...this hybrid set-up of past Piano Magic players from different eras of the group gels succinctly through three freshly-cut pieces across fifteen minutes. The comparative brevity suits them well, particularly when focusing proceedings even more tightly on the ensemble’s pop-noir smarts on the two bookend tracks fronted by Johnson.
Yearly Archives: 2026
172 posts
It is an interesting spectacle, because although the crowd knows to look forward to two forty-five minute sets and a short intermission, what those two sets might entail is anyone's guess. The air of anticipation is further heightened by the lack of a support slot, so nothing interferes with the trio's planned or unplanned journeys.
The legendary jazz pianist gets the biopic treatment, albeit with far less crowd-pleasing flash and far more character-based introspection, very much in keeping with the playing style of the subject and the musical idiom in which he flourished.
Although more organically earthbound and less sonically expansive overall, this triumvirate of nascent offerings doesn’t simply dispense thin sketchy outlines for Weaver’s latter-day technicoloured presentations.
...complex comedy-drama about a film-maker struggling with problems both professional and personal, and all the while another film-maker is figuring out how to tell her story in a way that reflects his own equally difficult life.
..reassuringly sustaining a reputation for molten brilliance in the live arena, it’s arguable that Prolapse’s creative stock has never been higher. Which makes another dive into the group’s historically healthy working relationship with BBC radio producers and DJs suitably enticing.
Willem Dafoe is in quiet and self-effacing mode in this bittersweet comedy drama based on the Arthur Schnitzler novella about Ed, a long-retired poet rediscovered by a clique of young New York hipsters determined to lionise him until he re-enters their bohemian world by way of writing a memoir.
...these records, finally, are perhaps two sides of the Monk coin -- one a stretching and contortion of what was already there, one pinning Monk to the mast of improvised music and sailing off into the whorling void. Big up yourselves, everyone concerned.
An impressive set of tunes with real sonic depth, concluding with the soft plumage of “‘Concrete Conversation”‘s undulatory rhythmic with croaking robotics slowly frequency combed to silence.
It's kind of psychedelic music, if that wasn't principally rubbish. The reference for me is something like Les Rallizes Dénudés, thought that is also off. What LRD do is to take a basic doo-wop poppy structure in the rhythm section and have a guitar go waaaay into the red. Fushitsusha use that as a kind of springboard, and take out the predictable rhythm section. Where most rock music -- most music -- deals in clearly repetitious elements, pulses and such, Fushitsusha take whatever is repetitious and hide it.
Slow ‘n’ steady, lulling mirroring sounds -- then just when you think it’s grasping towards some om-like union, a repetitive carpet of agitated frets throws things splendidly off-piste, the canvas suddenly gripped in an overfed rebound and answering recoil.
Claire Foy processes her grief over the death of her father through an obsessive commitment to a Eurasian goshawk in this middlebrow but emotionally affecting riff on Ken Loach’s Kes, which dramatises the popular 2014 memoir of nature writer Helen Macdonald.
...the whole is a -- dare I say -- pretty but disconcerting melange of electronic elements that veer between noise and rhythm. It's certainly not the kind of textural play of musique concrète or noise, but it's also not so sedate as to qualify as ambient music.
Like Werner Herzog before him and Robert Eggers today, Annaud makes great use of his locations, and the faces of those inhabiting them, creating a fourteenth century you can almost smell. It may be a cracking adventure and a fun time at the movies, but you really wouldn’t want to live there.
As a treatise on self discovery, the album works really well; the wide variety of songs, the welcoming closeness of the players and the willingness to attempt the road less travelled here and there makes for a pleasurable listening experience.
...metatextual slasher movie about a young film-maker working on a reboot of a 1980s classic, while developing a penetrating relationship with the reclusive star of the original.
...arrives with the strong expectation of being another consistent concoction. Dutifully and rewardingly, Phelan and co. don’t abuse such presumptions with the honourable Hullabaloo.
The blustering guitar, dirty, squalling sax and tumble-drier drums really bring to mind a drive through a desert that is alive with discordant debris...