CDs/DVDs
Nick Hasted
When The Secret in Their Eyes beat the more fancied A Prophet and The White Ribbon to last year's Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film, there was mild consternation. But Argentine Juan José Campanella’s film works both as a mystery with jigsaw pieces spread across a quarter-century, and an equally fragmented, frustrated romance.Retired legal investigator Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) visits his old boss Irene Hastings (Soledad Villamil) to discuss the novel he’s struggling to write based on their shared experiences around a savage murder case 25 years earlier, in 1974. Love and justice Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Dateline July 14th, 2357, New Oxford Excavation, UK Sector 71. Uncovered a remarkable haul of artefacts from the early 21st century. Most pristine among these is a sonic data disc, theoretically a devotional item related to the contemporaneous female fertility symbol known as Rihanna. The disc was discovered intact in a transparent plastic case accompanied by a 120 x 120mm stapled booklet. It appears the disc’s primary purpose was related to sexual arousal. Photographic images within the booklet, both black-and-white and colour, offer up Rihanna in a multiplicity of sexual availability – Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Chart music has always been largely about sex, but for me The Saturdays marked a tipping point in pop's pornification when they covered Depeche Mode's “Just Can't Get Enough” in 2009 and turned an innocent electro classic into a gushing paean to insatiable lust. The video has notched up over five million hits, presumably more to do with the strumpets in suspenders than a frankly unexpected cameo from Muffin the Mule.Still, my Meldrewish moans have hardly held them back and the Anglo-Irish quintet’s new album finds them getting a little bit experimental. Calm down, don't expect them to be Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Kate Bush has always steered a dangerous course between pure genius and mannerist excess. Her latest album, a hymn to snow and the icy element’s soft and crystalline associations, is no different. There are moments when she teeters on the edge of self-parody and cliché and others when she makes music that dazzles as much as it moves. She is a unique British artist, existing in a creative bubble well outside the mainstream yet never marginal or beyond the reach of popular taste.She is uniquely British, too, or more exactly English, resonating with a strain of our island’s culture that Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Like a fist to the face of the traditionally insipid, female-fronted rom-com, Bridesmaids marks a departure from the oft-derided norm, not by being brassy or crude (OK, there might be a sizeable helping of the latter) but because of its authentic humour, credible character dynamics and the foregrounding of female friendships over romance. It is also wildly funny.Kristen Wiig (who co-wrote the film with Annie Mumolo, who appears as “Nervous Woman on Plane”) is Annie, a thirtysomething singleton asked by her childhood chum Lillian (Maya Rudolph) to be her maid of honour. Despite her outstanding Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
You’ve got to love the “I Can Only Give You Everything” riff. Admiral Black do and base their “Got Love if You Want It” around an inverted version on their debut album. Cheese-wire fuzz guitar pulses, Bo Diddley drums bash and a wheezy organ, well, wheezes. From the borrowed title alone, it’s obvious where Admiral Back are coming from: classic Sixties-leaning rock. It's not all scuzz and psych though in the house of Black. “Madman’s Blues” drifts by in a haze and “Crystallised” begs for lighters in the air and a swaying audience.Not to be confused with the Chicago rock/metal outfit Admiral of Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Scratch Massive sound from their name as if they should be a very dodgy hip-hop outfit. They are not. Instead, French duo Maud Geffray and Sebastien Chenaut are a music-based art unit who have worked on sonic projects with Karl Lagerfeld, soundtracked films for Zoe Cassavettes and were once produced by German techno DJ-producer Moritz von Oswald. Their first album, back in 2003, dabbled in hefty rock dynamics but somewhere along the way – possibly that Moritz von Oswald connection - they were persuaded of the power of synthesisers.Their third album is a moody beast that wishes it were Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“I tell myself that I have created the modern woman's wardrobe,” declares Yves Saint Laurent during the press conference that opens L’amour fou. Hubris, but the trouser suits, safari jackets and Mondrian dresses he created did – in other manufacturers' hands - become day-to-day wear. The gathering was called in 2002 so the designer could announce his retirement. Despite his death in 2008, the YSL brand lives on. The hagiographic L’amour fou won’t undermine that.Like the Simon and Garfunkel documentary reviewed last week on theartsdesk, L’amour fou is intimately entangled with parties linked Read more ...
Joe Muggs
If there's one electronic sub-genre that is not worth approaching blind it's “tech-house”. Since the late Nineties, it has tended to be the most functional and generic of club soundtracks, a steady, decadent plod, all clean lines and predictable shifts: nothing to frighten the horses or interrupt the steady progress of weekend hedonism. In short, boring. However, there are practitioners who have raised its slowly evolving repetitions to an art form that has life outside the club: the Kompakt label, Chilean maverick Ricardo Villalobos, and Brightonian in Berlin Matt “Radio Slave” Edwards.This Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s pronounced doh, like Homer Simpson’s favourite exclamation. Although The dø aren’t yellow cartoon characters, they edge towards the caricature with songs like “Gonna be Sick!” and “Smash Them All (Night Visitors)”. Their art pop has a slight taste of The Sugarcubes and Olivia Merilahti’s vocals can be a bit too cutesy-pie. But Both Ways Open Jaws is great.Hot property in France, the duo got together in 2005 and might as well be Gallo-grown. Dan Levy is French and Merilahti is Finnish. The D and O come from their names. They initially wrote for film soundtracks and ballet. Both Ways Open Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I remain bemused when bands such as U2 or Coldplay announce they are “going experimental” and are greeted as if they might be. The correct response is: “No, you’re not, you’re as alternative as avocado in a prawn cocktail rather than lettuce.” So here we have U2 and Coldplay’s wet younger sibling supposedly stepping into the wild unknown for their sixth album. In reality this means having a tentative crack at sounding like an early Simple Minds album, albeit firmly filtered through the epic sonic template laid down by those aforementioned older brothers.Snow Patrol’s early history is a story Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Witchfinder General, along with The Wicker Man, has latterly been claimed as a pinnacle of a peculiarly British style of film. “Weird Britain” is a default description. It’ll do fine for these unsettling, intense horror films which draw from the British landscape and its history. This sparkling restoration of Witchfinder General can only enhance its status.Set during the English Civil War, 1968’s Witchfinder General centres on freelance witch detector Matthew Hopkins. Naturally, he’s corrupt. The Wicker Man featured Christopher Lee and Witchfinder General features Vincent Price as Hopkins. Read more ...