Spike Magazine

Patricia Duncker : Hallucinating Foucault : Insanity Clause

Chris Mitchell gets philosophical with Patricia Duncker about her novel Hallucinating Foucault “Madness, death, sexuality, crime; these are the subjects that attract most of my attention.” So said the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, one of the century’s most audacious intellectuals, who died of AIDS in 1984. Only Foucault’s books remain as a reminder of […]

Stuart Walton – Out Of It

Chris Mitchell Given the jacket cover emblazoned with dayglo euphemisms for getting altered and the obligatory chortling review quotes from numerous lad mags, you’d be forgiven for wondering at first glance if Stuart Walton’s book is a paragon of research sobriety. But rather than being another cheap cash-in on the still-burgeoning UK drug scene, Out […]

Tony Wheeler – Lonely Planet Unpacked

Chris Mitchell Lonely Planet: the world famous travel guidebook company which has scores of writers in the field at any one time and scores more desperately trying to get a job with this coveted organisation. So the logic behind Lonely Planet Unpacked is sound – given that LP has a veritable travel anecdote treasure trove […]

Bill Bryson – Mother Tongue

Chris Mitchell Mother Tongue is one of Bill Bryson’s earlier books and a superbly manageable and amusing treatise on the English language – where it came from, what it’s doing and where it’s going. It’s the sort of complex subject that needs the lightness of Bryson’s touch to give an obviously affectionate and enthusiastic overview […]

Damien Wilkins – Chemistry

Dorothy Johnson The title of Damien Wilkins’ novel refers to substances, pills and potions but also to the reactions people set off within each other, and the possibility that they might result in unimaginable consequences. The book concerns a family deeply immersed in the world of medicines and chemicals, as pharmacists, doctors and addicts, and […]

Susana Baca : Espiritu Vivo

John Edwards Gunn The diva of black Peru comes with her response to 9/11 – ‘to sing is to overcome pain and death’ – an album recorded in New York with a band including reknowned avant/world/fusion guitarist Marc Ribot, and featuring songs by Cateano Veloso, Mongo Santamaria and Bjork, along with traditional Peruvian songs. With […]

Various Artists : Red Hot + Riot

John Edwards Gunn I’ve always hated these ‘tribute’ albums where you get various artists covering old songs by one classic act. At first it was shitty indie bands trying to draw attention to themselves. Somehow the idea caught on and nowadays those paying tribute are often more successful and famous than the tributees ever were. […]

The White Stripes : Elephant

Peter Wild Ryan Adams has already said that Elephant is the greatest rock n roll album ever recorded (laying to rest, once and for all, his spat with “cissy boy” Jack White). Jack White himself – well, Jack White thinks this is where The White Stripes get off. Nobody is going to buy Elephant. Or […]

UFO : V

John Edwards Gunn Not the 70s heavy rock outfit, this UFO is United Future Organisation from Japan, specialising in future jazz of astonishing clarity and detail. Listening to this album is like viewing a beautiful panoramic scene on a cool, clear day up in the mountains. Close attention is repayed in spades as ever more […]

Orlando Cachaito Lopez : Cachaito

John Edwards Gunn I’ve never quite got into Latin music. Too often it seems overcooked, too spicy. Those fiery syncopated rhythms are made only for wild dancing in steamy Caribbean nightclubs. Nothing cool about it. But this music, led by bassist Cachaito, from Cuba, is more subtle. Here we have careful arrangements of percussion and […]

Alan Gurney – The Race To The White Continent

Chris Mitchell This is one book not to be judged by its cover. It features a photo of Shackleton’s ship Endurance, even though the venerable explorer barely gets a mention in Gurney’s book, and even then only at the end. As the title suggests, The Race To The White Continent is more concerned with the […]

Banana Yoshimoto / Michael Emmerich : Goodbye Tsugumi : Two Worlds And In Between

Jonathan Kiefer discusses the delicate art of translation with Michael Emmerich, English translator of Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto Here’s what it means to be a literary translator: If you haven’t heard of Banana Yoshimoto, you probably haven’t heard of Michael Emmerich. If you have heard of Banana Yoshimoto, you probably haven’t heard of Michael Emmerich. […]

Mum : Finally We Are No One

John Edwards Gunn I’m not all that interested in the biography of bands, but it seems essential to the character of Mum’s music that they’re Icelandic, and of course a big part of their appeal to the likes of style-mag editors, now that Iceland is – for some reason – the epitome of cool. Well, […]

Studio One Scorcher : Studio One Scorcher

John Edwards Gunn These Studio One compilations by Soul Jazz are much more coherent that the ramshackle 100% Dynamite series that made its way to 500% before running out of steam a couple of years ago. Plenty of great tunes on the latter discs, but the way they mixed and matched tracks from various eras […]

Andrey Kurkov – Death And The Penguin

Stephen Mitchelmore This book is a page-turner. The simplicity and overt plainness of the prose combine with the perverse congeniality of the foreground subject matter to make one carry on, ignoring worldly concerns. And while the plot is complex it is also strangely unimportant, compared, that is, to the foreground. Viktor, a 39-year-old journalist, lives […]

Alan Moore – The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Chris Mitchell Take several classic 19th century literary characters – Allen Quatermain from "King Solomon’s Mines", Captain Nemo from "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea", The Invisible Man, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, among others – bring them together as an ego-ridden but intriguing outfit under the auspices of the British Secret Service, set them within […]

Doris Lessing – The Sweetest Dream

Edmund Hardy Our sweetest dreams are, apparently, ideological. Those seductive systems of thought which attract people who want to save the world on their own terms, but who end up mired in disillusion or pedantry. There’s prime potential for grim humour when people play at being revolutionaries, and Lessing is well-placed to crack the jokes: […]

Michel Houellebecq – Atomised

Kevin Walsh Michel Houellebecq is one of those authors who inspire hugely conflicting reactions. Some hail him as a literary giant in the European tradition, deftly weaving philosophy, history, and science into his bleak, challenging narratives, asking those questions that other more commercially-minded authors shy away from. Others think him hollow, pretentious, showily didactic and […]

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 […]

Paul Auster : Cruel Universe

Adrian Gargett on the writing of Paul Auster Paul Auster is not a realist. As the title of his latest book The Book of Illusions suggests, he inhabits a world of illusion. His novels are worldly, finely tuned, elegant and knowingly self-referential. An academic whose wife and two sons die in a plane crash, leaving […]

El-P : Fantastic Damage

Edmund Hardy There’s something bleak and claustrophobic brewing in the beats and rhymes of New York City, and here it boils over into a seventy-minute scream of anger, apocalypse and funkiness, shot through with a menacing surrealism. The music is manic, pushed into extremity because that’s how El-P can express himself in a perceived world […]