• Thom Yorke – Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes

    October 20, 2014 - By 

    Listen Thom­­, we need to talk. It’s not me, it’s you.  You’ve decided to release your new record, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes via Bittorrent. Conceptually, it’s neat wee idea, using the model which the industry has railed against for the last 15 years. It’s cheeky and somewhat clever, but a bit ‘too little too late’ considering the success of services like Bandcamp. The album’s release model is also stuck with being compared, quite fairly, to the ‘Pay what you want’ model of 2007’s In Rainbows. The thing is, that album legitimately challenged how we experience and release music in the modern…

  • Caribou – Our Love

    October 17, 2014 - By 

    Most adults have, at one stage or another, suffered from a broken heart. A thoroughly miserable life experience, the majority of us deal with it by ingesting copious amounts of chocolate, moping around the place feeling sorry for ourselves and – if you’re The Thin Air, at least – drinking ourselves into pointless oblivion in pubs. Dan Snaith clearly does things a bit differently, channelling what has been – if the lyrics are anything to go by – a period of considerable emotional turmoil into the ten songs that make up his fourth LP under the Caribou moniker (after two…

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

    October 16, 2014 - By 

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles combines two of the least appealing trends in current pop culture. The first is an unearned nostalgia for television cartoons that were already pretty ropey to begin with (only worsened by the recent dominance of the listicle). The second is the relentless grimification of pulpy comic book material for the PG-13/12A multiplex crowd. TMNT is an inexplicable and gormless film, which seems to have been made with some fictional demographic in mind. There’s none of the pulpy stylishness of the comics, or the light-hearted silliness of the television series. It’s a Nickelodeon production but I can only imagine children will be quickly bored by the unending humourlessness…

  • Flying Lotus – You’re Dead!

    October 15, 2014 - By 

    L.A.’s Flying Lotus (Steven Ellison) has had a somewhat circuitous musical journey since releasing his debut LP in 2006. Taking its title from his birth year, 1983 saw the beginning of a series of full-length releases that harked back to concepts and ideas – memories even of life and place – that were intrinsic to the beatsmith’s musical identity. These sonic origins, as heard on 1983 and Los Angeles, compounded the variety of deep and melodic hip hop instrumentals that J Dilla and Madlib had long been well known for, but Ellison’s interpretation of the mix-tape style was unique. It…

  • Shellac – Dude Incredible

    October 14, 2014 - By 

    Shellac don’t operate like a normal band. Releasing albums every seven years in between Steve Albini and Bob Weston’s day jobs as recording engineers; no fanfare, no previews or singles; no accompanying tour. One thing they can be relied on for, however, is their consistency. You could essentially arrange Shellac’s discography into any order and it would be difficult for a newcomer to work out the correct sequence. This is no bad thing – no one wants to hear a Shellac album that doesn’t sound like Shellac – it’s a testament to how consistently strong they’ve been over the last…

  • Ida

    October 13, 2014 - By 

    Ida is a modest but beautiful Polish-language buddy road movie from Pawel Pawlikowski, who returns to his homeland for a gorgeously vintage story of histories both personal and political. The sheltered Anne (Agata Trzebuchowska) is a novice nun in Sixties Poland, who has been living in the convent since she was abandoned as a child. Before she takes her vows, she is sent to meet her only living relative, the hard-drinking, cynical Aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), a former prosecutor with the Stalinist regime, and get a taste of the secular world she is preparing to reject. Anne’s benign ignorance give way to a complex…

  • Perfume Genius – Too Bright

    October 9, 2014 - By 

    Mike Hadreas’ third Perfume Genius album marks a sea change for the Seattle-based singer-songwriter. The grungy outfits, introverted lyrics and subdued piano confessionals with which he made his name are consigned to history; in their place struts a shiny androgyny and a corresponding confidence in the power his words and appearance invoke. His music reflects this new-found sense of empowerment, employing an impressive level of sonic and vocal variation across these eleven songs. Hadreas leads us gently into this brave new world via the album’s most familiar-sounding track. Brief, aching and piano-centric, ‘I Decline’ cleverly summons uplifting clichés before unceremoniously…

  • Dracula Untold

    October 8, 2014 - By 

    To local youngsters seeking a bankable trade in these uncertain times, might I suggest a specialism in medieval prop design? HBO’s Game of Thrones has had a good time of it transforming our castle-and-field vistas into a fantasy-realist Middle Ages, and the trend continues with Dracula Untold, feature debut of Dublin-born director Gary Shore. Filmed here over the last year and a half, the film echoes much of Thrones‘ production aesthetic: set in 15th-century Transylvania, it’s all heaving bodices, clashing steel, improbable dental hygiene and over-literal geography like ‘Broken Tooth Mountain’. It’s a very contemporary studio product, feeding on the vogue for origin stories and Universal’s plans for an Avengers-style cinematic universe for the various…

  • Alt-J – This Is All Yours

    October 8, 2014 - By 

    Alt-J rose to success in 2012 having already been together for five years. All this time meant that their first album was the result of five years of hard work; the best tracks to come out of long hours spent in the studio. Arriving just two years later, people might not have thought that This Is All Yours would be able to satisfy the fans. The good news is that it does not disappoint. Despite the departure of Gwil Sainsbury (bassist and vocalist), the band’s new album equals the sound of artistic harmony and chemistry that fans fell in love with…

  • Avi Buffalo – At Best Cuckold

    October 7, 2014 - By 

    In this day and age a four year gap between album releases can be viewed as a lifetime for any young band, such is the way music is consumed (more often than not, spat back out the very same week). It’s just as easy for a new group to garner positive column inches or be thrown into the world of magazine photo-shoots as fresh cannon fodder following a critically-lauded debut album, as it is for them to implode, or find themselves lost amidst the immediate and frenzied media response. In Avi Buffalo’s instance they seemed to have it all going…