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Interviews Music

Il Divo make it look effortless

Take one look at the four men in Il Divo and you’re almost guaranteed to think theirs must be a lifestyle of leisure – yachts, cognac, and lazy afternoons, occasionally interrupted by serenading some beautiful Italian ladies.

At the very least their Armani suits, dashing looks, impeccable grooming and opera training suggest a quartet of staid gentlemen who listen to Puccini in their drawing rooms.

But, in reality, American David Miller, Frenchman Sebastien Izambard, Swiss Urs Buhler, and Spaniard Carlos Marin have a slightly less refined taste in music.

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Interviews Music

Jose Gonzalez: quiet introspection

Born in Sweden to an Argentinian father who loves Latin American music and western pop classics, it would have been easy for Jose Gonzalez to suffer from some cultural confusion.

His first musical outings involved playing bass in a rock band, flirting with hardcore and dipping into indie rock — before pulling out the plug.

The 28-year-old’s stark solo album ‘Veneer’ is “an understated, moody collection” that’s all about “simple guitar, murmured vocals, and the subtlest of harmonies”, said our reviewer.

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Travel

Easy does it in Ireland

Package tours are great. That is, if you don’t mind feeling like an animal – herded like cattle, with all the free-will of a sheep; or hanging out the bus window like a dog as the world whooshes by in a blur.

Really, the only way to experience a country properly is on foot or bicycle. Ireland is no different – you need to squelch through the boggy fields, feel the rain on your skin, smell the freshly cut grass and cowpats, dodge the cars in Belfast, feel the sea breeze, and pedal your way alongside the greenest fields imaginable to truly appreciate Ireland in all its guises.

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Music Reviews

Depeche Mode at their best

Four weedy boys from Basildon (England’s answer to Poffadder) burst onto the charts — decked out in shirts, ties and suspenders — with a cheesy, irrepressibly bouncy synth-pop song about nothing really, ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’. Who’d have thought that a little over ten years later their band would be one of the biggest in the world; their tattooed, heroin-addicted lead singer would resemble an emaciated Jesus; and their dark songs would be about sex, death, religion.

It’s a transformation that can be heard on ‘The Best Of Volume 1’ and that began, gradually, after that first hit song back in 1981. Chief songwriter Vince Clarke left the group — to continue his brand of cheesy, irrepressibly bouncy synth-pop with Yazoo and Erasure — leaving the far more cynical, nihilistic Martin L. Gore to come up with the tunes.

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Music Reviews

U2 pick the hits

The video for U2’s ‘Window in the Skies’ is a montage of vintage clips, cleverly edited so that veritable icons like Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, The Clash and Johnny Cash appear to be singing the words. Cheeky maybe, but take one listen to ‘U218 Singles’ and it’s easy to hear why these four Irishmen have joined that pantheon of rock royalty.

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Movies Reviews

‘Casino Royale’ takes a gamble

“Gimme a martini,” demands a flustered James Bond.

“Shaken or stirred?” asks the barman.

“Do I look like I care?” Bond snaps back.

It’s hardly what we’ve come to expect from the debonair super spy – but, then again, ‘Casino Royale’ is hardly what we’ve come to expect from the 007 franchise.

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Music Reviews

The Killers go in search of ‘Sam’s Town’

They appeared as if from nowhere (the cultural wasteland that is Las Vegas) to became the brightest young things of 2005. Their irrepressible songs that nicked the best of Duran Duran, New Order, Depeche Mode and vintage U2 became so ubiquitous that their lyrics “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” even infiltrated Robbie Willams’ Live8 set.

Some bands cope with such early success by repeating the formula, recording a difficult fuck you album to kill off the fan base, or just imploding. But these four boys from Sin City did the only thing they know how: go bigger. In every way.

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Movies Reviews

‘Match Point’ serves for victory

It’s back. After battling for more than a decade to make even a halfway decent film, Woody Allen has stumbled across his talent again. And for the New Yorker who has made his career, and slowly undone it over the past ten years, with New York films about New York people, it was lurking in the most unlikely of places – London.

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Music Reviews

David Gilmour is on an island

While Bob Geldof was convincing David Gilmour to regroup with the rest of Pink Floyd for Live 8, the guitarist played him the music he was working on. Geldof’s typically blunt response: take some speed, man.

Now, just about a year later, some of those songs appear on ‘On An Island’, an album as tranquil as the title — and Geldof’s appraisal — suggest. But like those classic blues albums that make ideal Sunday morning listening, this 10-track collection is anything but bland, forgettable background muzak. Being quieter and more personal than anything in the Pink Floyd canon only makes it more arresting than such mass consumption bombast as ‘Another Brick In The Wall’.

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Travel

Wilderness wandering

We’re standing on a beach; fossilised sand dunes towering to the left, the clear water of the Indian Ocean lapping gently on our right. Looking ahead, there’s nothing but pristine white sand and the distant rocky outcrop of Gericke’s Point rising from the ocean spray.

“This,” says Mark Dixon, stretching out his arms, “is my office. And I love it.” Spend just an hour with Dixon and you’ll know that ‘love’ is something of a euphemism, and that the Garden Route is more playground than office.

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