Category: classic review
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samantha crain – a small death (2020)
A Small Death was born after Samantha Crain, almost implausibly, was involved in three car accidents in three months. After living without the use of her hands for years, Crain’s sixth full-length LP condensed the pain of not playing and of being out of step with the world and sharpened it with the equal difficulty […]
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blossom dearie – blossom dearie (1957)
Margrethe Blossom Dearie died in 2009, aged 84. It is strange to think that the voice we hear on this record, so precisely alive and sweet, could ever be anything but. A lover of jazz and bebop, Dearie was widely admired in return by figureheads such as Gil Evans, Bill Evans, and Miles Davis. Her […]
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the remote viewer – here i go again on my own
Passively seeing beauty in the green of the countryside is easy; seeking beauty in the city is another matter. The former involves letting nature wash over the eyes, while the latter forces a squint through the cracks of a seemingly seamless metallic sheen. On their second full-length album, The Remote Viewer scrunched up beats as […]
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mos def – black on both sides (1999)
Prince’s wild overpromising on what the year 1999 might hold had given way to stark outlooks of either hope or destruction. After deaths on the East and West coasts, hip-hop was embarking on an ego-led, bustling bling age. Between two fractious eras, Mos Def collated everything he saw and experienced in the capricious world and […]
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lijadu sisters – danger (1976)
Watching the Lijadu Sisters in an interview is like observing two parts of the same brain popping off with thoughts: “If I’m in the kitchen singing a song, and I’m walking towards the bathroom, I hear her singing exactly the same thing”. The death of Kehinde Lijadu in 2019 signalled the physical end of a […]
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