CDs/DVDs
Jasper Rees
Berberian Sound Studio has the quirky flavour of an academic treatise on shlock horror with lively slide illustrations. Peter Strickland’s claustrophobic homage to the Italian giallo – in which diabolical dismemberings are perpetrated upon female innocents - would seem an odd leap from Katalin Varga, his brooding revenge drama set in rural Romania. But both films bring an outsider’s all but ethnographic eye to the rituals of Euro-barbarity. The game changer is that Berberian Sound Studio is also funny.A meek British sound engineer called, improbably, Gilderoy is hired by an Italian film Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Leonard Cohen has been the king of melancholy ever since he set out on his slow journey through the dark side. Befriending the black dog means being aware of the finite nature of life at every moment. It’s also about relishing slowness. As he enjoys mature old age, Cohen now inhabits, with almost joyful resignation, the blue mood he has made his own – to the irritation of those who have dismissed him as a purveyor of self-indulgent bedsit blues.He was always old before his age: there is, in many ways, nothing new about Cohen’s Old Ideas, a collection of profoundly moving songs of love and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Begins – The Flying Dutchman MastersKieron TylerThis fine box set has a cuckoo in its nest which has to be dealt with instantly. Like Eric Clapton’s 1976 declaration of support for Enoch Powell, Scott-Heron’s “The Subject Was Faggots” is a blot that’s hard to erase from a career otherwise marked by inclusivity. “Giggling and grinning and prancing and shit… faggots who were balling because they couldn't get their balls inside the faggot hall,” is how it goes, with Scott-Heron plumping for “he, she or it” as his favoured signifier. Yeah, times were different, the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Thanks first to a David Holmes cover version then to some recent reissues of his records, I knew the approximate story of Detroit singer-songwriter Sixto Rodriguez. Roughly speaking: intelligent but borderline down-and-out Detroit musician is discovered, makes two amazing albums in the early 1970s, fails to sell anything, and turns his back on the industry to find steady work and raise a family.Meanwhile his records become the centre of a cult among white liberals in South Africa and symbol of the struggle against Apartheid. South Africans assume he's dead, and thanks to some industry Read more ...
graeme.thomson
One would hope that a man whose CV includes “teacher of wilderness survival” and burlesque dancer might be well equipped to bring a better than average sense of depth and drama to a set of folk songs handed down through generations via the oral tradition. Even so, Sam Lee's achievements on Ground of Its Own surpassed all expectations.I first heard of Lee last year courtesy of a piece on theartsdesk which followed his attempt to fuse English folk music with the indigenous sounds of Sudan. His tendency to look for interesting cultural connections is equally evident on his Mercury Prize- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The real test of whether an album stands apart from everything else is not whether it’s well crafted, moves a genre forward, is thrillingly original or is searingly confessional. The list could go on. The measure is whether it invites revisiting. Repeatedly. There’ve been many magnificent releases this year, but The Echo Show by Paris duo Yeti Lane is the one which has to be heard more than any other - again, again and again. This seductive swoon of an album has a rare beauty transcending the styles it’s rooted in.The Echo Show, Yeti Lane’s second album and first as a duo, nods towards Read more ...
Joe Muggs
End of year lists are, of course, wildly arbitrary – based on what raddled writers can scrape from their memory-barrels come deadline day, with half an eye on what we think our colleagues are going to pick so our choices will end up in aggregated lists too.I could easily find a way to argue that the rarefied ambience of Santiago Latorre was my record of the year, or sing the praises of Message To Bears's chamber music all day long. I could honestly say that I'd been playing the Jessie Ware and Norah Jones albums on repeat, or loving the off-centre electronic squonk of Mouse On Mars, just to Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
First off, if you want to read a proper review of Two Fingers’ album just head here where I reviewed it a few months back. Instead, starting today and for the rest of the year, the musical side of Disc of the Day will be devoting itself more subjectively to theartsdesk's new music writers’ favourite albums of 2012.My contenders range from Orbital’s startlingly vital post-sabbatical return (Wonky) to Dexys' superb concept album about life, love and relationships (One Day I’m Going To Soar), from the very different, fascinating femme-pop of Santigold (Master of My Make Believe) and Sinead O’ Read more ...
howard.male
I suspect that this cruel, clever sitcom is more loved by men than women, because what woman really wants to delve this deeply into the murky pool of the unreconstructed male psyche? But after a decade of Jeremy (Robert Webb) and Mark (David Mitchell) fucking up their lives and fucking off their girlfriends there’s a pall of foreboding lingering over proceedings in Series 8 that suggests this can’t go on forever. Or can it? Every show that focuses on a particular period of our lives – from the teenagers of The Inbetweeners to the 20-somethings of Men Behaving Badly - has had to free its Read more ...
graham.rickson
Does this disc succeed in doing what it sets out to do? Yes, it does, which makes my minor carpings irrelevant. It’s already selling in industrial quantities. But, to quote a review of another Christmas album on this site, “an album full of tunes you’ve been hearing all your life needs to be adept at reinvention”, and too many of the traditional numbers featured here follow the same template – gloopy, synthetic sounding production values and glacial tempi. Experience has convinced me that carols can be most emotionally potent when they’re sung by untrained, youthful voices. We’ve all welled Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The best Christmas songs are a bit like the best decorations: more glittery than tasteful. Merry Christmas Baby's tracks may have a jazzy sheen but deep down they fit that bill. Its cover photo – Rod dressed in a white pimp-suit in front of a snowy bauble-laden tree - says all you need to know about what sort of crooning he's been up to here.This is the kind of music you might expect to hear coming out of the speakers in an upmarket department store. That's no criticism. Who wouldn't enjoy a well-executed mix of warm and fuzzy easy-listening seasonal standards and carols? Vocally there’s the Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Prodigy: The Fat of the Land 15th Anniversary Expanded EditionThomas H GreenAlmost a decade after acid house changed the landscape of British music, it seemed rave culture was finally about to take over pop. The Chemical Brothers hit the top of the charts, assisted by Noel Gallagher, in Autumn 1996 with “Setting Sun”, Goldie led a wave of drum & bass eagerly signed by major labels, 12” singles were selling by the ton and, leading the charge, The Prodigy topped the single’s and album’s charts in mid-1997 on both sides of the Atlantic with “Firestarter” and its parent album The Fat of Read more ...