tue 01/04/2025

New releases on CD & DVD

DVD/Blu-ray: The Substance

Markie Robson-Scott

“I knew I wanted all the effects practical and made for real. The movie is about flesh and bones, about women’s bodies.”

Album: Erlend Apneseth - Song Over Støv

Kieron Tyler

A pizzicato violin opens Song Over Støv. Gradually, other instruments arrive: bowed violin, a fluttering flute, pattering percussion, an ominous double bass. They merge. The climax is furious, intensely rhythmic. Suddenly, it is over.

Album: Bryan Ferry and Amelia Barratt - Loose Talk

Graham Fuller

On the spoken word LP Loose Talk, Amelia Barratt reflects on her or other women’s experiences, real or imagined, over tunes drawn from Bryan Ferry’s...

Album: Will Smith - Based on a True Story

Ibi Keita

Will Smith’s new album, Based on a True Story, is a prime example of why some comebacks should remain hypothetical. After two decades away from music...

Album: Perfume Genius - Glory

Joe Muggs

I can’t stop reading and re-reading the review copy I got of a new book, out next week. Liam Inscoe-Jones’s Songs in the Key of MP3: the New...

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Album: Alison Krauss & Union Station - Arcadia

Tim Cumming

Their first album in 14 years looks hard at the past, and its role in the present

Blu-ray: Lifeforce

Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper's frenzied, far out space sex vampire epic

Album: Toria Wooff - Toria Wooff

Kieron Tyler

Assured but too measured debut album from Americana-inclined singer-songwriter

Album: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco - I Said I Love You First

Thomas H Green

An album by a pair of loved-up Hollywood celebs that is, whisper it, rather good

Album: The Horrors - Night Life

Thomas H Green

A new line-up proves no hindrance to a band bringing electro-rock zip to the darkness

Album: Billy Hart Quartet - Just

Sebastian Scotney

The drum legend's group in perfect balance

Album: Greentea Peng - Tell Dem It's Sunny

Guy Oddy

South Londoner’s smoky sophomore album is loaded with dope tunes

Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The Same

Kieron Tyler

Belated debut album from the early Creation Records mainstays

Album: Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow

Joe Muggs

Small stories, big talent from the Alabaman storyteller extraordinaire

Album: Steven Wilson - The Overview

Graham Fuller

Infectious prog concept LP ponders Earth's insignificance and what lies beyond

Album: Coheed and Cambria - The Father of Make Believe

Ellie Roberts

An impressive welcome back to the group's imaginitive universe

Blu-ray: The Barnabáš Kos Case

Graham Rickson

Witty and stylish Slovak black comedy, alarmingly prescient

Album: Reg Meuross, Fire & Dust: A Woody Guthrie Story

Liz Thomson

At once a celebration and an exploration of the timeless Dust Bowl Balladeer

Album: Lady Gaga - Mayhem

Joe Muggs

The godmother of theatre-kid pop is back! Back!! BACK!!!

Blu-ray: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Nick Hasted

Tobe Hooper's grisly, blackly comic sequel patents a surreal Texas zone all its own

Album: Spiritbox - Tsunami Sea

Tom Carr

Second album from Canadian metalcore band is a sonic assault yet graceful and beautiful

Album: The Burning Hell - Ghost Palace

Kieron Tyler

Reflective Canadians interpret an increasingly unfathomable world

Album: Anoushka Shankar - Chapter III: We Return to Light

Guy Oddy

Sitar titan blends the sounds of modern India into her travelogue triptych

Album: Jethro Tull - Curious Ruminant

Graham Fuller

Tull burst out again with a set of bristling folk-prog anthems

Album: Architects - The Sky, The Earth & All Between

Tom Carr

The Brighton metallers condense their 20-year career into an impactful concoction

Album: Abel Selaocoe - Hymns of Bantu

Mark Kidel

A celebration of the ancestors, African and European

Album: Doves - Constellations for the Lonely

Joe Muggs

Prog-rock existential wranglings from the grizzled Mancunians

Album: bdrmm - Microtonic

Kieron Tyler

Post-shoegazing quartet’s third album evokes the communal musical experience

Blu-ray: Drugstore Cowboy

John Carvill

Gus Van Sant's non-judgmental indie classic about a gang of narcotics addicts

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