CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Right Said Fred, in the wave of global fame that followed their 1991 mega-smash “I’m Too Sexy”, were unlikely celebrities. The two shaven-headed Fairbrass brothers seemed to have accidently wandered into pop and were laconic, likeable stars. There was something parochially British about them, even as Madonna claimed she wanted to shag them. Success of that calibre disappeared after a series of jolly hits, and the last this writer heard of them was when some thug drew blood attacking Richard Fairbrass at a gay rights rally in Russia a decade ago. Which only made them more likeable.Apart from Read more ...
joe.muggs
It's a monstrous cliché – all too often laden with problematically patronising overtones – to describe African, Caribbean, or Afro-Latin music in terms of “sunshine”, with all the carefree holiday brochure imagery that brings. But damn, the music of the Garifuna people of the Caribbean coasts of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua makes it hard not to.In particular the Honduran Aurelio Martinez, the most prominent exponent of Garifuna music since the 2009 death of the Belizean star Andy Palacio, has a guitar style which combines the lilting arpeggios of West Africa with the tremolo- Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s a nice pairing to these two character-led documentary films, as reflections on concepts of partnership presented from different ends of the spectrum of innocence and experience. Treating innocence, Someday My Prince Will Come (2005) is the story of 11-year-old Laura-Anne, growing up in an isolated village on the Cumbrian coast, as she begins to engage with the boys around her.There’s an almost conscious naivety, as well as plenty of humour in its observation of childhood, as the director follows his subjects over the course of a year in the deprived community in which they live, its “ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The keeper on Burning the Threshold is “Around the Axis”, a glistening, three-minute instrumental rooted in the finger-picking of Davy Graham’s classic 1961 arrangement of “Anji”. Building from its inspiration, “Around the Axis” deftly interweaves three guitars, suggesting where Graham and other contemporary solo stylists such as Bert Jansch may have gone early on if they had not been lone instrumentalists. It also suggests one aspect of where Pentangle were at in 1969 and a familiarity with the 1966 Bert Jansch/John Renbourn album Bert and John.Burning the Threshold though is not entirely an Read more ...
mark.kidel
Dreadzone make feelgood music, but with serious intent and a historical dimension. Dreadzone‘s new album reaches back, in a style they have made their own, to the origins of Reggae – with the opening track “Rootsman” that lilts forward appealingly from a sample of Grounation’s African-tinged drumming.The simplicity of the music’s origins in Jamaica and beyond gives way to the gently undulating pulse of the music, with spacey production, filled with the echoes of dub and a use of reverb that opens the mind and lifts the heart.The toasting on “Mountain” is reminiscent of Massive Attack, Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Ryan Adams’s 16th solo album since he debuted in 2000 with Heartbreaker reveals many influences, including AC/DC and the Electric Light Orchestra - notably on the opening track and single, “Do You Still Love Me”, where keyboards are to the fore. But mostly Adams is channelling The Boss.Bruce Springsteen seems everywhere evident – the vocal style, the keening harmonica breaks, the big echo and much besides: "Haunted House", with its pounding drum, acoustic guitar and a vocal line that coils around just a few notes; "Shiver and Shake", its vocal almost spoken over two or three gently Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Mixing up your yakuzas and your triads can be a bloody business, as Takashi Miike’s films show in the goriest detail. The title of the earliest work in his “Black Society” trilogy, Shinjuku Triad Society from 1995, says it all – a Chinese criminal gang at the heart of Tokyo’s Kabuki-cho nightlife district, the traditional turf of Japan’s own deeply entrenched native criminal element. But Miike’s work – at its best when it’s most unsettling, and that's something that goes beyond the sometimes cringingly unforgettable violence – is about bringing all sorts of other different things Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
British bass music has played a gigantic role in contemporary pop. Twenty years ago it nearly crossed over when the major labels wrongly assumed that, post-Goldie, drum & bass was going to explode commercially. It didn’t and the whole scene disappeared back underground, mutating, breeding, moving forwards. Drum & bass begat speed garage which begat 2-step/UK garage (giving us Craig David!) which begat grime which begat dubstep, all of which begat monster hits by everyone from Justin Bieber to Jax Jones.But far ahead of the Top 10-chasers, there have always been stranger, more Read more ...
mark.kidel
For a young singer like Joel Culpepper, blessed with a fine set of vocal chords and remarkable skill in using them, there is a wellspring of black singing tradition to draw from – from gospel and blues through to soul and contemporary R&B. There are echoes in his sensual and seductive singing of Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Prince and many others. Like many African- American or Afro-Caribbean talents before him, and in tune with ancient African tradition, he pays homage to his teachers and yet manages at times to strike out into new territory all of his own.The production, in the assured Read more ...
graham.rickson
Eureka’s restored print of Charles Vidor’s 1944 musical Cover Girl looks and sounds astonishingly vivid, especially when watched on Blu-ray. Would that everything were so simple: despite a starry creative team, the film makes for frustrating viewing. Doubly so when you consider that this was one of Jerome Kern’s final scores, with lyrics provided by Ira Gershwin which are the film’s one constant pleasure: couplets like “Because of Axis trickery/My coffee now is chicory” are peerless, especially when delivered in brash style by a young Phil Silvers.Gene Kelly plays Danny McGuire, injured in Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Thievery Corporation are veterans of the mid-'90s chill-out scene from well before the point when it disappointingly descended into a soporific dirge for middle-class dinner parties. Laying down Brazilian sounds and laid-back beats, they brought a broader international dimension to the tunes favoured by our weed-smoking brethren while avoiding hippy self-indulgence. The Temple Of I and I, however, sees their sound take a distinctly Jamaican turn, albeit one that is more reflective of a Seventies “roots and culture” vibe than the harsher sounds that are more usual today.While the groove on The Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Tinariwen are one African band you don’t dance to. It’s not that kind of music. They emerged from refugee camps, guerrilla camps and nomadic desert camps through the Eighties and Nineties, and since reaching a global audience via The Festival of The Desert, they have released eight consistently fine albums (the recent Live in Paris is particularly good).Their music is internal, meditative, sombre, political, philosophical, poetic, and returns again and again to the long line of troubles besetting the Tuareg region of Saharan Mali, riven by Islamists – a former friend of the band ended up Read more ...