In the late 90s, in Action and Drama, Bis cast themselves as meta-pop activists:

Pop music’s not gonna die / It just has no direction / We need a plan of action
But what was their plan of action? The accompanying track Eurodisco (a worry about[…]

Often in scholarly discussions of the revolutionary impact of Bis on the cultural scene in the late nineties, little notice is taken of the trivial. Nevertheless to understand exactly how the Teen-C revolution came about, sometimes the trivial become[…]

The self publishing revolution was of course started by Bis in the 1990s with their Teen-C fanzines, so it’s only fair that we go back in time to 1997 and ask them their opinions on today’s rumoured launch of the Apple Tablet which seems […]

Here at Freaky Trigger we have realised that January has been a bit slow with output. A new year can put new strains upon our writers and what with Tom’s Guardian column and me embarking on a year without cinema, pickings have been slim. What w[…]

There really isn’t much to add about Billie Jean that wasn’t mentioned in Tom’s excellent piece for Popular, or indeed in this Freaky Trigger & The Lollards Of Pop episode where we heard Jackson’s slightly ramshackle unfo[…]

I have a new (fortnightly) column in the Guardian – the first instalment is here. I posted that link on Tumblr last night and The Lex left an interesting comment, which I’m going to excerpt:
“Illegal downloading is v much an elephan[…]

So the “who they” Art Vinyl people have awarded the best album cover of 2009 then. I believe a public vote may have been involved, indeed one assumes it must because the winner was Muse who have a lot of public. The Resistance is not a ba[…]

(This review, of my favourite song of the decade, was originally written for The Pitchfork 500, which I recommend you own a copy of. Oh, and happy 2010!) (more…)[…]

Well, that’s that: the machine has been given a good beating and we can look forward to “Bulls On Parade” on the festive Argos ad next year. I will admit I didn’t think the RATM crew could do it: I was wrong. But as the dust s[…]

What does it mean to buy 10 copies of a CD? It means you have 10 copies of a CD to deal with. What does it mean to “buy” 10 copies of an MP3? You have the same file sitting on your hard drive 10 times.
In one sense there’s no differ[…]