1980s
bruce.dessau
It says something about the commodification of modern music that Scottish poppets Camera Obscura are probably best known for "French Navy" because it is used by wine company Echo Falls on the sponsored intros to Come Dine With Me. It is a brilliantly romantic rush of a song and I tweeted that it was a shame it was linked to selling booze. Comedian/fan Josie Long, not one to condone corporate sell-outs, responded "I just think 'I hope this means you are funded enough to write your beautiful songs!'"Well, maybe the cash-injection has helped, because the Glaswegian band has returned after four Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Even the most committed lover of long odds would not have bet on Depeche Mode still being this big when they first tinkled their way into the charts over three decades ago. The smart money would probably have been on them now playing, at best, to a medium-sized Marc Almond-style devoted audience or, at worst, joining nostalgia packages alongside one-time fellow hipsters ABC. Yet here they were selling out two nights at the O2 Arena to a positively ecstatic, if possible arthritic, largely middle-aged audience.It is also a surprise that Dave Gahan is still around at all, after drug addiction Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Rodion G.A.: The Lost TapesInitially, under Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s borders were open: Blood Sweat & Tears, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong played there. But the regime tightened its grip after the dictator’s 1971 visit to North Korea and China. Ceaușescu fostered a personality cult, the world outside was largely shut out and Romania’s citizens had few chances to flourish artistically. Absolute censorship was imposed and the Securitate were the eyes and ears of the regime. Yet somehow, music was made, some of it released on the state-run Electrecord label. Rodion Roşca only had Read more ...
joe.muggs
It took nine years between the first and second instalments of this series, and another 22 years to make the third. And that's one of the least strange things about this record. The production team of B.E.F. (aka Human League / Heaven 17 members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh) have dedicated themselves to unusual cover versions, in the past featuring guest vocalists from Gary Glitter to Tina Turner to Paula Yates, and they are still on a mission to rework classic songs in a high-gloss 1980s pop style with very peculiar results indeed.There are a lot of high points here. Sandie Shaw yelps her Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
What’s the price of betrayal? In Peter Nichols’s 1981 play it’s a painful splintering of the psyche. The betrayer mentally compartmentalises in order to be both affectionate husband and ardent lover; the betrayed loses her confidence, her purpose, even her identity until she is – in ways that Nichols makes theatrically explicit – beside herself.There are moments when this ghastly anti-romantic gavotte creaks faintly, carrying with it the sour whiff of the hangover from the sexual-liberation party games of the Sixties. But the drama, often compared to Stoppard's The Real Thing and Pinter's Read more ...
Simon Munk
An invincible army of cybercommandos, neon-pink pulsing colour schemes and the throbbing sounds of a Morodor-style baseline – Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is every bit the dumb Eighties action game on the surface, but underneath it might actually be one of the most interesting approaches to mainstream gaming in a while.Blood Dragon is "downloadable content" – an extra expansion pack served up after the main event (the game of the year, Far Cry 3). The phrase is normally a dire enough idea it should send gamers scurrying in the opposite direction.Most downloadable content packs are hastily- Read more ...
bruce.dessau
There was a point about two-thirds of the way through last night's gig when someone lobbed something onto the stage in front of Mick Hucknall. It was not clear exactly what it was due to the sea of dancing mums in front of me, but my strong suspicion is that it was something made of lace and worn below the waist judging by Hucknall's bemused declaration: "That's Tom Jones's department."The funny thing is that Tom Jones had been on my mind a lot during Hucknall's set, and not just after the low-flying knickers. Last year Jones came to Hammersmith as part of a Blues Festival but his devoted Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Killing Joke: The Singles Collection 1979-2012Killing Joke were one of the most singular British bands to emerge in wake of punk. Their metal-edged, tribal stomp didn’t fit in with anything else going on at the time. Collecting 33 tracks from their singles and EPs to date, The Singles Collection 1979-2012 shows them as single-minded, a trait bringing a timelessness and consistency. “In Cythera”, from 2012, is as impactful as 1988’s “America”.Their sound has changed though. The rough edges and bark of “Follow the Leaders” (1981) or "Let's All Go (to the Fire Dances)" (1983) have been tempered Read more ...
Graham Fuller
British film noir followed two courses in the 1980s. Whereas the American neo-noir revival of the 1970s prompted such contemporary crime thrillers as The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa, and Stormy Monday, three superior BBC drama serials, though also neo-noirs, drew more rigorously on Hollywood’s classic noir era.Troy Kennedy Martin’s Edge of Darkness (1985) and Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective (1986) were acknowledged as masterpieces. Howard Brenton’s Dead Head (1986) was admired but not lauded to the same extent. The red tops’ predictable reaction to a sex scene that showed the woman Read more ...
bruce.dessau
When I suggested reviewing Ian McCulloch's new album, our glorious editor was under the impression that it was just a live collection of ancient tracks. It is actually a double album – mainly old Bunnymen beauties on the self-explanatory Orchestral Reworkings from the Union Chapel plus a newish studio album,Pro Patria Mori, which had a low-key release in 2012 funded by fans. An understandable misunderstanding, as even the press release foregrounds the live album. Whatever Ian McCulloch's future holds, it is probably his illustrious early Eighties past that will be of most interest to his Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Down in the cellar where the monsters were in Sam Raimi’s 1982 debut The Evil Dead, you glimpsed a poster for Wes Craven’s 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes, ripped symbolically in half. The bar for gruelling low-budget horror, Raimi was saying, had just been raised.In employing another debutante, Uruguayan Fede Alvarez, to remake The Evil Dead, Raimi, these days the unlikely Hollywood insider behind the Spiderman trilogy and Oz the Great and Powerful, invites him to raise the stakes again.The original’s fireproof premise is kept: five friends spend the weekend in an isolated cabin in the woods ( Read more ...
Simon Munk
The bassline starts, "1979" flashes up on screen and, over a scratchy recording, the voice intones "Walking down the street, I get punched; you're walking down the street, you get punched".PunksNotDead's not going to hold your attention for more than a few minutes, but in those few minutes, this hyperkinetic, luridly day-glo explosion of punk attitude and violence encapsulates everything that's great about the indie games scene – it's the ideas, stupid (and they're free).PunksNotDead sees your stickman ambling along a street filled with fluoro-pink people, cars and lampposts, except some of Read more ...