MARK TURNER wallows in the virtuosity of Swansea Jazz Festival openers, Simon Spillett and Pete Long

Lucidvox
We Are
(Glitterbeat Records)
★★★★★
LUCIDVOX are one-offs. Although wedded to the rock idiom, they augment it by imaginatively borrowing from classical music and Russian folklore — a beguiling symbiosis.
The four Moscovites are consummate musicians and phenomenal instrumentalists — Galla Ghintoft plays guitar with mesmerising, elegant riffs, Alina Barsukova vocals sung in Russian are thrilling either solo solo and in choral combinations with others, while Nadezhda Samodurova’s jazz-influenced drumming and Anna Switchitout’s “wandering” bass combine in formidable, boundary- stretching orchestrations.

MICHAL BONCZA highly recommends a revelatory exhibition of work by the doyen of indigenous Australians’ art, Emily Kam Kngwarray

Despite an over-sentimental narrative, MICHAL BONCZA applauds an ambitious drama about the Chinese rescue of British POWs in WWII

Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet

New releases from Hannah Rose Platt, Kemp Harris, and Spear Of Destiny