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
By now, creative music fans know Susan Alcorn for her feat in bringing the pedal steel guitar to New York’s downtown music scene, with guitarist Mary Halvorson’s Octet and with other knotty improvising collectives. But Alcorn hasn’t entirely forsaken her… Read More
For a television show that centers on a masked, male individual, the final episode of Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian Season 2 (which premiered on Disney+ 18 December 2020) showcases a sequence that is wildly unexpected and politically telling. In the… Read More
Take heed that thou wash said the Angel to Dante before opening the gates to the Purgatory with two keys, a silver key for remorse and a gold key for reconciliation. Irrespective of where the path leads henceforth, this is… 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
I first noticed Maxwell Stern from a pleasant, unassuming tweet that somehow snuck into my usually gloomy feed. Stern’s tweet said something about not really wanting fame but wanting that low-key 12:30 am talk show slot, and he said he’d… Read More