John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts

July 15, 2017 / Theatre Reviews - Archive

Roslyn Packer Theatre, June 29 7/10 At the risk of sounding like a goon from Pyongyang or Guantanamo Bay, let’s do the torture first. Advance publicity that the torment of Winston Smith was excessively confronting proved something of an alternative fact. More troubling than the implied violence was that the…

July 14, 2017 / Album Reviews - Archive

LEFT RIGHT LEFT (Orenda) 7/10 Trump’s election has had one positive outcome. The despair felt by LA drummer Tina Raymond prompted her to record her first album as leader, its title referring to the US political landscape: left-leaning on either coast; the right entrenched in the middle. Raymond, veteran pianist…

July 12, 2017 / Album Reviews - Archive

ON THE SLIVER GLOBE (Sofa Music) 8/10 In some ways this album is the obverse of the Splinter Orchestra opus I reviewed immediately before it. Where that one saw the players taken into the desert to interact with the environment and create a “field recording” of sorts, but one primarily…