CDs/DVDs
CD: Huntsville – For Flowers, Cars and Merry WarsSunday, 05 June 2011
Music from Norway can have moods and textures that aren’t found elsewhere. Templates are thrown away and boundaries between genres are non-existent, bringing a thrilling unpredictability. Huntsville, a three-piece with roots in improv music, jazz... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Mahler, Widmann, BerioFriday, 03 June 2011
This week we’ve some pioneering, trailblazing Mahler with a dramatic twist, courtesy of a conductor who mentored Leonard Bernstein. Elsewhere, there are some disconcerting, dark sounds from a youthful German composer, and a supremely entertaining... Read more... |
CD: Battles - Gloss DropFriday, 03 June 2011
They started as a band of hyper-accomplished musicians aiming to play fiddly electronica in a guitar-band format and thereby creating a rather witty new kind of progressive rock. Now, minus key member Tyondai Braxton but plus a few leftfield star... Read more... |
CD: JuJu - In TranceThursday, 02 June 2011
Over the past five years, Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara have made two albums and an EP together, but it’s only now that they’ve got round to doing what most bands can’t wait to do, which is give themselves a groovy band name. Even though I’m a poo-... Read more... |
CD: Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo – Songs of Mirth and MelancholyThursday, 02 June 2011
It may have taken just three days to record, but this new duo recording from sax player Branford Marsalis and pianist Joey Calderazzo has 13 years of music-making behind it, dating back to when Calderazzo replaced the late, great Kenny Kirkland in... Read more... |
CD: Arctic Monkeys - Suck It and SeeTuesday, 31 May 2011
"I poured my aching heart into a pop song/ I couldn't get the hang of poetry": a line from the title track of the Arctic Monkeys' fourth studio offering, Suck It and See, pretty much sums things up really. The new album is a poppy selection of... Read more... |
DVD: Jan Švankmajer's AliceTuesday, 31 May 2011
This remarkable 1988 adaptation of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland opens with Alice addressing the audience. “This is a story for children,” she tells us, before adding a teasing note: “Perhaps.” And that “perhaps” is worth noting, for... Read more... |
CD: Eddie Vedder - Ukulele SongsSunday, 29 May 2011
The story goes that Eddie Vedder first picked up a ukulele in Hawaii in the mid-Nineties, since when the instrument has become his constant travelling companion and a handy songwriting tool. A whole album's worth of songs written on the funny little... Read more... |
CD: Mama Rosin together with Hipbone Slim & the Knee Tremblers - Louisiana SunSaturday, 28 May 2011
What do you get when you cross a Swiss Cajun punk band with a London garage rockabilly band? Well, if it’s not a contrived record company manoeuvre, but instead came about because the two bands just happened to bump into each other at a festival and... Read more... |
CD: Philly ReGrooved 2: Tom Moulton Remixes - The Master ReturnsSaturday, 28 May 2011
This series of albums is the sound of one of the most epochally important producers in soul and dance music history reworking his magic. The closest analogy I can think of that non-dance music fans would appreciate is The Beatles' Love album in... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Boyle, Martin, RachmaninovFriday, 27 May 2011
This Saturday we’ve a new recording of a famous Russian symphony played by an Italian orchestra under their London-based principal conductor. There’s a rare Shakespearean opera written in the 1950s by a Swiss master using a German text. And a... Read more... |
DVD: Taxi Zum KloThursday, 26 May 2011
Frank is a primary school teacher in Berlin. His pupils love him as he treats them as individuals rather than little pegs for fitting into holes. What they don’t know - and what Frank doesn’t advertise - is that he is gay. Their dictation homework... Read more... |
