Demob Happy

Another View Point 7/10 Keigo Oyamada – aka Cornelius – has a curious sound that is at once lush and acoustic, but proudly synthetic and occassionally a little sterile. Point‘s mix of funky house, beach boy harmonies, garage rock and other electronic ephemera feels somehow both spontaneously breezy and painstakingly intricate. The digital production is [...]

Cornelius - Brazil [ 3:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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A fine book 8/10 Rohinton Mistry is an unusual voice in contemporary literature. His compassion for his characters is evident throughout his writing, going to great lengths to create tangible, likeable subjects. Whereas many other recent booker-shortlisted authors have either tried to radically play with narrative form (David Mitchell) or are ostentatious in the style [...]

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Kid B? 8/10 Apparently largely recorded during the same sessions as Kid A, and released only a year later, it has always been hard to divorce Amesiac from its predecessor and look at it on its own terms. It was suggested at the time – and repeated in the Amazon review – that this was [...]

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“Everything in its right place” 10/10 It’s hard to totally understand the furore surrounding the release of Radiohead’s much-anticipated (and arguably best) fourth album. Considering the bold and uncompromising nature of some tracks on OK Computer it seems stranger in context that that album should have had such broad appeal. One can only assume that [...]

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Forward Thinking 9/10 While ’13′ had some great tracks, there were two many square pegs being forced into round holes. The sonic experimentation seemed contrived and ill-matched to the album’s emotional thrust. ‘Think Tank’ rectifies this with an easier marriage of Albarn’s experimental tendencies and pop sensibility. It is an albun given levity by his [...]

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Elementary 6/10 Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans revisits the classically English detective novel, mimicking and deliberately undermining the style of authors like Agatha Christie. It uses this simple subtext to show how the global catastrophe of the second world war finally destroyed the quaint notion that evil and criminality could be overcome by logic and [...]

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