Joel_The_Dapper

A great, aural, enjoyable album., Mar 4 2010

"Their fourth album is not quite the copper-bottomed, hit-packed classic foreshadowed by their last but one, 2006's The Warning.
But "One Life Stand" is a really great electronic album about love.
Clubbing has always been more about pulling than avowals of affection like the deeply old-fashioned "Slush" - a waltz-time digital duet in which Hot Chip admit: "Now we are older/ There's more that we must do".
But Hot Chip have effectively hitched the rhythms and textures more often attuned to lust to a higher emotional calling.
One track, at the very least, stands shoulder to shoulder with "Over and Over", Hot Chip's breakout anthem. The title track is soppier than a puppy… Read more

An album of sublime beauty., Mar 3 2010

The Malian greatest-ever bluesman Ali Farka Touré died in 2006. Diabaté is a 71st-generation musician, and his mastery of the harp-like kora is complete.
The recordings on this album, the second collaboration between Touré and Diabaté after 2005's justly lauded "In the Heart of the Moon", are the last Touré ever made, and they are uncommonly beautiful.
Anyone who knows "In the Heart of the Moon", the spellbinding duo recording of Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté, will want to hear this. That magic mix of guitar and kora was sublime.
But does this session from 2005, recorded just a few months before Ali's death, add anything… Read more

A really addictive and excellent THIRD album., May 4 2008

In the mid-1990s, Bristol collective Portishead released two definitive albums - Dummy and its follow-up Portishead - then promptly went into hibernation, running scared of the era-defining trip-hop sound they had helped to shape.
For anyone that cares, Portishead are still made up of Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons and Adrian Utley, just as they were back in 1994 when "Dummy" hit the streets.
It has taken them 11 years to produce another album, entitled "Third", which has moved on from previous offerings - the smoky trip hop sound that was the backdrop to many a chilled late night is gone - replaced by an altogether heavier, starker, darker flavour.
Singer Beth Gibbons'… Read more