CDs/DVDs
CD: Sandra Kerr & John Faulkner – The Music From BagpussThursday, 22 November 2018
In 1974, a saggy old cloth cat and his rag-tag bunch of friends managed, in just 13 episodes, to influence a generation. Ask pretty much anyone who watched Bagpuss what their first experience of traditional folk music was and the answer is unlikely... Read more... |
CD: Ed Harcourt - Beyond the EndWednesday, 21 November 2018
Was anyone prepared for the fact that Ed Harcourt's new album would be fully instrumental? He's known as a songwriter – hailed for his Mercury Prize-nominated debut album, Here Be Monsters in 2001, then swapping solo work for song-writing, working... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Invention for DestructionTuesday, 20 November 2018
Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction (Vynález zkázy) was, for many years, his best-known film in the West, dubbed into English three years after its 1958 premiere as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne by an enterprising Hollywood producer. Both... Read more... |
CD: Josephine Foster - Faithful Fairy HarmonyMonday, 19 November 2018
Faithful Fairy Harmony is in the tradition of The Beatles’ White Album, Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard, a True Star and The Clash’s London Calling, all double albums because an outpouring of songs couldn’t be stemmed. Also like these, Josephine Foster’s... Read more... |
CD: Cliff Richard - Rise UpSaturday, 17 November 2018
Cliff Richard has been the butt of many jokes down the years, but he’s always looked the other way, true to himself. But he couldn’t look the other way when BBC TV conspired to air live coverage of a police raid on his home. Vindicated in court (... Read more... |
CD: Planet B - Planet BFriday, 16 November 2018
It’s fair to assume that the current state of American politics has US underground punker Justin Pearson and hip-hop producer Luke Henshaw somewhat riled. Planet B’s debut album is a 35-minute rant in the form of a relentless anti-love letter to... Read more... |
CD: Mumford & Sons - DeltaWednesday, 14 November 2018
Wow, can it really be 10 years since Mumford & Sons blazed their trail across the musical world with Sigh No More? The release of Delta, the band’s fourth album, marks the start of a 60-date world tour, which will keep them on the road – first... Read more... |
CD: Imogen Heap - The Music of Harry Potter and the Cursed ChildTuesday, 13 November 2018
London’s Palace Theatre this week celebrated the thousandth performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened there back in 2016. Like everything else JK Rowing puts her hand to, it’s been an outrageous success, taking the post-Hogwarts... Read more... |
CD: Liela Moss - My Name is Safe in Your MouthMonday, 12 November 2018
My Name is Safe in Your Mouth takes off with “Above You, Around You”, its fourth track. Up to that point, progress has been stately. Minimal piano refrains, distantly chiming guitars, heartbeat percussion, string swells and a plaintive, multi-... Read more... |
CD: Sarah Gillespie - WishbonesSunday, 11 November 2018
Whatever happened to real singer-songwriters? That is to say the kind of artist that raged against society’s ills in one song, and sung tenderly or bitterly of lost love in the next. Today’s insipid equivalent tends to be stuck in a perpetual... Read more... |
CD: J Mascis - Elastic DaysSaturday, 10 November 2018
“I don't peak early / I don't peak at all,” goes the wryly self-aware line in the opening song here, “Take me to the Movies”. Thirty-five years since he started releasing records, Mascis isn't interested in peaking, progress or much else beyond... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Hitler's HollywoodFriday, 09 November 2018
Apart from Leni Riefenstahl’s insidiously seductive celebrations of Nazism and the propaganda excesses of Veit Harlan’s Jud Süß (1940), the films that were made in Germany during the Hitler period have been air-brushed out of cinema history, almost... Read more... |
