CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Boards of Canada have it nailed. If we are to believe what we’re told, Scottish brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin are semi-permanently holed up in rustic heathlands south-west of Edinburgh, beavering with mystical intensity at analogue electronica. Every few years they release an enigmatic slice of it that’s pure, classic Warp Records on… Warp Records.They have developed a non-image that somehow intimates whiffs of the occult, particularly of The Wicker Man variety, of spooky 1970s public information films and general uncanny Berberian Sound Studio-style weirdness. Not since the prime Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I wouldn't describe this movie as an air crash, but the fact that it isn't is largely down to its flabbergasting near-disaster sequence, in which veteran pilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) manages to crash-land his crippled airliner after it suffers a catastrophic mechanical failure. Six people die but 96 are saved, in a heroic feat of airmanship which brings gasps of admiration from press and public. The shot of the aircraft flying upside down at treetop height is probably worth its own techie Oscar.However, Whip has a dirty secret. He's an alcoholic whose pre-flight routine stipulates Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Few albums evoke the essence of wind, but landscapes buffeted by the elements are vividly depicted on Phildel’s The Disappearance of the Girl. With frost-coated but warm-centred songs about darkness, sacrifice and the wolf as a dispenser of penitence, this could be gothic. Instead, despite the coffin, funerals and a switchblade, The Disappearance of the Girl is tonally nuanced, more the soundtrack to its subject’s search for equilibrium than a series of single vignettes.What’s actually on The Disappearance of the Girl is in danger of being upstaged by its creator's admittedly compelling back Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ian Dury: Lord Upminster / Ian Dury & the Music Students: 4,000 Weeks HolidayAs a single, "Spasticus Autisticus" was never going to be an easy sell. Ian Dury's reaction to the United Nation’s declaration of 1981 as the International Year of the Disabled was caustic and confrontational. Witty too. The BBC decided it was in poor taste and gave it no airplay. Yet it featured in the opening ceremony of last year’s Paralympic Games and the BBC broadcast it. Dury would have appreciated the irony."Spasticus Autisticus" was the first single released by Dury after he had left Stiff Records. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
CSS appeared riding the 2007 “nu rave” music media furore – their catsuit-wearing lead singer, Lovefoxxx, even dated one of scenester leaders The Klaxons for a while. That whole business is ancient history but, unfortunately, a host of great bands associated with the hype – notably The Klaxons and New Young Pony Club – have had a job finding purchase since their initial moment in the sun. The same applies to the Brazilian four-piece Cansei de Ser Sexy, a creative man down since the only male member of the band, Adriano Cintra, left last year. From the evidence of their fourth album, and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Reasons behind the prolonged absence of Queens of the Stone Age are legion, including line-up turbulence, successful side projects and the near-death experience of band linchpin Josh Homme. As if to acknowledge and compensate for the lengthy gap in new material since 2007‘s Era Vulgaris, there’s little that hasn’t been thrown into the ...Like Clockwork mix: power ballads, industrial sleaze, surprising reunions, the sound of broken glass - and Elton John on piano.That contribution - the joyous backdrop, half-buried in the mix, of a song called “Fairweather Friends” that begins like something Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Born in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, into a secular Muslim family with Orthodox Slavic roots, the filmmaker Emir Kusturica has long been a polarizing figure in the Balkans. A patriot of the former Yugoslovia, he is regarded by his enemies, who condemned him as an apologist for Slobodan Milošević during the Bosnian War, as a Serbian nationalist; as recently as April, the Bosnian stage director Selma Spahić withdrew the play she was bringing to the current Sterijino Pozorje Theatre Festival in Novi Sad because Kusturica was invited to open it.Time was – before his second Palme d Read more ...
bruce.dessau
It says something about the commodification of modern music that Scottish poppets Camera Obscura are probably best known for "French Navy" because it is used by wine company Echo Falls on the sponsored intros to Come Dine With Me. It is a brilliantly romantic rush of a song and I tweeted that it was a shame it was linked to selling booze. Comedian/fan Josie Long, not one to condone corporate sell-outs, responded "I just think 'I hope this means you are funded enough to write your beautiful songs!'"Well, maybe the cash-injection has helped, because the Glaswegian band has returned after four Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Guy and Howard Lawrence, brothers from Reigate, Surrey, aged 22 and 19 respectively, have become one of the hottest acts in British pop. They have done this by dint of being the figureheads of a genuine garage-house revival. Clubland has been embracing its goofier side for a good while, the macho wob-wob assault of much late period dubstep or the Guetta-esque trance-house cheese endemic in American “EDM”. Disclosure, on the other hand, recall the pared back, soulful sound of Chicago house in its earliest, purest form, amalgamated with a large dose of south London’s well-dressed two-step Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s something profoundly infantile about Quentin Tarantino’s quest to right the wrongs of history. Last time round he was retroactively bitchslapping the Nazis for the Holocaust. Here he’s punishing Americans who accrued obscene wealth out of slavery. In both films baddies galore get royally ketchupped. What’s next? Backdated justice for the Injuns? Oh shoot, Disney already pulled off that judicial backflip in Pocahontas.Django Unchained is a kind of spaghetti Blaxploitation epic. It’s immensely entertaining in bits – usually when Christoph Waltz is on screen reprising his casuistical Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It's apt that the word "slow" crops up in the title of the first album proper in 16 years from Scotland’s seminal and influential indie kingpins. "Stately" would be even more suitable. The pace at which Stephen McRobbie and long-term accomplice Katrina Mitchell move is akin to the speed change is accommodated by the rules governing accession to the British throne. And, in many ways, The Pastels are as important to the fabric of what makes this island nation tick as the royal family. Without the Pastels there would have been no Creation Records, no Jesus & Mary Chain, no Primal Scream.As Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In its day Alice in Chains’ so-called “sludge metal” – something a bit like the sound of industrial machinery pulled through treacle – was some of most darkly brilliant music to come out of Seattle. Much of this was down to Layne Staley’s drug-soaked lyrics which eventually proved prescient: in 2002 he succumbed to an overdose. Seven years later, when guitarist Jerry Cantrell resurrected the band, many wondered how long the new line-up could keep it up.On the strength of this new album they can do it as long as they like. The droning guitars, sledgehammer drums and bitter melodies on The Read more ...