Recently in Reviews Category

I have two new Free Culture-related reviews up at Furtherfield.

Abstract Hacktivism

A book collecting two essays by Otto von Busch and Karl Palmas transforms the concept of "hacktivism" with well-argued historical analysis and a number of informative case studies.

Big Buck Bunny

"Big Buck Bunny", the second short film from the Blender Foundation, features well animated cartoon animals trying to kill each other in order to advance free software and free culture.

Both of the works under review are excellent and well worth downloading and/or paying for.

Solaris - The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume 2

They're not mentioning it in the publicity, but this collection contains the new Jerry Cornelius novella from Michael Moorcock, "Modem Times".

I've started reading it and it's very good. Absolutely vintage Cornelius but with the quotes from Iraq now rather than Vietnam.

If this blog post is threatening to mean precisely nothing to you, Wikipedia isn't much help. I will blog about Cornelius at some point, the stories are absolute classics.

furtherfield review - Addressable Memory

Michael Takeo Magruder is portraying this landscape of digital memory with its own tools, producing portraits of its inhabitants with its own palettes. In Addressable Memory the first draft of history is allegorized as a process of combining and quantizing disparate experience and telemetry. Of mashing-up and composing. The technology and aesthetics of mobile phones, Internet news feeds, video screens, computer image processing and virtual reality are all turned on themselves. At TheSpace4 in Peterborough this show takes up all three rooms. It will be touring the UK throughout 2008.

My latest review at Furtherfield.

The broadsheets haven't been kind to Sweeney Todd. The Grauniad bemoaned Tim Burton discarding the play's critique of capitalism while The Sunday Times was upset that there weren't any proper tunes in Sondheim's score. Oh, wait, I got that the wrong way round. The Times wanted more class activism, The Graun wanted something to hum. What is the world coming to?

It's an excellent film. I found watching it a harrowing experience, as much from its psychological aspects as from the actual close shaves. The violence was a long time in coming as everything slowly fell into place (or possibly apart), and when it finally arrived it was visceral but matter-of fact which made it all the worse. A savage slash and few gurgles and that's it. Apart from the final scene, which had both a deeper feeling of dread and even worse atrocities pervading it.

The criticism I've read of the acting is space filler. Burton got a good performance out of Alan Rickman ferchrissakes, the one that Rickman always feels and that if you were sat in the stalls of a theatre or behind the camera on a set that you would feel but that, like all supernatural auras, usually never quite gets captured by technology. Burton gets Helena Bonhma Carter and Ali G to give performances that go from comic to tragic in the space of a few moments without ever being annoying. And if Johnny Depp doing some unsubtle emoting rather than actually acting would please broadsheet critics then that's just another reason to ignore them.

I found listening to the film confusing to begin with. It's The Muses' revenge on me for every time I have ever been unsympathetic to someone who doesn't get modern art. The words pole-dance around the music. The music is complex and fleeting. But I got into it, and by the time the worst pies in London were on the table I could find my way around it.

The punchline works thanks to some masterful misdirection of the viewer's attention, and the film ends at precisely the moment it should. In the soundtrack album notes, Burton mentions Hammer's horror films as one of his points of inspiration, and I think this is the kind of film the old Hammer would make now. If they did musicals and had Tim Burton as a director.

Mars Attacks!

This Tim Burton film with Tom Jones fighting (well, fleeing) early CGI martians made more money in the UK than in America on its first release. It's knowing kitsch with an enemy that says one thing and does another. Tories will hate the former, Guardianistas will find the latter as incomprehensible in art as they do in real life.

Starship Troopers

An hilarious parody of militarism and media body fascism with amazing aliens and Doogie Howser MD as a Herr Flick lookalike psychic. This tends to out Buffy fans, who hate all the beautiful ubermenchen getting eaten.

Alien 3

This troubled entry in the Alien series divides audiences into those who think it is the worst possible end to the character of Ripley and the whole idea of the Alien series imaginable and those who made the mistake of giving Alien 4 a chance.

Mad Max III

Where did all the corn come from? And where do they get all the food for the pigs?

In no particular order:

Strange House - the Horrors

Excellent hammond-organ-and-grinding-guitar driven gothic pastiche of garage rock that starts with a cover of "Jack The Ripper" just to let you know that they know that you know. A vibrant, literate and surprisingly affecting wild ride of an album that, like all the best Goth, lets you in on the joke.

CSS - CSS

A sexy, mischievous energy and a love of American New Wave and 80s pop make for Brazil's coolest export since Sergio Mendez. Fun, infectious, and liberated/ing.

Mantaray - Siouxsie

Free from the weight of the history of her previous bands, Siouxsie survives her transformation into an "artist" in the "content industry" with dignity intact and voice better than ever. She deserves better backing but this is still an excellent album. Find the videos "leaked" on YouTube and catch her live next year.

