1990s
Max Porter: Shy review - an ode to boyhood and rageWednesday, 03 May 2023
Max Porter continues his fascination with the struggles of youth in his newest release, Shy: his most beautifully-wrought writing to date, an ode to boyhood and a sensitive deconstruction of rage, its confused beginnings, its volatile results, and... Read more... |
Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, Komedia, Brighton review - a delightfully woozy head-tripFriday, 28 April 2023
My associate for the evening has recently returned from Breaking Convention, a conference on psychedelics, celebrating their renaissance in recent years. He’s been microdosing regularly. Around us the crowd sways, many with eyes closed, bobbing,... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2023Thursday, 20 April 2023
Record Store Day is nearly here. At theartsdesk on Vinyl we have a selection of goodies which are appearing exclusively in record shops. See anything you fancy?THEARTSDESK ON VINYL’S VINYL OF RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2023Suicide A Way of Life Rareties... Read more... |
Orbital, Brighton Centre review - a solid hands-in-the-air night outMonday, 10 April 2023
Just before the encore, the crowd is finally warmed up and dancing. It took a while, but hands are now in the air, middle-aged bodies are shifting about, muscle memory of MDMA nights in the last century.The Hartnoll brothers are also jigging onstage... Read more... |
Inspiral Carpets, Concorde 2, Brighton review - a raucous catalogue of Madchester-era hitsTuesday, 28 March 2023
As Inspiral Carpets play “She Comes in the Fall”, a great song and one of their signature tunes, its martial drumming drags me into my own past. Seeing them play it at a 600-capacity venue makes me recall seeing them, over three decades ago,... Read more... |
Standing at the Sky's Edge, National Theatre review - razor-sharp musical with second-act woesTuesday, 21 February 2023
Buildings can hold memories, the three dimensions of space supplemented by the fourth of time. Ten years ago, I started every working week with a meeting in a room that, for decades, had been used to conduct autopsies – I felt a little chill... Read more... |
Album: Orbital - Optical DelusionWednesday, 15 February 2023
Orbital, one of the great electronic dance acts, had a run of albums during the 1990s that encapsulate that decade in the UK (at least, for those willing to ignore the historical revisionism around tired, retro-tastic Britpop by the same media "... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: The Senders - All Killer No FillerSunday, 05 February 2023
The New York Dolls, The Ramones, Suicide, Television, Blondie, The Dictators, The Heartbreakers, The Shirts, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. From 1974 onwards, New York buzzed with bands. There were also Tuff Darts, The Fast, Pure Hell, Von Lmo and... Read more... |
'Time Out of Mind' Revisited - a deep focus take on classic DylanTuesday, 24 January 2023
The 1997 release of Time Out of Mind was the resurrection of an artist who appeared to have wandered off the reservation some years before, lost in transit on his Never Ending Tour, trailed by an army of "Bobcats" who followed him for show after... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Nil by MouthTuesday, 03 January 2023
Greg Urbanski, Gary Oldman’s long-term producing partner, tells us on the commentary track that no film company wanted to touch the script of Nil by Mouth. Oldman was riding high as an actor in 1996, renowned for his shape-shifting... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Guerrilla Girlsǃ - She-Punks & Beyond 1975-2016Sunday, 01 January 2023
In December 1977, the music weekly Sounds included an article about the County Durham punk band Penetration. By Jon Savage, it was headlined The Future Is Female. The same four words would be used by the band for their promotional badges.Penetration... Read more... |
Aftersun review - the last good timeFriday, 18 November 2022
The New York-based Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells's feature debut Aftersun is a sublime example of how an opaque style can be wedded to an ambiguous storytelling technique without cost to psychological truth. Though the movie is... Read more... |
