Blog archive

  • Saturday Summary 014

    Saturday Summary 014

    This is my first separate weekly post of links and news: it’s number 14 because there were thirteen earlier posts that were joined on to my series of pompous essays (still known as Monday Musings). Read more

  • lextrical – Deletia (electronica/ indie/ folktronica)

    lextrical – Deletia (electronica/ indie/ folktronica)

    Deletia opens with ‘Lunchbox D’, which begins with an obviously electronic backbeat; this is joined a bar later by a saturated, analogue sounding synth melody, and simultaneously by a guitar. This sets the pattern for the album: it is a predominantly electronic construction, but it is a highly organic one, and stylistically it looks toward… Read more

  • Cockdaughter – Cockdaughter (noise rock)

    Cockdaughter – Cockdaughter (noise rock)

    In 1917 Marcel Duchamp put a pissoir in a gallery: unfortunately, nearly a century later, many people still don’t get it. Those people will have trouble with the presentation of something as deliberately shambolic as Cockdaughter’s eponymous debut as a finished artwork; but it’s precisely to challenge that sense of the polished and refined as… Read more

  • pje – hidden stone (ambient)

    pje – hidden stone (ambient)

    The sound of pje can be uncontroversially described as ambient, but it explores a number of avenues under that rubric. ‘diffract’ has strong drone elements, while ‘scattered’ incorporates a strummed acoustic guitar pattern, and ‘memory key’ is characterised by percussive elements, in a beat that is never quite fully articulated. There is an element of… Read more

  • Meadows – Meadows (sludge metal)

    Meadows – Meadows (sludge metal)

    Meadows play some pretty extreme music. You could make all sorts of comparisons: The Melvins are an obvious point of reference; they also put me in mind of Bongzilla, although they have some fast thrashy passages to go with the slow stoner doom, and a turgidly saturated bass distortion that makes everything as thick as… Read more

  • Monday Musings: Canons and Mainstreams

    Monday Musings: Canons and Mainstreams

    How often does someone say ‘you must listen to/ read/ watch cultural artifact X’? How often is it assumed that you are familiar with a particular album, or does someone express shock that you are unfamiliar with another? This week’s topic concerns the cultural canon, and the idea of a mainstream. Certain artworks or artists… Read more