Music

The Light That Burns So Very Bright: A Playlist For MAGA Erasure

The victims of US racism had revealed to them the truth of their society. In refining that knowledge into music, they built some of the great human and…

Jun 17

RBE 40 Years Later: Ruach Demos

After a pause from 1982 to 2025, recent technology has made me interested again in the kind of electronica inspired equally by Lee Perry and the…

May 5 •

Dance to Your Nobodaddy: Tríd an bpoll gan bun at Sadler's Wells

Folk musician Sam Amidon and Michael Keegan-Dolan's Teaċ Daṁsa's new piece, inspired by Blake's divine dad-gone-bad, Nobodaddy, tells stories of…

Dec 3, 2024 •

Spectral Promises: Electronic Music 1970-1990

Listen now | From Stockhausen to Nurse With Wound, soundtracked by Iancu Dumirtrescu, David Bowie and Throbbing Gristle, Andy Wilson offers a…

Sep 30, 2024 •

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Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Not Stockhausen

A review of David Stubbs, Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen? Why do people flock to see abstract art but run screaming from…

Aug 28, 2024 •

Fruit Flies Like a Banana: Extract from Faust: Stretch Out Time 1970-1975

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana." An extract from the book Faust: Stretch Out Time 1970-1975. This was originally a chapter in the…

May 13, 2024 •

Gabriel Kahane, America and the Book of Job

A friend asked me to comment on the mention of the Book of Job is a recent song, Gabriel Kahane's Empire Liquor Mart, from The Apartment Sessions. It…

Mar 19, 2024 •

The Beautiful One Has Come: Reflections From a Damaged Jukebox

As I'm preparing to write about Job, I thought I'd fill the temporary silence with some of the music that set me off where I'm going. Over fifty years…

Feb 21, 2024 •

Kali, Chaos Magic and the KLF: On Black Holes and the Rites of Mumufication

This is based on a talk I gave for the Living Well Dying Well Foundation on the rite of MuMufication, the building of the People’s Pyramid, and the…

Feb 20, 2023 •

Mike Westbrook, Phil Minton & The Lo-Fi Improvised Music Ensemble with Sue Lynch: Intimations of a Future for Blake’s Music

In November 2022, The Mike Westbrook Band and The Lo-Fi Improvised Music Ensemble performed settings of Blake’s texts that raise questions about how…

Jan 5, 2023 •

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