fri 18/07/2025

CDs/DVDs

Album: Alex Warren - You'll Be Alright, Kid

The best-selling single so far this year in the UK is Californian singer Alex Warren’s “Ordinary”. It stayed at the top of the charts longer than any song this decade. If you’re not familiar, imagine the lyrical mood and production of Hosier’s “Take...

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Album: Slikback - Attrition

In the eternal now of the strobe-lit sweatbox, innovation functions in a different way to the rest of culture. Yes of course, the thrill of the new has consistently been a vital part of dancefloor culture, but so has the familiarity of particular...

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Album: The Near Jazz Experience - Tritone

As the name suggests, the Near Jazz Experience owe a huge musical debt to jazz, but that’s not the full story by any means. For a start, the rhythm section has more in common with the motorik groove of Can and the general atmosphere is closer to the...

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Blu-ray: Heart of Stone

Heart of Stone (Das kalte Herz) was the first colour film produced by East Germany’s state film studio DEFA, a big-budget spectacular which attracted huge audiences upon its release in 1950.This adaptation of a macabre 19th century fairytale by...

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Album: Kokoroko - Tuff Times Never Last

This second album from London-based septet Kokoroko welcomes you into its warm embrace with the gorgeous, beatific vocal harmonies of “Never Lost” anchored by drummer Ayo Salawu's pulsating backbeat. A horn-driven celebration of West African...

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Album: Wet Leg - moisturizer

War, pestilence, famine, death. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had my fill of them all. So what better time to visit the genuinely sunny uplands – the long-anticipated second album from Wet Leg.My, those seemingly demure, Amish-styled girls have...

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Album: Tami Neilson - Neon Cowgirl

Tami Neilson’s career is long and storied. The short version is that she began with a 1990s Canadian family band (opening for Kitty Wells, aged 10!), moved to New Zealand and became a country star there, then, over the last decade, has been “...

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Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry

I met Mark Stewart once. It was on a platform at Clapham Junction, I wouldn’t normally approach a famous person like that, but I felt I had to pay my respects. It turned out he was getting on my train – going down to Dorset to “visit his old Ma” –...

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Album: Gwenno - Utopia

Stylistically, Utopia wears multiple faces. Opening cut “London 1757” drifts by like a twig floating upon an unhurried stream. Next, “Dancing on Volcanoes” swings, employs a staccato guitar and suggests a late-Sunday afternoon dance floor. The kind...

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Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-praise, or sly, back-handed compliment?"Jukebox musical" connotes the sort of "exploitation film" Elvis churned out....

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Album: Olafur Arnalds and Talos - A Dawning

Silken ambience is the name of the game on this set from Icelandic composer-producer Olafur Arnalds and dreampop singer Talos, aka Eoin French, who tragically died in August last year, aged 36. Arnalds completed the album after his death.Talos' high...

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Album: Barry Can't Swim - Loner

Despite being Mercury nominated, Bazza’s hardly a household name. Nevertheless, his debut album When Will We Land was highly praised by those in the know. I am definitely not in the know and am more or less a stranger to electro stuff – it...

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