Reviews

Two from Brighton's FatCat, fast shaping up as one of UK's leading independents

Lisa Gerrard, spiritually intense wailer and ex-Dead Can Dance member is, we'll wager, no close relation to Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool midfielder. But you never know. She's gone all Maori on us here for a New Zealand indie film, and aren't they the fellas who do those scary war-dance routines before playing thug-ball, or rugby, or whatever it's called? Lisa, after working on Gladiator, Ali and others, is now a big Hollywood soundtracks player, which is comically absurd but blissfully reassuring.

First time on CD for post-Morrison freakout album recorded in California

Compilation of mail-order metapop from people who brought us the Langley Schools Music Project

Rich portrait of a rebel artist

The first in Takashi Miike's career-making Triad Society Trilogy. Set in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, rogue cop Kippei Shiina puts himself between local yakuza and a gay Taiwanese mob; cue cocaine-fuelled blow jobs, anal rape and old ladies having their eyeballs plucked out. A Hollywood remake seems unlikely.

Underrated 1989 adaptation of Jay McInerney's seminal NY nightlife novel, riddled with "Bolivian marching powder", period electro-pop and a brave (though criticised) performance from Michael J Fox as a broken-hearted magazine fact-checker who's burning the candle at three ends. Kiefer Sutherland's a bad influence. Dryly comic, painfully candid.

Ice-cold thriller with a downhome feel from the Coen brothers

Long-serving US singer-songwriter much lauded by Steve Earle

Second album from quirky Belgian star