Patrick Gamble
As seen in:
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New Zealand Herald,
Metacritic,
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Freelance writer specialising in film, music and artists’ moving image. “I enjoy all the meats of our cultural stew.” Email: PatrickJGamble@gmail.com
Articles by Patrick Gamble
Space Afrika – Quiet Storm
Album title: Quiet Storm Artist: Space Afrika Label: Dais Records Release date: 25 Sep Space Afrika's latest takes its title from the late-night radio format pioneered by Melvin Lindsey in 1976 featuring silky-smooth R'n'B and soul ballads that he dubbed "beautiful Black music." Although the group's nocturnal dubscapes could hardly be described as easy listening – often combining urban field recordings and spoken word samples to recreate the low hum of state surveillance and the quiet...
Julia Holter – Materia
Album title: Materia Artist: Julia Holter Label: Domino Release date: 21 Aug We tend to treat album tracks as finished products. Fixed the moment they're mastered. Julia Holter argues otherwise. Returning to Materia, the centrepiece of her 2024 record Something in the Room She Moves, Holter treats this hushed ballad the way a folk singer might approach a song passed down through generations, or a jazz musician a standard; not to preserve it, but to continue tending to it.
Ish review: urgent, intimate tale of two British Asian brothers – The Skinny
Film title: Ish Director: Imran Perretta Starring: Farhan Hasnat, Yahya Kitana, Avin Shah, Sudha Bhuchar, Joy Crookes Release date: 31 Jul Certificate: 15 Imran Perretta's 2019 installation The Destructors staged young Muslim men as objects of a state gaze, unable to distinguish between protection and persecution.
Lesley Mok – Transient
Album title: Transient Artist: Lesley Mok Label: American Dreams Release date: 17 Jul New York-based percussionist and sound artist Lesley Mok describes her music as "a passage through affective zones." A phrase that carries a cinematic charge, the soundworld she's created is not unlike the Zone in Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker: oppressive, mysterious, and existing outside the confines of conventional spatio-temporality.
Tara Clerkin Trio – Somewhere Good
Album title: Somewhere Good Artist: Tara Clerkin Trio Label: World of Echo Release date: 5 Jun Since emerging from Bristol's experimental scene, Tara Clerkin Trio have specialised in making music that refracts familiar melodies into something eerily new. Lake Walk opens the record like the title screen of an 8-bit videogame you swear you played before, Space Echo and clarinet sketching a landscape somewhere between The Legend of Zelda and a half-formed dream.
Loraine James – Detached From the Rest of You
Album title: Detached From the Rest of You Artist: Loraine James Label: Hyperdub Release date: 8 May Detached From the Rest of You announces itself with a glitch that recalls Ryoji Ikeda's investigations into data overload. It's an apt entry point for an album preoccupied with doomscroll paralysis and the psychological toll of a culture that has industrialised self-doubt.
Wendy Eisenberg – Wendy Eisenberg
Album title: Wendy Eisenberg Artist: Wendy Eisenberg Label: Joyful Noise Release date: 3 Apr Releasing a self-titled record midway through your career takes a particular kind of confidence. After three albums with their experimental rock trio Editrix, tours with Bill Orcutt's Guitar Quartet and a solo discography that spans a multitude of genres, Wendy Eisenberg arrives with a record that bears their own name, and carries the weight of that decision with aplomb.
The Love That Remains
Film title: The Love That Remains Director: Hlynur Pálmason Starring: Saga Garðarsdóttir, Sverrir Guðnason, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, Grímur Hlynsson, Þorgils Hlynsson, Ingvar Sigurðsson, Anders Mossling Release date: 13 Mar Certificate: 15 Most romantic films fixate on love’s dramatic peaks: first kisses, bitter break-ups and grand reunions. Not Hlynur Pálmason.
Maria BC - Marathon
Album title: Marathon Artist: Maria BC Label: Sacred Bones Release date: 27 Feb Maria BC's Marathon lays bare an uncomfortable truth: many of our most cherished memories are rooted in exploitation and climate collapse. The album's title track transforms a childhood memory of a gas station's glowing "M" into a meditation on complicity and longing.
