Reviews

Slow Dazzle

Hazy 12th album from perennial indie favourites

Buck 65 – Square

The proggy tendencies of current underground hip hop have not gone unnoticed. As if to prove the point, here we have four long tracks in true Yes fashion featuring tempo changes extended instrumental sections and bucolic acoustic guitar loops. But in the place of Jon Anderson's shrill squeak, we have Paris-based Canadian MC, DJ and producer Buck 65's soothing, friendly voice in your ear.

Short Cuts

Also released this month...

Rush – The Spirit Of Radio

'70s/'80s best-of from Canadian progressive rockers

Grogan’s Heroes

A welcome missive from the days when pop was savage and sweet

Plaid – Parts In The Post

Two CDs of remixes by pretty, playful techno duo

Le Fate Ignoranti

Mature, moving odd-couple romance from Italy

The Apu Trilogy

Satyajit Ray's superb 1955 debut Pather Panchali is released here as a three-disc package, including its sequels, Aparajito and The World Of Apu. Influenced by "new realist" European cinema, it tells the ongoing story of a poor, luckless Brahmin family in Bengal, following the fortunes of their youngest son, Apu. No Bollywood-style histrionics or musical interventions—this is beautifully shot, understated, quietly authentic, emotionally devastating cinema.

The Stunt Man

"If God could do the tricks that we can do, he'd be a happy man," declares megalomaniacal film director Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole, on epic form), who's just hired a wanted fugitive (Steve Railsback) to be a stunt man in his anti-war movie. Richard Rush's decidedly offbeat comedy thriller from 1980 lies somewhere between genuinely unsettling and extremely likeable.

Nostalgia

Oblique, arcane and infuriatingly sluggish, even by Tarkovsky's standards (makes Andrei Rublyov look like Moulin Rouge), Nostalgia is the litmus test for arthouse cinephiles. The 'story' of a Russian poet locked in existential agony while researching an obscure 18th-century composer is brimful of breathtaking tableaux, portentous dialogue and primal symbolism (flickering flame as human soul). But is it enough?
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