CDs/DVDs
CD: Giorgio Moroder - Déjà vuFriday, 12 June 2015
Giorgio Moroder has long been adopted by the cognoscenti. He’s the studio wizard who gave us key Seventies disco hits, iconic in the development of electronic music and club culture. The culmination of this archiving tendency was the tribute song on... Read more... |
CD: Maria Schneider Orchestra - The Thompson FieldsThursday, 11 June 2015
With slowly chiming piano chords, an impossibly high sustained note on the accordion, and a melody of the utmost loveliness on alto clarinet, the achingly beautiful “Walking by Flashpoint”, the opening track of The Thompson Fields,... Read more... |
CD: José Padilla - So Many ColoursWednesday, 10 June 2015
When International Feel label boss Mark Barrott moved from Uruguay to Ibiza, it was surely only a matter of time before he hooked up with Café Del Mar’s legendary sunset soundtracker José Padilla – inevitable even. The choice of producers to... Read more... |
DVD: The Dancing Years, The RatTuesday, 09 June 2015
The Dancing Years and The Rat are seemingly very different films. The Dancing Years (***, 1950) is a British musical which defines frou-frou. With a springing-off point in the dizzy world of the waltz-obsessed Vienna of 1910, its lingering shots of... Read more... |
CD: Melody Gardot – Currency of ManMonday, 08 June 2015
No one can accuse Gardot of stinting on the shoe-leather. For her previous two albums she has trotted the globe, drawing together samba, tango, bossa nova and calypso into a rhythmical pot pourri. This time, for the fourth album in seven years,... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The MothmenSunday, 07 June 2015
The Mothmen: Pay Attention!On their 20-minute “Mothman”, Manchester’s The Mothmen took a trip fusing bendy Captain Beefheart-style guitar, dub, insistent percussion and a Krautrock sensibility. The side-long track closed their album Pay Attention!,... Read more... |
CD: FFS - FFSSunday, 07 June 2015
Being arty, in pop, is generally considered a good thing. When it comes to being clever, though, things are less clear. Three-minute songs are, after all, mainly about feelings: about how much you’ve lived rather than how much you've read. Which... Read more... |
CD: Muse - DronesSaturday, 06 June 2015
Almost a decade ago, I went to a disappointing festival in Holland. Driven to distraction by the crowd – a sixth-form disco stuck between the third and fourth circles of Dante's inferno – I, on the advice of a friend, went to see Muse. Their... Read more... |
DVD: Far From the Madding CrowdFriday, 05 June 2015
Despite its 19th-century setting, John Schlesinger’s film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd – released to cinemas in 1968 – is a very Sixties film. Amongst the themes of the novel which resonated then are class differences,... Read more... |
CD: Leftfield - Alternative Light SourceThursday, 04 June 2015
The 1990s were a great time for electronic dreamers. Before social networks and cat videos and tedium there was a sense of romance about “cyberspace”. This “virtual universe” seemed to have the potential to be cosmic, narcotic and exciting. There... Read more... |
CD: Slaves - Are You Satisfied?Tuesday, 02 June 2015
As Britain stares down the barrel of another five years of austerity, it’s disappointing that so few of the country’s musicians have anything to say about the very bad times that are heading our way. Slaves, however, have very definitely got... Read more... |
DVD: WhiplashTuesday, 02 June 2015
Any parent, or anyone who's ever stood in front of a class needs to watch Whiplash. In a film brimming over with ideas, the recurring question is whether or not your pupils will ever achieve greatness if you overpraise them. As JK Simmons's Terence... Read more... |
