I first became aware of the film Whiplash when Mr and Mrs Pig both raved about it on Facebook so I was delighted when my son’s girlfriend arrived home one evening with the DVD. Whiplash is indeed a terrific film. I won’t give away too much about the story but basically a talented young jazz drummer is driven almost to breaking point by his music college teacher. It’s a bit like a jazz version of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Full Metal Jazz Cat maybe. Or maybe not. More »
Pure Hell, very much a punk band in the original form, hail from Philadelphia and were active in New York from 74 to 78 along with the likes of New York Dolls. Their sound is inspired, as many bands of this time were, by The Stooges and The MC5.
The title of Darlene Love’s latest album is of course ironic. Darlene had her first hit in 1962 with He’s A Rebel as the lead singer of The Blossoms, although the single was credited to the better-known Crystals who were out on tour and were unavailable to record the song at the time. He’s A Rebel, Today I Met The Boy I’m Going To Marry and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), all recorded under the direction of Phil Spector, have ensured Love’s immortality in the pop firmament. With Introducing Darlene Love, she shows signs of perhaps actually being immortal – this is a 74 year old woman belting out songs with the vigour of someone half her age. More »
Space Rock, I LOVE Space Rock and Spirit’s Burning are a bit of a who’s who of the genre. The albums are put together from a disparate group of over 45 musicians all overseen at a distance by American producer Don Falcone.
“A blackstar need not have an event horizon, and may or may not be a transitional phase between a collapsing star and a singularity.” More »
Wikipedia has this to say about the genre that is Shoegaze “Shoegaze is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s and reached peak popularity in the early 1990s. The style is typified by significant use of distortion, feedback, obscured vocals and the blurring of component musical parts into indistinguishable “walls of sound”. More »
New Hifi Pig contributor Daniel Brown takes a look at some of the albums and EPs that he has discovered during the last year. Much of the stuff is very different to the usual audiophile fodder and there is some great stuff in here, so read on and you may well discover something new yourself! More »
Bittersweet, fragile, sad, angry, reflective – collectively these are all emotions which neatly lay the groundwork for Daughter’s sophomore album ‘Not To Disappear’. Though the band’s sound has developed since 2013’s highly successful debut ‘If You Leave’, it has not progressed so much that you would now struggle to recognise it. I guess the overriding initial message here is “if it isn’t broke then don’t fix it”. More »
Ok, the first album review of 2016 isn’t an album at all but we won’t let that get in the way of things shall we!
On the front of Arguments Yard there’s a picture of Attila wearing a black T Shirt that has a quote on it and the quote says “ Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people” It’s a quote by Adrian Mitchell and I like it. It pretty much hits the mark because when most folk think of poetry they think of poncey aristos writing guff that has about much relevance to them as something with no relevance whatsoever. For me at least this perspective of poetry shifted a little with the advent of the likes of John Cooper Clarke and Attila The Stockbroker. Gone was the stuffy old crap and to replace it came poetry with attitude that spoke directly to me and with wit and with humour. With the advent of punk, poetry, although still on the sidelines of interest, suddenly became much more pertinent and with a message I and many others could relate to. More »
John Scott throws a log on the fire, pours himself a wee dram and puts on his copy of Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn as part of his Classic Albums series of reviews. More »
Peter Eden produced twenty albums between 1968 and72, which were labelled “progressive British jazz”, fr labels such as Deram, Harvest, Argo and Island, but he also released three albums on his own Turtle Records imprint in 1970 and 71and ot is these three recordings we have here. More »
It’s that time of the month again when I eagerly open the padded envelope containing a CD from record label él. I say this every time I review one of their offerings, but it’s a great experience not really knowing what you are going to get. And so here we have Percy Faith “Malaguena: The Music Of The Cuba/Kismet: Music From The Broadway Production”… so two albums on one CD essentially. More »
Some readers will know the name Cymande (Sah Mahn Day) from their three albums (Cymande, Second Time Round and Promised Heights) released in the early to mid-seventies, whilst others will be aware of some of their tunes (The Message) via samples used by De La Soul, Gang Starr and others. More »
John Scott looks at the classic album The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks as part of the ongoing Classic Album series.
