CDs/DVDs
graham.rickson
This is a reissue, but an important one, especially considering that the film industry’s gender inequalities are as entrenched as ever. Kay Mander’s cinematic career began in the mid 1930s when she became a publicist for Alexander Korda. She joined the Shell Film Unit in 1940 as a production assistant, directing her first documentary in 1941. It’s included here: How to File is a still watchable seven-minute training film aimed at metalwork apprentices. Mander’s unfussy, fluent style makes it a pleasure to watch. We get three longer shorts aimed at fire service and civil defence workers. Each Read more ...
Matthew Wright
For an album exploring the theme of heartbreak in wintry, coiling musical phrases, peppered with stark, fractured lyrics, the reception of Björk’s original Vulnicura was ever so slightly lukewarm. Her spacious and probing compositions were admired rather than adored, her analysis of breakup seeming to have a steely, cerebral edge. So it was a brave decision to adapt these songs for strings, an alteration that’s unlikely to make them any more accessible.Losing the rhythmic texture offered by the percussion, which is only partially replaced by a chopping string pulse on pieces like “Notget Read more ...
Katie Colombus
Jewel fans from circa 1995, when the folky rebel-poet-warrior's first multi-platinum album Pieces of Me (one of the best-selling debut albums of all time) was released, have been longing for more of that fresh, raw, melodic artistry ever since.But after the fiercely made Spirit, a world tour and This Way, what came next was a seemingly experimental series of new sounds – the bewildering intellectual pop of 0304, a Christmas album, two kids' CDs released by Fisher Price, a country album and a starring role as June Carter Cash in a Lifetime Channel film.Twenty years on and Picking Up the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Kim Longinotto’s Love Is All stitches together short extracts from 75 different films, aiming to highlight changing British attitudes to love, sex and romance. It opens with a one-minute 1899 short which looks forward to the closing shot of Hitchcock's North By Northwest, and the final montage includes scenes from My Beautiful Laundrette and news footage of a same-sex wedding in 2014 Islington. It’s frequently a frustrating viewing experience: the short running-time means that most of the clips are just too brief. Though watching the film on DVD means that you can at least refer to the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
James Morrison is undeniably one of pop’s more likeable and unassuming recent stars. Influential too: his laid-back sound has paved the way for recent megastars like George Ezra and Ed Sheeran. How much that constitutes a good or bad thing, though, divides opinion. Some find Morrison's blend of folk and soul relaxing yet intimate; others have said it's so bland it has its own zen. All, then, agree the amiable singer is a little short on grit. Maybe Higher Than Here can offer something a little more raw? The album starts off promisingly enough. “Demons” – an anthem to positive Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Laraaji: Ambient 3 – Day of Radiance“If you are OK with this as being an ‘ambient’ record, then I am OK with it too,” says Laraaji in the booklet accompanying this new reissue of his first album, 1980's Day of Radiance. He goes on to explain that back then he described his music as “‘beautiful’ or ‘ethereal’ or ‘celestial’.” As for being defined as New Age, he declares: “I have always accepted it. It was a term that was very alive at the time I began exploring this direction.” Minimalism is another genre which Day of Radiance could slot into quite comfortably. Pinning down exactly what Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Back in the early 2000s, it was rumoured that Ryan Adams had covered Is This It by The Strokes in its entirety. According to my extensive cataloguing of the career of Americana’s enfant terrible, only “Last Nite” ever surfaced (I have a live version, which opens with a couple of versions of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”), but the point is that Ryan Adams is no stranger to these sonic experiments. Which is why, as a huge fan of both artists I have found it both amusing and perplexing to watch the internet collectively lose its shit over Adams’ version of Taylor Swift’s 1989.The parallels between Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Killing Joke are a band that inspire near devotion in their fans. Their 1980 eponymous debut is regularly cited as one of the best of all time, and they’ve managed two very decent outings since the original line-up of Jaz Coleman, Paul Ferguson, Kevin "Geordie" Walker and Martin "Youth" Glover reformed in 2008.With Pylon, their 15th studio album, not a great deal has changed. The band show absolutely no sign of letting up on the raging fire and apocalyptic anger that have become trademarks, but it seems to suit the times a little better now. Perhaps the world has caught up with them – maybe Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Attempting to halt an enemy army with a small unit of troops on bicycles seems impossible and improbable, but this is exactly what happened at Lundtoftbjerg in the south of Jutland in the early hours of 9 April 1940 as Germany invaded the strategically important Denmark.Although the assault was launched on more than one front, this aspect of the land campaign is the subject of the Danish film April 9th, which tells the true story of how ill-equipped, low-population Denmark had no chance. Even so, the Danish troops did what they could after first sighting the invaders at 4.50am. There were Read more ...
joe.muggs
The world of Rodney Smith aka Roots Manuva often feels like a hermetic one. Despite his increasing elder statesman status the Stockwell-raised rapper, producer and visionary exists away from trends and scenes, a self-professed armchair philosopher, whose lyrics more often than not have the feel of internal dialogue, and whose music tends to the claustrophobic. And so it is here: the real, outside world is often referenced, starting with the sociological mutterings of the opener, “Hard Bastards”, but it always comes to you through Smith's thought processes, bounced back and forth in word games Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Asif Kapadia’s Amy packs a punch. It is a wrenching, clear-eyed portait of a supremely talented, charismatic young woman being whittled away by voracious, relentless 21st century celebrity, exacerbated by her own demons. At the UK box office it’s become the second most successful documentary feature film of all time (after Farenheit 9/11). Part of its power is, of course, the raw, soulful singing of its central protagonist. Now a soundtrack arrives, a collage of Winehouse favourites, demos and live takes interspersed with the instrumental music of Brazilian film composer Antônio Pinto.Where Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to his much-acclaimed The Act of Killing is a much more accomplished film. Once again, he is concerned with examining the large-scale, American-inspired massacre of Indonesian "Communists" in 1965.His first attempt – extraordinary and shocking – was in some ways undermined by the surreal reconstructions of killing and torture that the director filmed with the more-than-willing perpetrators. This time around, he has focused on one particular case of torture and murder, as a microcosm of the larger scale mass-slaughter. The film follows the optician Adi, as Read more ...