1990s
LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - incandescent swansongs by Mahler and TippettMonday, 23 April 2018
Why would any conductor resist Mahler's last great symphonic adventure? By which I mean the vast finale of his Tenth Symphony, realised in full by Deryck Cooke, and not the first-movement Adagio, fully scored (unlike most of the rest) by the... Read more... |
10 Questions for Musician Jeremy Cunningham of The LevellersThursday, 12 April 2018
Jeremy Cunningham (b.1965) is bass player and a founding member of The Levellers, as well as being a visual artist in his own right. During the 1990s The Levellers, and most especially their 1991 album Levelling the Land, became a phenomenon. The... Read more... |
My Golden Days review - a mesmerising tale of heartbreakWednesday, 14 March 2018
Arnaud Despelchin’s My Golden Days is a strange beast; it is both a sequel and prequel to the gloriously titled 1996 film My Sex Life…or How I Got into an Argument. Yet it tells its own story in the life of Paul Dédalus (Mathieu... Read more... |
Lisa Halliday: Asymmetry review - unconventional and brilliantSunday, 04 March 2018
Lisa Halliday’s striking debut novel consists of three parts. The first follows the blooming relationship between Alice and Ezra (respectively an Assistant Editor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer) in New York; the middle section comprises a... Read more... |
I, Tonya review - Margot Robbie shines in over-complicated oddityThursday, 22 February 2018
Tonya Harding and the kneecapping of Nancy Kerrigan – what a story it was, back in 1994. Even if you knew nothing about figure skating, you followed the tale of Tonya, the red-neck, white-trash Olympic hopeful from Oregon, her more elegant rival... Read more... |
Explore Ensemble, EXAUDI, St John's Smith Square review - making sense of NonoTuesday, 20 February 2018
This was an evening of silence and shadow, a chill, moonlit meditation, where each sound demanded forensic attention. Enter the world of Luigi Nono and his admirers. As his compatriot Sciarrino wrote of Lo Spazio Inverso, which opened the... Read more... |
Derry Girls, Channel 4 review – bring on series two!Friday, 09 February 2018
When first announced, Derry Girls seemed a strange prospect. Derry during The Troubles wasn’t an obvious choice for a sitcom; neither was writer Lisa McGee, whose only previous comedy outing London Irish was slammed for negative... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Butterfly ChildSunday, 14 January 2018
The critic Simon Reynolds characterised Butterfly Child’s debut album Onomatopoeia as the sound of “vitrified everglades in J.G. Ballard’s The Illuminated Man, where some kind of entropy has slowed down time, so that living creatures are literally... Read more... |
Liam Gallagher, Brighton Centre review - a rip-roaring sing-alongSaturday, 16 December 2017
Liam Gallagher is a great rock star. However, he often comes across as not a likeable person. He’s called himself “a cunt” on more than one occasion. But he bleeds inarticulate insouciance and arrogant rage. He doesn’t raise even half a smile... Read more... |
CD: Marilyn Manson - Heaven Upside DownThursday, 05 October 2017
Marilyn Manson, the man and the band, have maintained impressive global success for over two decades. Their albums – this is the band’s 10th - continue to shift by the bucket-load, and they can still sell out a worldwide stadium tour. Partly, their... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Life Is SweetFriday, 29 September 2017
Sweet isn’t the right word; in Mike Leigh’s 1990 film, life is unfair, frustrating and confusing by turns. Though, despite the darkness, Life Is Sweet exudes positivity and remains one of Leigh’s funniest, most quotable features.Many of the best... Read more... |
Symphonic Dances, Royal Ballet review - a truly interesting creationFriday, 19 May 2017
Liam Scarlett must be worked off his feet. Just at the Royal Ballet, he made a full-length work, Frankenstein, last year and is currently working on a new Swan Lake; and now last night he has premiered a new abstract work, Symphonic Dances at the... Read more... |
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