Give the music press a Liverpudlian inch and they’ll take a bloody liberty. The installation of Lee Mavers as some kind of lost pop genius based on one song speaks volumes for Brit-crit’s sentimentality. Our manufacturing industry’s[…]

1) Buy a 12-string guitar. Record yourself playing open fifths in various keys for 25 minutes. This is the foundation of your song.
2) Call up the bloke who married your sister. Get him to come over to your studio and put a bass guitar in his hands. […]

Now, truth be told, I have no psychic powers. I do not strictly know what song you are listening to on the radio right now, or if indeed you are listening to the radio at all. But if you are, I think we can all agree that not only is it derivative, b[…]

(inspired by Duel!)
Of course the Divine Comedy is worse than REM. And let’s be clear about it, I loathe REM from the depths of my innermost being. And not just for the exceptions (“Shiny Happy People”, “Everybody Hurts”[…]

A 3-disc gimmick record which its vain creator admits was designed to attract music writers? It sounds simply ghastly, my dears. Mind you, credit where it’s due: the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs has certainly done its job: all the pop p[…]

I may be encouraged to give a fuller disection of THE most appalling, derivative genre of dance music at a later time. Meanwhile – give it a rest fellas, and while you’re at it you can put vendors of foul coloured fluoro-beach-wear New Lo[…]

Mumbly, mildew-voiced men scratching their warty groins in ill-lit pubs, leering at women and sobbing into their drinks. Another useless cabaret entry in the Great British Parade of liver-failure chic and lowlife tourism: move on, nothing to see here[…]

I take Massive Attack to stand for just about everything that was wrong with the nineties, and not just musically. I take Protection to stand for the whole of their recorded output, as a mid point between the dull but worthy previous album, Blue Line[…]

God, I hate them. I really fucking hate them. For the benefit of those outside the UK, there’s a mainstream media stereotype here that people living on the Southern English coastline (where I grew up) are your stereotypical dim surf boys and gi[…]

With the current furore about students with no money and less taste playing swap shop with stolen music (i.e. Napster), Negativland’s stock has rarely been higher. This is a good thing, surely, since Negativland are a cutting-edge political ban[…]