Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Primal Scream never made dance music, no matter who was turning the knobs: the ten-minute organ-drenched lope of Andrew Weatherall’s “Come Together” mix (AA-Side of this 12″, and al[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Everyone likes the idea of music being economical or minimal or haunting, or groundbreaking or sensitive or profound, but when you come down to it I don’t think there’s a single music lover on […]

I’m in a central London cinema watching Fight Club: on the screen, Brad Pitt has forced a Korean shopkeeper to kneel in a puddle and is holding a gun to the man’s head. Pitt tells the man he is going to die, then asks him what he most wan[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
The only thing worse than breaking up is not breaking up. And the only not-breaking-up-yet pop moment of the 90s worse than when Susan Amway sings “This is the worst night I ever had” on this t[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
To outrun the 90s, you have to be fast. When the Aphex Twin created “Didgeridoo”, the record that made his name, that’s what he had in mind: to create a dance track so agitated nobody cou[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
No single less glamourous has ever seen release. Attacking gangsta rap, matching its deadly braggadocio with a self-righteousness just as bombastic, was and is easy. Guru could have played this story of po[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
David McAlmont can’t sleep. He glides through the house, imaginary conversations playing in his head, a vision of misery in a purple suit. Outside it’s late enough for him not to want to know t[…]

Revelations, even small ones, hit you unexpectedly. Mine comes about halfway through ‘Spooked’, the third track on Layo & Bushwacka’s Low Life, when, having explored some rather tasty crunchy electronic sounds, punishing bass a[…]

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
The saddest songs are often the simplest songs. “Abba On The Jukebox” is seven minutes long and feels like a miniature, a Zen sketch of heartbreak. A short, high-toned guitar phrase over tick-t[…]

A triple album box set, three hours long, containing 69 songs, covering almost as many genres – well, it has to be crap, hasn’t it? Surely it must betray signs of Prince-like lack of quality control? Amazingly, it doesn’t. The Magnetic […]