Low-voltage folkie-pop ranging from Paul Simon street corner shuffle (“Quiet Town”) to WB network angst-opera backgrounding (“It Looks Like Love”) to lone-wolf Starbucks atmospherica (“Jersey Clowns”). The sheer number of Jack Johnsons fighting for space would normally preclude any recommendation of this as the second coming of knife-divided raised-yeast products, but hookwise it’s a strong […]
Ensoph: “Project X-Katon”
Off-Broadway goth-metal punctuated with terrified screams, nano-beat samples, Gollum-spat epithets and mezzo soprano Tourettes played out in a Type O environment by a bunch of incorrigible German hams dressed like little Hellraisers. It’s one of those Berlin scenarios where the returns are predicated on the assumption that gothies will blindly snap at anything based around […]
She Wants Revenge: “She Wants Revenge”
So far, Justin Warfield has exhibited all the cowardice necessary to cop the honor of Billy Zane-like Genre-Jumper of the Year for his CYA abandonment of McRap and subsequent clambering into this schlock-a-block 80s lifeboat. His Joy Division hand-me-downs pander to the sort of mall-S&Mer who – he hopes – still eats this stuff up […]
Dresden Dolls: “Yes Virginia”
Eric Saeger Back for more seductive flashing of her Raggedy Ann-stockinged knees from behind the safety of her keyboards is Amanda Palmer, proffering another compendium of hyper-angst co-gloomed by her male Meg, Brian Viglione. Less theatrical than their eponymous rookie effort, Yes Virginia will also be (aside from the post-post-whatever “Necessary Evil”) a disappointing experience […]
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 […]
David Sylvian : The Good Son vs. The Only Daughter
Ismo Santala An album of remixes, the nine tracks of The Good Son vs. The Only Daughter were made by musicians handpicked by David Sylvian to shake up the subdued sonic architecture of Blemish (2003). Because most of the names of the remixers are not familiar to me, I can only go by what I […]
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 […]
Atomic Swindlers : Coming Out Electric
Chris Mitchell Music is the best mood-alterer we have. Put on a record and you can find yourself grinning involuntarily a few moments later; conversely, stand in an elevator for more than a few seconds involuntarily listening to crackly saxophone-driven muzak that manages to hit that precise treble frequency which is the sonic equivalent of […]
Hunter S. Thompson : An Appreciation : A Real American Patriot
Chris Mitchell on why Hunter S. Thompson was one of the most important figures in American letters I love my friends. Away from email for a few days, log in this morning to 5 different people telling me Hunter S. Thompson is dead. Distraught isn’t the word. Thompson was forever sidelined as a caricature in […]
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 […]
Charlie Brooker: Screen Burn
Ben Granger I judge newspaper TV reviewers by a very high standard indeed. Why the hell shouldn’t I? Let’s face it, this is the dream job any human being can have. Sitting, scratching your mardy arse whilst staring out the flickers that would bombard your face anyway and getting paid for it. Jesus! They have […]
Lawrence Thornton – Imagining Argentina
Peter Robertson Lawrence Thornton’s novel Imagining Argentina explores the evolution and aftermath of that country’s "Dirty War" (1976-1983) during which between 9,000 and 30,000 civilians were "disappeared" by the military regime. First published in 1987, it won both the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award and the PEN American Center West Award. But the film adaptation, directed […]
Paul Auster: Oracle Night
Stephen Mitchelmore Oracle Night is the first Paul Auster novel I’ve read since Leviathan in 1992. Until then, I had read every book. This was not a difficult feat. Auster is supremely readable. In fact, I am afflicted by an unusual inability to stop reading him once a book is begun. However, in the end, […]
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 […]
Mil Millington – A Certain Chemistry
Ian Hocking Mil Millington first surfaced on the web as author of the cult website ThingsMyGirlfriendAndIHaveArguedAbout.com, which comprised several thousand words of cringe-making – not to say hilarious – observations on the relationship between Mil and his German girlfriend, Margret. As Mil writes, ‘anything good you put on the web will get stolen’, and it […]
Jason Burke – Al Qaeda
Ben Granger The most striking fact Jason Burke hammers through time and again in this meticulous and comprehensive study is that “Al Qaeda” does not exist. Or at least, “Al Qaeda” the organised terrorist group, cohesive and complete we hear of in the media doesn’t. I like Spooks as much as anyone, but I fear […]
The Incredibles Are Satan’s FuckBeast
Chris Mitchell on the abomination that is Pixar’s latest The Incredibles. No no no. Sick and wrong. Until now, digital animation had been synonymous not so much with great computer generated cartoons as great scripts – Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, A Shark’s Tale and, leading them all, Shrek – which not only broke […]
Colm Tóibín – The Story Of The Night
Peter Robertson Short-listed once again for the Booker Prize, this year for The Master, about the life of closet-gay novelist Henry James, Tóibín has become even more of a name in Britain. But his hopes were dashed a second time- in October that country’s most coveted literary prize was awarded to rival gay writer, Alan […]
Julie Burchill – Sugar Rush
Ben Granger Julie Burchill: donchajusluver??!! Well, yes, actually. There once was a time when I agreed with all my Graun reading friends “that bigoted bitch” should be humanely shot, but it seems a very long while ago now. My obsession with her venomous vitriol went from fascinated horror to perverse admiration in the time it […]
Emma Larkin: Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell In A Burmese Tea Shop
Chris Mitchell This could well be my book of the year. Ostensibly an attempt to retrace the physical origins of George Orwell’s novel Burmese Days, Secret Histories is actually a superbly concise and deeply scary history lesson in the fate of pre and post-colonial Myanmar. (It’s been published in the USA under the less lyrical […]
Gustave Flaubert: Bouvard and Pécuchet
Ismo Santala Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert See all books by Gustave Flaubert at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Gustave Flaubert’s last, unfinished novel Bouvard and Pécuchet starts with a chance meeting that has the air of serene machination about it. The encounter between two Parisian copy clerks leads to a remarkable friendship. The first meeting […]
W.G. Sebald: Looking And Looking Away
Stephen Mitchelmore on the novels of W.G. Sebald Why are W.G. Sebald’s novels so flat? Why – when the books refer to events of utmost horror and disaster, sometimes dwelling on pain and death with a fascination and regularity verging on schadenfreude – are the events themselves always placed at a distance, always prior to […]
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 […]
Dave Hann, Steve Tilzey : No Retreat : Street Fighting Men
Ben Granger talks to Dave Hann and Steve Tilzey, authors of No Retreat, a punchy account of their days fighting neo-Nazis in the North-West of England Back in the late 70s Manchester was a stronghold of Britain’s premier far-right party, the National Front. As factories and communities went down they went up, recruiting at pubs […]
