Arpeggiated guitar chords so clean they must’ve emerged from a scented bath in holy waters. Reverbed jazz keyboards that tinkle, tinkle, tinkle and finally disappear into thick cappuccino bass swirls. Metaphors that mix less like vodka and milk[…]

“mOBSCENE”-Marylin Manson (video)
Marylin Manson is smarter then he is given credit for, with a history of glam and metal, a fuck you to censorship and a clever deeply personal need to offend all the small people- he is a freak, and his […]

Echoes seduces from the outset: the re-recorded “Olio”, the latent Curey tech-mope once wriggling to be free from the shitty post-hardcore recording quality made gloriously explicit. Then “Heaven”, brittle guitar raunch, clos[…]

MY ROCKIST SHAME!!! So I’m tidying up and “Carnival” by Archigram comes on and as you do I find myself bopping around the room, and then it suddenly dawns on me that I’m not just dancing, oh no, in fact I am playing air guitar[…]

Factological amendment to Simon R’s Rough Trade bit: it depends on the RT shop, dunnit? Yes none of them stock garage but in general the Ladbroke Grove one is the one that goes for nu-skool breaks et al. The Covent Garden one is much better: mi[…]

A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS – “Wishing (I Had A Photograph Of You) (Extended Mix)”
What really gets me about nostalgia clipshows is their desire to get everyone remembering the same 80s. It’s the same objection I have to Top 100 polls[…]

The whole thing is absurd, a drama queens lament, an over the top gothic grief session for the overly dramatic, it has to be done with a certain starkness, because if it doesn’t it is camp melancholy.
This is where O’Connor works so wond[…]

I’m having one of those days where everything sounds terrific, so please bear that in mind if I say something ridiculous, maybe something like ‘A.D.I.D.A.S.’ is the best single of the year so far. I’ve been wrong plenty of tim[…]

Let’s Do Lunch!: Vintage Frank Kogan, on Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, Times Square and Slade[…]

In case you somehow missed it, Ian Penman now has a blog.
If you don’t know who Ian Penman is or why you should care (whatthehellswrongwithyou?), hie thee hence.[…]