Luke Velazquez on the singular experience of the queer punk scene, reflected in the work of sculptor Fernando Carpaneda In our society, people are expected to behave in a certain way. To grow up, go to school, work a soulless dead end job, squirt out a few kids for the good of the commonwealth and […]
Joolz Denby and Ignite Books
From New Model Army to award-winning novels, Joolz Denby has created an impressive body of work. Now, with poet Steve Pottinger, she launches Ignite Books Poet, author, artist, vocalist, and all-round force of nature Joolz Denby recently published her latest novel The Curious Mystery of Miss Larkin and the Widow Marvell. Though more playful than […]
Tony Parsons – Stories We Could Tell interview
Someone To Drive You Home: The Long Blondes
“…with this far less feted CD, the Long Blondes definitely made the best album of that year, on every level…” Ben Granger Someone To Drive You Home – The Long Blondes See all albums by The Long Blondes at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com To be one of the immortals, one of the greats, a band needs […]
Muse: “Black Holes and Revelations”
(Warner Brothers Records) Out to please everyone at once, Muse’s symphonic-U2-punk-politicalness strikes a lot of different chords, none of them all that disagreeable. Certainly a lot of cut-and-paste goes on here – there’s seriously a bridge stolen from Foreigner in “Exo-Politics” and that’s just the beginning if you feel like playing Whack-An-Influence – but it […]
Paul Neilan: Apathy and Other Small Victories
Jayne Margetts Okay, so I listen to Thom Yorke, and enjoy reading books about people living with a gun pointed to their head. Call it entertainment, or living vicariously through others; apathy, black humour, a touch of the politically incorrect and make me laugh out loud, in these dark and here troubled times. I remember […]
Matthew Robertson: Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album (FAC 461)
Chris Hall Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album – Matthew Robertson See all books about Factory Records at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com In the late 70s, the mysterious, topographical radio waves of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures appeared like a burst of energy in an empty void, signifying the arrival not only of one of the best […]
David Nobakht: Suicide: No Compromise
Chris Mitchell Suicide: No Compromise – David Nobakht See all music by Suicide at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Just finished the top notch hardback edition of David Nobakht’s biography of synth-rock pioneers Suicide. I would have loved to have written this book. Very much a band biography rather than a personal history of Suicide’s two members, […]
The Fall : Fall Heads Roll
Ben Granger Fall Heads Roll – The Fall See all music by The Fall at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com It’s time again for the Seer of Salford to blast forth his enchanted bombast. With more albums now than anyone can count, and with its title surely a sly reference to the number of foot-soldiers fallen from […]
The White Stripes : Get Behind Me Satan
Ben Granger They may have been going for years beforehand but it was in 2001 that weirdo-duo The White Stripes became known to the world, arriving in fine feral style with their supercharged brand of primeval punk blues. They were hyped to the max with their red and white uniforms and carefully contrived sister/brother/lover cartoon […]
Erol Alkan: A Bugged Out Mix By Erol Alkan: Big Jesus Trash Can
Julie Burchill: Sugar Rush: Hurricane Julie
Ben Granger collides with Julie Burchill over several bottles of wine to seek out the dreadful truth on chavs, Stalin, Ariel Sharon and Morrissey “Never meet your heroes; they always disappoint” runs the old saying. Invited from my humble Lancastrian abode down to the Brighton realm of the greatest shit-stirring iconic hack of our […]
Tony Wilson: F4 Records: Fourth Time Lucky
Craig Johnson hears Factory Records supremo Tony Wilson on the rebirth of his record label, the upcoming Joy Division film, how he accidentally created Frankie Goes To Hollywood and why photographer Kevin Cummings is a miserable twat. ‘Wilson ya wanker!’ is a statement that has been bandied around Northern England for thirty years now. The […]
David Thomas: Pere Ubu : I Never Volunteer Information
