The world’s most successful mystery writer is found dead on the morning after his 85^th birthday. In attendance in his Gothic pile are his bickering family, each of whom might wish him dead, and a colourful detective ready to determine whodunnit.  

Without further ado, slightly delayed by the sheer volume of releases at this year time of year, here is the latest edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl. You will not find a more extensive monthly report on the goodies newly available on plastic anywhere on the internet. Every conceivable genre is theartsdesk on Vinyl’s game so dive in and get involved!

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Dallas Acid The Spiral Arm (All Saints)

It’s hard to believe that in 1824 there were no fewer than six productions of Weber’s Der Freischütz in London alone. Since then this colourful piece of German Romanticism hasn’t fared nearly so well, disappearing from the UK’s opera houses not just for years but decades at a time.

Starting life as a comic strip in 1938, The Addams Family seems to have reinvented itself for every generation. It’s the story of an odd-ball family from ‘The old country’ (where that is geographically located is by-the-by), who love the grim and gothic. Their outlandish ways were neatly juxtaposed against the wholesome values of American suburbia.

There's no knowing what to expect from Natasha Khan. Her most recent output has been furiously intense Thai and Persian psyche rock covers (as SEXWITCH in 2015) followed by torch songs full of shadow and eeriness (Bat For Lashes' 2016 The Bride). It rather felt from these two releases that she was happy cosmically dreaming on the margins – certainly in contrast to the strange pop promise of her early work, which prefigured the likes of Grimes and Lana Del Rey in many ways, and suggested someone with an eye on grandiose visions materially as well as mystically.