ANDY HEDGECOCK picks out his cultural highlights of 2025
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Album reviews with Ben Lunn: November 22, 2021
New releases from iyatra Quartet, Various Artists (Between Music and Ritual) and Yannick Nezet-Seguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra
Star cartoonist MALC MCGOOKIN finds lessons for today in the punch, and the economy of line, of an extraordinary generation of illustrators
LEO BOIX, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Dreamers, It Was Just An Accident, Folktales, and Eternity
JENNY MITCHELL, poetry co-editor for the Morning Star, introduces her priorities, and her first selection
HENRY BELL is sceptical of the notion that ‘progress’ is an ideology that the ruling class uses exclusively to camouflage appropriation
In search of political understanding, MATTHEW HAWKINS welcomes a critique of anti-semitism as codified by the Israeli state
BEN CHACKO welcomes a masterful analysis that puts class struggle back at the heart of our understanding of China’s revolution
iyatra Quartet
Break the Dawn
Self-produced
★★★
MADE UP of musicians playing clarinet(s), violin, cello and a small militia of percussion, the iyatra Quartet have self-released new album Break the Dawn, which blends curious knick-knacks of British history with more distant influences, including Arabic love songs and Indian ragas.
Traditionally, this album would fall into the “world music” bracket, but this term is slightly redundant, so it would almost be better described as “classical” music, since traditions such as ragas are as old (if not older) than most European musical institutions. The material is handled with care, but one still feels that it is treated with a certain distance.
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