Craig Johnson talks to Pere Ubu’s David Thomas Think of alternative rock in the 1970s and we immediately think of The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television as the major musical forces in those heady times. An under-rated band of that much pillaged and productive scene were underground rockers Pere Ubu – subterranean innovators of the new-wave/post-punk […]
Damo Suzuki : HollyAris : I Am Damo Suzuki
Craig Johnson meets the legendary member of Can who’s too busy looking into the future to care much about the past Does anybody ever go out on a Sunday night? I’m always too knackered to bother most weeks, but this particular night was an unmissable opportunity to see an unmissable psychedelic brain feast. I was […]
Berlin, Bromley – Bertie Marshall
Bertie Marshall provides a sneak preview of his own punk memoir documenting his suburban transformation into Berlin Berlin, Bromley – Bertie Marshall See all books by Bertie Marshall at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com THREE PIECE SUITE. A fading Polaroid of the twilight world, of a London suburb. It’s net curtains, privet hedges, Pebbledash, Fishmongers and draylon […]
John Peel : An obituary of sorts : Transmission Ends
What the death of John Peel means for music Mark Richardson Margrave Of The Marshes – John Peel See all books by John Peel at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com A week before the death of the Radio One disc jockey John Peel, an interesting exercise in semiotics was broadcast on the news. Fidel Castro, having delivered […]
Loretta Lynn : Van Lear Rose
Edmund Hardy I’m never quite sure what I’m going to order until I find myself saying “a sloe gin fizz please” or “white beer” or whatever – and – if the bar is somewhere like Wapping – the sloe gin arrives and I wonder why I suddenly thought of it. “Well sloe gin fizz works […]
Ben Myers – The Book Of Fuck
Chris Mitchell With a title like that, you’ve got to write a good book or have the word “wanker” silently appended to your name forever after. Just to make things more difficult, the press release trumpets the fact that The Book Of Fuck was written in seven days. I don’t know about your criteria for […]
Franz Ferdinand : Franz Ferdinand
Ben Granger Just because every music critic in the land suddenly simultaneously drools like a sick puppy over some hot new things, it doesn’t mean said things are actually that good. The slavish adulation these uber-foppish young Glaswegians are getting across the board is off-putting because it has so many bad precedents. Music mags, broadsheets, […]
Mark Simpson – Saint Morrissey
Ben Granger This book is not for people who’ve never, even briefly, fallen under Morrissey’s spell. Don’t bother; it’ll only convince you further of the psycho-obsessive nature of Morrissey fans in general and the author in particular. Don’t bother either if you’re looking for new facts about The Smiths or Morrissey, anything to do with […]
The Fall: Mick Middles – Hip Priest: The Story of Mark E. Smith and The Fall: Simon Ford
Ben Granger weighs up two attempts to explain the wonderful and frightening world of The Fall These two new books are a timely reminder of a group whose shocking individuality has been obscured by virtue of their sheer longevity. A reminder this band is not that nauseatingly cosy term "an institution", but a force distending […]
Basement Jaxx : Kish Kash
Jerome Deg Basement Jaxx are back, bigger and badder and rougher and tougher…their new album, Kish Kash, features trademark party tunes, punky attitude and a selection of new, innovative, funky tracks designed to burn up your living-room, club night or cellar afterhours party. Just listening to this album makes me want to dance – but […]
Chuck Palahniuk : I Want To Have Your Abortion
Jayne Margetts on the writing of Chuck Palahniuk When Bret Easton Ellis unleashed his novel, American Psycho, with its beautiful 18+ logo scripted on a lurid, Picasso-esque cover, my mind went into overdrive. Ellis’ literary missile was unlike anything written before. Its descriptive prose bled psychosis, its painstaking attention to detail as a Guide Book […]
Lou Reed – Pass Thru Fire: Collected Lyrics
Edmund Hardy Lou Reed is the craggy man in black leather, a permanent member of rock’s avant-garde without trying. Popular in all his guises, as Velvet Underground punk progenitor, as Seventies glam decadent, or as Nineties eagle-eyed chronicler. Or maybe just as the guy who wrote the original ‘Perfect Day’. But a book of song […]