1990s
Kieron Tyler
Shuggie Otis: Inspiration Information/Wings of LoveShuggie Otis's vanishing act after the release of his 1974 album Inspiration Information belatedly created one of pop’s great what-ifs. However, it only became so in the Nineties after the album was recognised as a soul treasure. David Byrne reissuing the album on his Luaka Bop label in 2001 didn’t plug the information gap, and Otis remained in the shadows. Now though, with this new reissue, the enigmatic soul auteur has resurfaced to supplement the album with a series of unreleased tracks dating from 1971 to 2000. Whatever else he was doing Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Simple Minds: Celebrate – The Greatest Hits +Of all the bands which surfaced in 1977 in response to punk, Simple Minds occupy a singular status. Despite line-up changes, they have never split up. After their 1982 success with “Promised You a Miracle”, they have never surrendered the glittering prize. Their enviable career is defined by a tenacity which can go hand-in-hand with a music that runs on rails. Although they can’t be faulted for sometimes putting their musical development on hold to embrace causes and the needs of the stadium, this chronologically sequenced triple CD suggests their Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marcos Valle: Marcos Valle/Garra/Vento Sul/Previsão do TempoIn 1968, having already done time in Sérgio Mendes & Brazil 66, Marcos Valle was selling bossa nova and samba to America, appearing on The Andy Williams Show in a blazer and roll neck. By the year’s end he was back in Brazil, which at the time was ruled by a fully-fledged dictatorship. Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil would go into exile but Valle wilfully chose the opposite path. His music and appearance changed: the former moving away from popular Brazilian styles and incorporating outside influences; the latter becoming Read more ...
Simon Munk
They were there at the beginning of video games, now it seems adventure games are back. After all, with so many mainstream releases reducible to running down a corridor shooting, it's hardly surprising there's an audience for a more interactive alternative.The Cave is a side-scrolling adventure game from two maestros of the point-and-click Lucas classics of the Nineties. Ron "Monkey Island" Gilbert and Tim "Grim Fandango" Schafer. Their names together on a bill mean so much to fans of the genre that their next title, codenamed Double Fine Adventure, has been Kickstarted to the record-breaking Read more ...
David Nice
Want to learn more about 20th century music in action? Starting tomorrow, you could lose yourself in the labyrinth of the Southbank’s year-long The Rest is Noise festival, and plough your way through Alex Ross’s monumental but partisan study of that name. Or you could learn a lot in a short space of time from John Adams’s mini-residency with the LSO at the Barbican. There’s an even more essential book to read alongside it, the composer’s Hallelujah Junction, following an insider’s path to finding his own voice after encounters with the rigours of the 12-tone system, Cage-style anything-goes Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
About the only thing I dislike about My Mad Fat Diary is the title. Based on a similarly-titled teenage memoir by the writer Rae Earl, the first episode of this six-part comedy drama is touching, hilarious and perfectly cast. And the lead character, who introduces herself as a “16-stone 16-year-old”, has just been discharged from a psychiatric hospital after four months of in-patient treatment, so it’s certainly apt.Besides, Rae would never be the type to tiptoe around two of what she sees as her defining features with delicate language. Young Glaswegian actress Sharon Rooney plays the book’s Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Prodigy: The Fat of the Land 15th Anniversary Expanded EditionThomas H GreenAlmost a decade after acid house changed the landscape of British music, it seemed rave culture was finally about to take over pop. The Chemical Brothers hit the top of the charts, assisted by Noel Gallagher, in Autumn 1996 with “Setting Sun”, Goldie led a wave of drum & bass eagerly signed by major labels, 12” singles were selling by the ton and, leading the charge, The Prodigy topped the single’s and album’s charts in mid-1997 on both sides of the Atlantic with “Firestarter” and its parent album The Fat of Read more ...
David Nice
Why so much of Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO on theartsdesk, you may ask, when other concerts pass unremarked? The answer is simple: quite apart from the immaculate preparation and the most elegant conducting style in the business, Jurowski programmes with an imagination matched by none of London’s other principal conductors – unless you like lots of Szymanowski served up by Gergiev with lumpy Brahms – and, more important, always finds connections.This stunning event was an excellent demonstration of the art, and introduced with typical eloquence by a Jurowski bent on pointing out a healthy Read more ...
Laura Silverman
Michael Palin's adventures in period drama as star and co-writer, with director Tristram Powell, pass a pleasant if forgettable hour and a half. The main thread – repressed Englishman loosens up abroad – links other familiar elements: the closeted life of Oxford academics; mild-mannered English types; and audacious, wealthy Americans. Perhaps the actor can be forgiven: the story is based loosely on his great-grandfather's diaries.The younger Palin is predictably strong as Francis Ashby, the reserved Oxford don “without moral blemish”. Hiking in the Swiss Alps, Ashby relaxes enough to take Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Jam: The GiftThomas H GreenGiven his continued artistic renaissance, it’s currently rather unfashionable to suggest Paul Weller was never better than with The Jam. Nonetheless, a trawl through their back catalogue will assure most this was the case. Musically, it’s arguable but lyrically it’s definitive. The Gift was The Jam’s sixth and final album, released in the spring of 1982. The trio were at the peak of their powers, riding chart success that melded punk’s snarl with Weller’s suburban angst, including, in “Going Underground”, one of the greatest and most furious songs ever to hit Read more ...
theartsdesk
Bill Withers: The Complete Sussex and Columbia AlbumsKieron TylerThis box set is several cuts above the usual major-label, no-frills cheapo collection gathering together a selection of an artist’s albums. Produced with evident care, it’s a superb tribute to a distinctive soul great. The clam-shell box contains Withers’ nine albums, originally issued between 1971 and 1985. Each disc comes in a card reproduction of the original album sleeve, even including a facsimile of the fold-out triptych cover to 1972’s Still Bill. Liner notes, annotation and a brief, newly written introduction from Read more ...
Nick Hasted
As Julian Assange continues to hold the world’s authorities at bay behind embassy doors, this new biopic offers Young Assange: a Melbourne teenager among the first generation of computer hackers, who cracked the Pentagon’s code on the Gulf War’s eve.Australian writer-director Robert Connolly specialises in lean, socially committed thrillers, and makes the tapping of keyboards and inner workings of Assange’s brain gripping enough. Alex Williams plays Assange with now familiar arrogance, mixed with youthful vulnerability. Connolly sources his disdain for power in an adolescence spent being Read more ...