CDs/DVDs
mark.kidel
Leonard Cohen has always been, first and foremost, a poet. His thoroughly grounded mix of Vedanta, Zen and Jewish mysticism places him in a class apart. He is both rabbinical high priest and consummate entertainer. As he’s never traded on borrowed African-American sex-and-swagger or matinée idol charisma, age hasn’t made him in any way ridiculous. He carries his gravitas lightly, not least because his deft way with words keeps us delicately poised between revelation and unknowing.From the seductive drag of “Slow”, Cohen’s call to deceleration, to the redemptive Hallelujah call of “You Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sun Ra and his Arkestra: In the Orbit of RaUp till his death in 1993, the space-fixated jazz bandleader, composer, musician and visionary born Herman Blount had issued around 117 albums, about 46 of which were live sets. Trying to pin down exact numbers with Sun Ra is unrealistic. Some albums repeated material from previous releases. Others were re-recordings or re-titlings. Since his passing there has been an outpouring of collections of previously shelved studio material, more live offerings and reissues on CD and vinyl. Getting to grips with this monumental catalogue is close-to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Even if this album were dull, which it is far from, Aphex Twin Richard D James’ return would be welcome. Although he’s only a pop star in the loosest sense, his return via the “dark web” and a nonsensical press release reminds that he’s the eternal prankster, subverting the increasingly staid music biz game.Happily, his career has also lived up to his obtuse anti-hype with game-changing output such as “Analogue Bubblebath” (1991), Selected Ambient Works 85-92 “Quoth” (as Polygon Window, 1993) and the extraordinary “Windowlicker” in 1999 (both the tune and Chris Cunningham’s demented video). Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Do not miss this film. I don’t say it lightly. Even on the small screen, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch's Cannes Palme d'Or nominee is a warm love story, no, a cool vampire tale, no, a wry comedy, no, all of these things in Only Lovers Left Alive. Stealing the title from David Wallis' 1964 science fiction book, this is an adaptation of Mark Twain’s satire The Diaries of Adam and Eve for the undead, and the casting couldn't be better. It's a film of mood and wit, of profundity and imagination: watching Only Lovers Left Alive will put you in a delicious mood.Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston play Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For someone who tags himself rock and roll's greatest failure, John Otway hasn’t done too badly. Anyone attempting to navigate their way through a career in rock ‘n’ roll wouldn’t do badly looking to Otway as an example to follow. He’s had chart singles, headlined the Royal Albert Hall, written two autobiographies and has a massive, loyal fan base. At age 61, he’s still at it over 40 years after the 1972 release of his first single. Judging from Otway the Movie, he does what he does full time, has a roof over his head, has a wife and an enviably articulate daughter. Failure? Hardly.The Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Goat are the Swedish psychedelic rock band that made themselves known to the world in 2012 with their sublime debut album, World Music. Much critical acclaim was piled upon their gumbo of psychedelia, motorik and afrobeat and most of these influences are present in Commune. However, things in Goatworld have not stood still and now there is even more emphasis on dancing into a frenzy to fuzzy and repetitive grooves, while more straightforward songs, like “Run to your Mama” or “Let it bleed” from their debut, take a backseat.If the term “psychedelic rock” brings to mind the spaced-out US West Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Hugely underrated, The Two Faces of January packs more filmmaking power than, at least, its poster would ever suggest. Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, which puts it streets ahead of most films, Two Faces... has a superb ensemble cast: Viggo Mortensen is the alluring Chester MacFarland, travelling with his equally alluring wife Colette (Kirsten Dunst) and their accidental tour guide, the charming Greek-American Rydal Keener (Oscar Isaac). Set in 1962, the couple are sightseeing and become entangled with Rydal, a small-time crook. Coming to their hotel quite innocently, Rydal sees Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
John MacLean has been recording as The Juan MacClean for just over a decade on former LCD Soundsystem main man James Murphy’s label DFA Records. Previously, Murphy was involved in MacLean’s old band Six Finger Satellite. In a Dream makes the link even more explicit as Nancy Whang, singer in the now-defunct LCD Soundsystem and before that an intermittent collaborator, has now joined MacLean full time.But In a Dream, The Juan MacLean’s third album, is not LCD Soundsystem part two. It maintains the boffinish fascination with electro-dance prototypes of 20-plus years ago, but raises the bar by Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Kicking off with an epic eight-and-a-half-minute-long tribute to New Jersey’s Palisades amusement Park and a lament to forgotten friendships, the Counting Crows seventh studio album intentionally invokes the spirit and sound of Seventies rock. The opening track has high aspirations with its triumphant horns, confident piano chords, shore setting and coming of age theme clearly paying homage to Bruce Springsteen’s early work, most obviously the Born to Run album.Tearing away across time, states and continents, and evoking the bands of a highly romanticised era, Counting Crows map the geography Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Game Theory: Blaze of GloryThe news of the death on 15 April last year of Scott Miller was a shock. Although hardly a household name, he was one of pop’s great auteurs. The California-born songwriter may no longer be with us, but the music he made with his bands Alternate Learning, Game Theory and The Loud Family will forever testify to his originality, single-mindedness and, above all, way with a tune and a meaning-filled snarky lyric. The structure of his songs twisted and turned, but they were always melodic. He was clever, eloquent, sarcastic and, in person, always charming. All of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When a person approaches a Barbra Streisand album, they would be a fool to go in carrying the same expectations as with, say, the forthcoming collaboration between experimental frontiersmen Scott Walker & Sunn O))). Or even, in all honesty, the new Jesse Ware album, the new Marooon 5 album, or some such. This applies most especially to music journalists, so often obsessed with the vanguard, with what’s coming next, and dismissive of mainstream, comfortable or rehashed sounds. So let’s approach the 72 year old actress-diva-legend’s latest in the knowledge that her debut album appeared 51 Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s war in the world outside and much conflict at home in Norwegian director Eric Poppe’s A Thousand Times Good Night. The film is centred in every sense around the poised, taut performance of Juliette Binoche as war photographer Rebecca, whom we first encounter at work in Afghanistan, as she follows the detailed preparations of a female suicide-bomber being prepared for martyrdom. The opening minutes are extremely gripping cinema, quietly understated but no less powerful for that, and raise the question of whether Binoche’s character has stepped over a professional line.But it’s the Read more ...