Chimpomatic

The Fall

Luscious, lavish art house epic. Painfully slow, with the emotional depth of a 90's Levi's ad.

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3rd Oct 2011

The Tree of Life

Unique, ambitious, hypnotic masterpiece that makes it's own rules. Arthouse cinema on an epic scale.

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27th Sep 2011

Aliens

The original grunts-in-space epic still stands ahead of the pack. Classic.

Halliwell says: Frightening but mechanical sequel with none of the half-assed poetry of the original.*

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15th Sep 2011

Platoon

Brilliant rites of passage movie that still stands as the definitive depiction of the war in Vietnam.

Halliwell says: Not badly done in the style of Bataan (plus brutality and gore). One would have thought it too late to do it at all, but the American public made it a box-office hit.**

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24th Jul 2011

The Tree of Life

Ambitious, epic, unique view of life, big and small. Beautifully shot, acted, edited and soundtracked.

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9th Jul 2011

How To Make It In America

Season 1

HBO

With Entourage winding down after an epic 7 (soon to be 8th and final) seasons, HBO have started to line up it's successor. While the no-money, Lower East Side vibe of aspiring fashion entrepreneurs Ben Epstein and Cam Calderon might seem like a million miles from the valet parking of Vincent Chase's Hollywood, there are many parallels with this East Coast cousin - following the same dreams of success and the high life, just jumping on board at an earlier stage.

Despite the opposing fortunes, lifestyle envy also plays a big part here and while the reality of always being a dollar short might not quite hold the everlasting appeal of having a dollar too much, always knowing the hippest parties and being on first-name terms with every door man in town is something many of us would have loved 15 years ago. Slow motion mixes with flash frame photography and well chosen music to beautifully capture the gritty, exciting world of opportunity of both the Lower East Side and the just-graduated student mentality.

How To Make It In America has that quick-fix vibe that gets you high in 25 minutes and leaves you wanting more. Well-rounded episodes that fly by, but the season arc stays strong and is filled out well with multiple story strands (including a career-best performance from Luis Guzman and Rasta Monsta) all staying as strong as each other, while still building the bigger picture of the show's overall themes and agenda.

Great stuff. Should be back for season 2 later on in 2011.

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1st Jun 2011 - Add Comment - Tweet

Thor

Another needless 3D comic book epic ...from the invisible hand of Kenneth Branagh. Saved by humor and Natalie P.

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19th Apr 2011

Ned Kelly

Ineffective Aussie outlaw epic. Nicely shot, but hampered by a poor script and weak direction.

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27th Jan 2011

Syriana

Stylish, sprawling, epic look at levels of subterfuge and intrigue with the oil industry and the middle east.

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3rd Jan 2011

The Adventures of Robin Hood

Timeless, spectacular, epic swashbuckler - with beautiful Technicolor cinematography.

Halliwell says: A splendid adventure story, rousingly operatic in treatment, with dashing action highlights, fine comedy balance, and incisive acting all round. Historically notable for its use of early three-colour Technicolor; also for convincingly recreating Britain in California.****

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2nd Jan 2011

Black Mountain

Wilderness Heart

With album number three, Vancouver's Black Mountain may be threatening to hit the mainstream ...and with an output history this solid and thrilling, they deserve nothing less.

While 2008's In The Future was a decade highlight for me, Wilderness Heart proves to be something of a departure from it's predecessor - eschewing that early 70's monolithic rock sound for something a little more modern. Circa 1978. Synths and keyboards litter the sound with hidden flourishes, while Amber Webber gets more time in the lime light on these concise, deceptively simple tracks.

Opener The Hair Song exudes a swaggering confidence, while Old Fangs is built around a riff worthy of AC/DC themselves. Empires are smashed, tempos are shifted and War of the Worlds-style synths rule in one of many mini epics on the album - where no tracks head far north of 5 minutes.

Rollercoaster dips before Webber's vocals soar. Let Spirits Ride takes the band on a freight train of their most thundering thrash to date, complete with electrifying guitar and keyboard solos. A calmness decends with the orchestral overtones of Buried by the Blues - but throughout the album Josh Wells' drumming is again a magnificent highlight, running in and out of the layered and intricate guitars and keyboards and providing a muscular and spine tingling backbone.

Title track Wilderness Heart is the highlight, cramming a ten minute epic into just under four minutes as all the elements magically come together perfectly: thunderous intro, duelling vocals, pneumatic waves of drumming and a soaring coda all weaving in and out of each other into a towering, all-conquering masterpiece. Thrilling.

