more reading matter

Had a fun chat with Lawrence of Mozart Estate / Go-Kart Mozart / Denim / Felt legend, condensed into this pithy Pitchfork Q+A 

Kieran on Kirkslop (it's what you think it is) for GQ

Did a bunch of interviews while in Argentina - this one by Romina Zanellato for Cenital is a good read (and can be easily flipped into English). 

Another one worth a look is Carlos Priego's for Le Tempestad but somewhere between AI doing the transcription and AI doing the translation (I'm guessing but I'd be surprised if wrong), somewhere between those processes and condensation of the conversation for space reasons, the most marvelous error has been generated. For during an explanation of the reasons for writing Retromania, I am said to have uttered these words:  

"I, in particular, had become addicted to U2, listening to all their albums and feeling like I was drowning in the past, so a lot of what I wrote had that feel."

It took me a while to realize what had happened - YouTube has been mis-transcribed as U2.

Except I wouldn't have said I had been addicted to YouTube. 

What I might have said is that I was addicted to downloading albums off blogs. There had been a long unhealthy phase of OCD / manic greed I got caught up in. To this day I have thousands and thousands of never-unzipped, never-played files stowed away….

speak-sing / print-head

Here's a piece I did for Tidal looking at the roots - in postpunk, New Wave and Britrap - of the current speak-sing wave (which includes some of the most entertaining music of recent times and some of the most irritating).  I also made a playlist tracing the lineage from M.E.S. to Legss, mostly Brit but with  occasional dishonorary Americans included. 

I was invited by Pierluigi Ledda, co-founder with his wife Francesca of Reading Room, a bookshop and cultural space in Milan, to contribute to their website feature Love At First Browse - in which guest writers and culture-workers talk about 3 magazines that have meant the most to them. Didn't seem quite right to include Melody Maker during my era, but two others I've contributed to made the cut and I doubt you'll have much difficulty guessing the other one. Here's my choices.