JJJJJerome Ellis - Vesper Sparrow
Album title: Vesper Sparrow Artist: JJJJJerome Ellis Label: Shelter Press Release date: 14 Nov "The stutter […] can be a musical instrument,” states Caribbean-American musician and academic JJJJJerome Ellis at the start of his latest record. It’s more than a declaration, it’s a guiding principle that shapes his practice.
claire rousay - a little death
Album title: a little death Artist: claire rousay Label: Thrill Jockey Release date: 31 Oct The title of claire rousay’s latest album might allude to post-coital bliss, but la petite mort was also used by philosopher Roland Barthes to describe the pleasure of losing yourself in a book and momentarily escaping the world’s ideological grip. A similar sensation arises when listening to rousay’s self-styled brand of ambient-emo, which reframes snapshots of daily life in emotionally charged contexts.
Lucrecia Dalt - A Danger to Ourselves
Album title: A Danger to Ourselves Artist: Lucrecia Dalt Label: RVNG Intl. Release date: 5 Sep From El Boraro, the vampiric demon on 2018’s Anticlines, to Petra, the alien observer of 2022’s ¡Ay!, Lucrecia Dalt often uses fictional personas to explore complex themes and emotions in her work. However, with A Danger to Ourselves, she sheds the chrysalis of these alter-egos to emerge with her most personal record yet.
The Passionate Ones album review: The Skinny
Album title: The Passionate Ones Artist: Nourished By Time Label: XL Recordings Release date: 22 Aug The press release for The Passionate Ones describes the latest record by Marcus Brown's Nourished by Time as a sermon “howled from the underbelly of late-stage capitalism.” Anyone who’s seen the Baltimore-born artist perform knows he has the magnetism of a preacher, and like any shaman worth his salt, he has a gospel to spread.
Kara-Lis Coverdale album review: From Where You Came
Album title: From Where You Came Artist: Kara-Lis Coverdale Label: Smalltown Supersound Release date: 9 May Kara-Lis Coverdale is a composer in constant conversation with the world around her. On her extraordinary new record, From Where You Came, she creates rich, electroacoustic compositions that capture the ever-shifting currents of existence.
Nazar album review: Demilitarize
Album title: Demilitarize Artist: Nazar Label: Hyperdub Release date: 25 Apr On his debut album Guerilla, Nazar combined field recordings with ‘rough Kuduro’ – his hybrid version of Angola’s upbeat dance music – as a way of processing his experience of growing up in the aftermath of the Angolan Civil War. Although Demilitarize sees the Amsterdam-based producer retreat from those battle lines, he continues to push his club-derived soundscapes into uncharted territories.
hexed! album review: The Skinny
Album title: hexed! Artist: aya Label: Hyperdub Release date: 28 Mar 'Where to begin?
Marie Davidson album review: City of Clowns
Album title: City of Clowns Artist: Marie Davidson Label: DEEWEE Release date: 28 Feb With companies like Google and Meta harvesting our data for profit and AI-driven automation threatening job security, tech anxiety is at an all-time high. Inspired by Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Montreal producer Marie Davidson places this unease at the core of her latest album.
Sam Amidon album review: Salt River
Album title: Salt River Artist: Sam Amidon Label: River Lea Records Release date: 24 Jan Traditional folk songs are often regarded as artefacts that allow us to peer into the past. However, there’s an argument to be made that attempts to preserve these songs in their original form are destroying the oral tradition that gave them life. Thankfully, Sam Amidon understands that nothing about culture is static.
The Brutalist review: Adrien Brody at his very best – The Skinny
Film title: The Brutalist Director: Brady Corbet Starring: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird, Isaach De Bankolé, Alessandro Nivola, Ariane Labed Release date: 24 Jan Certificate: 18 What is it about Brutalist architecture that makes it look so bleak yet awe-inspiring? Emerging in the 1950s, the imposing geometric shapes and rough concrete textures of Brutalism were designed to be egalitarian.
Elori Saxl - Earth Focus
Album title: Earth Focus Artist: Elori Saxl Label: Western Vinyl Release date: 15 Nov Elori Saxl’s debut, The Blue of Distance – named after Rebecca Solnit’s observation in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, that faraway mountains appear blue – investigated the ways in which technology has altered our relationship to the environment. So who better to compose the soundtrack for PBS’s environmental documentary series, Earth Focus?
No Other Land review: devastating stories from West Bank – The Skinny
Film title: No Other Land Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor Starring: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham Release date: 8 Nov Certificate: 15 When No Other Land won best documentary at this year’s Berlinale, Israeli filmmaker and journalist Yuval Abraham used his acceptance speech to address the deep inequalities between himself and his Palestinian co-director Basel Adra. However, his call for a ceasefire was met with charges of antisemitism and death threats.
Yasmin Williams - Acadia
Album title: Acadia Artist: Yasmin Williams Label: Nonesuch Records Release date: 4 Oct Earlier this year, Yasmin Williams raised the hackles of the Beyhive when she criticised Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter in an op-ed for The Guardian.
Nala Sinephro - Endlessness
Album title: Endlessness Artist: Nala Sinephro Label: Warp Records Release date: 6 Sep You don’t need to believe in reincarnation to appreciate Nala Sinephro’s latest album, but as a device for forcing you to listen closely and ponder deeply, it works beautifully. An album of permeable borders and diverging paths, Endlessness sees the Caribbean-Belgian composer and her collaborators fuse elements of avant-jazz and electronic music into a 45-minute composition split into ten distinct movements.
潘PAN album review: Pan The Pansexual
Album title: Pan The Pansexual Artist: 潘PAN Label: Transgressive Records Release date: 12 Jul You might already be familiar with 潘PAN from her appearance on Grimes’ 2015 album Art Angels, where she performed as Aristophanes on Scream. However, her 2024 EP Reborn saw the Taiwanese rapper officially lay that moniker to rest. No surprise then, that her debut LP engages heavily with issues of personal metamorphosis.
Bored at My Grandmas House - Show & Tell
Album title: Show & Tell Artist: Bored at My Grandmas House Label: CLUE Records / EMI North Release date: 14 Jun Leeds-based singer-songwriter Amber Strawbridge, aka Bored at My Grandmas House, might have written Show & Tell in her bedroom, but these tracks could easily be mistaken for full-band compositions. Lead single Inhibitions sets the stage for the rest of the record; a cathartic shoegaze ballad about being plagued by intrusive thoughts that sounds both homespun and elaborately produced.
Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown
Album title: Lives Outgrown Artist: Beth Gibbons Label: Domino Release date: 17 May Middle-age is a period of life that can cause untold anxiety, but rather than dwell on narrowing horizons, Beth Gibbons has released her first proper solo album. Written across the last ten years, in which the Portishead singer grappled with the menopause and the loss of friends and family, Lives Outgrown is a record about departures and the transition to a new equilibrium.
claire rousay - sentiment
Album title: sentiment Artist: claire rousay Label: Thrill Jockey Release date: 19 Apr claire rousay describes her music as “emo ambient”, but until recently the influence of bands like The Promise Ring and Pedro the Lion were only audible in the wistful longing that underlines her abstract compositions. On sentiment this connection is much closer to the surface, with rousay transforming her domestic brand of musique concrète into a collection of melancholic pop songs.
Radu Jude on Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
“I’m working a lot at the moment, but it isn’t real work,” Radu Jude tells us, as we sit down to talk about his latest film, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. “I used to make a living as an assistant director, and then as a director on TV shows and advertisements. Real work is spending long hours doing things that you hate.” A stinging satire of contemporary work culture, Do Not Expect… offers audiences a passenger-seat view of the indignities and absurdities of late capitalism.
[OPINION] Four Steps to Preserve your Family’s Wealth and Legacy
The past half-decade has seen more shifting in the landscape for New Zealand trusts than in the several decades before: the Trusts Act 2019 was introduced and took effect in early 2021 after years of consultation and review, reporting and disclosure requirements for Trusts have increased considerably through the IRD; and now the trustee tax rate is to be raised from 33% to 39% on 1 April (excluding charitable trusts) – effectively an 18.2% rate increase.
Kali Malone album review: All Life Long
Album title: All Life Long Artist: Kali Malone Label: Ideologic Organ Release date: 9 Feb Last year composer Kali Malone was forced to cancel her concert at the Church Saint-Cornély in France after far-right protesters deemed her performance to be "profanatory”. You could argue they were right. After all she does harness sounds associated with religious worship for her own secular purposes.
claire rousay - sentiment
What this album lacks in the amount of vocals, it makes up for in gorgeous and atmospheric production. Definitely one of my favorite albums that have come out this year. Claire's vocals are subdued yet powerful backed by impressive instrumentals. I do wish there were more vocals, but I love this project for what it is. Favorite Tracks: lover's spit plays in the background, asking for it, head
Actress album review: LXXXVIII
Album title: LXXXVIII Artist: Actress Label: Ninja Tune Release date: 3 Nov Taking its inspiration from game theory – a branch of applied mathematics frequently associated with chess – Darren Cunningham's ninth release as Actress sees the producer pit his techno-oriented rhythms against his avant-garde impulses in a knotty single-player game.
Confronting Demons: Gazelle Twin on latest album Black Dog
“I'm really scared of them!” laughs Elizabeth Bernholz, aka Gazelle Twin, when asked where her fascination with ghosts comes from. “It's a fucking terrifying concept to me; that there could be this whole other side of existence that is less about nature, and more about sadness and suffering.” Bernholz is speaking to us about the inspiration behind her new record, Black Dog, an album that unfolds like a classic haunted house movie. “I'm a child of the 1980s,” she tells us.
Loraine James album review: Gentle Confrontation
Album title: Gentle Confrontation Artist: Loraine James Label: Hyperdub Release date: 22 Sep Gentle Confrontation's title track opens the record with a cauldron of trembling strings that wouldn’t be out of place on Building Something Beautiful For Me, James’ homage to late US composer Julius Eastman. However, it doesn't take long before her trademark angular beats bring the album to life.
Eyeroll album review: The Skinny
Album title: Eyeroll Artist: Ziúr Label: Hakuna Kulala Release date: 28 Jul Berlin-based producer Ziúr creates deconstructed dance music that beats with a human heart. Her previous album took its inspiration from medieval myth, but her latest pushes her sound into more extreme and abstract territories.
Godflesh: PURGE album review
Album title: PURGE Artist: Godflesh Label: Avalanche Recordings Release date: 9 Jun Godflesh’s ninth studio album – their first since 2017's Post Self – sees the Birmingham pioneers of industrial noise (guitarist/vocalist Justin K. Broadrick and bassist Ben Green) revisit the template behind their 1992 hip-hop-inspired record Pure. NERO kicks things off with a muffled boom bap beat, before erupting in a maelstrom of monolithic riffs and tortured screams.
Tina Satter on NSA whistleblower thriller Reality
“It wasn’t a big story at the time. Certainly nothing compared to Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning,” explains playwright-turned-filmmaker Tina Satter when asked about the first time she heard of Reality Winner, the subject of her gripping docudrama Reality.
bar italia - Tracey Denim
Album title: Tracey Denim Artist: bar italia Label: Matador Release date: 19 May Since forming in 2020, bar italia, have released a steady stream of music. Throughout that time the group have ruthlessly preserved their anonymity; rarely granting interviews or sharing images of themselves online. However, that’s all about to change following the release of Tracey Denim, the band’s first release for Matador Records.
Lucinda Chua album review: Yian
Album title: YIAN Artist: Lucinda Chua Label: 4AD Release date: 24 Mar In English, YIAN translates as ‘swallow’. It’s a fitting metaphor for an album that majestically soars to blissful plateaus, but the inspiration behind the title of Lucinda Chua’s debut comes from the name her parents gave her to preserve a link to her Chinese heritage.
Kate NV album review: WOW
Album title: WOW Artist: Kate NV Label: RVNG Intl. Release date: 3 Mar It’s hard to imagine a better title for Kate Shilonosova’s latest album than WOW. The Russian songwriter, best known as Kate NV, has always approached music with a childlike curiosity; her compositions wavering between a genuine post-internet pop and the iconoclastic product of outsider art.
The Shadowless Tower - first-look review
About Little White Lies Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
EO review: poignant donkey road movie
Film title: EO Director: Jerzy Skolimowski Starring: Sandra Drzymalska, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Isabelle Huppert Release date: 2 Feb Certificate: 15 Although Jerzy Skolimowski’s has been favourably compared to, Robert Bresson's 1966 masterpiece in which he parallels the mistreatment of a young farmer’s daughter with a donkey who is brutalised and exploited, the veteran Polish director’s latest is very much its own beast.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Film title: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed Director: Laura Poitras Starring: Nan Goldin Release date: 27 January Certificate: 18 Academy Award-winning director Laura Poitras has made a career out of documenting individuals who stand up to powerful forces. Her previous subjects include Edward Snowden (Citizenfour) and Julian Assange (Risk), so it’s perhaps no surprise that she was drawn to Nan Goldin, a photographer who has revolutionised the art world in more ways than one.
Exploring empathy through virtual reality at LFF
About Little White Lies Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
Klondike review: timely, uncompromising anti-war drama
Sign up for BFI London Film Festival emails Get #LFF news, competitions and ticket release updates. Email Maryna Er Gorbach’s Klondike, about the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, begins on 17 July 2014, the same day a passenger airliner was shot down over the occupied Donbas region.
Laurent Garnier: Off the Record review: full house
Gabin Rivoire’s powerful techno documentary gets up close and personal with the eponymous DJ, though it’s not without its pitfalls. 15 July 2022 By Patrick Gamble Laurent Garnier: Off the Record (2021) Sign up for Sight & Sound’s Weekly Film Bulletin and more News, reviews and archive features every Friday, and information about our latest magazine once a month. Email “My bedroom became a club,” veteran DJ Laurent Garnier tells us as he describes the time he was given a mirror ball as a child.
Can you decide who inherits your wealth?
Sweeping changes to the laws covering wills come at the same time as the greatest transfer of wealth in New Zealand history.In coming years, an estimated $1 trillion of NZ baby-boomers' wealth will change hands. The legislation most certainly does need change – some of the laws haven't been looked at in 70 years.
Futura | The Skinny
Film title: Futura Director: Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher Release date: 8 Jul Certificate: 12A Influenced by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Love Meetings, in which the Italian director took to the streets to ask people about their attitudes toward sex, Futura sees Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi and Alice Rohrwacher collaborate on their own state-of-the-nation travelogue.
Moon, 66 Questions
Film title: Moon, 66 Questions Director: Jacqueline Lentzou Starring: Lazaros Georgakopoulos, Sofia Kokkali, Nikitas Tsakiroglou, Peter Rundle, Release date: 24 Jun Certificate: 15 After a number of internationally acclaimed short films, Jacqueline Lentzou’s long-awaited feature-length debut has finally arrived.
Il Buco review: philosophical documentary
Film title: Il Buco Director: Michelangelo Frammartino Release date: 10 Jun Certificate: U Michelangelo Frammartino’s long-awaited follow-up to 2010’s Le Quattro Volte recreates a 1961 speleological expedition in Italy’s southernmost region of Calabria. This ambitious attempt to chart the Bifurto Abyss (at the time thought to be the third deepest cave system in the world) is observed by an ageing shepherd who lives near the spelunking site.
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