This was originally published in The Wire in 1999, in their EPIPHANIES section. RIP Cecil T 1929-2018
It began in 1977, at second-hand: I knew before I heard a note of it that I’d love Cecil Taylor’s music. In a jazz encyclopaedia I’d already […]

My NME was rubbish. I wasn’t there for the underground press invation, or for the Titanic sailing, or the Kinderbunker. I missed the post-structuralist years. I never read about Youth Suicide. I was even too late for C86

No, not that one, it’s okay. I mean Timothy Thatcher, the wrestling one. No? The one with the mean face. No? Let’s start this story again… I love professional wrestling

NEW MUSIC

Day 52: FISCHERSPOONER – Sir: Compelling, in a glum sort of way – meandering, thoughtful synth-pop outlining the late-night territories where desire, and weariness, and resentment of desire, and resentment of weariness, all run togethe[…]

This is late, and brief, as I’ve been in France helping my parents as my Dad’s been ill.
NEW MUSIC

Day 43: TAL NATIONAL – Tantabara: Pell-mell afro/jazz/rock from Niger, teetering on the line between exciting and exhausting. Everything sounds […]

Hi, I’m Edgar the computer from the flop film Electric Dreams in 1984. Yes, the one the song comes from. I was just a normal 16 bit computer until my nerdy owner thought he would put out a fire near me with some sparkling wine. After a brief mo[…]

NEW MUSIC

Day 36: ???? – Sekundenschlaf: Philip Sherburne’s Pitchfork review goes in deep on the enjoyably ridiculous backstory of this dude, how these are supposedly found tracks from the hard drive of a PC from the Chernobyl isolation zone or […]

Hi we’re the Telebugs, unloved 80’s British cartoon characters who traded on British kids loves of robots and television and still failed to create a following across our 88 tedious episodes. Part of this disdain might be that whilst we a[…]

NEW MUSIC

Day 29: JOHN SURMAN – Invisible Threads: Pastoral, ruminative jazz from an English composer and saxophonist. Very much a set of mood pieces, it seems to me, whose folky calm is upended at one point by a much brisker cover version. Chosen[…]

Datura, or a Delusion We All See by Leena Krohn
(Read as part of the Book Riot Readharder challenge 2018. Category: A single-sitting book.)
An anonymous woman in an anonymous (though clearly Nordic) city receives a flower for her birthday. She begins[…]