Blu-ray: Saraband for Dead Lovers

★★ BLU-RAY: SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS Ealing's tedious costume extravaganza

Gorgeous restoration can't rescue Ealing's tedious costume extravaganza

The 17th century romantic tragedy Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), Ealing Studios' first Technicolor film, was conceived as a magnificent spectacle. The opulent costumes and Oscar-winning sets, shot in pleasingly muted tones and rendered almost 3D by Douglas Slocombe’s deep-focus cinematography, make for a visual feast in StudioCanal’s restoration. Sadly, it’s a banquet of stodge thanks to Basil Dearden’s cumbrous direction and dire performances by Stewart Granger and Joan Greenwood.

Album: 100 gecs - 10,000 gecs

★★★★ 100 GECS - 10,000 GECS Bonkers eclecto-core smash-pop from playfully noisy US duo

Bonkers eclecto-core smash-pop from playfully noisy US duo

If popular music is dead and done and there’s nowhere left to go, rising duo 100 gecs, from St Louis, Missouri, are here to prove there’s still deranged fun to be had cannibalising the corpse. The second album from the pair, both in their late twenties and with a background in electronic production, is a post-modern assault, garish and unapologetic, part satire (possibly), part avant-punk noisiness, and part wilfully infantile and ridiculous.

Album: U2 - Songs of Surrender

★ U2 - SONGS OF SURRENDER Bono creeps up on you and emotes right in your ear. It's horrible.

Bono creeps up on you and emotes right in your ear. It's horrible.

U2 are better than their many critics make out. Their Stakhanovite work ethic in creating huge sonics, not-a-bolt-out-of-place songwriting and stagecraft that could reach every corner of the biggest venues long before the days of giant LED screens made them the biggest band in the world with good reason. Bono Vox’s “Marmite personality” was also a big part of that: it pretty much requires a messiah complex to work that hard to reach that many people.  

Album: Islandman Feat. Okay Temiz and Muhlis Berberoğlu - Direct-to-Disc Sessions

★★★★ ISLANDMAN FEAT. OKAY TEMIZ AND MUHLIS BERBEROGLU - DIRECT-TO-DISC SESSIONS Turkish grooves with a Western sensibility

Turkish grooves with a Western sensibility

Turkish traditional music lends itself for marriages with other genres, not least rock and jazz: something about rock’s deep roots in African trance music and Turkey’s soul connection to the shamanic music of Central Asia.

Album: Lana Del Rabies - Strega Beata

A dark waking dream soundtracked by electronic sorcery

Lana Del Rabies, the provocatively but humorously named alter ego of Phoenix-based multi-media artist and producer Sam An, is a musical sorceress who makes hallucinatory and experimental sounds in much the same vein as the UK’s haunting and trippy Gazelle Twin. Industrial and gothic noise combine with darkwave and ambient textures to produce tunes that are distinctly eerie and sinister – and which could easily soundtrack a magic mushroom enhanced midnight stroll around a dark forest.

Album: M83 - Fantasy

Decent without breaking ground - French music project's new album flatters to deceive

It’s easy to forget in the age of TikTok and trending that “virality” doesn’t always cement a lasting mainstream awareness. This can be said of M83, the cinematic music project started in 2001 by French musician Anthony Gonzales.

Blu-ray: Miami Blues

★★★★ BLU-RAY: MIAMI BLUES Alec Baldwin balances goofiness & danger in a rollicking 90s noir

Alec Baldwin balances goofiness and danger in a rollicking, eccentric Nineties noir

Junior (Alec Baldwin) peers through his airplane window at fluffy clouds with childish wonder, then a wolfish grin of opportunity. He turns to practising the signature from his latest mark’s stolen wallet, with Miami below for the taking.

Album: Miley Cyrus - Endless Summer Vacation

★★★★ MILEY CYRUS - ENDLESS SUMMER VACATION The former child star finally in her own

The former child star has finally come into her own

Being a few years more marinated in life than Miley Cyrus, it’s taken me a while to come around to her music. From the periphery, I’ve traversed the annoyance of small folk watching Hannah Montana and the "Hoedown Throwdown", to the bemused horror of watching a young female talent be either so manufactured/exploited by a male-centric music industry or rebelling against it so hard without being safeguarded she seemed intent on implosion.

Album: Nia Archives - Sunrise Bang ur Head Against the Wall

★★★★ NIA ARCHIVES - SUNRISE BANG UR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL The jungle-pop star shows precisely what she's made of in this condensed statement

The jungle-pop star shows precisely what she's made of in this condensed statement

We are way, way past the point where it makes any sense to talk of jungle or drum’n’bass “revivals”. Thirty years from the emergence of jungle from the rave scene, its tempo and tropes have remained a staple sound for generation upon generation of clubbers, boy racers and festival goers. It is woven into the fabric of global, and particularly British, culture just as integrally as, say, indie rock guitars are.