Music As Control: Phase Fatale on 'Scanning Backwards'
Berlin-based techno producer, Phase Fatale discusses how music can operate as a means of control and how technology has entered the most intimate of human affairs.
23 Jan 2020
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Tipping the Swear Jar: How mewithoutYou Used the F-Bomb to Say More Than the F-Word
Lyricist Aaron Weiss of post-punk Christian band mewithoutyou used the F-word in a song and it got banned from radio and the album got pulled from record stores. Meanwhile, his fans ponder his parodying of cultural mores.
16 Jan 2020
'Switched on Pop' Schools the Academy
The first book from Switched on Pop hosts Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan leans into the podcast's academic tendencies, as it makes the case for music fans to take all music a bit more seriously.
16 Jan 2020
In Appreciation of Camille Billops and Her Films
Camille Billops moved beyond predictable and well-tread ground to open up space for new narratives in her films—about Black families, Black women, and Black middle-class life—that pulled on her distinctive and unapologetic worldview.
15 Jan 2020
John Badham's 'Dracula', the Rock Star
On John Badham's Dracula. Because the director of Saturday Night Fever is the first person you would think of to direct Dracula, right?
15 Jan 2020
To the Vector the Spoils: On McKenzie Wark's 'Capital Is Dead'
In a brave new world dominated by platforms such as Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb, and marked by anxiety in the Age of the Anthropocene, McKenzie Wark's Capital Is Dead eschews digital utopianism for a sense of urgency that recognizes things have gotten serious.
14 Jan 2020
From Zeus to Superman: Why Do Superheroes Keep Coming Back?
Why, despite all the knowledge we've gained and the technology we've harnessed, do we cling to our mythologies?
14 Jan 2020
No Sanctuary in the Light: The Story of Temple Drake
The Story of Temple Drake grapples with the unbidden, unsettling force of emergent sexuality.
13 Jan 2020
Rush Drummer Neil Peart Passes Away at 67
Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, one of the most technically gifted rock musician of his - or any - generation - passed away from brain cancer on 7 January, leaving behind an incredible legacy.
13 Jan 2020
In Defense of Enjoying Tom Hooper's 'Cats'
Critics and audiences have made much fun of Tom Hooper's Cats. The laugh is on them.
13 Jan 2020
Punk Hybrids, Part One:Â Back in the Garage
Punk's idea(l)s may have been fostered in Art schools, but its musical foundations were cultivated in garages.
13 Jan 2020
Every Win on The Wrens' 'Meadowlands' Is Hard Won
After suffering through the pressures and losses of years past and laboring on their album in practical anonymity, the Wrens have hit the ground running.
12 Jan 2020
There'll Always Be An Ealing: Postwar England's Little Studio That Could -- and Did
The Ealing name has been revived in the new century, but film buffs will always regard its incandescent era as that period when it held up a scrappy and schizoid mirror to postwar England's depressions and aspirations.
10 Jan 2020
Prince's '1999' Shines a Light on What Might Be the Best Year Ever for a Pop Artist
Prince's 1999 is not so much one of the greatest albums of all time as a curation from an amorphous mass of music that might be one of the greatest achievements in pop.
09 Jan 2020
Sam Wasson's 'The Big Goodbye' Puts Roman Polanski's 'Chinatown' in Its Place
Social historian Sam Wasson's The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood, is a graceful and compelling elegy to both Roman Polanski's landmark film, and the end times of old Hollywood.
09 Jan 2020
Joni Mitchell's Fearless Jazz Debut, 'Ladies of the Canyon' at 50
Joni Mitchell's foray into jazz was not an impulsive change. Rather, jazz has been the constant, undulating beneath industry demands and topical concerns that called for the acoustic guitar or the Appalachian dulcimer.
09 Jan 2020
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