CDs/DVDs
Guy Oddy
While Oasis have so far resisted the temptation of the big pay-off that a Gallagher family reunion would ensure, plenty of other Britpoppers have been considerably less coy about getting back together since the heady days of the 1990s. We’ve already had reunions from Blur (albeit temporarily), Suede, Dodgy and even Shed Seven. Now though, it is the turn of Louise Wener’s four-piece, Sleeper.Slipping easily back into their old sound with New Wave guitars and bitter-sweet, spoken-sung vocals, The Modern Age could easily be a reissue from Sleeper’s first time around. However, while the sound is Read more ...
joe.muggs
Everything about this mixtape oozes confidence. It crams 12 tracks plus interludes – all produced by Andre “Shy FX” Williams – into barely more than half an hour. It happily leaves “Roll the Dice”, the single which conquered club and radio and featured Lily Allen, until last. As well as roots reggae, carnival marching bands, lyrically and rhythmically brutal bashment and lashings of the drum'n'bass that Shy FX is best known for, it traverses creepy-crawling avant pop, modernist R&B and moody off-centre hip hop, yet never loses the sense of being a focused party soundtrack. And Read more ...
Mark Kidel
1957 was a busy year for a very busy director: Ingmar Bergman made two of his most famous films – The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, several TV dramas, and a number of major stage productions. All the while, he was suffering from painful stomach ulcers, juggling a number of love affairs and breaking through, after a decade of increasingly accomplished and controversial films, as one of the leading film-makers in the world.Jane Magnusson’s documentary uses this annus mirabiliis as a thread for a film that explores the entirety of the Swedish master’s life. All of Bergman’s films are in Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Every so often, an album reminds you that, done properly, the art form is more than just a collection of songs. Barely 35 minutes in length, Lucy Rose’s fourth release No Words Left is a beautifully sequenced work in a time when track listings have come to mean little; its songs, and the spaces between them, something of a late-night reverie. Rose describes the album as emerging from a particularly difficult period in her life, but rarely has a dark night of the soul ultimately sounded so uplifting.This is an album for the loneliest of sleepless nights – ironic, really, for one that opens Read more ...
Russ Coffey
If you're familiar with The Brian Jonestown Massacre, chances are it's from the 2004 Sundance-winning rockumentary, Dig!. The film took a wry look at the Californian band's intense rivalry with The Dandy Warhols. More, though, it was an extended character-study of charismatic, drug-frazzled BJM frontman Anton Newcombe – a man once described as consuming narcotics so ferociously, it was like an anteater eating ants. It was generally assumed Newcombe would soon be sucked into the vortex of his fevered mind. Instead, he got sober and stayed that way. The change is certainly remarkable Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Groove Denied’s keeper is “Ocean of Revenge”, a drifting Syd Barrett-tinged contemplation with a structural circularity and edge setting it apart from the rest of what’s credited as the first solo album from Stephen Malkmus since 2001’s eponymous set. That, though, was an album he wanted co-billed to him and his band The Jicks. His label Matador had other ideas.Plus ça change. The former Pavement man wanted Groove Denied issued in 2017 before the release of last year’s Sparkle Hard, a Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks album as such. The ten tracks out now are solo for real (despite being listed Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Birmingham’s reggae veterans UB40 are a band who have often worn their politics on their sleeves, and the title of their new album is taken from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party mantra. The parallels between the two have already been noted, of course. After a turbulent time, a split saw a new man thrust into the spotlight while divisions raged and claims were made over who had the rights to the soul of a British institution. Sound familiar? In fairness to Duncan Campbell, brother of former singer Ali, he seems to have adapted to his role rather better than the current Labour leader (fair Read more ...
Asya Draganova
A mere 12 years since their previous disc Ma Fleur came out, the Cinematic Orchestra have finally got around to releasing their fourth studio album. So naturally, there are expectations to meet and To Believe responds by demonstrating a re-energised artistic direction. The new album finds a good balance between the lightness of the Cinematic Orchestra’s sound and a coherent, well-articulated album concept. Indeed, without any pretentious claims to innovation, this new set evokes a sense of space, motion, and timelessness with contemporary and elegant orchestrations, memorable loops, and a Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The story behind this first – and final – feature from the young Chinese film-maker Hu Bo is as sad as anything in recent cinema history. Stretching to nearly four hours, An Elephant Sitting Still is a film of almost unremitting bleakness, following the overlapping paths of a group of characters and their existence – “life” hardly seems the right word for it – in a run-down city in regional China. Set over the course of one day, it is also a hugely skilled piece of filmmaking, with a script from Hu (also an acclaimed novelist) that manages the rare achievement of bringing separate strands of Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Foals have delivered a consistently top-notch series of albums (this is their fifth since Antidotes in 2008): guitar-led, high-energy, musically literate without being effete or pompous. Power pop elevated beyond the run-of-the-mill by a great deal of intelligence and taste.The latest album is the first of a pair (a kind of delayed-release double album) and once again, the band, who are no doubt at their best as a very exciting live act, have made an album rich in material that will stand the test of time, and yet feels very fresh. That frontman Yannis Philippakis should hail from the hill Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Metaprogramação is the third album from Deafkids, the chaotic mass of hair and flailing limbs that put on a fine display at last summer’s Supersonic Festival, during a recent rare visit to the UK. As with the band’s previous fare, it’s a whoozy psychedelic concoction that sits very heavily indeed. Characterised by weirded out 1970s’ Dr Who-type sound effects rubbing up alongside guitars and vocals that are manipulated and twisted beyond all recognition in a musical stew that is driven by ferocious polyrhythms that never let up, this is an album that sits in an orbit as far from the mainstream Read more ...
Owen Richards
As collaborations go, it’s a doozy. Karen O’s signature vocals over Danger Mouse’s production – it was always going to pique interest. And Lux Prima does much to meet expectations, gorgeous cinematic soundscapes that flit between haunting and defiant. At its best, its damn near mesmerising. But for those expecting a genre-defying, structure-blowing new horizon, it falls just short.Of course, those parameters are wholly unfair to judge an album, but it was hard not expect something ground-breaking after the titular lead single “Lux Prima”. Clocking in over nine minutes, a synth groove Read more ...