Author: jerobear
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Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: Loin Des Hommes (Soundtrack)
As if he didn’t have enough to do, on top of the Bad Seeds / Cave / Grinderman work, Brighton’s most visible resident also does movie soundtracks. (This isn’t really classical but it’s what we listened to this week). We bought the bleak film The Proposition some years ago, because Cave wrote the music and…
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Peter Sheppard Skaerved: Telemann: The Great Violins, Vol. 1
This rather lovely and delicate new album is from Divine Art and is the first instalment of an ambitious new project, to record baroque works on some of the world’s most historic instruments. For volume one, Peter Sheppard Skaerved is playing a 1570 Amati, already 150 years old when Telemann wrote his 12 fantasies for…
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Thea Gilmore: Ghosts and Graffiti
Much as Gilmore is respected as a singer songwriter, she left us a little unmoved. She’s respected in the folk world but she passed us by, at least until her last album Regardless which was packed full of sparkling pop tunes and deserved to do better than it did (which was #39 in the charts,…
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Ash Hunter: Rural Music
This came via Wedge at A&A Music so we weren’t expecting much: in fact it’s wonderful. Overall the vibe reminded us of Traffic’s mix of folk and jazz, from an era when people used to be optimistic about putting the world to rights with a few good ideas and a steady supply of weed. It…
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The Wombats: Glitterbug
Time travel does exist: The Wombats are in fact a cheesy 70s disco band stranded in this century. Shortly after an appearance on Top Of The Pops in 1975, they took a wrong turn and ended up in Dr Who’s Tardis, then found themselves stuck in 2007. Still dressed in Wombat suits and with Peter…
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Eska: Eska
Eska is a session singer and apparently this album has taken five years, presumably working on and off. If you Google her, you find things like “the most talked about, revered singer you’ve never heard of”. It’s an album to immerse yourself in, and one that doesn’t really lend itself to a 200-word review. It…
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The Best Of The Grateful Dead
With the Dead announcing that they’re calling it a day — three shows at Chicago’s Soldier Field from 3-5th July will be their last — it’s a good time to issue a best of. It’s probably not the first, but it’s a good ending to their career. We’re not massive Deadheads, but they are embedded…
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Gilbert Rowland: Handel: Suites for Harspichord Vol3
Having spent the week listening to Sebastien Fagerlund’s intellectually stimulating music (see this page) and the thrash punk of Gallows (ditto), and enjoying both, it’s a big jump to Rowland’s presentation of Handel’s harpsichord music, whose aim is “merely” to entertain. We’ve enjoyed this too, but there’s just less to say, at least without just…
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Sebastien Fagerlund: Darkness In Light
Sebastien Fagerlund is Finnish and his Wikipedia entry reads: “He is described as a post-modern impressionist whose sound landscapes can be heard as ecstatic nature images which, however, are always inner images, landscapes of the mind.” It says the violin concerto Darkness in Light “inhabits the zone between dream and reality” and is partly inspired…
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