CDs/DVDs
Mark Kidel
Contemporary music from Mali hovers delicately (and creatively) between purist tradition and more or less successful attempts at making things more attractive to a younger and worldwide audience. Oumou Sangaré’s first five albums for the British World Circuit label stuck mostly to the raunchy Wassoulou style, characterized by pentatonic style and irresistible loping polyrhythms; but her first with No Format, who have, paradoxically, distinguished themselves with very fine acoustic albums for Ballaké Sissoko, Vincent Ségal and Kasse Mady Diabaté, launches into new territory, the great singer’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As if listening in on the heart of a robot, it begins with a throb over which a disembodied voice sings as a classic motorik rhythm kicks in. The song, “H>A>K”, perpetually builds and then abruptly ceases. It ends with “I Wish”, where a folky melody is underpinned by rattling drum machine, insistently strummed guitar and analogue synth wash. In between, songs of secret societies, a mysterious architect and attempts to find a destination by tracking the paths of butterflies which may or may not be there.Conceptually, Modern Kosmology is a triumph. Though inspirations are not hidden – Read more ...
Barney Harsent
“Harry's new album is F*CKING INSANE!” tweeted Father John Misty recently, setting the expectation bar very high for a collection that, sources close to the former One Direction member had indicated, would be “deeply personal” (or, at least, as deeply personal as a Grammy-winning songwriting team would allow). Then, with the release of lead single “Sign of the Times” came comparisons to Pink Floyd and David Bowie. Not an overlong Robbie Williams piano ballad sung by someone with decent range, then? No. Pink Floyd. And Bowie.The comparisons and preposterous hyperbole seem stranger still on the Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Nostalgia is dangerous; return to your childhood haunts and what was huge is now tiny, what once was magical at the movies is now mundane. Luckily this is not the case with Melody (also known under a distributor-enforced title as S.W.A.L.K.), unseen since its first release in 1971 when I was even younger than its central characters, a couple of 12-year-olds who fall in love much to their parents’ and teachers’ disapproval. It’s as charming now as it was then.Mark Lester and Jack Wild, then fresh off the megahit musical Oliver!, play two south London lads whose friendship is interrupted Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
That Pumarosa’s single “Cecile”, a Breeders-channelling monster, is not on their debut album says everything about their confidence. The 10 songs on The Witch have the heft of rock music, but also a more-ish femininity, both in the vocal department and the elasticity of their construction. They have a looseness, even an electro-pop funk on occasion, that’ll have student discos jigging to the likes of “Honey” or the seven-and-a-half-minute throbber “Priestess” (with its chorus of “You dance, you dance, you dance”).Universal subsidiary Fiction is generally home to indie-style bands that are Read more ...
Guy Oddy
To call Jim Jones a punk-blues dynamo is something of an understatement. Having already fronted three epic bands since the mid-Eighties in Thee Hypnotics, Black Moses and the Jim Jones Revue, he’s now ready to unleash the debut album by his latest combo, Jim Jones & The Righteous Mind. Super Natural, happily enough, shows no evidence of diminishing returns though and is actually considerably more than is needed to prove that Jones is still riding the garage rocket.The opening track, “Dreams”, comes roaring through the speakers like an air raid. Primal and gritty rock’n’roll with fire and Read more ...
Saskia Baron
This is a very welcome 4K digital restoration of Juzo Itami's extremely tasty Japanese comedy from 1985. Nobuko Miyamoto plays Tampopo ("dandelion" in Japanese), a widowed café owner with a small son. She dishes up bowls of ramen noodles to local trade but business is not good. A passing trucker (Ken Watanabe in Clint Eastwood mode) takes pity on her and rounds up a gang of misfits to help her perfect the recipe. Interspersed with their slapstick adventures – breaking into kitchens, rummaging through rival establishments’ bins, tracking down gourmets living in a hobo jungle – there are Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Flawlessly uniting atmosphere and melody is challenging. Especially so when creating music is approached unconventionally and with the desire to be individual. Having set her bar high, Juana Molina triumphs on all counts, again proving herself as a virtuoso artist who executes her vision with enviable assurance.Halo is the Argentinian musical witch’s – the press release describes her as a “good witch”, which, considering her unearthliness, seems fair – seventh album, the follow-up to 2013’s WED 21. Molina edited, produced, programmed, recorded and played almost everything. Yet it does not Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The first solo album in eight years from legendary musical innovator Ryuichi Sakamoto resonates with misfire and melancholy - unsurprisingly, when much of that time has been dedicated to a battle against throat cancer. The organ, Bachian fugues, and a series of portentous narrations join a more familiar blend of dissonant and percussive tracks which, like the title “async”, blend a pervasive sense of an organism malfunctioning with a contemplative attitude to mortality and mutability. Even for a composer already known to span a giddy generic spectrum from Iggy Pop to John Cage, this is a Read more ...
Barney Harsent
We live in a time of particularly polarised opinion, and Paul Weller remains a divisive figure. To some he’s the Changing Man, the Modfather, the Most Modernest Modernist that ever was. To others, however, he’s come to represent the very chromosome that turns perfectly good songwriting into "dadrock" and creates the sort of tuneful terrain on which Kasabian can flourish.While I’m not here to defend Kasabian, there’s a clear case to be made for Paul Weller. Forgetting for a moment the breadth of musical ambition he displayed in the Jam and Style Council years, recent(ish) albums have seen a Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Catfights can be entertaining, till the blood starts to flow – or, as in Onur Tukel’s brutal social comedy, you take turns putting your opponent in a coma. During three increasingly ritualised donnybrooks, Anne Heche and Sandra Oh batter past the title’s fetishising of female fights. In a way unlike any other film I’ve seen, they also lose the requirement to be likeable which can make standard female characters so insipid. As they pummel each other to the ground, they’re finally saying what they really think.Writer-director Tukel sets up former college friends Ashley (Heche) and Veronica (Oh Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kasabian are more musically exciting than a multitude of bands taste-making hipsters thrust our way, yet they’re universally derided by those sorts. The reason is their blokeyness. And it’s true, even the light, lovely, strummed ballad “Wasted” from their new, sixth album has (quiet) terrace-chant backing vocals. And anything singer Tom Meighan touches musters a certain Liam Gallagher belligerence. That, however, isn’t a good enough reason to dismiss them. For Crying Out Loud is full of tasty bits.For those familiar with Kasabian’s back catalogue, the album’s flavour is midway between 2006’s Read more ...