5 Stars

“I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin." In the course of a person's life, there usually comes a time where you encounter things that move you. They may touch your soul in an emotive way - maybe you're reminded of a gentle summer's day frolicking in a hazy strawberry field as a wee bairn, maybe you're reminded of what it means to be human and all that comes with it. Who knows? However, sometimes you

Imagine, if you will, that you have a soul. A tangible soul that you can actually touch, full of tenderness and joy and sweet delicious sorrow...all of 'the feels' as the kids today say. Now imagine having that soul pulled out of your body and inviting a gang of football hooligans to stamp on it for 41 minutes and 34 seconds. That is the experience of listening to Mount Eerie's 'A Crow Looked At Me'.  There have been several albums made about death, particularly around the m

Prior to the release of this album, art-rock whizz kids Everything Everything had certainly shown some promise on the indie scene but threatened to fall into the mire of decent-but-never-great bands that were, for a while, the order of the day.  Their first effort 'Man Alive' was a band finding it's feet. Their next release, 'Arc' showed a giant step forward in terms of songwriting ability and spawned classic weirdo anthems like 'Kemosabe' and 'Cough Cough'. Then came the mo

This year the shock news broke that Michael Eugene Archer, better known as D'Angelo, passed away at the tender age of 51 years old. As such, the world has lost one of the most brilliant artists of our time and one who left a trail of incredible music in his wake. So it is only appropriate that we pay homage by reviewing one of the greatest albums of the past 25 years, certainly the greatest soul album by some distance, the year 2000-released, meandering masterpiece that is 'V

"That rug really tied the room together" What happens when you take an abject stoner with no discernible income, skillset or education and throw him into the middle of a Raymond Chandler-eqsue noir thriller? This is the question that the Coen Brothers came to the table with when conceptualising this film. Coming off the back of the critically lauded and quite brilliant 'Fargo' (1996), the Coen Brothers, as they have tended to do throughout their career, followed up a dark cr

Alfonso Cuarón has proved himself over the years to be one of the most innovative and brilliant directors around. His work spans across many different styles, but it's hard to argue that he knows how to put a film together. If you've ever seen the car-chase sequence in 'Children of Men', or any of 'Gravity' you know he knows how to do big cinema with the best of them, as evidenced by helming probably the most beloved film in the Harry Potter series, 'The Prisoner of Azkaban'.

"So I've decided to take my work back underground....to stop it falling into the wrong hands."  Before The Prodigy became a worldwide sensation, with Keith Flint becoming a cyber-punk poster boy and even your granny knowing the lyrics to "Firestarter", there was this: four maniacs from the illegal rave scene in deepest Essex. Their first album ('Experience', 1992) took the rave from the abandoned warehouses and shot it into the mainstream. Their unexpected breakout hits 'C

The sad irony of this title, contrary to what a lot of people think, actually has nothing to do with the untimely passing of the man formerly known as Biggie a few weeks before the release of this album. This double-LP was actually finished weeks before he was unfortunately gunned down in the streets of Los Angeles and serves as a direct narrative follow-on from his platinum selling debut 'Ready To Die'.