Stuff I wrote

I used to be a music journalist. Well, a music writer. Well, I wrote a load of reviews for a website and even some articles and stuff, and off the back of that a few people asked me to write for some actual real magazines and even a national newspaper once, ages ago. I wrote six things for it, I think. It was cool, but the timing was bad; my dayjob went pearshaped very soon after I’d started verging on getting serious and I retreated.

Anyway, some of the stuff I wrote I’m quite proud of, so I thought I’d link to some of it from here. So that’s what these links are.

This is my whole archive of everything I wrote for Stylus. Some of it is very much not worth reading. Those linked directly underneath are. I hope.

A piece about Your Woman by White Town.

An article about the philosophy and psychology of downloading too much music.

An article about dynamic range compression, society, consumption, and headphones.

An interview with 65daysofstatic wherein they reveal that I influenced the recording and mastering of their third album

A retrospective review / thinkpiece about Disco Inferno’s legendary sequence of five EPs.

An article about listening to Prince for (almost) the first time.

An interview with Graham Sutton, Bark Psychosis dude and current super-producer. (He’d probably hate that term.)

A piece about Mick Head’s heroin-folk masterpiece, The Magical World of the Strands.

A weird top ten list of my favourite of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, that someone claimed was the greatest piece of music writing they’d ever read, or something.

A list of my ten favourite “postrock” records that irritated a lot of 20-something men who wear too much black because I didn’t include Slint or Mogwai.

My ten favourite songs about trains. No, really.

A piece about Miles Davis’ classic In A Silent Way.

A review of a Boo Radleys ‘best of’ which, unfathomably and in great meta-weirdness style, ended up being quoted in the sleevenotes of another Boo Radleys ‘best of’ about 2 years later.

A slightly deranged piece about bands, narrative, and the relationships with fans. It’s very weird.

A slightly odd piece about constructing ‘the perfect listener’ in the style of some weird Cuban authors. Sort of.

Part 2 of the above. No less headmental.

A review of Portishead’s third album, Third.

A joint article I masterminded about the greatest ever b-sides.

A ‘remastered’ version of Imperfect Sound Forever, for The Quietus.

I may add more stuff in coming weeks and months.