Last week, I found it very hard to get down to the work I was supposed to be doing. Writing about music felt trivial, absurd. That feeling has passed - for now at least. Not because the trauma and dread has receded. But protecting the mental space to be excited and obsessed and amused by music, ideas, art, etc - life's essential inessentials - feels like something worth doing. Allowing one's consciousness to be completely monopolized, fixed in a flinch - that really would be defeat.
So here's something I wrote a few weeks before the election: a cover story for The Wire on A.R. Kane. As is the magazine's wise way, it's a print-only piece, so hie thee thither to the newsagent's or record shop.
Also interviewed: sister Maggie Tambala, sporadic backing vocalist back in the day but now the newly active (concerts, recordings) group's lead singer; Stephen "Budgie" Benjamin, whose clarinet flickered through the grotto of 69's "The Sun Falls Into The Sea" and who's now a fixture of the group's line-up; Amos Childs and Jas Butt of Jabu, the Bristol outfit with whom A.R. Kane are collaborating on an EP; and Vinita Joshi of Rocket Girl, who put out A.R. Kive last year and the recent Up Home Collected.
There are also some "ghost quotes" from Alex Ayuli, taken from unpublished parts of an interview I did with the Kane boys in 1989.