Fur And Gold - Bat For Lashes

A wonderful continuation of the English tradition of fey, visionary, referentially open popular music that starts with a harpsichord riff and goes on from there. "Prescilla" is my favourite song of the year.

The Imagined Village - The Imagined Village

If a camel is a horse designed by committee then The Imagined Village is Bat For Lashes delivered late and over budget by a PFI conglomerate.

Prinzhorn Dance School - Prinzhorn Dance School

Sadly for an art school joke band, "The Horn" have some good songs and an often melancholy vibe that distracts from the important stuff like them making their own teapots. A slow, disquieting, stripped down, bassy, indie rock sound.

Sighs Trapped By Liars - The Red Krayola with Art & Language

The American rockers and the English conceptual artists team up for an album with a very contemporary-sounding retro psychedelia and cool rock feel and a pair of female vocalists mirroring the pair of male lyricists. The songs are about Rimbaud, the editors of October, Samuel Beckett, various economic idiocies and several artworks by Art & Language. They are understated, savage, and very successful both as left-field music and left-wing art.

We Are All Pan's People - The Focus Group

More of the excellent same from one of Ghost Box Records's stable of English retro-electro outfits. Analogue synths mashed up with library albums of spoken word and incidental music tracks underwitten by the brooding feel of a countryside that is more Summerisle than Ambridge.

An End Has A Start - Editors

If Coldplay's management had told them to try to sound more like Joy Division this would have been the result. Near-empty stadia await.

Our Love To Admire - Interpol

No, you can't be the next Coldplay either. Not yours. What happened to the band that produced "Turn On The Bright Lights"?

War Stories - UNKLE

Heavy, rocky, gothy, post-Trip Hop dirty beats from UNKLE. Forget the insipid electronica of their second album and enjoy the sonic attack of this affecting and danceable return to form.

Myths Of The Near Future - Klaxons

Dance opportunism from some very well-read indie boys but who cares when it sounds this good? "Atlantis To Interzone" is a classic and if they can avoid going prog rock then great things await them.

OK, what did I miss?

If I wanted to make this blog linkbait I would just post snarky comments about Goth icons' latest offerings and watch the Adwords revenue come pouring in.

But I don't. So when people get the wrong end of a slightly more nuanced stick than I feel they are giving me credit for I feel I need to revisit what I have written.

This means that I have four things to say about my comments on Mantaray:

1. I like the album. I said I did. It has grown on me even more with repeated listening, and it was great to see Siouxsie on Later With Jools Holland.

2. I stand by my comments about Siouxsie's inconsistent pronunciation of ts as ds. Compare even words in the same song never mind different songs or previous albums. I concede that I cannot know why this is the case.

3. I also stand by my comments about the music. It is content by the traditional two producers. It is competent content, and probably all that is possible at this point in history, but it is still a comparative disappointment as a backing for such excellent vocals.

4. If you love music then be willing to look inside the box rather than just accepting the marketing speak. Content isn't questioned and makes no mistakes.

Just to re-iterate: I have some criticisms about Mantaray's production (none of which are aimed at Siouxsie, who is on top form here) that I hope can be addressed for the next album, but it's a very good album so go and buy it.

Art and Language wrote lyrics that The Red Krayola (nee Crayola) set to music for three albums in the 1970s and 1980s. After a gap of more than twenty years they have got together again a fourth time for "Sighs Trapped By Liars".

The album has a summery psychedelic rock sound that is very contemporary in its smooth retro feel. The songs are about mirrors, the authors of "Art Since 1900", economic and social anecdotes and the texts of various Art & Language artworks. The lyrics, written by the two male artists of Art & Language, are delivered by two female vocalists, continuing the mirroring theme.

The sleeve notes mercifully contain brief explanations of the lyrics as well as the text of the lyrics themselves. These are songs that are deceptively easy on the ear. Their usually laid back feel hides a musical as well as a lyrical bite. Art & Language's paintings are still texts, and The Red Krayola's songs are still incisive.

"Four Stars" (about the authors of "Art Since 1900"), "Laughter At The Foot Of The Cross" (about a story by Rabelais), "Hostage" (the text of a series of paintings by A&L) and the title track are my favourites from an album of thirteen strong tracks.

Sometimes Art & Language's lyrics and The Red Krayola's instrumentation are both unstructured enough at the same time that they give neither singers nor listener enough to work with. This can be disorientating, which is presumably the point, but it does rob a good anecdote ("Jerry Fodor's Story") of its satisfying conclusion.

You can get the album from any online CD store or on iTunes. I recommend very highly that you do. There are previews on some sites, notably Amazon, so don't just take my word for it.