From The FT Mailbag…
“well ewing, my friend has just emailed me your article, ‘holding on for tomorrow’ where u refer to ronan keating as BLAND, PITIFUL, TOO SINCERE and his music RHYTHMLESS, DRIVELESS and ENTIRELY SURPRISELES[…]

ilx faq: the move for our discussion boards from greenspun.com to the promised land of the New Server is taking up most of my site-maintaining time this week. Here’s a draft FAQ, if you’re interested.[…]

Sugababes 101 – it’s faux-naif like Amy Phillips or someone but writing about actually good music! This is why Spizzazz is in my Top 10.[…]

Isabel likes booty bass music — the chatter, the rhythm, the smut. So I played her Peaches: she thought it was shrill, inflexible, unsexy. Maybe that’s the point, I started saying — I wanted to convince myself, too. It didn’t […]

The Boards Are Dead – ILM and ILE are temporarily down. They’ll be back up, I’m sure, but meanwhile we’re getting ready to shift discussion to a new server. Here’s the alpha version for you to try out, designed by Graham[…]

DoubleAmericano: new music blog discovered via BlogTree where it was listed as NYLPM’s child! Blimey! I then tried to break BlogTree by having NYLPM’s grandfather Josh Blog also be its son but the site was having none of it. (Though this […]

Slim Swanee: context really is everything – one bootleg (“Marshall’s Been Snookered”, Slim Shady over the Pot Black theme tune) is a giggly novelty to anyone in the UK, but this article makes it a Marcus-ian marriage of song-a[…]

Here is an idea. Pick a date and select a record – more than one if you like. Make it a record you think you can write something about. When the date comes round, play the record and write as much or as little as you like about it. Then wait a […]

Tom’s Top Ten!
XINLISUPREME – “Kyoro”
MOCKY – “Fuck All Night”
DERRICK LARO AND TRINITY – “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough”
WIRE – “Germ Ship”
THE CORAL – “[…]

THE RAPTURE – “Olio”
A trick that’s sometimes served me well: you look for the similarities in things that you’re told are different and you look for the differences in things you’re told are the same. Or to put it[…]