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7th May - 1st September 2010
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All Articles by Alex Wisgard
Music
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Because
When last we saw la belle Gainsbourg, she was mutilating herself in a most private place at the behest of malevolent directing genius Lars von Trier in last year’s harrowing Antichrist. This, hot on the heels of a near-fatal brain haemorrhage, has hardly left her in the best mindset to record the follow-up to 2006’s critically acclaimed 5:55.
Fortunately, instead of working with songwriters (Air, Neil ‘Divine Comedy’ Hannon) who are almost as in thrall to her legendary father as Charlotte herself, IRM (that’s French for MRI) is a collaboration with the king of PoMo pop himself, Beck.
Unlike its predecessor, the album is very much the sound of an artist starting to find herself. Gainsbourg’s vocals have always been seductive - a lush whisper which oozes Gallic cool while exuding a quaintly English restraint; on IRM, they truly shine. Hushed ballads like ‘In the End’ betray a spectrally alluring folk sound, showcasing the subtleties of Gainsbourg’s voice, while the pitch black sultriness of ‘Greenwich Mean Time’ sounds like a missing track from PJ Harvey’s classic To Bring You My Love. Meanwhile,… Continue reading...
Any other meaning?
Wisgard pontificates on the meaning of Life... Without Buildings.
“No detail, but I’m gonna persuade you...”
Life Without Buildings’ only studio album Any Other City is a decade old this year. That sentence may have no significance for most of you, but a cursory trip to last.fm will show you what you’re missing. Long before the mid-decade post-punk revival, its roughly-produced collision of jagged guitars over a corset-tight rhythm section, all elastic bass and metronomic drums was riotously compelling enough before you consider LWB’s most unique feature.
Posted in LS2 » Music » Any other meaning?
Indietracks
PREVIEW
Located in a disused rural railway station, Indietracks proudly takes the notion of being an indie trainspotter to a new level. An Eden for anoraks, its crowd gives bands who released one single in the mid-eighties the kind of rapture as AC/DC at Donnington, while the merch stand houses as many fanzines and knitted goods as it does band t-shirts. Previously headlined by Los Campesinos! and Camera Obscura, this year’s lineup boasts Brooklyn darlings The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and cult eighties heroes the Pooh Sticks and the Primitives. Just don’t call it twee.
Read morePosted in LS2 » Music » Indietracks
KRAFTWERK
12345678 THE CATALOGUE (EMI)
Having influenced everything from hip-hop to electro-pop, LCD Soundsystem to U-fucking-2, Kraftwerk - the pioneers of electronic music - are having their back catalogue reissued this month. Remastered to the band’s exacting sonic standards, these albums now sound better than ever and, having originally been slated for release five years ago, are now finally ready for rediscovery and reappraisal.
The only gripe with these reissues is the covers. These classic images were as much a part of the band’s albums as the music - the black radiogram of 1975’s Radio-Activity was a suitably doom-laden portent of the sounds inside the sleeve - and these reimagined covers trade the iconic for the iPod.
Still, for a large contingent of Korg-heads, anticipation of these reissues trumps that surrounding the Beatles’ box sets (minus an as-yet nonexistent Synth Hero tie-in game).
With that in mind, let us present a guide to The Catalogue...
The Best Albums of 2009
Leeds Student presents the Top 20 Albums of 2009 as voted for by the writers of the music section
Presented in descending order from 20 to 1.
Read morePosted in LS2 » Music » The Best Albums of 2009