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13th Sep 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Jerk With A Bomb

Death To False Metal

Last week's Black Mountain gig sent me into a completist spin of Black-Mountain-Army-MP3-domination and as a result I dug up this previously overlooked, very early Jerk With A Bomb album. Before Pink Mountaintops and before Black Mountain it was just One Easy Skag and the Silo - AKA Stephen McBean and Joshua Wells.

While later JWAB efforts - 2001's The Old Noise and 2003's Pyrokenesis - have their moments (Pyrokenisis in particular with stellar stand-outs Fine Health Is At Home and the sublime To The Graves), both could be considered relatively patchy affairs. Death To False Metal on the other hand aims a little lower but maintains a solid, consistent level of entertainment - as well as a healthy live feel. You could imagine these two turning up at your BBQ and wowing the camp fire crowd with this whole album.

That's not to say it's all at one note - and This Broken Heart, New Wave Is Dead and particularly Half Mast provide some momentous highlights. Sure, it's still a lo-fi affair, but the passion and fury unleashed on some of the tracks is astounding and the record serves as a welcome early warning of Stephen McBean's deep reservoir of song-writing talent, not to mention Joshua Wells' epic drumming.

Listen in full over at CBC Radio 3 (Track 5 onwards is this album, the first 4 are from the 2 later albums).

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23rd Jul 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pearl Harbour

Michael Bay turns it up to 11 in his unsubtle, entertaining, bombastic epic.

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4th Jul 2010

Active Child

Curtis Lane

Merok

As the dying beauty of opener I'm In Your Church At Night fades gently into the background you'll ask yourself where on earth this sound came from and how dare it pop up and steal your heart this damn easy and with such little warning. Well it's the momentous achievement of Pat Grossi who's soaring falsetto vocals are the instant attention grabber. They float with a fragility that caries with it real power. Miscellaneous fuzz and effects follow it's every movement and when supported by the calamitous drums on Weight Of The World the effects are utterly dazzling. This music is dream-like in its production with different planes of sound from twinkling harp to great synth oceans sliding in front of the vocals and pushing everything into the distance and rendering it all untouchable. This only serves to encourage your ears and soul to strain even harder to reach the prize.

With such simple strokes Grossi produces epic magnitude and though the EP only spans 6 songs its power is astonishing. It's the soundtrack to a momentous event in your life.
Killer tracks: When Your Love Is Safe, I'm In Your Church At Midnight.

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11th Jun 2010 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Sage Francis

Li(f)e

Anti

It's been a long time coming but finally the follow up to 2007's Human The Death Dance drops and it sees Mr. Francis all grown up. I remember seeing Sage Francis at Plastic People many many years ago as he stood in the middle of the crowd spitting venomously into his mic and backed by a CD of recorded beats that he himself had to operate. Well Li(f)e is a far cry from that set up and is the first time Sage's unique and intricate poetry is given the panoramic backdrop of a a full and live band, not to mention the guest appearances. Opener Little Houdini sees Sage hook up with Grandaddy's Jason Lytle and Slow Man teems up with Joey Burns of Calexico. The result is a far richer concoction and one that works on may levels. It's more low key than previous releases and the warmth with which his beats emanate seem to give Sage's rhymes more body.

Three Sheets To The Wind livens up the general slow pace with Death Cab For Cutie's Chris Walla on guitar, Slow Man shimmers with midwest heat and closer The Best OF Times continues Sage's tradition of ending on an epic note. WIth rich orchestration he wrenches the heartstrings to the bitter end.

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28th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

The National

High Violet

4AD

Stumbling across Alligator in Fopp on a non-descript weekday afternoon in 2005 worked out to be one of the sweetest and unexpected musical highlights of the past ten years. Since then, this Brooklyn band has consistently honored that experience by confidently building on Alligator's success. 2007's Boxer raised the bar to heights that even Alligator rarely hinted at - and so, expectation was swollen and bloated beyond the humble proportions that this band cultivate. Since Boxer the Dessner brothers have proved themselves to be quite a creative force in today's industry putting out the Dark Was The Night and Long Count projects, so with all that added experience High Violet was set to be stellar.

I have to admit though to feelings of disappointment throughout many of the initial listens here. Boxer's rich soundscapes and widescreen ambition seemed to have been compromised in favor of a much more low key sound. Matt Berninger's dichotomous writing can lift you up on "A wingspan unbelievable" with confessions of inadequacy and insecurity but here seemed to fall short of those heights and feel more content to leave you wallowing. The pace also hints at this redirection of vision. Boxer was a drummers album and High Violet rarely exploits this aspect to the same extent.

