The Sound Barrier Podcast: 1: The Lost World / The Lost City Of Z

3 Apr 2017 So for a while myself and Pamela Hutchinson, of Silent London fame have been talking about doing a more regular podcast. And while we love talking about silent films, we also like new films too. And so The Sound Barrier was born over a Campari Spritz or four, we take a new release and we […]

Blog ’92: Introduction

15 Aug 2007 On my eleventh birthday I received a copy of a tape called “Rave ’92” through the post from my sister Grace, who was away at university. It was the second tape she had made for me whilst she was away, (the first being a random mix of grebo, soul, indie and ‘Love Shack’ by the […]

The Cottage Industry Of Moments

1 Jan 2002 For a while *everyone* wanted a part of Britgum, its determined lack of modishness making it an ideal force for the career resuscitation of 60s survivors such as The Fortunes, whose two previous hits (“You’ve Got Your Troubles” and “Here It Comes Again”, epic and orchestrated both) had shone some way above the beat boom […]

A User’s Guide To The Culture Industry

1 Jan 2003 Part One: The Death Of Pop, by Alex Thomson Like the death of art, to which it may just turn out to be related, the idea of the death of pop seems to have been around forever. Its names are legion. The threat of technology to real music; the rise of faceless dance robots; the […]

BRYAN ADAMS – “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”

5 May 2011 #667, 13th July 1991 Sixteen Listens For Sixteen Weeks: An Everything I Do Liveblog This song got to number one for 16 weeks, so I decided to play it 16 times in a row, writing as I went. Play 1: And we’re off. I’ve honestly hardly heard this in the last twenty years so I […]

BLUR – “Country House”

5 Jul 2013 #725, 26th August 1995 BOXING? A “heavyweight battle”, the NME cover-billed it. And if “Country House” vs Oasis’ “Roll With It” was a title bout, the music press were desperate to play Frank Warren. Perhaps they had most at stake. It was, in a way, their last great fight. Many other moments define Oasis. Blur […]

Gnome Man’s Land

11 Jan 2016 I wrote a thing for here about David Bowie and how I felt about him and what he meant to me, but then Pitchfork kindly decided they wanted to run it, so it’s below. (Original title: He Could Be Dead, He Could Be Not, He Could Be You). And to any other good pieces I […]

Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mini Mussolini?

22 Aug 2006 Despite a brief cameo by Michael Schumacher Car, the filum Cars steers clear of German cars. Oh, there’s a VW campervan, but that is a hippy, with a typical hippy accent (its your grandad’s idea of a hippy at that, straight out of early seventies films). Equally British cars barely get a look-in. So there […]