At the back of this story lies another more tragic story, a story made more tragic by the often wilful ease with which many young black rappers meet their untimely deaths. Big Pun was not only the first Latin solo rapper to go platinum he was known to those who knew him as an extremely generous man with a great sense of humour and an even greater family man. Being Big though has its downside and Big Punisher died of Continue Reading
With song titles as impossibly surreal and abstract as ‘Vietcaterpillar’, ‘From The See’, ‘I Am The Alphabet’, ‘I Think It Is Beautiful That You Are 256 Colors Too’, ‘Early 70’s Gymnastics’, and ‘Folks with Magik Toes’ it’s doubtful whether we were ever going get an easy ride. And sure enough a few bleeps into ‘Raspberry Dawn’ and we’re cowering under a fizzy electric blanket of pure, buguiling noise. A far from unpleasant electro kind of noise, fair enough, but also Continue Reading
Coming across a soundtrack album can sometimes be like listening to a friend’s compilation tape – intimate and affecting, with songs linked by spirit rather than theme, band or label. On the other hand, it can simply be a sprinkling of tracks too diverse to involve or cohere and making no sense without the film or series that it supports. The L Word, a U.S. series “about a group of young women in Los Angeles, their lives, careers and romantic Continue Reading
We tend to automatically chart a bold line from age to maturity, accepting the latter as some kind of veiled vindication for recycled ideas, thinning ideals, an inevitable middle-aged penchant for jazz and an overnight appreciation for all things easy on the ear. The Cure though, they never really grew up. Not exactly in a Peter Pan way (Christ, have you seen the bloke lately?!), but Robert Smith still yearns, wallows and self-depreciates in much the same way he has Continue Reading
They were always going to have to pull something sizable, nay startlingly immense, out of the laundry basket to make this still-preposterous proposition plausible, as far down the line as a second full-length album. ‘White robes, a roll-call as long as Gulliver’s left leg and pompous multi-instrumental pop’ observed we over the past couple of years. “Novelty!” shrieked some of the world, failing to see past the end of its stubby nose. Of course such a fate often befalls anything Continue Reading
There’s an age-old but popular belief that’s if it’s obscure and esoteric, it has to be good; a belief more often than not brought about by a feeble mind and hand grappling hopelessly to reproduce the slight and complex strokes of intentional genius. In short, the best place for the feeble mind to hide is in obscurity. If no one knows your artistic intention, there’s an even greater likelihood they’ll fail to recognise there never was one. And no one Continue Reading
They’ve come a long way since the contrary hip-parodists of ‘Carnival’, ‘Lovefool’ and the immeasurably sunny and delicious ‘Life’ album whose kooky, lounge jazz and post-Bacharach irony had us kitsched up to the nines and swooning and humming for a full half decade. They’ve also come a long way since the irrepressible modernist complications of perfectly measured masterpiece of ‘Gran Turismo’ (1998). True it had its share of sunny off-kilter pop nous, but it was dark and frosty affair all Continue Reading
‘There’s nowt so queer as folk’, as my gran used to say. And she wasn’t wrong, god bless her. Not that she’d have approached this flagrantly controversial and quintessentially gratuitous sex-romp with the same candour. I dare say she would spent the greater part of the series in the kitchen stirring a cup of tea and cracking faintly nervous jokes to the dog. But I digress. Whilst the UK version of the mini-series emphasised the gritty, realistic and necessarily furtive Continue Reading
For a brief spell in the late eighties and early nineties, video spawned a monster: and its name was Morrissey. First released in 1990 off the back of albums ‘Viva Hate’ (1988) and ‘Bona Drag’ (1990) the collection is a veritable treat for anyone who enjoys a shapely promotional short. You’ll doubtless love the homoerotic cut and thrust of ‘Last Of The Famous International Playboys’ (in a bedroom green with envy, no less) just as you’ll doubtless love the miserably Continue Reading
The Orkney Island’s Kevin Cormack likes listening to musicians who challenge the functions of specific instruments, those who try to make other objects into musical instruments. It’s a simple enough wish. Why have the same old tired samples coupled with the same old tired riffing coupled with the same old tired drum-kit when you can make a pleasing enough racket with a washboard, a badly tuned guitar, a suitcase and a box of cornflakes? With the exception of the Animal Continue Reading