ROOTS MANUVA – “Join the Dots”
The horns march fatalistically. He leads, striding and declaiming, sometimes whistling only to keep time.[…]

The Anti-Bling Kings: Simon Reynolds on Cannibal Ox. Very good on the problem of the underground MC (“as knotted with riddles and imagistically overripe as a late-period Costello lyric” – yes!), then less good on explaining exactly […]

The Mix Project: Michelangelo Matos makes mixtapes and writes about the songs on them as he does so. I thought of doing something similar to this a little while ago but all my mixtapes are the same anyway.[…]

Why I Love House Music: the end for A Thousand Songs is surely finally in sight![…]

In case you’re interested…the LondonIndieUSA event raised – when corporate donations were included – around £1800 for the International Red Cross. Thanks very much to any readers who came along![…]

NIRVANA – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”/SONIC YOUTH – “100%”/SMASHING PUMPKINS – “Cherub Rock”
Spiteful snarls and bitter distortion claw at curtains of shopping-mall gloss.
Butch Vig never got his du[…]

THE STREETS – “Has It Come To This?”
“You’re listening to The Streets”
Are we? The Streets is a novelty record which has the feel of an underground record, or – maybe even better – it’s an undergr[…]

Four Months Later…: A Thousand Songs is back.[…]

MICHAEL JACKSON – You Rock My World
Is that all you got? C’mon, show me what you got!
I’m not sure if this is all too new, but a “radio edit” version of the video has been spotted. Hopefully, you’ve lost 20 minut[…]

VAN MORRISON – Like A Jelly Roll
Van The Man. What kind of nickname is that? Its as if he was so dull that the couldn’t think of any distinguishing factors of his personality to hang a sobriquet on. Truth is of course that a lot of people[…]