John Fahey 1939-2001
Forty-two years ago John Fahey released an album of solo acoustic guitar based upon classical structures – Bartok played by Mississippi John Hurt being the simple concept – in an edition of 100 with money made as a ga[…]

Orange Juice, DJ Marlboro and the question of limits 
A lot of the best dance music is made by people who’ve got no idea and less care about how to do things properly. Think Outkast’s hyperspeed snare rushes on “B.O.B.” and t[…]

Charlemagne Palestine – Four Manifestations on Six Elements 

1.Charlemagne Palestine approaches a piano like a climber approaches a mountain. He does not play the instrument so much as he lets it test him: he starts each performance lik[…]

By far and away the pinacle in imaginary They Might Be Giants awfulness – We Put The A In Accordian – is an almost prog-rock type number which explains almost their entire career away as some sort of sad, sorry joke. It is only a matter o[…]

Me, Le Tigre and the Internet Backlash 
Kathleen Hanna has an idea. She sings it thoughtfully, like she’s still rolling it over in her head, like it’s still no more than half a hunch. “It seems so eighties / or early nineties / to […]

Bowery Electric’s “Freedom Fighter” is bewitching and worrying, and not just because it was made by a band I’d put down as America’s most useless. In fact the beat Bowery Electric use on “Freedom Fighter” sou[…]

TALKING HEADS – Fear Of Music
TALKING HEADS – Remain In Light
DAVID BYRNE/BRIAN ENO – My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
Ben Okri’s The Famished Road was one of the nineties’ big publishing successes, a novel told through the[…]

The Avalanches – Since I Left You
It’s summer in Melbourne, and stinking hot. I take solace where I can find it: stealing my sister’s fan any time I can, sculling bottles of juice at three in the morning, and listening to The Avalan[…]

On Skykicking last week, Tim touched, popwise, on the continuing cultural battle over what the eighties were or are or mean or meant. The story of mainstream rock and politics in the 1990s was among other things the story of a similar battle, that ti[…]

In a recent Guardian piece, columnist Charlotte Raven took modern pop to task, contrasting the current crop of British stars – Craig David, A1 et al. – with those of a bygone age. “I think it should be compulsory for every teenager […]