CDs/DVDs
joe.muggs
There are musicians on the UK dance underground who doggedly identify with particular scenes and evolve with them. There are those who adapt stylistically in order to move from scene, or manage to be part of several at the same time. And then there is Londoner Danny Native aka Altered Natives. He is truly the outsider’s outsider.He’s made tracks over the years that have been played by mainstays in scenes like house, broken beat, UK funky, post-dubstep and elsewhere, but by a combination of accident and design is part of none of these things. With a distinctively cantankerous and mordant wit, Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Around the time the time that he retired his Ziggy Stardust alter ego, David Bowie put out an album of covers, done in a Glam/Proto-punk style. This included tunes by the Yardbirds, the Kinks and various other Garage Rock bands that were somewhat outside the mainstream at the time.Fifty years or so later (yes, really), Soft Cell’s Marc Almond and Neal X, most famously of Sigue Sigue Sputnik, have put together a new outfit with Mat Hector and Ben Ellis of Iggy Pop’s touring band and James Beaumont, called The Loveless, and have done the same – albeit with a couple of fine original tunes for Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Nailah Hunter’s debut album occupies a domain where trip-hop, Lana Del Rey were she recording in a deep, echo-filled cave and ambient-slanted pop overlap. There’s a kinship with FKA Twigs and Julia Holter, but Hunter’s propensity to channel what feels like a mystical experience means that Lovegaze is more inscrutable than what’s generated by first impressions.Her voice is distant, a low-ish soprano set in a wash of synths. Pattering percussion and the glissando of her Celtic harp pierce the aural mist. On the relatively sparsely arranged “Adorned” – which has a slight Alice Coltrane feel – Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis hasn’t made large waves this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps this is because her appeal has partly been rooted in Latin communities across the US and, indeed, Central and South America. Last year her third album, Red Moon in Venus, reached the Top 5 of the US album charts. At the time she said she already had her next album ready, a Spanish language affair. This is it and it’s a slightly feistier creature than its woozily narcotic predecessor.Uchis’s current default setting remains sexy-stoned. Her voice is a seductive instrument. She silkily rolls language Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
January 2024 marks the beginning of a new era for leading UK pop-punks Neck Deep, their upcoming 10 track LP captures a moment of harmony between their global success and their dedication to staying true to their roots. Following huge tours and top 5 records, the band opted to write and record their self-titled album in their own warehouse space in Wrexham, and from energetic opener “Dumbstruck Dumbf**k” all the way through to introspective closing track “Moody Weirdo”, Neck Deep expertly represents the band. It’s pop-punk perfection with a distinguishable Neck Deep stamp on it.The familiar Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations is the Vaccines’ sixth studio album and their first since the departure of original guitarist Freddie Cowan. As with previous releases, it’s rammed with catchy hooks wrapped in in fizzy pop rock tunes – but despite Justin Young’s claim that “it’s about the loss of dreams”, it is also distinctly lacking any nuance or real soul.Over the course of their previous five albums, the Vaccines’ music has frequently been dismissed as little more than contrived and light-weight power pop that wears its influences just a little bit too heavily. Not that picking up on the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Margaret Thatcher’s witless assertion that “there is no such thing as society” dates back to 1987; Ken Loach’s The Old Oak offers a belated but powerful rebuttal.His film highlights several discrete societies coexisting in a depressed Durham mining village. We meet a group of ex-miners who eke out pints in the titular pub, frustrated that the terraced houses they struggled to buy are now being bought up for a pittance by property companies. And there’s the coachload of Syrians who pitch up in the opening scenes, greeted with a mixture of bewilderment and open hostility. In between are people Read more ...
Ellie Roberts
As a lifelong blink fan, there was no competition for my album of the year. One More Time… was undeniably the musical highlight of 2023 for me, a perfect token of the next chapter of blink-182. Accompanied by an intimate Zane Lowe interview and a tour that were as joyous and emotional as the music itself, 2023 was the year that blink reminded the world of their magic.In signature blink-182 style, the album is extremely moving at the exact same time as being the epitome of fun. It’s everything that's great about the band with an extra sprinkling of excitement because of the time that has Read more ...
Cheri Amour
Even Alanis would admit that choosing an album of the year from a band channeling the Seventies and who don’t actually exist is pretty ironic. Don’t you think? Originally drummed up by New York Times bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Read, Daisy Jones & The Six in its original book form documented the whirlwind rise and fall of a band whose sound defined an era. When Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, announced they’d be creating a documentary-style series adaptation of the novel for Amazon Prime, she admitted real-life rockers Fleetwood Mac would be an Read more ...
Tom Carr
Where 2022 threw a personal surprise Album of the Year with Maggie Roger’s dancey indie-folk blend on Surrender, 2023 was more of a return to business, with a range of my regular listens all popping up with solid-to-supreme listens.From Queens of the Stone Age’s dark-witted return with In Times New Roman, to Enter Shikari and Spiritbox each both surpassing their solid pandemic releases with A Kiss for The Whole World and The Fear of Fear EP respectively – though I had enjoyed the new delights from Mitski and Hozier, in the end it was the familiar faces that carried me through. Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
“I had sex with a woman. Can I tell you about it, please?” says film director Tomas (Franz Rogowski) to his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw), a printmaker. Tomas is full of excitement about his night with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos); Martin is resigned, pale, doesn’t want the details. This always happens when you finish a film, he says. Take a nap, relax. But Tomas has thrown their relationship into crisis.Relaxing is not something that comes easily to Tomas, who’s driven by his impulses and expects everyone to be endlessly indulgent of his mercurial desires. When they’re not, he crashes. He Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
In 2023 Dave and Central Cee had the longest running number one UK rap song ever with "Sprinter", a song about the logistics of being very rich. The real star of the show, however, was the spritely, luxurious instrumental which was partially produced by South Londoner Jim Legxacy, who also released the best album of 2023: HNPM.This is my album of the year because it feels both like a snapshot of the internet’s genre-blending rap scene as well as of modern day Lewisham. Legxacy is fluent in mixing genres in a way that only an internet native could be, for example on the standout track "old Read more ...