21st century
Hough, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester online review - brassy, bouncy optimismFriday, 16 April 2021
Sir Mark Elder is back with the Hallé for the latest (and penultimate) filmed concert in their “Winter Season” of 2020 and 2021, including the world premiere of Huw Watkins' Second Symphony. He introduces it from the Bridgewater Hall foyer, and... Read more... |
Undine review - respecting the nymphWednesday, 07 April 2021
Illogical in its twists and turns, elusive as a fading dream but not stylistically dreamy – Christian Petzold’s optimistic romantic tragedy Undine is a ciné-conundrum par excellence. It seems, at first glance, a dismayingly insubstantial work for... Read more... |
Charles Saumarez Smith: The Art Museum In Modern Times review – the story of modern architectureThursday, 25 March 2021
“This book is a journey of historical discovery, set out sequentially in order to convey a sense of what has changed over time.” Add to this sentence, the title of the work from which it is taken, The Art Museum in Modern Times, and you’ll probably... Read more... |
Craig Taylor: New Yorkers - A City and Its People in Our Time reviewMonday, 22 March 2021
For the last couple of years, until we were so rudely interrupted, I’d been spending chunks of the year in New York, a city I’ve come to know well these past 25 years. I’d once found the idea of it intimidating, scary even. A migraine-inducing... Read more... |
Edward St Aubyn: Double Blind review - constructing 'cognition literature'Tuesday, 16 March 2021
If it weren’t for the warning on the blurb, the first chapter of Double Blind would have you wondering whether you’d ordered something from the science section by mistake. It's a novel that throws its reader in at the deep end, where that end is... Read more... |
Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separationTuesday, 16 March 2021
Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in those works with elements “non-existent in reality”, which cover various themes “in the context of the supernatural, futuristic, and many... Read more... |
Hughes, Manchester Collective, Lakeside Arts online review - creating the occasionMonday, 22 February 2021
There’s an atmosphere of tender restraint through most of the programme created by Ruby Hughes and Manchester Collective for Lakeside Arts at the University of Nottingham. It was streamed live yesterday afternoon, and, as is the way with most... Read more... |
Albums of the Decade 2011-2021Tuesday, 16 February 2021
On Valentine’s Day 2011 Disc of the Day album reviews sprang into being, and has been solidly reviewing five albums a week ever since. Out of the many thousands, which ones did we rate the most? To mark 10 years since its inception, 12 of... Read more... |
Alice Ash: Paradise Block review - a matrix-like collection that reinvents the short story genreMonday, 01 February 2021
“Burglar alarms jangled through the empty hallways of Paradise Block.” In this ramshackle, lonely tenement, such alarms might be one’s only company. Yet, in this intricate collection of short stories, the inhabitants’ lives intertwine. Alice Ash’s... Read more... |
Album: Bicep - IslesSaturday, 23 January 2021
Bicep's second album fufills the promise of the first, released in 2017 to wide acclaim. Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar, friends since childhood from the city of Belfast, draw inspiration from Chicago house, Detroit techno, Italo disco and... Read more... |
Raven Leilani: Luster - portrait of the artist as a black millennial womanTuesday, 19 January 2021
One of the finer episodes in Raven Leilani’s startling debut (which contains an embarrassment of fine episodes) comes about halfway through, when Edie, our young, struggling black narrator, starts working as a rider for a “popular in-app delivery... Read more... |
Gillam, Hallé, Bloxham, Hallé online review - music of poetryFriday, 15 January 2021
Jonathan Bloxham makes his debut as conductor with the Hallé Orchestra in the third of the Hallé’s Winter Season concerts on film. It’s a poetry-connected programme in several respects and features poet laureate Simon Armitage reading both his the... Read more... |
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