Stockport musician and producer David Ainley has created a wonderful piece of post-ambient beauty here. It invokes the illogical themes of dreams: figures with heads that are never seen, fragmentary buildings, the sense of hazy, unresolved issues. Glitches, sighs and ghostly soundscapes permeate throughout the album. The title track, featuring saxophonist Daniel Thorne, fizzles andContinue reading “Album Review: Holy Other- Lieve”
Category Archives: Review
Album Review: Modern Nature- Island Of Noise
Imagine this. You’re in the Lake District perhaps, or by a boathouse. Take a moment to lie down in the still of the night. Can you hear it? There’s a bàbbling stream. Birds twitter. There’s no Twitter, no social media, no hassles here. Modern Nature have created an album that is sheer bliss, as ifContinue reading “Album Review: Modern Nature- Island Of Noise”
Album Review: Parquet Courts- Sympathy For Life
You could be forgiven for thinking this is just another ebullient, scrappy album from the New York indie stoners, or however we’re stereotyping them this week. After all, the irresistible bounce of Walking At A Downtown Pace seems to personify this, with Max Savage’s rollicking rhythm and their trademark shouty refrain. But album seven isContinue reading “Album Review: Parquet Courts- Sympathy For Life”
Album Review: Lotic- Water
MusIc that knocks you sideways and rearranges vital organs is rare these days, but occasionally, something appears that sounds so otherworldly that you feel quite changed. Water by Lotic does this to me. It’s like experiencing an infatuation. It’s experimental electronica, future- soul, with bewitching, hard to fathom sounds that are impossible to shake off.Continue reading “Album Review: Lotic- Water”
Film Review: Here To Be Heard (2017)
There was no one quite like The Slits, and there never will be again. It’s eleven years since lead singer and force of nature Ari Up passed away from cancer at just 48 William E Badgley’s documentary charts the first all-female punk band and their formation in 1976, featuring interviews with Kate Korris, the originalContinue reading “Film Review: Here To Be Heard (2017)”
Overlooked Classics: Cutie and the Boxer
Why don’t more people know about Zachary Heinzerling’s remarkable, delicately moving documentary film from 2013? Cutie (Noriko ) met The Boxer (Ushio Shinohara) when he was forty one and she was just nineteen Shinohara was already an established presence in the New York avant-garde art scene of the sixties, with his action paintings, where heContinue reading “Overlooked Classics: Cutie and the Boxer”
Book Review: Genesis P-Orridge- NON BINARY
For anyone interested in transgressive art, the name Genesis P-Orridge needs no introduction. An artist interested in pushing societal boundaries of gender, sex, religion and politics, their art always provoked. In the seventies, as part of the noise/visual collective COUM Transmissions, and industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle, they were met with resistance from establishment figures, censored,Continue reading “Book Review: Genesis P-Orridge- NON BINARY”
Lost In Music: Nightmares On Wax ft OSHUN- Breathe In
Three years in the making, the new Nightmares On Wax album Shout Out! To Freedom is getting good and spiritual on your ass. Exactly what we need, methinks, when times are uncertain and fraught. And any projects including the wondrous Shabaka Hutchings and Greentea Peng has to be worthy of your time. The new single,Continue reading “Lost In Music: Nightmares On Wax ft OSHUN- Breathe In”
Theatre Review: Krapp’s Last Tape/Go On, Tron Theatre
Go On Linda McLean’s plays are all about humanity in all its messy, smudgy forms, so it’s a fine companion piece to Beckett. Jane (Maureen Beattie) is training an Artificial Intelligence prototype, Jayne. One appears on a screen on a glowing cube, glugging down red wine in a suburban kitchen. The other is in personContinue reading “Theatre Review: Krapp’s Last Tape/Go On, Tron Theatre”
Hit The North 