Blog archive

  • Saturday Summary 018

    Saturday Summary 018

    A few scattered shots in the long range artillery duel over free music this week, but nothing dramatic. Lots of interesting articles though, on various topics. http://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/journal/article/view/81/134 This is a really interesting and in depth article on the role of militarist imagery in industrial music, but its observations are clearly applicable to other musics that… Read more

  • Matt Stevens – Live In Blackpool (progressive/ post-rock/ acoustic)

    Matt Stevens – Live In Blackpool (progressive/ post-rock/ acoustic)

    What’s the point of live albums? As music fans, we usually hope for a number of things, but they mostly revolve around an anticipated sense of greater authenticity. This is the musician doing it for real: you can hear whether or not they really know their stuff, or whether it was all studio trickery. If… Read more

  • Paranoid Android – Paper God (new wave)

    Paranoid Android – Paper God (new wave)

    Punk was like some kind of natural catastrophe: in terms of the frantic pace of pop-music it happened an eon ago, but the shockwaves that spread outward from its point of impact, like a tsunami, get more powerful the more open ocean they traverse. Our understanding of popular music before punk is now characterised by… Read more

  • Doll Fight! – Morning Again (punk/ riot grrrl)

    Doll Fight! – Morning Again (punk/ riot grrrl)

    It’s easy to form a punk band: just get some drums and guitars, make up some punk songs, and play them at some punk gigs. If you’re not too sure exactly how to do it, just listen to some Lagwagon or Blink 182 records: you can sing about getting drunk and being a bit naughty… Read more

  • Heidi Harris – Underneath The Grass And Clover (folk)

    Heidi Harris – Underneath The Grass And Clover (folk)

    Heidi Harris works with a palette of folk and Americana pigments, but she doesn’t paint quite the pictures you might expect. Folk music is a collective aurality, the sonic expression of an orally transmitted tradition, and as such, it daubs its canvases with the colours of communal experience: even when it trades in specificities, perhaps… Read more

  • Monday Musings: The Myth Of Popular Music

    Monday Musings: The Myth Of Popular Music

    Myths are everywhere, wrapped around common currency ideas, giving shape to our cultural narratives, and putting filters on the lenses of our minds. There’s a ‘myth’ about myths: it says that a myth is wrong. The term ‘urban myth’ perpetuates this usage, but that kind of a myth, the erroneous legend, is just a part… Read more