And another Kieran P-R piece - this time on the inventor of (no really) dariacore, an 18-year-old called Zeke who records under the aliases dltzk and leroy. 

"Hit play on a dariacore track, and within two minutes you might hear PinkPantheress; a squeaky-bed sound effect; the YouTuber Fred Figglehorn hollering, "Hey, it's Fred!"; a dolphin squealing; Vanessa Carlton making her way downtown; police sirens; and Yeat rapping, "She eat me up like it's Benibachi." The basic template is a breathless mishmash of recognizable songs pitch-shifted and layered over each other."

So mash-ups, even more mashed? 

plastik flashbac

Here's a fun piece I did for 4Columns on an alternately sumptuously severe and gruesomely garish art book, Reversing Into the Future: New Wave Graphics 1977-1990 - a feast of album and single covers, tour posters, club flyers, music paper advertisements, merch and promo gimmicks, and sundry ephemera of the Noo Wave Era. Explores the punk / pink connection and the geometric aesthetic. Plus I got to use the word "stipple", knowledge fruits of having a dad who worked at a newspaper and would bring home materials from the office every so often. 

 

Here's Kieran Press-Reynolds talking about music writing - his own and in general - in the newsletter Music Journalism Insider's regular feature Q&A. 

And here's a few examples of Kieran's recent work for a different Insider  - a piece on PinkPantheress,  a profile of Quinn and a deep dive into the scapegoating of TikTok (cowritten with Palmer Haasch)

Check out also his overview of hyperpop for Omni (yes, that Omni)