CDs/DVDs
joe.muggs
Ask someone in the early 2000s to predict which cities were going to be influential in electronic music in coming years, and it’s unlikely many would have picked Kampala, Uganda. But here we are. Across African countries, vernacular electronic forms and versions of DJ culture have been bubbling for a good while, but in Uganda, catalysed by two immigrants – Greek-Armenian Arlen Dilsizian and Belgian Derek Debru, founders of the Boutiq Electroniq club and Nyege Nyege festival and label – misfits from these various scenes, and indeed from none, have gathered, influencing one another and any Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Jean-Luc Godard’s film-making career, a restless quest for a cinema that questions the medium as well as its place in the social and political context, is both astonishingly prolific and unique. Rarely drawing directly on autobiographical themes, sometimes refusing to be credited as the sole director, he nevertheless remains the most personally driven of all the stars of the French New Wave. His 1966 Masculin Féminin is a kind of hologram of the thematic obsessions and stylistic tropes that characterise many of his best-known films.Although very loosely inspired by two Maupassant short Read more ...
Asya Draganova
The title of Cavalcade, or a “dramatic procession”, could not describe better the contents of black midi’s new release. This cavalcade of an album moves between fast and noisy tracks like the singles “John L” and “Chondromalacia Patella” to the soulful “Marlene Dietrich”, the slowly building psychedelic repetition in “Diamond Stuff”, and the nearly 10-minute closing opus “Ascending Forth”. In fact, black midi’s record pulls together a collage of musical, literary and historic references that may initially appear somewhat random – a place where acoustic and electric guitars, a violin, a jazzy Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Mdou Moctar is often dubbed as the “Hendrix of the desert”. He is not the first West African musician to be linked with African-American guitar stars. Just as you can hear echoes of John Lee Hooker in Ali Farka Toure, and Taj Mahal could collaborate seamlessly with Toumani Diabate, the young musicians emerging brutally into a world of international mining robbery and fundamentalist terror, naturally find inspiration in music from over the ocean. As with so much in music, the influences flow both way, or, from another point of view, there is an epigenetic kinship resounding through shared DNA. Read more ...
Russ Coffey
If there's one songwriting technique Twenty One Pilots' Tyler Joseph has perfected over the years, it's the art of combining upbeat melodies with angst-ridden lyrics for maximum emotional impact. It’s evident throughout his band's work (and never more so than on 2015's multi-platinum Blurryface); Scaled and Icy simply takes the formula and pushes the "upbeat" to the limit. In a recent interview, Joseph describes his latest tunes as "shiny and colourful" with lyrics that "address some pretty heavy things". Rather than being worn down by life's setbacks, though, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Gary Numan says that his new album “looks at climate change from the planet’s point of view… it feels betrayed, hurt and ravaged… it is now fighting back.” Intruder is, then, a bleak, apocalyptic concept album. Given his last album explored similar terrain and that gothic dystopian wordplay has been central to his work for a decade, this isn’t new territory. Then again, his Eighties fans shouldn’t quibble. His chart-topping classics are riddled with po-faced Ballardian sci-fi so, arguably, it’s simply what Numan does.Where Intruder is different is the sound. Numan’s recent work often placed Read more ...
joe.muggs
Lambchop leader Kurt Wagner has suggested that the title of this album is semi literal: that he wanted to write “something akin” to classic, Great American Songbook show tunes, rather than his usual country-tinged style. If so, it’s for a rather gloomy sort of a show. At the beginning, it does suggest you’re going to get some high drama: the rather Leonard Cohen-ish “A Chef’s Kiss” would certainly fit in a middle of a musical in the “how did I get here, where will I go?” bit where the protagonist is alone in the spotlight on a blank stage. But where you might expect such a number to pick up Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Chris Petit's Radio On, his 1979 debut as writer-director, should be regarded as the first British psychogeography film. Though its protagonist, Robert B (David Beames), a DJ for the United Biscuits Network, drives from London to Bristol in his two-tone Rover to investigate why his brother has killed himself, his journey extends beyond his half-hearted sleuthing and carries him into as many liminal spaces in his psyche as the real ones in which he lingers during his journey. Unfolding over a few wintry days centred on Saturday, 10 March 1979, Radio On is often painted as bleak, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“A complete fully translated and transcribed Obsidian Rock Audio Anthology chronicling the ancient spiritual technologies and exploits of prehistoric, post-revolutionary afro bionics and sacred texts from The Great Book On Arcanum by Supernal 5th Dimension Bound 3rd Dynasty young Kushites from Azania.”So runs the text on the back of the sleeve of the second album from Johannesburg’s Blk Jks, the belated follow-up to their 2009 debut After Humans. Helping them build from this inscrutable manifesto are guests including guitarists Vieux Farka Touré and Madala Kunene, vocalist Ali Magassa Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Martin Ritt’s 1965 classy screen adaptation of John Le Carré’s bestseller The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is an antidote to the full-colour hi-jinx of the Bond franchise that ruled over the spy movie genre in the 1960s. By the time Paul Dehn, an ex-spook himself, and the screenwriter of Goldfinger (1964), took over as the main scriptwriter for the film, the public was ready for something a good deal less glamorous, and a hero who was a serial failure rather than a seductive superman.This is perhaps one of Richard Burton’s greatest moments in film – as the desperate and melancholy agent Alec Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
With all eyes on her in 2018, Jorja Smith’s debut was surprisingly level-headed and mature, filled with the introspection and storytelling of someone twice her age. This new, slender eight-track project feels like a stepping stone in her career rather than a follow up to her acclaimed debut. That being said, it’s a fine collection of songs which finds Jorja in a more world-weary and sombre head space than ever before.The second single “Gone” is an example of Jorja’s evolving storytelling. Backdropped by an elegant beat by Rahki, it’s a song about loss which makes use of narrative positions in Read more ...
Nick Hasted
“The Changingman” came to sound a little rich in the years after it introduced Stanley Road, as Weller settled into a style which grew atrophied enough to define “Dadrock”. The alias fits these days, though, as the man who pulled the plug on The Jam with a brace of Surrey soul anthems then blew up The Style Council with a house album again exemplifies the Mod aesthetic. Productively sober since 2010, he’s looking sharp in every sense, alert and precise, and turning his Black Barn studio into a pop artisan’s workshop, producing crafted English pop almost round the clock.Fat Pop (Volume 1) is Read more ...