In an interview with A4 TV, the Bug, aka formerly UK-based producer and sound manipulator Kevin Martin explains, “I love drowning in decibels. I like swimming in frequencies. I like to forget where I am.” For someone who sees the… Read More
“It’s not a rule. It’s sportsmanship.” So instructs Mr. Shaibel, the custodian who introduces chess to orphan Beth Harmon in the Netflix limited series The Queen’s Gambit (Scott Frank, Allan Scott, 2020). The nine-year-old Beth knows how the chess pieces… Read More
A thumbnail sketch of Britain’s state in 2021 will provide a useful entrée into the quite brilliant new Sleaford Mods album, Spare Ribs. As Cornish fishermen and women complain that their catch is being left to rot on docksides due… Read More
Alexis Boylan opens Visual Culture with a careful explanation of how inundated most of us are by visual imagery. Whether engaging with screens — televisions, computers, smartphones — or moving through the world, the constant flow of changing images, many… Read More
Pop musicians have never been shy about having ambition. In recent times artists as different as the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt released a grand three-volume concept album composed of 69 Love Songs, the Flaming Lips put out Zaireeka, a four-CD… Read More
For the uninitiated, Bicep are a Belfast-born and now London-based dance duo formed by Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson. Their 2017 eponymous debut received rave reviews for its combination of eclectic influences and sprawling knowledge of electronic music as a… Read More
Miles Davis’ 1970 fusion landmark, Bitches Brew, sparked considerable controversy over definitions of jazz. However, a perhaps more important yet overlooked debate questions if Bitches Brew fits within larger Black musical traditions. For the purposes of this essay, I conclude… Read More
On their first album, Birthday (2019), Pom Poko delighted in confounding expectations and taking their brazen sounds to giddy extremes. With Cheater, the band are essentially repeating the process with even more confidence. This is a group that doesn’t believe… Read More
In the late hours of a June 2001 evening, a performance by a young, fresh-faced band was broadcast for a national audience on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show. Late-night talk shows draw in musical artists of all stripes, but at that… Read More
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