Issue 576

Records - Lau

21 May 2007

FOLK This debut CD from Lau, a trio made up of fiddler Aidan O’Rourke, accordionist Martin Green and guitarist Kris Drever, is an accurate reflection of the kind of music that had been emerging in their impressive (if occasional) live work since they…

The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics

21 May 2007

CRIME SATIRE CF Wong is having a bad day. The office he shares with his Australian assistant Joyce is about to be demolished by property developers, and he also seems to be on a collision course with some vegan terrorists who have recently invaded…

Erik Truffaz

Album

21 May 2007

JAZZ French trumpeter Erik Truffaz’ new album takes its name from the crazily surreal architecture and shifting wintry landscape of the remote Russian city of Arkhangelsk, and succeeds in working up some intriguing musical geometry of its own.

Gutsville No.1

Comics

21 May 2007

FANTASY HORROR Created by two of British comics’ brightest new talents, Gutsville No.1 is a steampunk fantasy yarn that has absolutely no truck with even the furthest reaches of possibility. Yet it’s all the better for that, as Simon Spurrier has an…

Various (Optimo)

Album

21 May 2007

ELECTRONIC Technically this is a ‘various artists’ compilation, but rarely has a DJ partnership ever put their own stamp to a mix CD like the Optimo duo. Following on from their recent, well-received Kill The DJ and Psyche Out mixes, Walkabout…

Wiley

Album

21 May 2007

GRIME Long hailed as the progenitor of grime, since his 2004 debut Wiley has struggled to match his credibility with commercial success. Sadly, lacking any degree of quality control, his third album sees only more underachievement. While others can…

Various (Thank You For Being You)

Album

21 May 2007

NDIE One of Scotland’s most prominent indie labels of the last two-and-a-half decades thanks to their discovery of Belle and Sebastian with Tigermilk, Stow College’s Electric Honey here pay tribute to a whole slew of contemporaries such as Postcard…

Biffy Clyro

Album

21 May 2007

ROCK The pressure of expectation on a band is only really pressure if you don’t have the requisite songs to walk the walk. This, Biffy Clyro’s fourth album, walks the walk. The proggy edges that might have frightened the greater populace in the past…

Records - Megadeth

21 May 2007

METAL Once one of the most influential thrash titans (part of the ‘big four’ alongside Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer), Megadeth went one faster, one harder than the rest of the metal pack. However in 2002 it looked like frontman Dave Mustaine would…

Records - Thomas Truax

21 May 2007

PSYCHEDELIC POP If you had to sum this record up in two words, you’d nick them from the press release: ‘Tim Burton’. Like the maverick filmmaker, New York-raised, London-based one-man band Thomas Truax is a man of similarly unique vision, his…

Rufus Wainwright

Album

21 May 2007

POMP POP Conceived as a more commercial release than the acclaimed but largely overlooked Want One and Want Two, Release the Stars is nothing of the sort, not so much radio-unfriendly as radio-oblivious, despite the presence of Neil Tennant as…

Records - Candie Payne

21 May 2007

RETRO POP Candie Payne sings songs about love lost, makes you think of skinny, melancholy girls in 60s eyeliner, tramping Liverpudlian streets wishing their lovers would give them one last chance. Her bell-clear voice coos through the introspective…

The Rainbow Family

Album

21 May 2007

ELECTRONICA Having a remote Scottish studio hasn’t quite made The Rainbow Family the new Boards of Canada, but their surroundings certainly seem to have given them a more pastoral outlook. Duo Barry Christie (who has worked with Mylo as a member of…

Jeff Buckley

Album

21 May 2007

ROCK For those of us who are not paid-up apostles in the Church of Jeff, this collection, marking the tenth anniversary of his tragic drowning, contains everything that was great and galling about him. Not for nothing does his immense cover of Lenny…