CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
Guy and Howard Lawrence, brothers from Reigate, Surrey, aged 22 and 19 respectively, have become one of the hottest acts in British pop. They have done this by dint of being the figureheads of a genuine garage-house revival. Clubland has been embracing its goofier side for a good while, the macho wob-wob assault of much late period dubstep or the Guetta-esque trance-house cheese endemic in American “EDM”. Disclosure, on the other hand, recall the pared back, soulful sound of Chicago house in its earliest, purest form, amalgamated with a large dose of south London’s well-dressed two-step Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s something profoundly infantile about Quentin Tarantino’s quest to right the wrongs of history. Last time round he was retroactively bitchslapping the Nazis for the Holocaust. Here he’s punishing Americans who accrued obscene wealth out of slavery. In both films baddies galore get royally ketchupped. What’s next? Backdated justice for the Injuns? Oh shoot, Disney already pulled off that judicial backflip in Pocahontas.Django Unchained is a kind of spaghetti Blaxploitation epic. It’s immensely entertaining in bits – usually when Christoph Waltz is on screen reprising his casuistical Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It's apt that the word "slow" crops up in the title of the first album proper in 16 years from Scotland’s seminal and influential indie kingpins. "Stately" would be even more suitable. The pace at which Stephen McRobbie and long-term accomplice Katrina Mitchell move is akin to the speed change is accommodated by the rules governing accession to the British throne. And, in many ways, The Pastels are as important to the fabric of what makes this island nation tick as the royal family. Without the Pastels there would have been no Creation Records, no Jesus & Mary Chain, no Primal Scream.As Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In its day Alice in Chains’ so-called “sludge metal” – something a bit like the sound of industrial machinery pulled through treacle – was some of most darkly brilliant music to come out of Seattle. Much of this was down to Layne Staley’s drug-soaked lyrics which eventually proved prescient: in 2002 he succumbed to an overdose. Seven years later, when guitarist Jerry Cantrell resurrected the band, many wondered how long the new line-up could keep it up.On the strength of this new album they can do it as long as they like. The droning guitars, sledgehammer drums and bitter melodies on The Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Rodion G.A.: The Lost TapesInitially, under Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s borders were open: Blood Sweat & Tears, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong played there. But the regime tightened its grip after the dictator’s 1971 visit to North Korea and China. Ceaușescu fostered a personality cult, the world outside was largely shut out and Romania’s citizens had few chances to flourish artistically. Absolute censorship was imposed and the Securitate were the eyes and ears of the regime. Yet somehow, music was made, some of it released on the state-run Electrecord label. Rodion Roşca only had Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
I suppose that whether Once I Was An Eagle appeals may depend on whether you consider "underwhelming" a synonym for "disappointing". It's the word that surfaces most, the more I listen to the fourth album from newly Los Angeles-resident Laura Marling; but I use it to conjure the lack of flashiness, of anything overpowering about the record rather than for its negative connotations.Neither respect nor acclaim for the young songwriter has ever faltered, even in those circles where those she once performed and socialised with have become the butt of jokes. From album to album her songwriting has Read more ...
emma.simmonds
The latest film from acclaimed Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking) tells the story of two young brothers who are separated when their parents divorce and who attempt to bring their family together again. While its prosaic subject matter might sound far from must-view material, I Wish is absolutely a film to savour, one whose considerable folksy charm, humour and authentic spirit will take you hurtling back to your own childhood adventures.12-year-old Koichi (Koki Maeda) lives in Kagoshima with his mother (Nene Ohtsuka) and grandparents, under the threat of an active volcano. Read more ...
mark.kidel
Tricky left Massive Attack, the Bristol collective who provided tbe soundtrack to many a shopping therapy expedition, and went on to make one of the greatest albums of the 1990s, Maxinquaye. He was never a purveyor of easy listening or trippy-hoppy background music. He delved much deeper, dredging through a family history of mixed race shenanigans, gangland violence and his own martyrdom as a victim of major respiratory and skin disease.It’s been over 16 years since the first album came out, and Tricky claims he has returned to form with False Idols, after a number of rarely better than Read more ...
joe.muggs
It took nine years between the first and second instalments of this series, and another 22 years to make the third. And that's one of the least strange things about this record. The production team of B.E.F. (aka Human League / Heaven 17 members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh) have dedicated themselves to unusual cover versions, in the past featuring guest vocalists from Gary Glitter to Tina Turner to Paula Yates, and they are still on a mission to rework classic songs in a high-gloss 1980s pop style with very peculiar results indeed.There are a lot of high points here. Sandie Shaw yelps her Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Stooshe are a manufactured London girl band. They were put together a couple of years ago by shrewd ex-girl-bander Jo Perry, a self-made London studio engineer and a songwriter for, among others, Peter Andre. Despite this prosaic, business-savvy backstory Stooshe emanate a sass that’s likeable. Unlike, say, Little Mix, there’s a certain garrulous, sweary bounce to them, a sense that perhaps they really are friends and really are having fun. On top of this, the influence of their (comparatively) easygoing attitude to body shape and appearance in a teen/tween market overrun with homogenized Read more ...
mark.kidel
“Chronicle of a Summer” (“Chronique d’un été”) is one of the great documentaries of all time – and a work that could only have been made in France, home of the immensely influential Cahiers du cinéma and the constant ferment of speculation on the nature of film. The BFI’s release of the 1960 classic by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin couldn't be more timely: documentary flourishes today as at no other time in the history of cinema and attracts some of the world's best film-makers.The realm of non-fiction cinema, first explored by the Russian avant-garde pioneer Dziga Vertov in the 1920s, is free Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Scott Walker: The Collection 1967-1970Few pop records possess a beauty taking them into the otherworldly, inexplicable realm where it’s impossible to understand the magic which coalesced in their creation. The Four Tops’ “Seven Rooms of Gloom”, Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”, Billy Fury’s “Halfway to Paradise”, ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”, Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream”, Sigur Rós’ "Hoppípolla”: all channel something other, rapturously embracing the listener.Another such is Scott Walker’s “Boy Child”, the string-bedded contemplation he wrote which closed side one of his fifth solo album, 1969’s Read more ...