comics@list.co.uk
CRIME
5 IS THE PERFECT NUMBER
Igort
(Drawn and Quarterly) 0..
When the son of a former Napoli mafioso is whacked by a rival family, old Peppino comes out of retirement to wage war on everyone who had anything to do with his beloved Nino's murder.
Italian cartoonist Igort (Igor Tuvero) inks this tale of revenge in a cinematic. noirish style. EmpIOying blue-black duotone, he gives the rain-soaked streets of Naples a marvelloust expressionistic look and the numerous bloody shoot-outs a hardboiled edge. Beyond the gunplay mayhem Igort explores some more interesting ideas. most notably that the death of a child can. ultimately, be the beginning of a new life for his father. (Miles Fielder)
URBAN SCI FI ANOTHER SUBURBAN ROMANCE
Alan Moore and Juan Jose Ryp
(Avatar) .00
Alan Moore. as well as being a practising druid and comics god. has his finger in many pies: he's made music, written novels and even plays.
Emmi.
One of those plays. Another Suburban Romance. is here adapted and fully illustrated for the comics medium. It's split into three chapters and the art is lavish and epic in its attention to detail (even in black & white). This will instantly remind anyone of Geoff Darrow’s peerless work with Moore on Hard Boiled. But it's the prose that lets it down. The rhyming couplets that are sequentially flashed up in captioned panels are perhaps more suited to the stage than the page. (Henry Northmore)
ADOLESCENT ANGST THE SUMMER OF LOVE
Debbie Drechsler (Drawn 8. Quarterly) 0.
I") a. H
When I was 15. I cried. A lot. About everything. Debbie Drechsler captures the miserable side of being under 20 with her prize-winning
Nowhere series. collected here as ‘The Summer of Love'.
Lily has to navigate through her feelings towards her friends. enemies and boyfriends as the new arrival in suburbia.
This is all fine and should mean it's set to join Daniel Clowes' Ghost World — but unfOrtunately Lil's character is too listless and unfunny for us to
care about and you
can't see the nice plasticeny drawings for the murk of orange and green the book is printed in. So no summer of love here. (Charley Murray)
NEW TALENT COMPENDIUM
DRAWN AND QUARTERLY SHOWCASE BOOK 1
Nicolas Robel and Kevin Huizenga (Drawn & Quarterly) 0..
This promising first outing for new talent under the D&Q wing contains the work of two yOung bucks who share a fascination for the suburban and the mundane. Quebec City- born Robel offers up a strange. beautifully presented tale of childhood madness and frustration that is deeply influenced by Debbie Dreschler (see above) among others. Huizenga is more the wise guy from Chicago (though he grew up in Illinois).
His stretchy, non-flashy style is reminiscent of Chris Ware's early Jimmy Corr/gan strips but his hapless protagonist. Glenn Ganges is the modern New Man — the put upon victim of losers. hippies and bureaucratic philosophers.
(Paul Dale)
/ / II ,, / //// g J , M) é“ I W //
WOULD i709 HAVE
From Nicolas Robel’s 87 Blvd des Capucines
108 THE LIST 13—27 Nov 2003
records@list.co.uk
INDIE BALLBOY
The Sash My Father Wore and Other Stories
(SL) 0000
Why are we still staring longingly across the pond to New York and Detroit when there is some genuinely beautiful guitar music being written right under our frosty-tipped noses.
If you haven‘t yet encountered Scottish indie collective baIIboy. your life is sadly lacking in the emotive music department and you
INDIE ROCK
TEN YEARS OF DOMINO
must grab a copy of this. their third and most stunning offering. Acoustic guitar and rich string-based stuff, it features three gorgeous cover versions of Galaxie 500. Khaya and most bizarrely, Bruce Springsteen songs. but it's the self-penned tracks that really make it a must.
Filled with romance. humour and some magnificently caustic anti-bigotry lyrics, The Sash My Father Wore . . . is a stripped-down. wonder of a listen. (Camilla Pia)
ELECTRONICA. hCUBE 3 (Versatile) 0000
When people talk about dance records with ‘range' they're generally
talking about a bloated wafer of a chill-out track tagged onto the end of a house album that would otherwise be filled with 4/4 theatrics. French house producer Nicolais Chaix. by comparison, knows how to keep things varied. setting the deep house of Monotone alongside brilliant, twitchy hip hop (‘Can You Deal With That' features RZA) and expansive. mellow work outs. There's enough techy experimentalism to appeal to the serious side of the market and enough pop style to rope in the waverers.
From left, clockwise: Four Tet, Pavement and Elliot Smith
In the last decade the Domino Recording Co has been responsible for releasing some of the most innovative, influential and inspired music ever to grace airwaves and record players. With small labels being swallowed up by majors at a worrying rate, Domino remains a bastion of all things independent, a compact unit determined to keep pushing the boundaries.
‘lt’s quite a diverse range of music on the label,’ says manager Bart McDonagh. ‘It’s interesting outsider music really — people who work on the outside of the mainstream and follow their own vision.’
That diversity can be plainly heard on the label’s tenth anniversary compilation album, aptly titled Worlds of Possibility. The 36 tracks spread over two CDs accurately chart the history and future of the label - the first half showcasing the best moments from Domino’s past, the latter section displaying a rosy future in the hands of recent signings.
And the tracklisting reads like a who’s who of indie. Sebadoh, the Pastels, Smog, the late Elliott Smith, Pavement and many more all rub shoulders on 601, while the likes of Franz Ferdinand, the Kills, Four Tet and James Yorkston strut their alternative stuff on 002. The album clearly shows a trend away from American artists to British ones in the last few years, something McDonagh says is deliberate.
‘Working with British bands it’s a lot more hands on,’ he says. ‘lt’s more collaborative and more rewarding at the end of the day.’
You won’t love everything on this record - it’s simply too diverse for that. There’s rock, pop, electronica, folk, country, Io-fi and a handful of utterly undefinable music that you just have to soak up and see if it’s for you. But the world is a better place for having Domino in it, and that’s more than enough for now. (Doug Johnstone)
I Worlds of Possibility is out now on Domino.