Ear Music レコード& CD

Review: Very few acts can reach their 16th album and still sound as exciting, fresh yet consistently slick and reassuringly familiar as Incognito. Delivering the finest jazz soul goods since 1979, Bluey Manuick has chiselled his band (fresh faces and old) to perfection once again on Amplified Soul. From the immense chorus impact and dreamy slides of "Wanna Be Loved" to the tight funk stutters of "Day Or Night" via the epic, heart-stopping two-part title track saga and the cinematic jazz majesty of "Wind Sorceress", this ticks every box you'd want it to. Timeless compositions, pristine production and that smooth yet solid Incognito signature we've fallen in love with so many times before.

Review: Already 13 albums deep, Gary Numan unveiled Pure in November 2000, a pivotal year in world history even if we all thought its significance was just the passing of one century, and millennium, into the next. We hadn't seen it, but the decade that followed served to bookend modernism itself, landing us in a very different time - post-analogue, post-truth, post-physicality, post-recording industry, and, in many ways, post-human. What better way to mark the transition than with this electro-synth-goth collection?

Well, it depends who you ask. Arriving to mixed reviews at the time, with comparisons to Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson not meant favourably (artists critics said had already explored these sounds before Numan dived in, despite his veteran status), listening back now those comments seem more unfair than ever. The reality is, Pure marks the next stage in a long-evolution of a mastermind who, over decades, has continued to venture further into darkness, never even considering to step back.

Review: RECOMMENDED
There's always been an air of mystery about The The. Look through the band's history, which stretches wayyyyy back to the late-1970s, and the list of collaborators alone is enough to convince you they've been making moves in the right places for many, many years, striving to innovate and carve out their own space in the unarguably busy post punk landscape.

Everything Matt Johnson touches seems to turn to gold. Albeit a particularly scuzzy gold that exists solely in the darkest rooms of the least kept venues. Even on this accolade - a group getting a spot at The Royal Albert Hall is no mean feat - there's a sense of yellow-hued street lights and rain falling on concrete. But this is combined with a poetic element that's up there with the finest literary Romantics, and a commentary that will tell you all there is to tell.