There used to exist the perfect bar. It was on a sidestreet off Amsterdam’s main square, simply sitting there, waiting to be stumbled on. For years I used to go back there, sure each time that it wouldn’t dissapoint, until that dreadful winter evening when I turned up after an evening flight from Dublin, only […]
Derek Raymond, the English noir writer whom Interpol knew better as Robin Cook, could spell in at least two languages, as his dystopian novel A State of Denmark proves. Leave aside comparisons to Orwell, with the novel’s imagined totalitarian England run by a media-backed dictator called Jobling, and instead concentrate on the words frazione, presa, […]
Instead of shedding tears over just how much Mike Skinner has forfeited his concrete jungle panache in a series of increasingly trend adhering, substance lacking albums since (and including it has to be said) A Grand Don’t Come for Free, let’s remember for one beautiful instance the Brummie smartmouth had perfection precariously wobbling in his […]
You probably wouldn’t pick one of Northern Ireland’s best known poets, academic – and traditional music enthusiast to boot – to be the novelist to have translated the spirit of the internet into book form. In Shamrock Tea (2001) though Ciaran Carson has, in my humble view, done exactly that – and there’s not a hint […]
4th Estate celebrate their 25th birthday this year, and to mark it have produced a very nice film which reminds you of many of the great books they’ve published This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo. Some favourites here include Michael Chabon’s novels, Robert Fisk’s huge book on the middle east, and […]
There’s an embarassing moment that happens to nearly all students of a foreign language, when they over-eagerly grasp to a similar sounding word to that of their own native tongue, only to find out that it’s a ‘false friend’ with a completely different meaning. Approaching Kate Rusby’s fragile and beautiful No Names, from the album […]
Caught between the devil (Britney Spears) and Gordon Sumner, the idea that an artist can reflect their politics in music has become a largely discredited notion. When putting their minds towards defeating Thatcherism artists like Billy Bragg, Paul Weller, and the Communards produced arguably some of their worst material – they may have won your […]
Part of the government’s master plan, enthusiastically supported by Gazeta Wyborcza (boring the country where the main serious media agrees with the government), is to put an end to early retirement in Poland. Keep cracking the whip over the backs of aging proles: that’s the ticket. Perhaps, to give the neo-liberals their due, the system […]
Paraphrase the famous ‘I may not like what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to defend your right to say it’ into ‘I think your sexual politics are more than a little dodgy, you look unpleasant (and decidedly unwashed), but you’re the first Irish band in history to whose music you can imagine […]
