CDs/DVDs
Tom Birchenough
The repercussions of the revelations about intelligence gathering by American and other surveillance services made by US whistleblower Edward Snowden have proved huge. Laura Poitras’s documentary CitizenFour is no less revelatory about the process of their appearance, about just how Snowden came to be in that Hong Kong hotel room with reporter Glenn Greenwald, and what happened there.To call their encounter, the centrepiece of the film “eight days that shook the world” might be an overstatement, but not by much, so acute did the revelations make the question of the relation between Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Fetty Wap is the biggest new name in hip hop. His song “Trap Queen” has been on the UK charts for nearly six months and sold two-and-a-half million downloads in the US alone. The singles released since have established him as an artist capable of commercially holding his own with the very biggest, as stars such as Kanye West and Jay-Z have keenly acknowledged. Born William Maxwell II 24 years ago, he hails from Paterson, New Jersey, an area he refers to in songs as “the Zoo” (he has the nickname “Zoovier” tattooed on his face). He lost an eye to glaucoma as a child, giving him an appearance Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence, who are Disclosure, have always made clear they’ve no especial passion for club music. They are, they say, first and foremost musicians and their affinity with dance culture stops there. Despite this they’ve become the biggest act to appear from the deep house boom, and the best of their 2013 debut album Settle harked back to the slick, soulful energy of original Chicago house. They were a breath of fresh air as EDM blossomed crassly around them. Now, however, they reveal their true colours. Caracal is one wet lettuce.Apart from a single track – the likeable Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although The Tribe is disquieting, seeing it at home rather than experiencing the full immersion of a cinema screening raises questions of what gives it its impact. theartsdesk’s review coinciding with the theatrical release pinpointed what makes director Miroslav Slaboshpitskiy’s strange Ukrainian film tick: from its use of sign language to its commentary on Ukraine. But are there individual stylistic elements which leap out as signifiers of its singularity?Time will tell whether or not Slaboshpitskiy can follow his first full-length feature with another film as striking, and whether working Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Kevin Martin is a busy man. Last year, there was The Bug’s floor-shaking Angels and Devils album and “Boa”/”Cold” collaboration with Dylan Carlson of drone titans Earth. In 2015, after a spectacular headline performance at the Supersonic Festival, he’s back with the King Midas Sound collective and more collaboration: with Austrian ambient wizard Fennesz.King Midas Sound’s 2009 debut album, Waiting For You was a laidback digi-dub masterpiece that often suggested the spirit of Tricky’s finest moments, with it’s mash-up of electronic reggae sounds and creeping industrial textures, underlying the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pere Ubu: Elitism for the People 1975–1978Pere Ubu’s early records still sound great. The ethos of the Cleveland, Ohio band had nothing to do with prevailing trends when they formed in 1975, and had nothing to with the punk, new wave or what was later termed post-punk which opened many doors for and ears to them shortly afterwards. The timelessness stems from being singular, an aspect of which resulted in them issuing four singles on their own label between December 1975 and August 1978. Yet Pere Ubu were not isolated: their precursor band Rocket From the Tombs was co-billed with Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Complaining about pop music sounding manufactured is something that, in these postmodern monoculture days, “serious” music fans are all supposed to be past by now. Certainly, since its US release last month, those who are paid to know better have been practically frothing at the mouth over the long-awaited third album by a third-placed 2007 Canadian Pop Idol contestant whose irresistible “Call Me Maybe” was the soundtrack to your summer a few years back. But while E•MO•TION crackles and fizzes in places with moments of pure pop joy, there are big chunks of this record that sound as though Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Growing up is a pain in the arse. Actually that’s not true, my arse has remained relatively unaffected by advancing years. In the last few months, however, I’ve managed to put my back out getting up off the sofa and inexplicably hurt my knee while trying to stand after retying a shoelace. I’ve also developed an acute fear of cholesterol, without really understanding what it is.On the basis of the two tracks I’d already heard on Rattle That Lock, I’d assumed that David Gilmour had managed to avoid such bodily rebellion and was dancing his way through the days. Both the title track and single “ Read more ...
Graham Fuller
When filming Vivre sa vie in 1962, Jean-Luc Godard made his wife and star Anna Karina wear a wig resembling Louise Brooks’s black-lacquered art-deco bob. Karina’s Nana was less immaculately coiffed than Brooks’s Lulu in G.W. Pabst's Pandora’s Box (1929), however, and her hair didn’t taper into pincers, like those that lay against Lulu’s cheeks. Nana is more vulnerable than her iconic antecedent – her glum stares at the camera replacing the devastating smiles Lulu bestows promiscuously.Godard’s fourth feature (and third with Karina) ostensibly traces Nana’s downward spiral as an aspiring 22- Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The oft-used phrase “Hackney drum & bass band Rudimental” is misleading. It sets the listener off on the wrong foot. Anyone up for a “Hackney drum and bass band” would likely want something with serious bite - big, bad and boomin’. I know I would. This is not what Rudimental are, as anyone who’s heard their chart-topping hits and debut album will attest. Their second album journeys even further away from such a description.In Autumn 2011 a shrewd trio of young Hackney DJ-musicians approached the successful producer Amir Amor, a man who already owned a Hoxton production house and had Read more ...
Tim Cumming
I was prepared to be fondly underwhelmed by Keith Richards' first album in 23 years: 15 loose-limbed tracks laid down with drummer Steve Jordan from 2011 on, with studio guests and old Xpensive Wino friends casually sitting in on keys, brass, strings, vocals. There's Bobby Keys with his last recorded blows of brass on “Blues in the Morning” and “Amnesia”; Norah Jones breathing sweetly over “Illusion”; Larry Campbell on fiddle and pedal steel on "Just a Gift" and "Robbed Blind".But mainly it's Keith, handling all the guitars and a fair amount of piano, carrying lovelorn ballads and songs of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The off-the-wall premise of The New Girlfriend could have been one adapted by Pedro Almodóvar. After married woman Claire’s close childhood friend dies, she gives an undertaking to look after the widowed father David and the couple’s daughter, to whom she is godmother. While keeping her promise, she accidentally discovers he is a secret transvestite – David says his wife knew of this. Claire helps him into the outside world in his female persona (which she names Virginia), learns the reasons for the cross-dressing, falls for him in his female guise and, in the process, discovers she isn’t Read more ...