Latest Posts
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Learning To Adapt
If you are someone who wishes they could spend more time creating instead of being perpetually stuck in a state of block, then Spike Jonze’s 2002 film Adaptation is essential viewing. This metafilm follows real-life screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (played by… Continue reading
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Sufjan Stevens: Where Has My America Gone?
During the early years of the twenty-first century, commentators on American cultural life had begun to notice a certain social wide attitudinal shift. In the latter decades of the second millennium, a smirking, cynical stance had come to infect everything… Continue reading
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Encounters: Pop by Gas
Inspired by the writings of Elizabeth Smart. Above, nothing but blue, stretching through the brief sweep of my closed-in vision. One faint wisp of white drifts into the frame. Below, green leaves soaked in light quiver on the wind’s faint… Continue reading
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Listening To… Louke Man
I first came across the music of Louke Man while listening to the Harsh Riddims Vol. 4 compilation from Atlanta’s Harsh Riddims Blood Sucking Cassette Co. label. The Toronto producer’s track ‘Differently_’ stood out from the others for its smoothness… Continue reading
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Does Massive Attack’s Eutopia Constitute a New Form for Political Music?
The notion that music can be used as a medium for expressing political or socially engaged ideas is hardly new. Throughout the twentieth century disparate genres were used as vessels for the spread and popularisation of radical ideas, from the… Continue reading
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Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men (Review)
Sacha Jenkins’ 2019 documentary mini-series on the Wu-Tang Clan has finally made it across the pond, airing for the first time in the UK last month on Sky Documentaries. For any fan of the Clan it’s a must-watch, and I… Continue reading
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Deftones – White Pony (Review)
Warning: This review contains references to bodily harm, sex, and drug abuse. I’ll start with a confession: Ever since I first listened to it in my early teens, I never quite understood White Pony. I grew up listening to Deftones.… Continue reading
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Politics of Language. Languages of Politics.
At the start of last week’s Premier League fixture between Manchester City and Burnley, as both sets of players finished taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter, a plane flew over the Etihad Stadium pulling a banner that… Continue reading
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Run The Jewels – RTJ4 (Review)
There is a cliché in the music industry that states you have your whole life to prepare for the first album, and only a year to prepare for the second. Longevity is a hard game, and many artists who happen… Continue reading
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Division and Reconciliation in Darren McGarvey’s Poverty Safari
Back in the early 1980s, my Dad, still a schoolboy, was taken on a school trip to Glasgow. The trip was part of his Higher Modern Studies programme, an opportunity to see first-hand the redevelopment projects taking place in the… Continue reading
Dead Academic 