Classic Stereo recordings by the great British conductor Sir Adrian Boult are released in a wonderful new 79CD edition by Warner Classics this month, assembling in fine style his Columbia, EMI/HMV, Pye…
BAD TIDINGS OF DISCOMFORT AND JOYLESSNESS: ECLIPSE AS THE ULTIMATE ANTI-CHRISTMAS FILM
What do you need for the perfect Christmas Day? Quick checklist: “Wait, what?” I hear you cry, having reached the last two of those. Since when have simmering hate-fuck sexual tension and…
GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS: THE TELEVISION TRADITION -Robert Kenchington
Christmas, 1971: the BBC enters its golden age. As the new-fangled colour service opens up to an expanding television audience around the United Kingdom, ‘Auntie Beeb’ fills the schedules with a range…
THE GOOD LIFE: SOCIALISM IN SURBITON – Robert Kenchington
This year marks the 50th anniversary since the original broadcast of one of the most beloved of British television series, The Good Life. Created and written by John Esmonde and Bob Larby,…
REVIEW: Yours Cruelly, Elvira: Memoirs of the Mistress of the Dark by Cassandra Peterson (Hachette) – Neil Fulwood
Cassandra Peterson has had quite the life. Bullying mother. Rough diamond father. Traumatic childhood accident (pan; boiling water). Socially awkward. Suddenly voluptuous. Go-go dancer in her mid-teens. Showgirl while still a good…
ELEGY IN A ZOMBIE-INFESTED CHURCHYARD: THE WEIRD AESTHETIC OF REQUIEM FOR A VILLAGE – Lucy Bellingham
What’s the weirdest zombie film you’ve ever seen? Zombeavers? Fido? Anna and the Apocalypse? I’ll see you and I’ll raise you: David Gladwell’s Requiem for a Village. Gladwell is mainly remembered as the editor of Lindsay…
Five Leaves Left: Robert Kenchington
“One day he’ll be a famous conductor!” said Molly Drake as her five year old son, Nick, waved in time with the music on his nursery wind-up gramophone. If only. As history…
CHRISTOPH VON DOHNÁNYI (1929 – 2025): Obituary by Neil Fulwood
Christoph von Dohnányi died on 6 September 2025, two days shy of his 96th birthday. To say he’d led a full life would be an understatement. It’d be no exaggeration, in fact,…
COMICAL LITTLE GEEZERS: The ups and downs of PERFORMANCE
Here are some of the things Performance fetishises: Performance is about a lot of things, principally the merging and blurring of identities. With a specific focus on sexual identities (today’s word on Sesame Street is “troilism”). It’s…
Please Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: Time, imagination, grief and the quest for meaning in Don’t Look Now
The central nervous system conventionalises reality for us so that we can move through time and space … We’ve inherited large parts of our view of the world from our forebears hundreds…
LANDSCAPE AND MINDSCAPE: The fragmented spaces of Donald Cammell’s ‘White of the Eye’
Following their collaboration on Performance – arguably the most influential counter-culture film to come out of the UK in the ‘70s – Nic Roeg went on to make 16 feature films, various shorts, and…
CARRY ON SARGENT
Edwardian Dandy, savvy Savoyard and Imperial Father of the Proms, Sir Malcolm Sargent (1895 -1967) has, like many great musicians of the past, been all too easily typecast. Even before his death,…
INSECTS, TINFOIL AND ASHLEY JUDD: The crazed brilliance of William Friedkin’s BUG
When you think of William Friedkin, you think of big set pieces crammed with detail. The exorcism and the myriad ways in which a demonic force kicks back in The Exorcist. The car/L-train…
DANGEROUS PAYLOAD: FRIEDKIN’S SORCERER AND THE LONG SHADOW OF THE WAGES OF FEAR – Neil Fulwood
Sorcerer was meant to be a modest, low-cost production; a filler between The Exorcist and a big-budget project called The Devil’s Triangle which was intended to capitalise on the former’s box office supremacy. The very idea of…
The City as Anti-Hero: Freidkin’s To Live and Died in L.A. – Neil Fulwood
7th August 2025 marks the second anniversary of the death of maverick filmmaker William Friedkin. CHAINLINK publishes a series of articles on his work throughout the month. By the mid-Eighties, William Friedkin’s…
KLAUS MÄKELÄ: A massive hope for the future – Robert Kenchington
Emerging from the ruins of a Classical music industry broken by recession, COVID and post millennial gimmickry, is a phenomenal new artist who within the space of only five years has become…
WHAT. THE. ACTUAL? – HAUSU AND THE COMPLETE DERANGEMENT OF THE SENSES
About twenty minutes into Hausu – which translates, fairly obviously, as House, but which I’m going to refer to Hausu throughout this review purely to piss off autocorrect – seven friends hop off a train at a…
The Timbre of Tucson: An Abundance of Music from the Old Pueblo- Mike Grover
Mike Grover on the Tucson Music Scene an in depth look.
Carlos Kleiber: The idol with feet of clay – Robert Kenchington
The slow death of Carlos Kleiber
ALFRED BRENDEL (1931-2025) – Neil Fulwood
An Appreciation by Neil Fulwood How to describe Alfred Brendel? As a pianist, obviously – one of the greatest concert pianists who ever lived. A musician of immense talent and versatility.But also:…