Uyai by Ibibio Sound Machine
There seems to be a lot of music around at the moment involving a fusion of more acoustic – I don’t want to say ‘traditional’ – African musics, or African vocal pop traditions, and electronic production. Of […]

One of the great dangers of listening to music from around the world – as you’ll see, it’s a danger I fall foul of a LOT – is a kind of geographical determinism, At home I’m a tourist, projecting my misty sense of a place I’ve never been […]

Walter Becker of Steely Dan died the week before last, and so I spent last week listening to each of their seven LPs, one a day. “The rim of salt around the cocktail of my taste”, I called them on Facebook: this last week I’ve been […]

A list in which the descriptions match the wrong entries.
A list in which the order is determined drunk and the descriptions are written sober.
A list in which the order is determined sober and the descriptions are written drunk.
A list in which the […]

FAKE NEWS! But REAL POP! In April I went to Seattle and talked about Eurovision and Brexit, and now thanks to the miracle of YouTube and Bruce from my work’s Graphics Department you too can experience my presentation. It isn’t quite the s[…]

The fourth instalment of my project to listen to a new (to me) album every day for a year: one track from each of the LPs I listened to in April. I’m pleased with this one – though this is a playlist of two halves, and those wishing to av[…]

Last year’s Seattle Pop Conference, on Voice, was an epiphanic experience for me, reviving a part of me that had become burnt out since I stopped writing regularly about current music. Like most epiphanies it was almost traumatic – I staggered ar[…]

The (much delayed) third playlist for this project, covering the 31 records I listened to for the first time in March. Delayed partly because it was a lot harder to get some of these songs to play well with others! Full list under the cut.

(more&he[…]

Thanks to the Unheard Album Project (March mix on its way!) I am finally in a position where I can ACTUALLY DO a list of the records I’ve enjoyed most in “Q1”. (Note that at no point in my career as a ‘music journalist’ […]

Ed Sheeran’s absurd dominance of the singles chart is great news for him, his fans, Asylum records, and Paul Gambaccini’s agent, but it’s hard to argue it’s good news for the chart itself. It demonstrates the utter weakness of the post-stream[…]