But to cut a long story short, now I bloody love it. I must have had it on repeat constantly for the last week and this new direction has seeped into my soul and to this day refuses to release me. I guess a good way to describe High Violet is in depth rather than height. While Boxer could often soar, these songs bury deep and take you to much darker places and all with the same tools. The same rich pallet is employed here as it swirls and builds with intricate subtlety around Berninger's baritone hum. Having their own studio and the gift of time afforded them space to obsess over every minute of this record, but instead of suffocating under these conditions it thrives - and it takes a skilled group of musicians with enough self awareness to achieve such a result. Speaking about their approach to High Violet, Aaron Dessner says "Matt expressed a desire to hear things that "sounded like hot tar. Or loose wool." This goes some way to describe the finished product that is High Violet. Songs like Sorrow and A Little Faith drip out with such thickness that given a decent pair of headphones it's quite easy to lose yourself in their density. Anyone's Ghost and Afraid Of Everyone are hollow depictions of loneliness and isolation, while Bloodbuzz Ohio continues where the Boxer heights left us.

Seeing them on their tour of Boxer I was quite worried to witness the bloated endings that seemed to have been tacked on to most of the songs. At the tail and of the vocals the Dessners' would step forth tho the front of the stage and elevate each song to a Wilco like frenzy of feverish guitars, and it really didn't suit their style. High Violet opener Terrible Love does this too but I am very pleased to see the restraint that this album shows and it never does it again. Given their astonishing rise this band would be forgiven for letting some of it go to their heads but this record shows this not to be the case. It is a work of admirable restraint yet progressive enough to honor the memory of what's gone before.

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13th May 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Best Of 2009

CSF

As a quick precursor to the Best of the 00s list I'm currently editing, here's my Top 5 albums of 2009.

Not a stellar year compared to 2007 or 2008, but there's certainly been a few stand outs.

John Frusciante - The Empyrean
He didn't tell us he'd left the Chili Peppers, but Frusciante's latest solo album certainly upped the anti on 2004's marathon of low-key releases, blending epic guitars, a stellar guest list and a near-perfect cover of Tim Buckley's Song To The Siren.

Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love
The Black Mountain side-project took it's own place in the spot light, with a solid album - made twice as good by the outstanding supporting tour.

Lightning Dust - Infinite Light
Amber Webber was missed on the aforementioned Pink Mountaintops tour, but luckily that's because she was polishing up her own project. Taking the promise of their debut, Lightning Dust moved forward with grand strides on this haunting ethereal masterpiece.

Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
The old favourites pulled virtually no surprises out with this one, just another handful of great rock songs with mind-blowing musicianship - and again backed it all up with one of the gigs of the year.

Flight of the Conchords - I Told You I Was Freaky
One great album seemed like a fluke, but the soundtrack to season two expanded the comedy duos surprising knack for blending piss-take and homage in an accomplished way, laced with fits and giggles. I'm in love with a sexy lady, with an eye that's lazy.

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30th Dec 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Fuck Buttons

Tarot Sport

ATP

Having produced one of the most intense and energy draining albums of 2008, Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power return with a much more user-friendly take on their drone headache and one of the most succinctly perfect dance records I've heard for a good while. Street Horrrising had its fair share of melody and pop sensibility, but that's before a tone of ear scraping noise was dumped on it from a high height and all but obliterated any nod towards recognised form. That's not to say it wasn't an endlessly intriguing piece of work, but I must admit the shift that has occurred with Tarot Sport comes as a welcome change and one that retains all the edge we associate with this band, but channels them into subtler and more palatable structures.

There are various factors behind this change of approach and therefore sound. The enormous expanse of songs like Sweet Love For Planet Earth that opened the first album came from a post-rock school of thought and while this thinking still drives every song here it comes from a more electronic place. The other factor to bear in mind would be Andrew Weatherall at the helm. His influence is stamped all over this record and the combination of his techno history and Fuck Button's post-rock drone tendencies is a near-perfect marriage. The band explain Weatherall's input: "There are so many more layers of sound that we needed somebody with the ability to spread these out over a wide plane... The ambition of sound in this record required him to realise it." The result is massive synth textures that grow and evolve around meticulously constructed rhythms which together expand into epic sonic journeys.

Their skills are put to way more mature work here. These constructions are subtle and slow to evolve but carry with them such gravitas. They unfold with narrative melody and throughout their lengthy progression they become more like mini life-spans than actual songs. Where brutality was the flavor on their first record, it is merely suggested in the might of these tracks. It's in this restraint that Tarot Sport really succeeds. Opener Surf Solar employs a clipped synth melody to build tension growing fiercer with every mangled texture, while The Lisbon Maru is built around a military drum beat that threatens an onslaught but always holds back. The central song Olympians could be the soundtrack to one of Godfrey Reggio's Quatsi movies. Over the course of its near eleven minute length it could only be fitting for something this grand to accompany the evolution of the universe itself.

