Reviews
Demetrios Matheou
From its ambiguous opening shot onwards, writer/director Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands is a tricksy animal, which doesn’t just keep you guessing about its characters and plot, but about what kind of film it is we’re watching.It takes its time before tiptoeing into noir territory, specifically the kind that swaps nocturnal shadows for sun-bleached locations, where characters are led astray less by racy dialogue and treachery than heat-induced lethargy, tinged with lust. But Gerster (Oh Boy) also offers intimations of Antonioni’s great existential mystery, l’Avventura, along with Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
Mind, body, body, mind. Medical science confirms the powerful two-way traffic between emotional and physical health. Nonetheless the idea of separating the thoughts and the bodily experiences of George, the recently bereaved protagonist of A Single Man, in a two-act dance version of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, is neat. At the Linbury Theatre – whose stage feels comfortably close wherever you happen to sit – the application of this neat idea is firmly unambiguous.Stage left is a neon outline of a man, the kind of outline you might find on the door to the gents. Within it stands the Read more ...
aleks.sierz
I love irony. Especially beautiful irony. So I’m very excited about the ironic gesture of staging a show with no words at the Royal Court, a venue which boasts of being the country’s premier new writing theatre. Billed as “a new experiment in performance”. Cow | Deer uses only sound to evoke the lives of two animals, one domesticated, the other wild.Created by director Katie Mitchell, writer Nina Segal and sound artist Melanie Wilson, the piece is performed using the talents of a quartet of performers and Foley artists (Foley being sound effects usually added post-production to films, and so Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
One piece that you’re unlikely to hear at the Lammermuir Festival is Lucia di Lammermoor. As co-director James Waters explained during a drive to the absurdly picturesque church and castle at Crichton (fit setting for a Netflix epic, let alone a blood-soaked bel canto opera), venues and resources do set some limits to works that can be presented to the standards he demands.But not many: this year the festival hosted a double-bill of one-acters from Scottish Opera; it will welcome both the Philharmonia Orchestra at full strength, and Reinaldo Alessandrini’s legendary Concerto Italiano ensemble Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A lot is going on during Yasmine Hamdan’s third solo album. Despite all ten songs of I Remember I Forget بنسى وبتذكر drawing from the lyrics and music of Palestinian folklore, what is heard is avowedly non-traditional. Hamdan is sticking with the electronica she has been associated with since the late 1990s.The title track exhibits an acid house pulse. “Seven vows سبع صنايع” begins as a smoky ballad but quickly incorporates ominous washes of sound and echoing, gun-shot percussion. “Shadia شادية”, the most linear track, has a Seventies film-theme vibe. “Mor مرّ التجنّي” evokes a desiccated, Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
My final visit to the Proms for this year was a Sunday double-header of the RPO playing Respighi, Milhaud and Vaughan Williams at 11am and an evening concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and massed choirs in Gipps, Grieg and Bliss.The matinée (★★★★) was a set of three cityscapes, depicting Rome, Rio and London. Respighi’s The Pines of Rome is a terrific orchestral showpiece, low on memorable musical content but high on vivacity, gorgeous in its Technicolor scoring and performed here with pizzazz by the RPO, especially in the second and fourth movements. After the rumbustious opening Read more ...
James Saynor
The Coen brothers’ output has been so broad-ranging, and the duo so self-deprecating, that critics have long had difficulty getting their arms around them. Telling stories of distemper in the American heartland, with the occasional drive-by hit on Old Hollywood, they defined indie cinema for a generation and then perhaps single-handedly released it from its ghetto and merged it into the mainstream. After an extended run of successes from Blood Simple (1984) up to but excluding Intolerable Cruelty (2003), intermittent irritation has greeted some of their 21st century offerings, a few Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
VINYL OF THE MONTHBlack Lips Season of the Peach (Fire)Some of the many releases by don’t-give-a-damn southern US rockers Black Lips are of variable quality. They’re actual rockers, not Modern Music BA university graduates, so it depends where their wild heads are at. Their latest is a good one. Their garage instincts are intact, but they also render loose-limbed, fibrous versions of country music, southern soul and indie guitar pop. There aren’t many bands who could write a song with a chorus that runs, “I just want a prick of my own”, and make it a catchy new wave singalong akin to the best Read more ...
Jonathan Geddes
There is such nonchalance with Sabrina Teitelbaum that even her appeals to the crowd appeared laid-back. At points during her set the Los Angeles singer would slowly raise an arm, in the time-honoured tradition of a musician demanding noise, but in a way that suggested she wasn’t bothered if the call was actually heeded. Then again, perhaps it was just a sign that she knew the gesture would have the desired effect, given her evident popularity here.Two albums into her career, and with this show – her first ever in Scotland – upgraded due to demand, the 28-year-old appears in a settled Read more ...
mark.kidel
At the start or her show, the white-robed singer Ganavya does something unusual: while other performers usually warm their audience up before suggesting they sing along, she plunges straight in, a minute or so into chanting “a love supreme”, and gets everyone to join her in what can only be described as a communal act of devotion. This is a kind of high-wire daring, and it works, suggesting as well that she's assured of a large group of listeners for whom she can do no wrong.Now well-established as a purveyor of spiritual jazz and traditional South Indian chants, born and raised in New York Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Chiswick Records 1975-1982 - Seven Years at 45 RPM is a triple album marking the 50th anniversary of the first release on the titular label. That record was a four-track, seven-inch EP by the rough, Rolling Stones-ish pub rockers The Count Bishops. It came out in November 1975.Setting the trend for what was around the corner with punk, not only was The Count Bishops EP on an independent label it also came in a picture sleeve. The label was an outgrowth of the Rock On record stall and shop. The folks behind the imprint – Roger Armstrong, Ted Carroll and Trevor Churchill – all had backgrounds Read more ...