CDs/DVDs
Mark Kidel
Danûk are a group of exiled musicians, mostly Kurdish, and Morîk is their very appealing first album. They draw their bewitching songs and instrumentals from Kurdish tradition as recorded on wax cylinders in the early years of the 20th century by German and Austrian ethnomusicologists and companies.The five of them play an assortment of Middle Eastern string and percussion instruments. They first met playing in the streets of Istanbul and the tracks have been produced by Michael League, a musical explorer, who has distinguished himself as a member of the jazz fusion band Snarky Puppy, and Read more ...
Justine Elias
Wandering the wrecked streets of Memphis in search of blues and rock history, two teenage Japanese tourists debate who and what’s better: Elvis Presley vs. Carl Perkins, the sleek ultramodernity of their hometown Yokohoma vs. the “vintage” charms of a nearly deserted Tennessee train station.He’s cool and poker-faced, she’s sweetly extroverted, but they’re young and in love, and no matter how much they argue, the road-tripping couple (Masatoshi Nagase and Youki Kudoh) discover America in a way that natives rarely do. And check out an exchange between her and a downtown denizen who asks for a Read more ...
joe.muggs
There is a truly fascinating story to be written about the hidden Punjabi influence on UK bass music. Maybe it’s natural for kids growing up with the huge booming sounds of dhol and tabla drums to gravitate to big bass speakers, but some of the most unique and influential producers in the interface between reggae, grime and dubstep have been from Punjabi backgrounds: notably Kromestar, V.I.V.E.K. and brothers Sukh Knight and Squarewave.And perhaps most successful of all is Pahuldip Singh Sandhu from Newham, aka Steel Banglez. SB first made his mark in grime, and has effortlessly adapted to Read more ...
Katie Colombus
What a conflict of interests. I feel like Jean-Claude Van Damme in that Volvo ad, with the truck on the left hand side being my music editor who was recently name-checked by Lewis Capaldi after describing him as “a constipated Hozier”, and my children on the other who are constantly squawking about the video snippet from “Wish You the Best” shared on Tiktok about the little dog in the bike basket that’s making hoardes of adolescent children sob at the bus stop.Personally, I massively rate Capaldi for being so snort-inducingly dry in his self-deprecating humour, and his honesty about living Read more ...
Tom Carr
In the era of TikTok and Spotify playlists, it’s hard to gauge when an artist will reach the nebulous threshold and become popular. But for those who can ride this game of algorithms – the change can be sudden.Look no further than Sleep Token. The British metal collective whose anonymity and heavy gothic apparel set them apart upon entering the scene. Their unique style, coupled with a metal sound that defies firm genre definitions quickly garnered them a niche following since 2017.With their two albums so far (2019 debut Sundowning and 2021’s This Place Will Become Your Tomb) their Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kesha is one of the 21st century’s most characterful pop stars. She’s regularly stepped out of the boxes people have put her in, musically and otherwise. But, even taking into account truly oddball songs such as “Godzilla” (from 2017’s Rainbow), or projects such as working with Flaming Lips, Gag Order, created with cosmic ultra-producer Rick Rubin, is by far her most out-there work. It’s also the sound of a tormented human being.On her first two albums Kesha personified young American women raucously embracing hedonism, breaking out of the cultural straitjackets that had head-melted Britney, Read more ...
joe.muggs
Paul Simon is an ornery bugger. Full of awkwardness and perversity as a person, seemingly hugely detached, but as an artist capable of as much tenderness and directness as just about anyone out there. Capable of making world-changing artistic statements but queering his pitch with bizarrely, unnecessarily reactionary statements or actions. Really, a very weird man.But thankfully, he’s never gone all the way into cantankerousness. He’s not a Morrissey, so high on his own farts that the perversity becomes his entire persona, and every action and word is layered with provocation and second Read more ...
Nick Hasted
This almost forgotten, naturalistic 1976 road movie lets four young Frenchmen off the leash in a cross-country trip from Lille to Cannes.Car salesman Klouk (Bernard Crombey) is forced by his oppressive boss to ditch a promised weekend with his wife to deliver a rich man’s Chevrolet to his Cote d’Azur mansion. His wife is contemptuously resigned to such defeats. His goofy, probably gay nurse friend Philippe (Xavier Saint-Macary) tags along, and they pick up abrasive Charles (Étienne Chicot) and his dreamy, dependent flatmate Daniel (Patrick Bouchitey, pictured bottom right with Chicot) along Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Life is better together, and the beauteous sounds created by The Milk Carton Kids proves it. Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan got their acts together in 2011, having each pursued solo careers that never quite gelled. Ryan pitched up at a Pattengale gig in Eagle Rock, California, which was home for both of them.They recorded their first album live at Zoey’s Café in Ventura a few months later and would soon be featured in the all-star line-up for Another Day, Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis. Now comes their sixth studio album, their first since The Only Ones, a short Read more ...
graham.rickson
The titular character in Juraj Herz’s Morgiana plays a peripheral though important role, some of the film’s most striking visual flourishes (courtesy of legendary cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera) being her point-of-view shots while she scurries in and around the dusty lodge owned by her mistress Viktoria. Morgiana is actually a very photogenic Siamese cat, the perfect companion to Iva Janžurová’s witch-like Viktoria. Outraged at learning that her late father has left the bulk of his estate to his other daughter Klára, Viktoria takes revenge by dosing her sister with a slow-acting poison. Herz Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Mali’s Tuareg superstars, Tinariwen have been burnishing their assouf desert blues sounds with the echoes of folk and country sounds from the rural USA for some time – most especially on their 2014 Emmaar and more recent Amadjar albums. However, these foreign sounds have never felt more than a bit of decoration before now.Amatssou, an album produced by Daniel Lanois, with pedal steel, banjo and fiddle from Wes Corbett and Fats Kaplin and additional percussion by Amar Chaoui, feels more like a focussed collaboration between two distinct musical genres – even if it was largely put together at a Read more ...
Mark Kidel
“Yerimayo Celebration”, which opens Baaba Maal’s brilliant and superbly paced new album, sets the tone: it starts in the mists of time, as it were, drawing deep on the minimal soul of traditional West African music: a plucked ngoni, and a haunting voice. The spirits have been summoned.Then, the song explodes, driven by the rhythmic clatter of the sabar drums, so characteristic of the region, with subtle voice distortions and electronic effects. This is fusion of the ancient and new that works wonderfully.The song celebrates fishermen, the clan from which Baabal Maal comes, rather than from a Read more ...