CDs/DVDs
Mark Kidel
Force of Evil is much more than a stunning film noir classic: it’s first and foremost a film about money and power and their tragic power of attraction. Set in the world of the numbers racket in New York, where the big combinations, created by gangsters who've barely gone legit, are pitted against the smaller "banks", or players. This Hobbesian struggle feeds off the lesser but still significant desire of the betting man on the street, driven by hopeless dreams and always close to the breadline.The story, based on a novel by Ira Wolfert, and adapted by Polonsky himself for his first film as a Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
How great is Uniform Distortion? As great as Greg Sage’s Straight Ahead or Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Ragged Glory or Dungen’s Ta det lugnt or Alex Chilton’s Like Flies On Sherbert. That’s how great Uniform Distortion is.Uniform Distortion is the fourth solo by Jim James, mainstay of My Morning Jacket and in-demand producer and collaborator. He’s helmed albums by Basia Bulat and Dean Wareham and, most recently, contributed to Laura Veirs’ The Lookout. His last solo album, Tribute To 2, was a covers set where he tackled songs by such unlikely bedfellows as Al Bowlly, Dylan and ELP. Tribute Read more ...
Owen Richards
It took Soulwax 12 years to release 2017’s From Deewee, a triumphant one take clash of live drums and electronic wizardry. It’s taken less than 12 months for their follow-up; at their current rate, we can expect another release sometime next weekend. As described in an opening voice-over, this is an “essential mix” equivalent to a mixtape, originally created for a BBC Radio 1 session. However, instead of putting together their favourite songs, the band decided to write and record original material over a two-week period – but is this enough time to create a worthy successor?The songs are Read more ...
Guy Oddy
For their 15th studio album, The Orb have decided to sidestep the more techno-influenced sounds of their two previous albums Moonbuilding 2703AD and COW / Chill Out World! and reacquaint themselves with the vibe of their genre-creating debut album, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. By bringing back into the fold the likes of Youth, Roger Eno and the mighty Jah Wobble, Alex Patterson and Thomas Fehlmann have crafted a blissed-out groove that doesn’t stall once. Dubby bass, sparse piano, half-heard spoken word samples and found sounds are all wrapped up for some chilled-out and smiley Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Christina Aguilera is taking a reflective tone in her latest studio album since 2012. There’s a real sense of looking back, right back to when she used to sing “Maria” as a child, to escape the brutal reality of domestic abuse.Here, her version of the Sound of Music classic has the eerie twang of a horror film soundscape with Baroque undertones. It features the vocals of children and lyrics about "how was I supposed to know" and "being too young to know the difference". We then veer aggressively into the shouty “Sick Of Sittin” which sounds like any stressed out mother at the end of their Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Sophomore records are never easy, especially when your debut was as acclaimed and beloved as french artist Melody Prochet’s first outing as Melody’s Echo Chamber, and this follow-up has had its fair share of bumps in the road. Prochet first announced Bon Voyage in April last year, on her 30th birthday; a new song was released, and a string of tour dates to go with it. But shortly after, Prochet was hospitalised following a serious accident that left her with broken vertebrae in her neck and spine, and a brain aneurysm. The album and accompanying live shows were put on hold. It’s impossible to Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The invaluable work being carried out by the Wim Wenders Foundation to preserve the legacy of the great German director continues to bear fruit. In 2012, with the help of the World Cinema Foundation, Wenders bought back his entire back catalogue (which he had lost in associated bankruptcy proceedings a decade earlier), and the process of 4K digital restoration began.The challenges – much more than just repairing images drawn from some very tired original prints (though that was considerable work too, as an accompanying extra here, Restoring Time, reveals) – were particularly demanding in the Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Hot in the burning footsteps of Bargou 08, last year’s subtle but daring mix of traditional Tunisian sounds and electronic beats and textures, Sofyann Ben Youssef launches a new project under the name of AMMAR 808, Maghreb United. There is a great deal more fire and confidence in this new album, which plunges deeper into the rich sonic universe of the Maghreb while taking a few more risks with the contemporary electronic and rock elements that are deftly combined to create a beguiling whole.Traditional popular music from the Maghreb works with distortion – the snare on the bendir frame drum, Read more ...
joe.muggs
For a decade now, Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson – Lykke Li – has been a poster girl for the Scandinavian, and particularly Swedish, ability to find the highest common factors between high gloss pop and introspective indie/alternative music, and to make it into something that hides emotional heft behind glossy surfaces and impeccable poise (see also Little Dragon, Alphabeat, Miike Snow...) Her fourth album, however, might well lose some of the fans who leaned towards the indie elements of her music. In probably the biggest single creative shift of her career, huge swathes of Slowdive, Beach Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Mark Hodkinson is a Rochdale writer, journalist, songwriter and musician who’s also behind underground label/publishing house Pomona. Black Sedan is the latest product of his febrile mind, a band collective that’s been slowly coming together over the last couple of years. Their debut album sprawls about a number of styles but retains a likeable cohesiveness, wallowing in a loose, strummed stew that’s lightly psychedelic with plenty of sonic trimmings.It begins with “Love on Love”, a delicious, widescreen piece based around Charlie Chaplin’s fantastic speech at the end of The Great Dictator, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lily Allen has long been an unlikely inhabitant of the tabloid sphere. She was born into it and her pop career sealed the deal, rendering her a recalcitrant victim of paparazzi fishbowl idiocy, ugly magazines and online sidebars. She is, however, one of the few to undermine this process, offering gritty, poetic response in song. “The Fear”, for instance, was a huge hit that also 100 percent nailed vapid celeb aspiration. Her fourth album is, at its best, her rawest and most revealing.Allen’s last outing, 2014’s Sheezus, saw her less focused. Lyrically sharp as ever, it was hampered by lesser Read more ...
Barney Harsent
For his fifth solo album (not counting last year’s delayed soundtrack to Set Fire to the Stars) Welsh singer-songwriter and sometime Super Furry frontman Gruff Rhys inhabits an imaginary landscape in order to deal with issues that are all too real. Like its filmic predecessor, it has been a long time coming. The songs were recorded back in 2016 and, given the world's trajectory in the ensuing years, the dystopian landscape Rhys paints could easily be seen as visionary. The reason for the delay was not to encourage comparisons with Nostradamus but to ensure that composer Stephen McNeff Read more ...