Pitchfork Tracks Of 2007: I’m in this, a bit (capsule reviews of T2, Groove Armada, Spoon) and voted in it and anyway it’s always intriguing to see what the P4K list turns up. What I thort of the Top 10, under the cut: (more…)[…]

Return to the Freaky Trigger archive, putting up content lost from several years ago. This time – White Town, Kelis, Radiohead, Kraftwerk and the Human League. (more…)[…]

I have been re-reading Philip Ball’s Critical Mass, his book about “social physics”, how the study of physics can lead us to understand aggregate human behaviour better. It’s very wide-ranging and interesting, with pretty obvi[…]

Everything you ever wanted to know about the ladies voted (yet again) Kerrang!’s most fanciable female, by their creator. Not safe for post-adolescence.
(I will only take the NME annual “cool” polls seriously when Th’ Lone Gro[…]

I am sure a fuller discussion of the virtues and vices of The Golden Compass: The Movie will be forthcoming on FT soon, but a quick mention must be made of the Golden Compass QUIZZER which we saw afterwards. Fast work from IND:E games and lavish pr[…]

Doing the rounds on Livejournal over the last couple of days has been the “Wikipedia band meme”, a methodology for creating a fake band and record using random wikipedia articles. I first saw it on Rosie’s journal (her of Popular co[…]

Looking through the old FT backups for lost material I came across the links list I made in 2000 when I ended Blue Lines. I’d thought it would be a good idea to run the links list as a personal history essay, so presented them in more or less c[…]

9. The Orb – Assassin
Another brilliant transition takes us from Anita’s dying echoes (“Don’t be afraid, it’s just the magic friend, friend, friend, friend…“) into a track that could be its polar opposite. ([…]

Yes yes there is an obvious answer to the question but the specific phenomenon of all the big Christmas hits (and Andy Williams) getting back into the Top 40 still bears closer examination. For instance, why is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want […]

There is a moment when critics unleash their wrath on a particular film which is akin to bear baiting. Except often the film is not the cinematic equivalent of a bear, and the lashing is completely justified. Two films have been savaged by critics th[…]