Mulatu Astatke - New York, Addis, London: The Story of Ethio Jazz 1965-1975 (2009)
Addictive ethio-jazz which miraculously combines a dark, smoky feel with a soulful gutsiness, reminiscent in mood of the concurrent-ish work of Augustus Pablo.

Manuel Göttsching (Ashra) - New Age of Earth (1976 ( Read more... )

While the maxim that there’s nothing new under the sun is subject to itself, nonetheless, the last decade has seemed especially blatant in its carbon-copy revivals of old genres (in music and cinema, especially). On the one hand, one doesn’t want to revile this trend, because, despite the fact that I sometimes think that the more obscure corners ( Read more... )

This camp horror-comedy gem from the 1980s lies unjustly neglected in the cult vaults… but, pursuing my mission to give new (un)life to the contents of the 1980s (Society, I’m looking at you), I bring you a film which features as its centrepiece an undead Grace Jones, with white and red body paint and props by Keith Haring, performing a striptease ( Read more... )

As far as krautrock goes, I’m more a fan of the kosmische, the ambient and the motorik moments than of the riotous long-form hippie-era free jams in which the genre had its inception - apart from Cluster, other favourites include Neu! (a band whose full potential is sadly only realised in a few songs), Harmonia, Kraftwerk’s Ralf und Florian, and ( Read more... )

For a country which has been a Mecca for tourism, it’s surprising how little literary travel writing there is about Thailand (particularly on the part of Australians, for whom Bangkok is a likely stopover on the way to, gosh, nearly anywhere else). But perhaps that relates to the reasons many go to the country (sex tourism, backpacker parties or ( Read more... )

Suspiria (1977)
Profondo Rosso ('Deep Red', 1975)
Tenebrae (1982)

There’s probably little new to add to the vast reams of commentary on Argento’s work - but here am I, here you are - or, to put it another way, Dario where all men have gone before... I must admit, to my chagrin, that I’ve started watching Dario Argento films a number of times on ( Read more... )

My interest in City of Spades was initially inspired by a growing fascination with mod subculture. MacInnes’ Absolute Beginners is considered to be a classic evocation of the mod era, but CoS was the work that I managed to pick up secondhand, and also the first in the London Trilogy, of which AB is the second. And it was certainly absolutely ( Read more... )

While animal names have flourished in recent times - Grizzly Bear, Panda Bear, Wolf Eyes, Deerhoof, Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective, and, trending back a little further, Cat Power - and have been a marker of ‘alternative,’ not to say art-school experimental, musical sensibilities, the ‘tiger’ moniker has mostly been spared this trend - and, indeed, ( Read more... )

Working through the darker recesses of Victorian fiction and the sensation novel, I’ve wended my way from Collins through early Hardy, Le Fanu and Braddon to Ellen Wood (Charles Reade, I’ve got my eye on you…) East Lynne, somewhat neglected but, unlike many of its sistren and brethren, still in print, is a work which justly takes its place in this ( Read more... )

I must confess that on first listening to I.G.Y. (named for the International Geophysical Year), the first track on The Nightfly and perhaps that which most encapsulates its themes and concerns, I was not taken - nice, I thought, but a little too commercial sounding. However, the sheen of polish, the feel that every note and lyric is a precisely- ( Read more... )