Having a number one single used to mean something. It signaled a cultural phenomenon: looped on the radio at all hours of the day, parodied and remixed and covered to oblivion, spawning a moment that would help define the year,… Read More
“Enola Gay”, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s (OMD’s) wonderfully indulgent synthpop classic named after the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, has just turned 40. While the last 40 years have seen OMD produce multiple charting records, break into… Read More
Once upon a time, wearing a Jacques Derrida T-shirt was a hip way to declare one’s cerebral aspirations but to do so now is more likely to be taken as an indication of age or quaint fidelity to a thinker… Read More
The restless musical spirits of siblings Nicki and Patrick Adams have found a pared-down yet bracing place to land on their latest musical collaboration. With Nicki on piano and Patrick on trumpet, this eclectic duo, perhaps best known as being… Read More
The paradox of all great ambient music is that it sounds easy to create, but it isn’t. All the different parts are simple, but the way they come together is not. This has always been the case with both Ulla… Read More
Open Up To Me (Kerron sinulle kaiken) is Finnish director Simo Halinen’s award-winning 2013 drama portraying the tribulations of Maarit Majantie, a middle-aged trans woman. Now employed as a janitor, she’s trying to rebuild both her professional career as a… Read More
In an interview for Rolling Stone India (2020), BTS member SUGA said: “I want to be like the ’90s folk musicians whom I’ve been listening to. I’m not trying to limit myself to a specific genre. I simply want to… Read More
Yellow Rose (2019) centres on Filipina teenager Rose (Eva Noblezada), who dreams of becoming a country music performer. When her mother is picked up by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service, she’s forced to choose between staying with her family,… Read More
One of the exciting aspects of the explosion in queer studies in recent decades has been the growing body of work on place-based queer histories. While the quality of the scholarship varies (along with the intended audience: some popular, some… Read More
When Elvis Costello crashed into the consciousness of rock fans in 1977 with his debut album, My Aim Is True, he seemed like the bastard son of Buddy Holly and Johnny Rotten, the personification of the angry young nerd inside… Read More