow Minds, boast an unexpectedly effective gnarled, druggy punk. These were followed by a 2012 double A-side Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For its 6 April 1985 issue, the NME chose The Long Ryders as its cover stars. The colour picture of the band was emblazoned “A Shotgun Wedding of Country and Punk.” The Los Angeles outfit attracted attention as part of a wave of California bands overtly drawing from the past. Local peers included The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate and The Three O’Clock.Competition was tough. Bands from elsewhere in the States were also voguish during the pivotal years of 1983 to 1986: Green on Red, Let’s Active, R E.M. and The Replacements amongst them. The directly punk-rooted Black Flag and Hüsker Dü were on Read more ...