CDs/DVDs
Kieron Tyler
Although sadness currently cloaks Norway, the release of Razika’s joyful debut album might raise a few spirits. From Bergen, this all-female four-piece are school friends jointly born in 1991, hence part of the album title. Program 91 is a ska-inflected romp that would’ve been a snug fit for Rough Trade in the early Eighties. Razika weren’t even born then. The other half of the album’s title is inspired by fellow Bergen band Program 81, a ska-inflected new wave outfit formed in 1981. Razika – coined as band-speak for a cute boy - clearly aren’t shy about revealing their inspirations, Read more ...
bruce.dessau
In a recent interview with theartsdesk Bombay Bicycle Club talked about jamming together in their kitchen in Covent Garden in central London, but listening to A Different Kind of Fix it sounds as if they had their sights set further afield at the time. Their third album boasts an epic ambition that was absent from their more intimate second album, Flaws. This is a set of tunes that is big but never overblown, confident but never boastful. There are some lovely, grand chunks of rhythm that should make Fix a fixture in halls of residence up and down the country this autumn and could even Read more ...
graham.rickson
A legendary septuagenarian wind player from Switzerland returns to the repertoire with which he made his name 50 years ago, and there's an exciting live reading of a gloomy fin-de-siècle symphony conducted by a contemporary French giant. The same conductor also treats us to a sparkling Stravinsky rarity, and a youthful duo lighten the mood with some Russian fireworks on Merseyside.Bach: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis - Concertos and Sinfonias for Oboe Heinz Holliger (oboe), Camerata Bern/Erich Höbarth (ECM)
None of Bach’s original concertos for oboe survive in their original form; yet it’s now Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Watching Incendies leaves you winded. Although it can be read as a thriller, Incendies is a drama that offers no hints of where it’s going. When it gets there, it hits hard. It’s about more than Middle East conflict, more than a search for identity. As director Denis Villeneuve puts it in one of this DVD’s extras, Incendies is a “Greek tragedy with a thriller inside it”.Based on a Wajdi Mouawad play which premiered in Montréal, the scope and the use of sudden explanatory, digressive flashbacks are cinematic rather than theatrical. Although there are very few characters in the film, and the Read more ...
joe.muggs
If you want the distilled sound of global hypercapitalism, David Guetta is your man. A genial, workaholic Frenchman, he has created the sound of superclubs from Miami to Dubai to Kuala Lumpur – the sort of clubs where the VIP section is bigger than the main dance floor, with Guetta's own “F*ck Me I'm Famous” parties in Ibiza as the ideal model – and, thanks to the trickle-down effect, the sound of every shopping mall and taxi from here to eternity. His sound is the cheesiest of Nineties commercial dance music given a turbo boost with every possible megastar from the worlds of rap and R&B Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"I wanted to do an album that would be very uplifting and positive, as well as inspirational," quoth the divine Miss P of her latest waxing. Starting as she means to go on, she opens with the chunky honky-tonk pop of "In the Meantime", which crams a panorama of hopes and fears behind its perky exterior. We shouldn't worry about nuclear war and Armageddon, she advises, because "nobody knows when the end is coming" and besides, "God still lives in the hearts of men". Oh, and we should take care to look after the planet, too.There's quite a lot of this sort of holy-rolling self-helpism sprinkled Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Chris Marker has made over 60 films in his long career (he's now 90). But his reputation has rested on just two. Sans soleil (1983), a meditative film essay on Japan, and La jetée (1962), a 20-minute sci-fi film in the ciné-roman photomontage style, are widely considered the finest examples of their respective genres. On top of that, La jetée was named one of the Top 10 sci-fi films of all time by Time magazine. Optimum Classics are re-releasing both this week on one DVD.With its eccentric eye, its exotic locations, its peripatetic ways, zipping between the economic miracle of Japan and Read more ...
matilda.battersby
If Pavement fans have recovered from the excitement of last year’s reunion then they may find their pulses racing once more when they hear Stephen Malkmus and the Jick’s new album which is produced by Beck (no less).Mirror Traffic is a pleasant, more laid-back record than Real Emotional Trash, Malkmus’s notably rocky previous offering. Erring on the conventional side, it combines an early-indie sound inviting comparisons with Blur and Grandaddy, with noticeable fine tuning to the Jicks’s quirky and complex musical arrangements for which Beck should probably be credited.At 15 tracks long the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It opens quietly, with swelling strings that evoke Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave. After they give way to a jazzy percussion and wordless vocal interplay, Carlyle declares, “I used to sleep/ Too many secrets to keep”. Floreat itself was almost a secret, almost not released. Thankfully, this dream of an album is now coming out. Seamlessly roaming across jazz, Cajun music, English classicism, show-tune styles and electronica, Floreat is one of this year’s benchmark releases.Floreat was originally meant to be issued in 2008 by EMI under the title Nuzzle. It was shelved and it's taken until now for Read more ...
graham.rickson
A young American composer's work is showcased by a major label and doesn't disappoint. A classy British horn player enjoys teaming up with a pianist and a flautist. And an impressive cycle of 20th-century symphonies gets a welcome airing, thanks to a hard-working London orchestra and their principal conductor.Martinů: The Six Symphonies BBC Symphony Orchestra/Bělohlávek (Onyx)
Deep joy. There’s a lot of classical music which is justly neglected. But the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů’s six symphonies are always worth hearing, and this cycle of performances was recorded live at the Barbican Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In 1989 when Lenny Kravitz released his debut Let Love Rule people complained that he had failed to quite master the Sixties influences that cut through it. They were wrong. That year it made Kravitz the most exciting black/white crossover artist since Prince. Since then, his path has been mainly a little more straightforward - maybe a little retro, but still consistently stirring. However with Black and White America Kravitz has again thumbed back through his Black-American songbook to find new styles with which to score his treatise on 21st-century race relations. Is it as good as Let Love Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although FW Murnau’s pre-America years will always be defined by 1922’s Nosferatu, he’d already racked up nine films in the preceding three years. He made his mark on Hollywood with the 1927 landmark Sunrise but, although being overshadowed by Nosferatu, his earlier German films reveal how he reached these points. Schloss Vogelöd (also known as The Haunted Castle) is a Murnau obscurity, a stately, atmospheric meditation from 1921 that’s capable of giving the willies.But they take a while manifesting themselves. The straightforward plot is drawn out. Every scene is a carefully staged set piece Read more ...