Author: jerobear
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Hinds: Leave Me Alone
This all-girl band from Madrid are going to be all over the shop this year, as youngsters discover how exciting music can be. Older fans will have heard it all before, The Troggs Wild Thing onwards. It’s got a definite ramshackle charm, albeit one that fades a little as the album plays through. A bit…
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Balsamo Deighton: Unfolding
We’ve had this for some weeks and we’ve played it a lot. It’s modern English pop/country and while there is nothing outstanding, it’s written and played to the highest standards. Some songs have got close to being earworms — Light In The Dark is one — and we love the guitar solo on the harmonica-laden…
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Phil Collins: Face Value / Both Sides
It’s not quite up there with Blackadder going over the top or Del Boy missing the bar and falling over, but one truly great television moment was the opening episode of Miami Vice: Crockett and Tubbs drive down a waterfront road in a Ferrari Daytona Spyder, racing to a show-down. The soundtrack that made it…
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Leo Brouwer: Bandurria and Guitar Music
This does what it says on the label: Cuban Leo Brouwer is acknowledged as one of the most challenging and innovative of contemporary composers, and this is his music for bandurria — a lute-type instrument dating back to the c16th — and guitar. The former is perennially popular in South America, says the Press notes.…
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Jonathan Ostlund Lunaris
Trying to describe this double CD in a short review is like condensing War And Peace into 25 words. There’s just too much going on to do it justice. The sleeve does a good job, suggestive as it is of dreamy, other-worldly soundscapes featuring unicorns and maidens in ponds. The CD opens with a…
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Lo’Jo: 310 Lunes
We love Lo’Jo in the Review Corner. We came across them on a compilation we had to review about the new wave of French music (Cuisine Non-Stop: Introduction to the French Nouvelle Generation, 2008, Luaka Bop), which was opened by Lo’Jo’s Baji Larabat. Lo’Jo is a kind of collective, formed in 1982 and blending French…
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Boreas Quartet: Tye, In Nomine
You’ve all heard the work of Christopher Tye, even though he died before 1573 — he wrote the hymn Winchester Old, the basis for one of those songs we all love around December, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks. We meant to review this album for Christmas but hey ho (ho ho ho) we never did,…
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Reto Kuppel: Vieuxtemps, Solo Violin Works
Henri Vieuxtemps was born nearly 200 years ago (1820), and was a Belgian composer and violinist, a towering figure in his field (says Wikipedia). He was the son of a weaver, from Verviers (now twinned with Bradford). Despite the age of this music, and the fact that it’s a lone violin for the best part…
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Dominion String Quartet: Alfred Hill, String Quartets, vol. 6, Nos. 15-17
Last week we reviewed the piano quintets of Frank Bridge and Cyril Scott; Hill was operating at a similar time and writes music that’s not a million miles away, but while Bridge and Scott were stiff upper lippish and English, this collection, the last in a series, offers the warmth of an Antipodean giving you…
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