Gareth L. leaps to the defence of Adorable. Provoked, apparently, by me, so I should say that all I remember about them was that bloke in his white suit, and “Sunshine Smile”, which Gareth rightly calls ‘insipid’. I don’[…]

Pitchfork reviews Loren Mazzacane-Connors: I only have one solo Connors album (9th Avenue), and one of his fine collaborations with Keiji Haino, but both discs get a fair bit of play from me still. Al Shipley writes an interesting review, though as w[…]

The Heavenly Jukebox: via everyone (well, Mike initially). Pretty much the ultimate Napster/copyright.MP3s article. Fine stuff.[…]

New stuff on Surface Vs Depth: Some reviews wherein Gareth preaches the truth: “Continuing to prove that, for now at least, the ‘mainstream’ is way ahead of the ‘underground’ in terms of innovation and experimentation as[…]

We used to have a poster of Billie on our wall at work in which she would explain, using crudely blue-tacked speech bubbles, the intricacies of weighting, sampling and pricing to curious market research executives. This kind of thing appears to be a […]

OUTKAST – “Bombs Over Baghdad”
You get, what, half a second to take cover – a drawled “Yaay-uh” – and then Outkast hit you with the whitest-knuckle hip-hop you’ve heard since “Welcome To The Terro[…]

So yesterday I went shopping. I bought Belle And Sebastian’s “This Is Just A Modern Rock Song”, which isn’t modern, doesn’t rock, and is a wanksome seven-minute dirge that barely qualifies as a song. Thumbs down. I also […]

“Tom, I want fifty-plus versions of Hot Butter’s synth-pioneer tune ‘Popcorn’ and I want them NOW!” OK, loyal reader, here you are.[…]

And speaking of nutcases…. “The British Dialogues” is a (very partial) record of the newsgroup war that erupted earlier this year when self-proclaimed musical revolutionary ‘Art S. Revolutionary’ invaded uk.music.alterna[…]

When I was 13 for about six months I would write down every song I heard that I really loved on a big bit of paper. I don’t know why I did this, something about writing the titles down cemented my bond with the songs, maybe. Anyway, after a bit[…]