TIGA

Bugatti

PIAS Recordings

FOUR STARS

This amusing and infuriating new video by French directors Division Paris has been compared to “a Wes Anderson movie on techno and acid”. And that’s a description this writer would struggle to improve upon. Loops of absurd images assault the senses, while Canadian house producer Tiga deadpans the same inane exchange over and over again. “Girl comes up to me and says ‘What d’you drive?’ and I say ‘Bugatti.’” (It’s a sports car.)

JAPE

The Heart’s Desire

Faction Records

FOUR STARS

Two time Choice Music Prize award-winner Richie Egan returns with his first offering since 2011’s Ocean of Frequency. Self-produced, and mixed by David Wrench (FKA Twigs, Caribou), a new album The Chemical Sea follows in 2015.

NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS

In The Heat of the Moment

Sour Mash

TWO STARS

Another moribund solo

offering, recorded in the dwindling window before

Noel Gallagher succumbs to the lure of a lucrative, but artistically bankrupt, Oasis reunion. And with his idiot kid brother impregnating and divorcing ladies like there’s no tomorrow, financial pressure for that reunion must now be at fever pitch. The video director here plays it pretty safe, no doubt mindful that any ill-advised auteurish flourishes will be hilariously skewered by Gallagher on a future DVD commentary track a million times more entertaining than any of the actual songs he’s done since 1995.

SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR

True Faith

Warner

THREE STARS

Sounds of the ‘80s: Contemporary Artists Covering Classic 80s Hits is the official title of a forthcoming BBC compilation album. (‘The hits of the ‘80s performed by the artists of relatively recently’ might be a more precise. To be fair, Kian Egan’s Run to You is a force of nature.) and Ellis-Bextor’s take on this seminal New Order hit is surprisingly assur- ed, up until the orchestral break in the middle. Sacrilege.