CDs/DVDs
mark.kidel
DJ Shadow, made famous in 1996 With Endtroducing…, an album made entirely of samples, and the originator of a sound that was described as "trip-hop", sometime before it was attached to various Bristol sounds, continues to express his musical curiosity and eclecticism with wide-ranging connoisseurship and passion.His new double album is divided between a series of characteristically diverse instrumentals, and collaborations with rappers and singers. The instrumentals - mini musical essays - vary in style from explorations of electronica and noise and breakbeat-driven grooves to moments Read more ...
graham.rickson
Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction and The Fabulous Baron Munchausen are dizzying romps, whereas his earlier Journey to the Beginning of Time, made in 1955, is disarmingly straightforward – a simple tale of four boys searching for prehistoric life in order to complete a homework assignment. With a minimum of fuss, they board a no-frills wooden boat and row through a cave and down a river, heading further and further back in time. There are a few petty squabbles and a couple of minor examples of what the BBFC used to term “mild peril”. Otherwise, this is joyous, exhilarating fun. Read more ...
howard.male
Last month this Western Saharan singer-songwriter stood on stage at London’s Jazz Café and turned the venue into a hallowed holy space with just her voice and the rhythm she summoned from her tabal drum. Translated from the orginal Arabic, two lines she sung were: "The only one who seeks war, is one who has never known it". These simple yet profound words come from "Cuatro Proverbios", the opening number of this, her third album. However, although Aziza sings a great deal about her poverty, her war-stricken childhood in Algerian refugee camps, and the pain of exile (she currently lives in Read more ...
Tim Cumming
There’s plenty going on in Ronnie Wood’s world, with Mike Figgis’ feature documentary, Somebody Up There Likes Me, a mini tour with his band The Wild Five – London, Manchester and Birmingham – and this platter, subtiled "A Live Tribute to Chuck Berry", that was recorded live last year at The Tivoli in Wimborne, Dorset. I know the venue well, dear readers, as the local flea pit of the 1960s and 1970s. Its last screening as a cinema was Led Zep’s The Song Remains the Same in 1977 (there were plenty of grebos in the Wimborne area), before its divine resurrection as a music venue, thanks to the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Massively successful Irish trio The Script could, loosely speaking, be called a rock band. But they aren’t really, are they? Their sixth album is an indictment of the kind of music they play. It’s packed with over-produced post-Coldplay anthem-pop featuring lyrics calibrated for a generation gnawed by social media anxiety. Listening to it is an edgeless, squeaky clean experience. The buzz, if there is one, is all sugar rush and no sharp edges. Who could have known a quarter century ago that a key genetic ancestor of 21st century “rock” would be the Benidorm-friendly Euro-cheese of Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Pumarosa picked the perfect time of year to launch their second album into the world: its skittish drums, claustrophobic melodies and haunted vocals are the perfect soundtrack to witching season. But the horrors that inspired Devastation are far more personal: frontwoman Isabel Muñoz-Newsome was diagnosed with cervical cancer the week the band’s 2017 debut was released, with the band playing Glastonbury mere weeks after her surgery.With that back story in mind, you’d be forgiven for thinking tracks like “Fall Apart”, “Lose Control” and “Devastation” are primed to tell a particular story - but Read more ...
Nick Hasted
After the bleakness in the parts of Skeleton Tree touched directly by his son Arthur’s death, and the desolate grief of the accompanying documentary One More Time with Feeling, this is Nick Cave’s statement of faith. Ghosteen is unlike any record he’s made before, often sung in a desperate, reckless, heedless, loving voice unheard till now. If his heart has had to be torn open to reveal its varieties of vulnerability – the bereft croon and shaking falsetto on “Spinning Song”, the absolutely lovelorn, unabashed full-heartedness of “Bright Horses” – they remain remarkable sounds. The Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Tahliah Barnett has been having a rough old time of it. There was that doomed celebrity romance (Robert Pattinson) and some health issues (I’m not entirely sure if we need to know about her operation to have fibroids removed) but suffering, as we are all aware, is the fuel of creativity. Unclassifiable but leaning towards the classical, fka twigs’ gut-wrenching, soul-bearing second album – her first since the Mercury Prize nominated LP1 – showcases her soprano vocals against bare, eerie arrangements which will without doubt never be played in a club. Upbeat this is not; but Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Land of Kush are an ambitious 20-piece plus ensemble which features all manner of instruments from strings, horns, piano, guitar, santur, darbouka, oud and synths, as well as multiple vocalists and percussionists. Led by Sam Shalabi of the trippy Dwarfs of East Agouza, as well as numerous other Arabic-leaning Montreal ensembles, they have been fusing jazzy sounds with modern classical music, Arabic Café and distinctly experimental grooves for over a decade. Sand Enigma, however, is the band’s first album since 2013’s hymn to Cairo, The Big Mango, and again has an experimental yet distinctly Read more ...
Nick Hasted
At once grandiose and down to earth, ELO belong to the Seventies moment which lovingly pastiched simple Fifties rock’n’roll, with added sweeping strings left over from their own early conceptual prog. Double-album Out of the Blue’s status as 1978’s 10-million-selling hit of the year saw them sturdily survive New Wave, thanks to Jeff Lynne’s single-writing knack matching any skinny tie-sporting rival.Lynne’s first loves of classic pop and production saw him mothball ELO in the Eighties (only for bassist Bev Bevan to gallingly tour as ELO Part II), and give an early digital gloss to his teenage Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Jeff Goldblum’s 2018 debut, Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - The Capitol Studios Sessions, was one of the great surprises of last autumn, its infectious, feel-good vibe and self-deprecating retro pastiche as engaging as a favourite Hollywood movie on a grey day. And live at the Cadogan Hall Goldblum was a treat, a real-life Mr Nice Guy who was just so good and so funny.I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This is a far more serious outing, by which I don’t mean dull and boring. Rather high-quality jazz that can stand tall and needs no apology. The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra – Goldblum Read more ...
mark.kidel
This new Eureka! boxset of 4K and 2K restorations provides ample evidence as to why Samuel Fuller was venerated by such a wide range of film-makers, including Godard, Wenders, Scorsese and Tarantino. Often characterised as a purveyor of pulp cinema, Fuller was much more than that: his command of filmic story-telling across a multitude of genres – western, film noir, war film and melodrama – was exceptional. He had a very special mastery of film language, a fine sense of when to go from wide to close shot, change the pace of editing unexpectedly, and move the camera at the service of Read more ...