2018 Music Diary Week 6: The Week Of Wakanda 15 Feb 2018 NEW MUSIC Day 36: тпсб – Sekundenschlaf: Philip Sherburne’s Pitchfork review goes in deep on the enjoyably ridiculous backstory of this dude, how these are supposedly found tracks from the…
2018 Music Diary Week 7: The Week Of Unsettlement 23 Feb 2018 This is late, and brief, as I’ve been in France helping my parents as my Dad’s been ill. NEW MUSIC Day 43: TAL NATIONAL – Tantabara: Pell-mell afro/jazz/rock from Niger,…
2018 Music Diary Week 8: The Week Of The East 1 Mar 2018 NEW MUSIC Day 52: FISCHERSPOONER – Sir: Compelling, in a glum sort of way – meandering, thoughtful synth-pop outlining the late-night territories where desire, and weariness, and resentment of desire,…
About the Author
Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here
15 Aug 2017
Spooky happenings over on Silent London this week, where the Sound Barrier Podcast dabbles in the supernatural, otherworldly and ectoplasmic. Or rather, a pair of meditative films which use death, and the afterlife, to dwell on the nature of existence. But if that feels a little dry, don’t worry there are madmen axing down doors, […]
13 Aug 2008
#428, 18th November 1978 “Rat Trap” is billed – in the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles, no less – as the first punk No.1. I couldn’t recall it – my memories of the Rats themselves were vague; Geldof I knew for later good works. So I approached “Rat Trap” cold but with a frisson of definite […]
15 Aug 2006
The Notorious Bettie Page is a film about the good old days of porn. You know, when it wasn’t exploitative, and all the girls portrayed within were not only fun loving conspirators in an art project, but believed in Jeebus too. Most film about porn are about the good old days. Inside Deep Throat told […]
4 Jan 2005
An OLD MAN and a WISE MAN are sitting on a bench. WISE MAN: Tell me, Old Man, if you had one piece of advice to give young students, what would it be? OLD MAN: I would tell them to be neither too proud or too ashamed of their music taste. The music you hear […]
10 Mar 2015
This is a post listing the records I’m listening to for my YEAR OF ROCKISM**, as outlined here (cut and pasted from Tumblr): I’m going to listen to one album on a once-a-day basis for a week, a different one each week. Not in order to write about them or anything, unless I decide I […]
28 Jul 2009
Here’s something I did for fun yesterday: a graph showing the % of UK #1 hits with female lead vocals, year by year. (Shared male/female leads counted half)*. (Click on it if you want it a bit clearer). The red bars are the percentage of female leads for each year. The line is a trendline […]
27 Mar 2014
#774, 20th September 1997 Every Popular entry starts with the same question: why this record? This time it’s especially loud. “Candle In The Wind ‘97” is the highest-selling single of all time in the UK, almost 2 million clear of its nearest competitor. This is as big as pop gets. But “why?” might strike you […]
17 Oct 2019
Hi all – We know some of you have had serious issues with the FT comments, both in terms of logging in on existing IDs and creating new ones. This is because of something being imposed by our hosts to stop continued spam comment attacks. We’ve taken the actions requested (updating wordpress etc) but there’s […]
