Reviews

Part of the BFI's intriguing "A History Of The Avant-Garde" series, this is 66 minutes of decaying, nitrate-film archive footage, an artful collage in which figures deteriorate as we watch. Obviously, it's heavily symbolic: nuns, children, boxers go about their endeavours unaware (or are they?) of the oblivion that looms. The dissonant score's a drag, but this is nothing if not haunting.

Recorded at the LA Troubadour in 2000—and gaps like that never bode well. Though it covers moments when the band were at their defiant best—"Olympian", "For The Dead", "Fighting Fit"—it still feels like they're going through the motions. And that's a shame as Gene always had a lot more to them than their ill-deserved reputation as Britpop fops. Worth seeing for what could have been.

'70s soul/country turns from The Killer

All the 45s from the sublime Scottish duo who briefly threatened to become part of the '80s pop circus

Lyrical roots rock from up-and-coming Virginian singer-songwriter

Striking Islamic roots album from Senegalese superstar

Debut from Cocteau Twin-championed Texan psych-pop quintet

Prolific Cornish knob-twiddler Luke Vibert returns

Korean horror gets bad reception

Following last year's release of his earlier work, this is an artfully presented set of Polanski's commercial breakthrough movies—Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown and The Tenant. Given a ready-made yarn with a thread, he could concentrate on brewing his own unique, dislocating atmospheres and obsessions, and did so brilliantly.