CDs/DVDs
Liz Thomson
It’s that time of year again, and we’re forced to endure crap Christmas songs while waiting to pay for milk and loo rolls. The fingers of one hand are sufficient for listing the world’s only good Christmas albums and songs: Phil Spector’s Christmas Album, “Fairytale of New York”, “Happy Christmas (War is Over)”, “Merry Christmas Everybody” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas”. OK, that includes a thumb. As a child I was a great fan of “Little Donkey” by Nina and Frederick, and Harry Belafonte’s “Mary’s Boy Child”, with its faint hint of calypso. From Joan Baez’s long-ago Christmas album, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In the last 25 years anything and everything has become possible in cinema. The budgets got bigger, the SFX more spectacular (and the audience ever more infantilised). By rights Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the first film that cost $100 million to shoot, should now look dated. This release proves otherwise. Everything about the Terminator sequel, arriving seven long years after the original, stands the test of the time.A bit like Garbo laughing, the concept of Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the good guy was a quantum leap in star branding. As he explains in the extras, he wasn’t that keen on Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Alexander Armstrong is one of TV's great Renaissance men. Not only is he the genial host of Pointless, he's also an actor, comedian, and, of course, the voice of Danger Mouse. But Armstrong's first love is music. Singing earned him a scholarship to Cambridge, and, in recent years, he's crooned his way through two successful albums. It was surely just a matter of time before he set his sights on Christmas.In a Winter Light sees Armstrong trying his hand at a range of festive styles, from carols to easy-listening. Unfortunately, Armstrong's baritone is not suited to everything. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the Hardanger Fiddle is regarded as a traditional Norwegian instrument, its use stretches back to no earlier than the middle of the 17th century. The music players summon from its strings is more easily seen as traditional though: music to dance to. Tuned differently to a standard fiddle, the hardingfele does not have a set amount of strings but instead has four for playing and four or five resonating, sympathetic strings underlying those which are bowed. The baroque viola d'amore, which also has sympathetic strings, is a near relative. Once heard, the keening, resonant power of the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
“Doing work” is the phrase that inmates of California’s New Folsom Prison have adopted to describe the group psychotherapy sessions that have been run there for more than 15 years now. Given that Folsom is a Level-4 penitentiary, in which murder is the least of the convictions for those imprisoned, most of whom will remain locked up there for the rest of their lives, issues of access and trust must have been as challenging as any documentary-maker could expect to encounter.How The Work co-director Jairus McLeary came to resolve them is a story in itself (of which more later), but the fact Read more ...
Guy Oddy
It’s quite a shock to realise that industrial metal-heads Godflesh have been beating on their particular drum (on and off) for some 30 years. Under lead noise-monger Justin Broadrick, titanic riffs and weaponised beats wrapped up in claustrophobic paranoia have given the British punk, metal and experimental music scenes periodic sonic shake-ups, while also influencing many from around the world with a yen to channel their own primal screams through highly amplified tunes turned up to 11. Godflesh might even be described as a Great British Export, given their somewhat unexpected and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
When Irish rock band U2 marked the release of 2014’s Songs of Innocence by loading it into everyone’s iTunes for free, it was an attempt to find a new angle on the "event release". While it was certainly that, it wasn’t, shall we say… universally well received. Thankfully, for its companion piece, Songs of Experience, the band has opted for an altogether more traditional delivery system. There will be no humanitarian air-drops of WAVs over the shire counties – you can tell the Home Guard to stand down.This, of course, means we're paying for the pleasure this time round – so what do we get? Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“The Prodigal Son of Magnesia” is an attention-grabbing title. So are “Three Legged Giant Centipede” and “Public Execution of the Sleeping Lotus Eater”. Each suggests that the album from which they are drawn could be a prog rock epic inspired by conflating existing myths with newly made-up fancies. Track lengths exceeding 10 minutes further the impression. Yet despite surface impressions, 1 is not a showcase for instrumental prowess or tricky arrangements. The first solo album from Finland’s Timo Kaukolampi is instead about immersive, intense atmospheres.Kaukolampi has form. As a producer, he Read more ...
graham.rickson
Jabberwocky is all the more enjoyable once you get past what it isn’t; Terry Gilliam’s 1977 directorial debut is a medieval romp starring Michael Palin and a short-lived Terry Jones, but audiences shouldn’t expect a Monty Python film. Gilliam and Palin’s bonus commentary is a joy, Gilliam describing his relief at “not having to be funny all the time,” free to let this baggy, rambling tale unfold at a more stately pace. There are many mirthsome moments, but Gilliam admits that Jabberwocky “is more quirky than funny.”The inspiration for Gilliam and screenwriter Charles Aveson was the nonsense Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Robin Rimbaud, AKA Scanner, has been releasing music for over two decades. There was a point in the mid-Nineties when he was a media “thing” due to the way he sampled sounds plucked from the airwaves. Shockingly, this included phone calls because cordless home phones are as accessible as any other radio signals. He has long operated on the art-intellectual spectrum, bridging electronic, industrial and avant-classical, collaborating with everyone from Wire to Michael Nyman.So to Fibolae, titled for a word that came to him in a dream, and his first album in eight years. Giving background to Read more ...
Katie Colombus
If I found it acceptable to swear at my children, I would serenade them with Björk's "Tabula Rasa". It goes: "My deepest wish, Is that you’re immersed in grace and dignity, But you will have to deal with shit soon enough, I hoped to give you the least amount of luggage, Got the right to make your own fresh mistakes, And not repeat others' failures." It's my own personal vision of utopia, in a nutshell.The rest of the album is equally as sage, and frank - notes and noises that create a soundscape made up of early English evensong ("The Gate"), with flutters of pagan pipes and rushes of Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Not since the 1960s has there been so much global shit to protest about! The Sixties, of course, gave us the protest song – and how well the best of them have worn. “Masters of War” and “With God On Our Side” are timeless classics. “Give Peace a Chance” can still be heard from the barricades.There’s no doubt Neil Young means well, believes passionately, but the agitprop – much as we all agree with the sentiments – does begin to pall. Much of the music doesn’t quite cut the mustard, though if it won’t stand the test of time perhaps that’s because it doesn’t need to – the goal here is to be Read more ...