Demob Happy

Love and death in a cold climate 5/10 In a recent bitch about Danny Boyle’s ever more frenetic visual style and expressing general irritation at the hyperactive mode of storytelling employed on his recent hit ‘Slumdog Millioanaire‘, my learned colleague David H. Schleicher posted the comment: “give me properly framed sustained panning long shots on [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT It’s not a shame about Fever Ray 8/10 I’d just finished mildly mocking Bon Iver’s Auto-Tune ballad ‘In the Woods’ from his recent ‘Blood Bank EP‘ when Fever Ray’s Vocoder-heavy debut album landed in my inbox with a mechanical clunk. Fever Ray is Karin Dreijer Andersson, one [...]

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You’re Welcome 7.5/10 FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT Extra Golden are a combination of Keynan and American musicians who marry political consciousness to a vibrant, funky take on rock informed by the Nairobi-born Benga style. According to the band’s MySpace, the member’s share a belief that “tight quarters = tight grooves”, and [...]

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Blood on the log-cabin floor 7/10 Vocoders: yes or no? The use of such synthesized vocals took a big dip in fashion between its Kraftwerk and ELO heyday and its minor resurgence under the auspices of so-called Chill Out acts such as Air and Bent. However, it is a sound probably most commonly associated these [...]

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My final answer 6/10 In one of my favourite books about India, Rohinton Mistry’s epic ‘A Fine Balance‘, one character says “there is no such thing as an uninteresting life”. Set in part in the vast slums of Mumbai – formerly Bombay – at a critical juncture in the city’s history (the emergency powers introduced [...]

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“Will it just be like they’re dreaming?” 9/10 It’s definitely a funny time of year to be reviewing what could likely be the best album of 2009, especially one with such sunshine-drenched atmospherics, but Animal Collective may just have rescued us from the seasonally adjusted black hole that is January. Subject to pre-release hype not [...]

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Cuba libra 8/10 I was going to start this post with a summary put down of biopics and it’s many crimes against good filmmaking. From pointless impersonation (‘Ali’), to line-towing, officially sanctioned dross (‘Ray’), to films of such massive pretension that you suspect the filmmaker to be covertly, deliberately assassinating the credibility of its subject [...]

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The fantastic Mr Fox As probably Paul Theroux’s best-known fiction work I’ve long wanted to read ‘Mosquito Coast’, and not just because I am a fan of his grumpy brand of travel writing. A 1980s feature film adaptation – starring Harrison Ford and River Phoenix – left a indelible mark on me, perhaps because, as [...]

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Switched on 7/10 Fujiya & Miyagi – also known as the very un-Japanese and un-duo-like David Best, Steve Lewis and Matt Hainsby – are part of a indie/electronica scene, including the likes of Baikonour (aka Jean-Emmanuel Kreiger) and Imitation Electric Piano, that seem to share in Lee Adams a mercenary percussionist. Like Baikonour, Fujiya & [...]

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Dignity and denial – the noble art of butlering In a comment on my post reviewing ‘When we Were Orphans‘, John Self of Asylum pointed out that many of Ishiguro’s novels are about ‘blindness’. While that novel has not warmed on me, it was with ‘blindness’ in mind that I read ‘Remains of the Day’, [...]

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