Category: Uncategorized
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Mac Miller: The Divine Feminine
We’d heard of Mac Miller before, when a younger member of the Review Corner started raving about him. From what we could gather, he was one of those white male hip-hoppers who sings party songs for college boys. Not really our cup of tea. This new album is supposed to be a different direction for…
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José Luis Domínguez: The Legend of Joaquín Murieta
We’ve been enjoying this dramatic double CD of music, a romp written in the style of a classical symphony. Domínguez is one of most sought-after Chilean conductors, conducting opera, ballet and symphony, and for ten years has been resident director of the Santiago Philharmonic Orchestra (who play on this CD). He wanted to write a…
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Jacko Hooper: After The Storm EP
We played this one Sunday afternoon and it’s great Sunday music, laid back and reflective. We were sent a download and the tracks aren’t in the correct order but opener Closer is a gentle piano ballad, and the repeated refrain “my heart breaks when your lips shake” is nicely ambiguous — is the owner of…
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Franz Liszt: Transcriptions of Symphonic Poems
The music on this recording features solo piano versions of Liszt’s orchestral music, either produced by Liszt or transcribed under his supervision. According to the sleeve notes, Liszt often revised his own music while transcribing it, or gave the task to his pupils and select associates, overseeing their work and then revising before publication. These…
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Big Top Heartbreak: Deadbeat Ballads
An album we play quite often is Vincent Black Lighting’s Songs From The Underbelly Part Two (it’s 1,536,042 in music on Amazon). Musically it’s a kind of sedate punk rockabilly with fantastic lyrics about life in North West England (they were from Burnley or somewhere). It was never going to be a hit but they…
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Karin De Fleyt: Hohler Fels, New Music For Flute
This experimental flute music is for those who like the flute and want to hear some technical playing but care little for melody (or pleasure, if we’re being harsh). The opening song is Rolf Gehlhaar’s Grand Unified Theory of Everything, which stems from a lecture Gehlhaar attended. It opens with a lone piano key and…
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Rob Richings: Parka and Boots
Sometimes you want to forget about seminal and influential albums and listen to nice music. The CDs that have the most legs with us are just good songs — Crash My Model Car and Martin John Henry might not have sold many albums but they get played a lot in the Review Corner. We were…
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Apothek: Apothek
Apothek are a duo from Oslo, and have that Norwegian sound to them, which is lo-fi and sounding like it was recorded in a cosy room with a big fire (which it might have been, given their climate). It’s got the same intimate air as Choir of Young Believers, also from Norway. Musically, it’s subtly…
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Still Corners: Dead Blue
This synth pop album from songwriter Greg Hughes and vocalist Tessa Murray is a pleasant listen. It’s undemanding electronic pop with an eighties synth feel but mid-way through its fifth or sixth play we realised that its existence was making us feel happy, never a bad thing. This is possibly because it taps into old…
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Tom Winpenny: Williamson, Organ Music
If often helps to understand a composer: an on-line obituary to Williamson compared him to fellow Oz ex-pats Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer and Clive James, leaving a “culturally deadening” Australia. The obit noted: “It is possible that some of his headline-making indiscretions at the expense of the fashionable would have remained private if he’d been…
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