CDs/DVDs
Tom Birchenough
Boris Barnet may not be as well known in film circles as his contemporaries Sergei Eisenstein or Alexander Dovzhenko, but his role in the first decade of Soviet cinema was no less important. What he lacks in the more pronounced experimentation of those two, he more than makes up in his depictions of the fabric of everyday life itself. His Outskirts of 1933 was one of the very first Soviet talkies, and followed on from Barnet's highly successful silent comedies. Its subject, however, was darker - this is the story how the beginning of World War I affects life in a small Russian Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It’s nigh on impossible to separate One Direction’s music from their horrid, grinny, showbiz persona or their gigantic success representing Palpatine Cowell’s Syco empire. This is especially the case if you’re a 45 year old music journalist rather than a 13 year old girl whose hormonal development has exploded through staring at posters of smouldering Zayn Malik (the sultry one!). One Direction are no more aimed at me – and quite possibly you if you’re over 16 - than is a day spent watching CBBC.That said, there are obvious benchmark musical comparisons to be made, notably with their boy band Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s been a bumper year for fans of Public Image Ltd. John Lydon took his new version of the band out on the road and issued the This is PiL album. His former PiL colleagues Jah Wobble and Keith Levene reworked the landmark 1979 PiL album Metal Box live, as Metal Box in Dub. Now, the duo have re-cemented their relationship with Yin & Yang, their first new work together since co-writing Gary Clail’s “Beef (How Low Can You Go?)” in 1990.The motives for these reunions and restatements of ownership are rendered moot by the forceful, and sometimes perplexing, Yin & Yang, an album which Read more ...
theartsdesk
Bill Withers: The Complete Sussex and Columbia AlbumsKieron TylerThis box set is several cuts above the usual major-label, no-frills cheapo collection gathering together a selection of an artist’s albums. Produced with evident care, it’s a superb tribute to a distinctive soul great. The clam-shell box contains Withers’ nine albums, originally issued between 1971 and 1985. Each disc comes in a card reproduction of the original album sleeve, even including a facsimile of the fold-out triptych cover to 1972’s Still Bill. Liner notes, annotation and a brief, newly written introduction from Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Brian Eno’s latest is the musical equivalent of slow food: something to savour in a state of quietude and away from the stresses of accelerated time. The ambient genre of which he was a pioneer has, in other hands, drifted into a kind of quality Muzak, background music to soothe the nerves of restless devotees of speed. With a subtle palette of soft-edged keyboard and string sounds, laden with reverb, Eno manages to stop time, avoiding the inevitably predictable tropes of narrative development, and gently drawing the listener into the presence of the here and now.Brian Eno avoids the cosy Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Possessed by the spirit of his dead mother, a young man is driven to murder women who excite him sexually. Sound familiar? Director Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo) acknowledges his debt to Hitchcock by placing the mother in a rocking chair; there’s even a shower scene, yet Santa Sangre is far from being a remake of Psycho. First released in 1989, this ravishing visual feast is far weirder and more wonderful than that.Fenix (Jodorowsky’s handsome son Axel) is confined to a mental hospital. He thinks he’s a bird and, perched naked on a tree trunk, screeches mournfully. Then, in flashback, we Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Director David Cronenberg is his own enemy. His unforgettable remake of The Fly, Videodrome and many others, raised the bar so high that it is virtually impossible for him to satisfy his fans. With Cosmopolis, he comes very close.Robert Pattinson – more than a just telegenic face but an actor who will someday outlive Twilight – is Eric Paker, a handsome wealth-maker who decides to take his live-in limo to get a haircut, crosstown to his father’s old time barber – forget that there’s a meltdown riot outside. Like his performance in Bel Ami, Pattinson is perfectly cast as the ubermensch who has Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It's sad, isn't it, that we still live in a world where the more something sounds like a great party, the less “serious” it is considered? Think about how much deep meaning is attached by how many to, say, the portentous mitherings of Thom Yorke, then try to imagine that degree of beard-rubbing analysis being given over to this non-stop blast of joyous grooves that have rocked festival stages, dance clubs and hip hop shows over the summer. Not gonna happen, is it?It's a shame, because there is so much depth in those grooves. Their rowdy, complex sonorities come out of the unbroken living Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Crystal Castles are a perverse and, consequently, exciting outfit. The Canadian duo of Ethan Kath and Alice Glass, producer and singer, front it out to their public in the manner of venom-fuelled nihilist industrial punks. At their concerts their music becomes a squall of noisy attack, the band encouraging riotous behaviour and Glass mutating into a snarling dervish. As interviewees they are the height of bored rudeness, especially Glass. It’s as if Crystal Castles wish they were Skinny Puppy or Ministry or someone truly gnarly, yet their lovely, doomy albums are in a whole different league Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Before approaching any Céline Dion album, a number of obstacles have to be navigated: the anticipation that over-singing is on the horizon, or the knowledge of her Trilby-like relationship to Svengali René Angélil. Most of all though, it’s the fact that she’s so far off the cool scale she might as well be from the Planet Naff rather than Québec. And the album’s slightly cheesy chick lit-style graphics don’t help. But life is strewn with moments which confound. Sans Attendre, her first French-language album for five years, isn’t going to stop the world turning. But it is good.In general, Sans Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Blue Nile: A Walk Across The Rooftops, HatsGraeme ThomsonThe Blue Nile occupy a unique spot in the musical landscape. Formed in 1980 by Glasgow University graduates Paul Buchanan, Paul Joseph Moore and Robert Bell, four albums in 30 years suggests a certain neurotic creative sensibility which resulted in a pretty slim legacy but served the music well.From their first single – 1981’s “I Love This Life”, included on these expanded reissues – to their last album High, in 2004, a dedicated and deliberate artistic ethos has driven the music. Aesthetically, there is something immensely pleasing Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A certain type of pop star takes time to lose their baggage. Once upon a time it was hard to enjoy The Monkees’ "Daydream Believer" or The Osmonds’ "Crazy Horses" because the bands were mired neck deep in record company shittiness and (as they didn’t call it then) corporate brand marketing. Thus it was with Robbie Williams a generation later. Some will never get over the fact he was “the cheeky one” from Take That, a crappy boy band who eventually came good with the critics. Nevertheless, Williams is likeable, he has showbiz genes tempered with unpredictability and a fascinating, unlikely Read more ...