Month: March 2007

Hip-hop to me – real hip-hop that is – has always been about building something that has definite walls and sides, something that has surfaces, storage cupboards, multi-dimensions and heights – everything but a roof. Listening itself should be a building experience. With a roof, it’s like saying it’s finished, and hip-hop is too transient for that, too fleeting. The closest thing to hip-hop as loose and as free as this is dreaming. The place you inhabit in dreams seems Continue Reading

First up you had Domino’s timely reissue of ‘Born Sandy Devotional’, now you have two former glories released together on the same day: ‘In The Pines’ and ‘’Calenture’. More than this though, you have the opportunity to pour over the release’s expansive 42 page booklet and extra tracks, conceived in the same manner as the label’s recent ‘perfect bound’ Pavement release and similarly detailing the ideas and inspirations behind the creation and recording of this classic 80s indie album including Continue Reading

Back when your humble reviewer was taking his first muddy steps into the grubby world of boisterous indie music at Reading Festival ’94, as some sort of self-prescribed induction into its sordid workings, there seemed much to learn, there were new experiences and there were many questions. But the one thing, above all other things that I took away that day (apart from perhaps wondering how I could get hold of one of those massive light bulbs the Chilli Peppers Continue Reading

Too Rye Aye! Oh bollocks. That was someone else. But that’s the whole damn point, I suppose. The average Joe in the street usually arrives at Mr Morrison via everything but his actual records. Dexy’s Midnight Runners or gut-wrenchingly awful Julia Robert flick, the port may be different but the destination remains the same, Van Morrison surely remains the most ubiquitous cameo and namechecked figure in popular culture since Alfred Hitchcock tried to get in on the guestlist at Gatecrasher. Continue Reading

It might not sound like much of a achievement, but primarily thinking of Charlotte Hatherley as Charlotte Hatherley is just that. The point is, we barely ever think of her as Her From Out Of Ash these days, and that is testament indeed to an excellent debut album, 2005’s snappy ‘Grey Will Fade’. And while the Irish boys flounder under the pressure of losing the best thing ever to happen to them, the best thing that ever happened to them Continue Reading