Tarot Sport is a seismic shift away from the first album but a conscious and meticulous one. It is a pure exploration of sound that holds the listener in mind all the way. It's a record that demonstrates an obsessive commitment to their art and one to be exceptionally proud of.

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24th Nov 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Atlas Sound

Logos

4AD

Deerhunter's Bradford Cox continues his creatively lucrative side project with a stunning followup to 2007's Let The Blind Lead Those Who Cannot Feel. Adopting a more introspective addition to day job's astral soundscapes Let The Blind was conceived from the loneliness of a hospital bed and emanated as a whisper from the cracks of Deerhunter's wall of sound. After the unbridled confidence of Microcastles. Cox reintroduces Atlas Sound with renewed energy and the results are impressive.

Logos is the sonic equivalent of an overexposed photograph. Bleached out with excessive warmth the vocals are absorbed by each sound that gets introduced into the intricately structured sonic compositions. As light permeates every corner of these songs details are washed out with sound creating the trademark dreamscapes that accompany all of Cox's music. But as with Deerhunter it's the moments where the album pulls focus and these otherwise hidden details come into sharp view that the power is unleashed. A prime example is the transition between the lethargic An Orchid and the emerging skip of Walkabout. Similarly the presence of the epic Quick Canal in the middle of the record resembles a fire-break in a forest. As its delicate rhythm creeps into view and stretches out over eight blissful minutes it's like stepping out of the thick undergrowth into a magnificent clearing. Laetitia Sadier's otherworldly vocals blow through the song with such refreshing lightness.

Musically this album is a treasure chest of ideas and sounds. Much like Let The Blind we get programmed clicks and bleeps that jostle against buried acoustic guitar and muffled drums support airy melody that shuffles along awkwardly. Cox's words almost trip over themselves in their reluctance to pick up any kind of pace. The result can be akin to a fine rain that ends up soaking you right through. But it's a welcome soaking.

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20th Nov 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Themselves

CrownsDown

Anticon

Seven months ago the FREEhoudini tape heralded the return of this now legendary partnership between two of Anticon's biggest players. Now after all this time Dose One and Jel return with their third proper album under Themselves. Much water has passed under the bridge since the last record. We've had bands like cLOUDDEAD further the abstract tendencies of Dose and we've seen Subtle rise from yet another side project for these two to become a real powerhouse band, not to mention their work with The Notwist in 13 & God. The result is CrownsDown a comeback record of epic proportions that incorporates all the skills picked up by these other formations and one that sounds a million miles from 2002's mesmerizing The No Music.

The recent Eskimo Snow record from Yoni Wolf has seen Why? take a giant leap away from any kind of hip-hop associations and in contrast CrownsDown is Dose and Jel's total emersion in the genre. This is a hip-hop record through and through. It's ten tracks serve as the Commandments of rap and encompass the archetypal themes that unite bands such as Gang Star, Public Enemy and Ultramagnetic MC's. You've got the 'guess who's back' jam of opener Back II Burn, the 'diss rap' of Oversleeping and the 'don't copy my style' cut of The Mark, and this is all in the first three songs. Nothing that is spat from the dexterous lips of Dose comes without its fair share of irony and while the tongue seems firmly in cheek during some of these moments of rap stereotype it sure is bizarre to witness. If irony goes on too long at what point does it start becoming genuine intention? The 'don't fuck with my DJ' jam seems to embody this totally. Skinning The Drum sees Jel flexing his DJ muscle by cutting up the Apache and Cold Sweat breaks back and forth as Dose references Ice Cube with the line "hey Jel, make it ruff."

Over many years of following every twist and turn from these two I have often wondered what would happen if they gave in to hip-hop, well this is my answer and while I find it quite strange it is undoubtedly one of the most impressive rap albums I've heard in a while. Dose's flow has evolved throughout his work with Subtle to a booming growl. His high pitched rapid-fire has morphed into something way more threatening and muscular. The speed is increased and the rhymes are lightning. Jel's beats come with equal ferocity and velocity. The No Music and their work with Deep Puddle Dynamics was all about intricate layering of effects and vocals, haze and fuzz would accompany any lyric to create a murky sonic composition out of which would emerge dazzling moments of crisp punctuation. This has a totally different agenda. The layers are still there but the fuzz has subsided leaving more fully formed raps and deep, pounding beats punched directly to your chest.

