CDs/DVDs
Russ Coffey
Back in the Eighties fans of Fish (of Marillion) considered his groovy wordbending to be art. Others begged to differ. Lloyd Cole and Atzec Camera-types would rubbish him as a slightly preposterous merchant of sixth-form poetry. Perhaps both had a point. Mk 1 Marillion certainly could be pretentious, but they also, undeniably, had some killer lines. "On promenades where drunks propose/ to lonely arcade mannequins" is, for me, a suburban evocation worthy of Richard Thompson. A Feast of Consequences - finally on general release – is Fish’s 10th post-Marillion studio album. On forums Read more ...
Guy Oddy
“What Goes On”, opening track of Pixies first album since 1991’s Trompe Le Monde, proves a suitably thrilling beginning for a set that has been much anticipated by fans who may have been concerned that Black Francis’ crew were happy as a heritage act. The chugger-chugger rhythm combines with plenty of volume and feedback and suggests a band that isn’t just going through the motions. This should cause massed sighs of relief to those who haven’t heard these songs over the three EPs and a download that were released over the last few months.When Pixies first appeared in the late 1980s, Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow – meet Allen Ginsberg, before the beard. Daniel Radcliffe plays an 18-year-old version of the infamous beat poet in the defining moments of the artist as a young man, and the true-life episode that created the genre.A bespectacled, sheltered, bookish Jew, Ginsberg frees himself from the shackles of a mentally ill mother and dodges the shadow of a middle-class education provided for by his bourgeoisie poet father Louis Ginsberg, by heading off to Columbia University. There, he is intoxicated by the kicks of jazz, a plethora of drugs and the heady thrill of Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
She may only be 23, but Iggy Azalea got off to a good start with those of us a good decade older last month when the video accompanying her single “Fancy” - an homage to 90s teen comedy Clueless - debuted online. Nostalgia sells, of course: any idiot with access to the nightwear department at Primark, where right now pyjamas featuring Alicia Silverstone and the rest share shelf space with My Little Pony, could tell you that. But fans of the film will know that its imagery, if not its heart, is the perfect accompaniment to the stylish swagger the Australian rapper brings to the verses, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Krai – Край – is employed in Russia to label tracts of land separating regions or marking borders. These liminal places each have their own name, defined limits and character, and have inspired the second solo album by the Brooklyn-based Olga Bell. An exotic musical travelogue through the nine Krais, Krai the album is delivered entirely in Russian.The music shifts from minimally arranged pieces drawing from Troika to melodies which could suit the balalaika. Orthodox religious chanting sits alongside Cossack melodies and the drumming of the Arctic-region Chuchki. There’s electronics, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
John Tavener: The Protecting VeilIn its tribute to John Tavener which followed his death last November, theartsdesk acknowledged the difficulties his devotional music brought. David Nice asked “what was there here that I couldn’t get from a standard traditional service?” He continued to describe The Protecting Veil as a masterpiece which “certainly cast its spell.” The tribute also included a fond and frank reminiscence from cellist Steven Isserlis, for whom The Protecting Veil was composed. Tavener was “was complicated," he said, "and could be very difficult.”This reissue of the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Britten to America – music for radio and theatre Hallé/Sir Mark Elder, Ex Cathedra/Jeffrey Skidmore Samuel West (narrator) (NMC)The official catalogue of Britten’s music currently runs to 1183 pieces – so, besides the 95 works with opus numbers there’s an enormous amount which remains little-known. The works assembled here can’t be described as juvenilia. Not everything stands up to repeated listening, but much of the music is highly engaging. Britten’s score for Auden and Isherwood’s mountaineering drama The Ascent of F6 was written largely on the hoof, and he was exasperated by the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
British brothers Simon and Robin Lee – AKA Faze Action - have been bubbling under the radar for a couple of decades. There was a point in the late Nineties when the disco-powered duo were poised to break through as the super-hip Nuphonic label’s signature act. But this was in the days before Daft Punk, multiple Norwegians and your Aunt Mildred had rediscovered, reinvigorated and reinvented disco. In some alternate universe Faze Action invaded the charts from the disco-house underground circa 1996, while the Disclosure siblings were still busy watching Clifford the Big Red Dog, sat in their Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Sixty years a masterpiece, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is being released by the BFI on DVD and in a Blu-ray Steelbook. Digitally restored by Toho from an original 35mm master positive, it ought to be a mandatory purchase for movie-struck kids raised on CGI, 3D, and hyperbolic action epics that bear no relation to reality. They and everyone else should, of course, see it in a cinema, too.Set in 1587, during Japan's late Warring States period, it tells the story, both stirring and elegiac, of five seasoned ronin, a boastful charlatan, and a starstruck rookie hired to spearhead a mountain Read more ...
joe.muggs
I'm starting to get irritated that the term “indietronica” steadfastly refuses to catch on. We live in a world now where Hot Chip, Metronomy, Fujiya & Miyagi, tUnE-yArDs, M83 and on and on and on are as much the norm in just-left-of-centre music as any kind of guitar-centric bands. It's not dance music, it's not particularly avant garde, it's got nice songs and interesting, vulnerable lyrics: it's indie, but electronic. It's indietronica, surely? But no, the years tick by, and this whole area remains essentially unnamed.Anyway. Phil Kay – not the under-rated stoner Scottish comedian, but Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s hard not to admire Kelis Rogers’ spirited and unpredictable approach to the music business. She’s been through multiple incarnations, approaching them with real zest, the spiritual successor to Nena Cherry, albeit more prolific and emanating a very American hip hop raunch. At her career’s start she explored the shouty borderland where R&B meets rock; in “Milkshake” she created one of the sexiest, starkest, best R&B numbers of the century, yet her last album was produced with EDM-pop Satan, David Guetta. Even outside her music, there’s always some new enthusiasm. The only time I Read more ...
graham.rickson
That Bill Forsyth’s 1979 debut feature is so polished shouldn’t be a surprise; he’d been working on documentaries and short films since the 1960s. Several of these are included as generous bonuses on this disc. KH-4 and Mirror are offbeat mini-dramas, but more pertinent is Oscar Marzaroli's Glasgow 1980, an upbeat short edited by Forsyth in 1970, outlining in optimistic fashion how the city would soon be transformed for the better. The depressing gap between aspiration and reality is clear in That Sinking Feeling. Glasgow remains grubby and congested, its pasty-faced denizens negotiating a Read more ...