“The Kinks was chosen as a name by the band’s manager Larry Page because it was slightly outrageous in the pre-swinging Sixties.” More »
Music has power. The power to stir emotions and paint pictures in our imagination. When Pink Floyd released their high-concept double album The Wall in 1979 its listeners were left to flesh out the storyline that the music and lyrics provided with whatever visual concepts their own brains provided. Like no album before it though, The Wall called out for visual interpretation. Pink Floyd’s live performances of the album mixed music and visuals in a way that no band had done before – building a physical wall between the band and audience and then projecting Gerald Scarfe’s animated interpretations of the story onto it, accompanied by huge, grotesque marionettes. Alan Parker’s 1982 film adaptations of the story provided a fully realised visual framework for the storyline, the music being somewhat relegated to a supporting narrative role. More »
Geoff Downes and Chris Braide released “ Pictures Of You”, their debut album as The Downes Braide Association, in 2012 after meeting at a Buggles reunion show in 2010. Downes was already familiar to me from his work with The Buggles – I’m a big fan of their Age Of Plastic album – Yes and Asia. Chris Braide was a new name to me but he has written and produced songs for Beyoncé, Lana del Ray, Paloma Faith, Christina Aguilera and Marc Almond amongst others so his pop pedigree is beyond doubt. More »
Let’s get this straight from the outset… the él record label is absolutely nuts!!! And I love its quirkiness and bottle for putting out albums of music that otherwise would be unlikely to see the light of day. Regular readers will have read other reviews I’ve done of the label’s output and it is nothing if not varied and eclectic. And this album is a continuation on that devil may care, plucky stance, for here on Escape In Time we have a collection of 24 popular British television themes of the 1960s and some incidental music from The Prisoner tacked on the end. More »
Now I don’t often buy music on spec but when I heard this album playing in the local supermarket (of all places) I had to enquire what it was…I assumed given the track that was playing that it was something new from Neil Young that I’d not heard about. More »
Eloquence, The Complete Works’ is a compilation of ex-Kraftwerk percussionist Wolfgang Flür’s “pop” tunes from 2002 to today.
“I selected the tracks on ELOQUENCE to show the width of my artistic possibilities from lyric writing, melody development, working with my voice and my being involved in collaborations with interesting international artists” says Flür, continuing “With Kraftwerk, I was a drummer and device inventor. I only detected my own more melodic musicality after I left my former group. If Kraftwerk played minimal electro, then I now play ‘maximal electro’; for example, I have nothing against the sound of a trumpet in a song if it fits well, as in my track “Best Friend’s Birthday”. In this respect, ELOQUENCE charts my development from a drummer-boy to a melody inventor and story–telling man and it’s been a great journey for me which makes me happy.” More »
A man of few words – a phrase that has almost definitely never been used in relation to Elvis Costello. Although he is every bit as much a tunesmith as a lyricist, it is his way with words that has made him one of rock music’s most respected songwriters.
Now Costello has written his memoirs, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, and has released an accompanying “soundtrack” collection, providing a 38 track overview of his career from pre-fame demos to brand new material. More »
Mention Mike Valentine or Chasing the Dragon, and you should (if you visit the UK hifi shows) think of the dragonesque firey orange and red colours of the clothes and an equally flamboyant bright personality that goes with it. His Chasing the Dragon and Vivaldi Four Seasons LP/CDs are part of my reference review sources. His background at the BBC and his love for reel to reels and ultra hi-quality recording gear go hand and hand with my own life experience, and whilst I don’t always agree with everything he records, I sure get the point of what he is trying to do. More »
Janine Elliot takes a listen to the Album “A Swingin’ Safari” which was recorded in the Polydor Studio, Hamburg in 1961/62. The original analogue recordings from 1961/62 form the basis of Christoph Stickel’s unobtrusive “refurbishing” which aims to avoid any artistic intervention and here it is released on Reel to Reel tape from Horch House. More »
Back in the murky mists of time, when I was around eight years old, I read a couple of children’s fantasy books by Alan Garner – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. Filled with wizards, witches and evil magical creatures, they were terrific; I read them over and over back then. I read them again just a couple of years ago and I still enjoyed them immensely. More »
Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series of records has been going now for over ten years but still shows no signs of becoming tired or struggling for new and relevant material and artists. More »
Back in the 1980s, Yes vocalist Jon Anderson first mooted the idea of working with violinist Jean Luc Ponty but it has taken until now to make that reality. More »
Copyright © Hifi Pig and Hifi Pig Magazine,
Big Pig Media LLP
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material (in part or in full) without express and written permission from this website’s author
and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Hifi Pig and Big Pig Media with appropriate and specific direction (link) to the original content.
Hifi Pig is part of the Big Pig Media LLP group
of companies.
Partnership No OC397825
