(Shaman Work Recordings) Just a fact you may have lost in the shuffle here: not everything about the African continent is a maddening saga of militiaman battling militiaman between bursts of genocide. Wale Oyejide is living testimony to this, and these almost ad lib-sounding Afrofuture recordings look at urban life – not strictly in Nigeria […]
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 […]
Jeff Noon : Pixel Juice : Dub Til It Bleeds
Polly Marshall hears why sci-fi is a four letter word for the Lee Scratch Perry of contemporary letters, Jeff Noon Jeff Noon’s gorgeous girlfriend has her hands on the wheel and a crazy glint in her big blue eyes. Jeff and Julie are my not entirely reliable guides on the Vurt tour, a late night […]
Jim DeRogatis : Paul Morley : Let It Blurt : Nothing : Critical Mass
Brian Dillon on the lifechanging journalism of Lester Bangs and Paul Morley Lou Reed’s magnificent “Rock’n’Roll” recounts the peculiar tale of a five-year-old girl living in a blank suburb where there’s ‘nothing happening at all … not at all … Then one fine day she turned on a New York station, she couldn’t believe what […]
Kodwo Eshun: More Brilliant Than The Sun
Chris Mitchell Technology is often seen as having a negative influence on music. Ever since the advent of sound generated by machines rather than traditional instruments, there have been dire predictions about the death of the Song. More Brilliant Than The Sun takes the opposite attitude and celebrates these strange new technologically-based forms of music, […]
Tupac Shakur and Death Row Records : Have Gun Will Travel and Rebel For The Hell Of It : Murder Was The Case
Gary Marshall on the history of gangsta rap as documented in Tupac Shakur: Rebel For The Hell Of It and Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records Under the guidance of its founder Marion “Suge” Knight, Death Row Records became one of the most successful and most talked-about […]
Kruder And Dorfmeister : The K&D Sessions
Chris Mitchell Despite the rise of dance music in the 90s to the point where it’s arguably overtaken rock’n’roll as the defining sound of popular music, remixing is still something of a dirty word. It’s unsurprising given the way pedestrian remixes are continually used as filler on singles and even albums when an artist has […]
