So much to choose from: Tanya Tagaq’s Animism (NI 477, Strut Records) was powerful; Sarah Jane Morris’ Bloody Rain (NI 475, Fallen Angel) was impassioned; and I didn’t even get round to reviewing Bonnie Dobson and Her Boys’ Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew (Hornbeam). But it’s the Berlin aesthetes Einstürzende Neubauten who scoop the CD of 2014 award with the meticulously researched Lament (NI 478, Mute). Never has Neubauten’s extraordinary collision of noise and song been put to such use. The ostensible theme of Lament is the First World War, but the real one is that of fragile humanity.
Surprising and rousing, magnificent and mainstream, Matthew Warchus’ Pride (NI 476, pictured above) showed the coming together of a striking south Wales mining community and London gay-pride activists. Three fine docs plot the intrusion of the state: Owen Gower’s Still The Enemy Within (NI 476), its coercive mobilization against striking British miners; Laura Poitras’ Citizen Four, its clandestine intrusion into our privacy and communication; and Plot for Peace (NI 471) its manipulation and preparation of public opinion in South Africa’s granting of the vote to all adults. Winter Sleep (NI 478) was Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s epic study of the wintry heart and loveless existence of a superficially charming, posturing ex-actor and landlord.
