• Q+A: Bear Worship WAS Here

    June 25, 2017 - By 

    Karl Knuttel – or Bear Worship, to use his professional name – has just released his nine-song debut album, WAS. It’s an exotic, hypnotic record that seems to exist in a time and place all of its own. Here, he talks to David Turpin about the process of making the album. I’d like to ask about the title of the album, WAS. It’s a very emphatic one-word title, and yet it also happens to be a very ambiguous word. I guess what I wanted to represent with the title is that every person wants to feel like they matter. Making…

  • Is It Happening Again? David Turpin On The Uncertain Return of Twin Peaks

    June 8, 2017 - By 

    It’s hard not to feel sympathy for anybody who ‘binge watched’ Twin Peaks in anticipation of the much-ballyhooed revival that began airing on Showtime / Sky Atlantic this May.  Seven episodes long and broadcast in the spring/summer of 1990, the first series is still the best serial drama ever made – an enchantment emerging from the attrition between soap opera surface and the febrile imagination of co-creator David Lynch.  It was humorous, slyly erotic, sometimes terrifying, and occasionally profoundly moving.  Following its progress into the gradually more dispiriting second series is an experience that can only be described as heart-breaking. …

  • ANOHNI – Hopelessness

    May 12, 2016 - By 

    For her first release since disbanding Antony and the Johnsons, Anohni has changed not just her name, but her sound as well. Gone are the doleful torch ballads of Antony and the Johnsons (1998) and I am a Bird Now (2005), and the intricate chamber arrangements of The Crying Light (2009) and Swanlights (2010). In their place are electronic soundscapes rooted in the sensibilities of the record’s two producers – the harder edges of Hudson Mohawke marrying surprisingly easily with the more amorphous textures of Oneohtrix Point Never. The change of sound is drastic, but arguably necessary, Antony and the Johnsons having proceeded to a logical…

  • Inbound: Bear Worship

    February 9, 2016 - By 

    Bear Worship is the new project from Irish musician Karl Knuttel, who has previously performed as Pinkie and as Ivan St John.  Here, he talks about his love of synthesisers, making music out of necessity, and the benefits of being ‘ridiculously controlling’. Words by David Turpin. You’ve said that Bear Worship emerged out of a time of anxiety and depression, and yet the music is far more dreamlike than nightmarish, and far more expansive than claustrophobic.  What do you mean when you say it was made “out of necessity”? You know, anxiety is a harrowing experience. It’s not at all…

  • Best Film Scores of 2015

    December 17, 2015 - By 

    In the first of a series looking at 2015 in film, David Turpin reveals his thoughts on his favourite film scores of the year that was. The Duke of Burgundy – Cat’s Eyes Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy was my film of the year – a peerlessly kinky erotic fantasy that was also a wise and humane commentary on the limitations of fetishism.  The score, by Cat’s Eyes (a collaboration between soprano Rachel Zeffira and The Horrors’ Faris Badwan), performed a similar trick – repurposing the gauzy sounds of 70s Eurotrash erotica for more than mere pastiche.  The haunting blankness…

  • Lianne La Havas – Blood

    August 3, 2015 - By 

    For her second album, Lianne La Havas has traded the acoustic settings of her 2012 debut, Is Your Love Big Enough?, for a lusher, summery sound. Inspired, La Havas says, by her Jamaican and Greek heritage, the album fairly shimmers with plush, melodic soul numbers, usually of the most laid-back variety. At the same time, there’s a refined musical intelligence at work across the album that keeps the attention throughout – not least in La Havas’ expertly judged vocal delivery. While co-producers Di Genius (son of veteran reggae artist Freddie McGregor), Paul Epworth and Jamie Lidell all put in top-drawer…

  • Tropics – Rapture

    January 30, 2015 - By 

    The second full-length release from vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Ward, better known as Tropics, Rapture builds on 2011’s lushly produced Parodia Flare to create something equally atmospheric, if rather more reserved than its title might suggest. Opening track and lead single ‘Blame’ establishes the album’s intriguing combination of reticence and expansiveness, as Rhodes pianos, gently bubbling analogue synths and flickering snatches of noise provide the bed for Ward’s gentle vocal, while loose but forceful percussion brings momentum. Looseness is a watchword across the album, which is propelled by richly textured percussive arrangements that ebb and swell as organically as the melodic components.…

  • New Old Testaments: Genesis and Job on screen

    January 12, 2015 - By 

    December 26 saw the opening of Ridley Scott’s $140-million Moses epic Exodus: Gods and Kings.  As cumbersome as its video game-friendly title, the film is occasionally spectacular but mostly stodgy, not to mention camp in the way that only a very, very serious endeavour can be.  Closer in spirit to Scott’s own Gladiator (2000) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005) than to Cecil B. De Mille’s two treatments of the same material (1923 and 1956), Exodus capped an unusually busy year for the Old Testament on screen. While the first and likely most profitable Biblical film of 2014 was a New…

  • Sexual Objects: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk

    October 27, 2014 - By 

    Last month, UK distributor Arrow Films – known for their lavish DVD and BluRay reissues – released new editions of five extraordinary films by the Polish auteur Walerian Borowczyk.  Available as a box set (limited to 1,000 copies and now sold out), as well as individual discs, the beautifully remastered editions make this a perfect time to investigate Browczyk’s bizarre and beautiful oeuvre. Born in 1923, Borowczyk studied painting and lithography in Kraków before embarking on a career as an animator.  Working first in Poland and later in Paris, Borowczyk produced an incredible array of short animation pieces, including the…

  • Kindness – Otherness

    October 22, 2014 - By 

    The solo project of British musician Adam Bainbridge, Kindness emerged in 2012 with World, You Need a Change of Mind, an album that synthesised diffuse influences into a svelte whole, co-produced by Philippe Zdar. On its follow-up, Otherness, Bainbridge moves away from glossy surfaces in pursuit of a more tactile sound, with a new emphasis placed on collaboration and live musicianship. Bainbridge describes Otherness as “another choice”, a self-styled alternative to what he calls “direct contemporary-sounding pop music”. That’s an intriguing endeavour, of course, but it’s also one that defines the music primarily by what it is not, rather than…