CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
This October lo-fi, fuzzy VHS-style footage of Kylie Minogue in a ripped tee-shirt swaying on a mattress in a messy loft apartment singing Flight Facilities’ breakthrough song, “Crave You”, popped up in internet-land. It was an unexpected move that successfully amped up expectations for the Australian duo’s debut album. Kylie’s acapella appears on the album, uncredited, as well as the original, a smooth, sleepy, longing, slothful love song and lazy dance throb which first appeared in 2010. It made clubland sit up and pay attention. If this album had swiftly followed, ahead of the deep house Read more ...
Matthew Wright
In the end, I had to disable every auto-correction feature in my word processing package to complete the sentence. Wiggly red lines and pop-up boxes were swarming all over the words “philosophy” and “Cheryl”. But eventually the machine understood: Cheryl’s fourth album has a philosophy. Not only that, but it also has a philosopher (Alan Watts) intoning worthily on the opening track about the meaning of life, with Cheryl first speaking, then (on subsequent tracks) singing her response.What she says is perfectly sensible at the level, perhaps, of a lifestyle column in a glossy magazine, though Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Italy’s nominee for next year’s Foreign Language Oscar is an ambitious satire on the ruinous machinations of the super-rich, symbolised by the overworked waiter clipped by a speeding SUV in the opening minutes. Three perspectives on the events tangentially leading to his death follow, giving writer-director Paolo Virzi (transplanting Stephen Amidon’s US novel to northern Italy) a broad canvas.The innocent, snuffed-out waiter isn’t served much better by Virzi, though. He’s a convenient metaphor, around which the film’s intricate puzzle-parts spin. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s Carla, the beautiful Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When TV On The Radio released their breakthrough album, Dear Science in 2008, they were hailed in some quarters as saviours of indie music through a modest injection of intellectualism and an eye for throwing the unexpected into the mix. Six years on and three years since Nine Types Of Light, it all feels like we’ve been here before.Recent single, “Happy Idiot” is pure homage to New Order and is catchy and danceable without slipping into daft clichés. Elsewhere Tunde Adebimpe, David Sitek and their merry men show off their 80s fetish with hints of Echo and the Bunnymen on “Could You” and Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Eight musical cities, eight films, eight sounds, eight songs: grasping the scope of Dave Grohl’s ambition with the Sonic Highways project is a strenuous business. The album cover, all distorted visual references packed together, looks more like a dystopian computer game than music from the honest-to-goodness Dave Grohl. It doesn’t sit well with the Foo Fighters’ core strengths: their frank, immersive, overwhelming energy and emotional honesty. And the connection between TV series and album is strained.The HBO docs, currently showing on BBC Four, in which Dave Grohl talks to musicians from Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Cyril Davies' All-Stars: Radio Sounds of Cyril Davies Various Artists: Girls With GuitarsAn escalating side effect of the current vogue for vinyl is that some reissues are being released only in that format – and some are so interesting they merit covering. theartsdesk saw this a while ago with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Jimmy Page’s Lucifer Rising soundtrack and John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil. So, once again, this week’s reissues aren’t available on CD.The compilation Girls With Guitars does though draw from a series of CDs – three so far – issued under that title, each of which Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The Endless River, a contemplatively ambient opus comprising four pieces made up of 17 instrumental sections and a concluding song, is Pink Floyd’s second “last” album. Their first sign-off was 1982’s dreary The Final Cut, virtually a Roger Waters solo excursion that demonstrated, as did much of The Wall, how crucial to Floyd’s characteristic sound were Richard Wright’s lambent keyboards-playing and his gently yearning vocals, not least on the Meddle masterpiece “Echoes”.Ousted during The Wall sessions, Wright rejoined guitarist-lead vocalist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason for the post- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It is an extraordinary scene. John Maloof stands over box after box after box of the belongings of Vivian Maier. They contain photographic negatives, undeveloped film, address labels, receipts, tickets and even teeth. In all, there are around 100,000 negatives and 700 undeveloped rolls of film. Soon after acquiring this material, Maloof scanned some of the photos, put them on the internet and it took off. The formerly unknown Chicago-based nanny and housekeeper became a buzz photographer, compared with greats like Diane Arbus and Weegee.Subsequently, she has been exhibited, prints of her Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Röyksopp have mustered fantastic moments during their career, notably the awesome floor-filler "Eple", one of pop’s most joyous, bouncy instrumentals. Since appearing at the turn of the century from the creative excitement of Norway’s second city, Bergen, which was bubbling over with electronic mavericks at the time, they have released four albums, each riding enthusiastically, accessibly and imaginatively across the landscape of electronic pop, usually with a strong house flavour. Now, however, alongside the claim their fifth will be their final album, they give us a melancholic synth-pop Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Purple’s debut album (409) is loud, brash and full of beans, with a big smile and an eye on a good time. This lively three-piece come on like a Texan take on UK indie favourites The Subways, but without the angst, and their exuberant garage punk rock with yelping, over-excited vocals is just the tonic for a wet autumn.(409) is named after Purple’s East Texan area code and “Wallflower” kicks off with some serious swagger, as singer Hanna Brewer commands “I’m a girl. You’re supposed to be chasing me!” over Taylor Busby’s dirty riffs, while knocking seven bells out of her drum kit. This is just Read more ...
Graham Fuller
John Halas and Joy Batchelor's Animal Farm, adapted from George Orwell's 1945 allegorical novel about the emergence of Stalinism, was Britain’s first animated feature film. Clearly influenced by Walt Disney's early 1940s classics, the husband and wife team (he was from Budapest, she from Watford) necessarily avoided sentimentalism but were unafraid to milk pathos in depicting the plight of Orwell’s oppressed proletarian beasts.The ultimate victim of the tyrannical porker Napoleon (pictured below) is the workhorse Boxer, who slaves devotedly to build a windmill for the agrarian collective Read more ...
mark.kidel
In reaching out to audiences beyond the African context, Malian musicians and singers have adopted performance styles that don’t always reflect the intimacy and personal communication so fundamental to the praise-singing at the heart of the region’s musical tradition. Kassé Mady Diabaté’s latest release, while not his first acoustic outing, avoids the world music festival staples of rock-tainted histrionics and takes us really close-up to possibly African’s greatest living singer’s warmth, generosity of spirit and deep-flowing soul. Kassé Mady is the epitome of the "cool", demonstrating Read more ...