CDs/DVDs
Mark Kidel
Eno pioneered ambient music way back in the 1970s, in collaborations with Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, and on his own label. His new album continues this adventure in search of stillness, at a time when we are more than ever shaped by muddled layers of high-speed narratives, fuelled by instant communication and hell-bent on denying the presence of the here and now.Like Xenakis, the avant-garde composer of the last century, who used mathematical formulae and discourse as a shield for deeply emotional music, Eno’s algorithm-generated slow-motion cascades of morphing tone are anything Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the highest-grossing film produced exclusively in New Zealand, and yet it snuck into UK cinemas at the back end of 2016 with less fanfare than it deserved. Its release as a home entertainment gives a better shot at a long life. It stars Sam Neill as Hec, an ornery old backwoodsman who reluctantly takes charge of Ricky, an unruly orphan thrust into his care. Neill has never been more loveable, but the charm of the film rests just as much on the unfettered performance of Julian Dennison as the boy.Naturally they have nothing in common, but as they go on the run in Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
50 is titled to mark fifty years of touring. Now 75, Michael Chapman released Rainmaker, his first album, in 1969. Though well-known devotees have never been lacking – Bowie recruited Mick Ronson after hearing his playing on a Chapman album; Elton John wanted Chapman for his band – his lengthy presence has not brought Chapman the stature of contemporary and similarly idiosyncratic British singer-songwriters like Roy Harper or John Martyn. Yet, he endures.The swift follow-up to 2014’s The Polar Bear is ample evidence why. 50 opens with the atmospheric, energised and rolling “A Spanish Incident Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Saxophonist, composer and former Radio 3 New Generation Artist Trish Clowes has created a reputation for original chamber jazz of densely woven harmonies and delicate, sometimes folk-tinged melody. This fourth album, with a quartet rather than (as often in the past) a small orchestra is billed as a new musical direction. It isn’t really, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of: in style and mood Clowes rather impressively recaptures the unshowy profundity of her chamber orchestra with only a quartet.There’s a remarkable range of subject matter here, testament to the diversity and maturity of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
An action film with an intensity that sets it apart, Assault on Precinct 13 still shocks. Although expected, its first killing is a “they wouldn’t do that, would they?” moment. No wonder the 2005 remake failed to overshadow the original. John Carpenter’s hard-boiled second feature, a follow-up to Dark Star, was filmed on a budget of $100,000 in less than three weeks in late 1975 and released the following year. He wrote, shot and edited it as well as composing and playing its brilliant soundtrack music (the early Human League took a lot from it). With a cast of unknowns, the noir-toned Los Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Christmas came, and brought with it the usual silly-season headlines. "Vinyl outsells digital downloads" came the cries, bringing with them a vision of a plastic phoenix rising from the ashes. The truth was, of course, much more prosaic – digital downloads are falling faster than Icarus as more people take to streaming services and abandon even the most ethereal physical things for an internet full of stuff.Meanwhile, in the real world, a rather wonderful release by Laurie Shaw, a ludicrously prolific 22-year-old, Ireland-based singer songwriter, passed by with barely a mention. That’s the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sixty-eight tracks into the intriguing Action Time Vision, orthodoxy suddenly gives way to individualism. The two-and-bit discs so far have mostly showcased what passes for notions of punk rock: block-chord guitars, guttersnipe vocals, Ramones-speed rhythms and Clash-style terrace-chant choruses. Suddenly, The Fall’s lurching “Psycho Mafia” suggests the early punk era was not about trying to be same as every other band. Individualism was possible.Recorded in 1977, but issued in 1978, “Psycho Mafia” was from The Fall’s first record, an EP on the Step Forward label. Other bands on the imprint Read more ...
peter.quinn
Through her work with Tomorrow's Warriors and the Nu Civilisation Orchestra and, more recently, Jazz Jamaica, alto saxist Camilla George has been an integral part of the UK jazz scene for over a decade. Apart from its melodic fecundity, subtle arrangements and the impressive way in which it fuses jazz, highlife, afrobeat, calypso and more into a meaningful whole, what makes this debut album stand out is the sense that George has been quietly honing not only her own sound but also that of her estimable quartet.George’s journey of self-discovery, from her African and Caribbean roots to her Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Oczy Mlody is so weak it’s a wonder it makes the finishing line. The album’s 58 minutes are taken up with unfocussed songs, fragmentary arrangements, moments of grating novelty and such a lack of sense of purpose, it’s hard to figure out why they bothered.The Flaming Lips' etiolated 15th album baffles. Lead Lip Wayne Coyne makes no effort to sing in an engaging way. No wonder everything else is as anaemic. Fronting up the songs with a voice this feeble leaves little to latch onto and little to lead the listener in.Recognisably a Flaming Lips album, Oczy Mlody meshes keyboard wash, clichéd Read more ...
Mark Kidel
In American mythology, the frontier offered a clean slate, the opportunity to escape from the shadow of the past and live heroically. But, as with everything else in the context of the American Dream, which continues to unfold in real life as if it were but a simulacrum of myth, the present is haunted by the shadow of evil: greed, violence – between white men, but also against native Americans – and personal tragedy. We are prisoners of our past, and nothing can save us.David Mackenzie's Hell or High Water is shot through with echoes of classic Westerns – two brothers on the loose, bad men Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Popular music works best when it strikes a chord that goes beyond the beauty of the hook, the seductive quality of the melody, or the catchiness of the lyrics. The resonance can be personal or universal, or perhaps, in order to qualify as a critic’s choice as album of the year, it should be both. Leonard Cohen’s last album, made in the full knowledge that it would be his last, spoke to me with a directness and depth that induced a paradoxical mixture of pleasure and pain.Cohen was, it would seem, born wise, and a certain native maturity coloured his work from the start. As he revisited over Read more ...
Bernadette McNulty
Much like the year itself, 2016's strongest albums tapped into a spirit of restlessness, defiance and disorientation. But unlike the punk explosion of 1977, there was no real sound or even genre that this mood of rebellion cohered around.Grime came closest to embodying a scene, fuelled by blistering albums from two stalwarts – Kano and Skepta. The latter's Mercury prize win gave a focus to the re-emergence of the sound, stripped-down to basics again, shorn of the shinier pop stylings that had diluted it during its brief absorption into the charts a decade ago. This time around, the beats Read more ...