This isn't the case for every song and these battle raps mostly sum up the first half with the second retreating into the more delicate territory we are used to. Daxstrong is the 'spread-love' song which pays tribute to the Subtle founder Dax Pierson who was paralyzed in a tour accident in 2005. Dax also sings an auto-tune verse on the following You Ain't It which acts as direct contrast to Dose's jagged speed delivery and Jel's apocalyptic drum beats.

CrownsDown is both a toppling of false hip-hop idols that may have risen in their absence and also a humble tip of the crown to acts that have paved the way for both these two artists. Having pushed the envelope to such an extent on your first few releases the only way to go is this I guess. The 'don't copy my style' sentiment that runs through a few of these tracks seems slightly unnecessary as since they first emerged there has been little hip-hop around that could possibly be accused of being capable of this. I find that the more Subtle emerge from the underground, the less they hold my interest and with the first few listens of CrownsDown I feared the same may be said for this long awaited comeback. There are moments here that stand out as being uncharacteristically obvious but as a whole it is a dense piece of work that sets the heart racing with very characteristic excitement. In its obviousness it asks more questions than it answers, and we'd expect nothing less from a Themselves album. CrownsDown is a long-awaited comeback and one that drops with curious yet impressive magnitude.

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19th Oct 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Pearl Jam

Backspacer

Monkeywrench

With their 9th studio album, Pearl Jam have fully completed their transformation from over-looked geniuses to the band that everybody thinks they have been since Ten first stormed the charts in 1991. As a lifelong Pearl Jam fan, for some reason I had a pre-conceived notion of how this album would be. The hints were there from the last album and a live outing for some if the new material did not bode well. I can't tell you how disappointed it is to have my preconceptions at least partly confirmed.

Advance tracks Get Some and The Fixer certainly have hooks and catches, giving a certain radio-friendliness to them, much like any recent album from AC/DC or even The Rolling Stones - rather than the difficult-to-fit, anti-mainstream style that hung around grunge, making it so fresh and new in the early 90's. 

Eddie Vedder injects the occasional attempt at enthusiasm with a whoop or a holler, while awkward drum fills patch the holes in the songwriting as the band try and add some urgency to the mundanity to most of the songs. Whether it was real or implied, much of Pearl Jam's attraction has long been built around the message, or implied narrative behind the lyrics. Here those messages are barely audible, instead opting for the gabba-gabba-hey enthusiam of bands like the Ramones - while Vedder's song writing and love-it-or-hate-it vocals are sadly underused.

There's an air of preparation here, as if song-writing duties have been distributed evenly amongst the rest of the band for some post-career nest building. I haven't seen the liner notes, but would suggest the faux Thin Lizzy of Johnny Guitar came from the pen of Mike McReady (update: wrong, it was Cameron & Gossard), while the Camero-driving pound of Get Some might be from bouncing bassist Jeff Ament (update: bingo). 

There are a handful of highlights here, with Just Breathe providing a short break from the non-stop pace of the album's opening, although at best it sounds like an outtake from Vedder's excellent stripped-bare solo album. Unknown Thought and The End approach the band's full potential (both penned by Vedder), while Amongst The Waves manages to shake off its cheesy start to build into a decent epic.

This isn't a terrible album by any means - and judging by some surprisingly positive mainstream reviews I would suggest everything I like about the band is what turned the masses away. There are moments of promise amongst the riffs, but Backspacer's biggest curse is that it is just largely forgettable. 

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29th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

2666

Robert Bolano

Picador

Heavyweight epic from the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, who died before publication.

Divided into five parts -

The Part about the Critics 
The Part about Amalfitano 
The Part about Fate 
The Part about the Crimes 
The Part about Archimboldi 

- this is a novel that starts out following four university literary critics on an obsessive search for an obscure German author, which then explodes to take in everything from philosophical rants, to politics, to the second world war, to Harlem boxers, making reference to everyone from Duchamp to David Lynch, all the while circling around a horrific series of murders and rapes in the Mexican border town of Santa Teresa as the various characters are drawn there for different reasons.

Just short of 1000 pages in the English translation, it's a demanding work that draws you in to multiple storylines and mysteries, offering up densely fascinating and accurately drawn portraits of all the many characters we meet without losing any momentum or drive. 2666 veers off into uncharted territory, shifting tone and style as it jumps around different moments in history and countries, and yet it feels entirely focused. It's brutally shocking, beautiful, dark and arch; funny, warm and moving - a thrilling vision of how much novels can still do. If you read one book this year (and if you're a slow reader, it literally might be one with 2666...) you won't be disappointed.

#chimp71

28th Sep 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet