Alex Zhang Hungtai — Dras

Processed into near-unrecognizable passages of ringng and breath, the saxophone on Alex Zhang Hungtai‘s Dras is unlike any I’ve heard. While the recordings for Dras were made in 2019, it’s clear that a great deal of planning and curating went into the progression and drift of this album as it is now, which moves from strangulated bleats to wide-open expanses into the unknown. The title track opens with what sounds like a phalanx of ring mods and flangers, bellowing from somewhere deep beneath an oceanic trench. The metal chambers of the saxophone have never sounded quite so metallic!

Danger: Diabolik — Danger: Diabolik (UHD/Blu Ray)

Danger: Diabolik is a camp, cool, and often groovy slice of 60’s supervillain action. Helmed by Mario Bava- it features, as you’d expect a great eye for colour, amazing set design, and clever shot composition. There’s a moody/ doesn’t say a lot supervillain, with futurist underground hideout, and some great suspenseful set-ups, going from high up in the sky, to deep down in the ocean. Here from Eureka is dual disc UHD/ Blu Ray release of the film. It takes in a 4k scan, three commentary tracks, and some most instresting extras.

Mancunian low-budget Movie Mogul

Cliff Twemlow On Severin

One of last year’s real big surprises in the world of Blu-ray box sets was Bloody Legend: The Complete Twemlow Collection, as it was a wholly entertaining, fascinating, and at times heart-warming set. The Severin released boxset brought together the work of one of the UK’s unlikeliest movie moguls- Cliff Twemlow, a Mancunian bouncer/ body builder, who went on to write/star in/produce a series of low-budget/ largely SOV films in the early 80s to early 90s- these moved between action, thriller, sci-fi, and horror. His most notable/notorious film was 1983’s G.B.H., which landed on the video nasty list, though he was connected to other ten feature films, many of which got their first real full/proper release on the boxset. Opening up the set was the excellent 2023 documentary Mancunian Man: The Legendary Life of Cliff Twemlow, which really pulls you into the set. I caught up with Severn’s David Gregory and Jake West, director of Mancunian Man, to discuss the boxset and all things cliff.

Repetitious History - A Quick Trip Into The World Of The Fall

The Fall

MES( Mark E Smith- The Falls main creator) possessed the ability to cram phrases into impossible spaces - “I’m hunting and I’m trying to find” delivered as “hut’na tryna find”; the eight-syllable “mere pseud mag editor’s father” hastily squeezed into a manipulation of time and space, heralded by the prior line “twice each at least”, the latter naturally repeated thrice.