Extremely loud and incredibly close

The songs on LCD Soundsystem’s comeback album tell the story of James Murphy’s own American Dream. And this is the story of how that comeback, including a triumphant return to Alexandra Palace, defined my 2017.

Jack, or master?

Master of None, the Aziz Ansari vehicle which returns for a second season on May 12th, exquisitely describes the predicament faced by any creative, stereotype-defying millennial, surviving but not quite thriving in the West.

Great Underappreciated Songbook

In the autumn I saw Parquet Courts in concert. The adulation they received from their young fans got me thinking about underappreciated American rock bands. Allow me to elucidate—with reference to the works of The Walkmen, Dirty Projectors and more.

Beats, rhymes, and the radical centre

The recent debate between David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors and Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, on the state of indie rock, brought to the public’s eye an issue I’ve been grappling with for a little while. In an age of such discontent, even a radical moderate such as myself can find some solace in the sometimes-disproportionate anger of politically-conscious hip hop.

Kraftwerk’s crystal balls

The seminal German outfit had arguably been following their own advice for much of their career: “I programme my home computer, Beam myself into the future”. On two rather prescient albums, they considered what effect technology and innovation would have on society, with conclusions that are relevant today.

Emergency!

Tuning into Beats 1 one Sunday, a little early for a rerun of a Time Crisis episode (thanks for the memories, Ezra), I caught the frontman of Panic At The Disco on “Gratitude”, closing out the show with Weezer’s one undisputed—if atypical—masterpiece, “Only In Dreams”. I listen to very little music resembling Weezer’s œuvre. But that song always gets me, with its hellhole-outsider perspective on modern romance.

Still chipper

It’s time to talk about Hot Chip‘s perpetually classy live show.

Tuff nuts

Popular culture is overwhelmed with humourless, oversaturated electronic music that sounds like sucking a lemon, or perhaps eating bitter gourd. Extreme darkness can be combined with surprising good humour—a little like the tone in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children Of Men—and ugliness doesn’t have to sound sloppy.

The Jazz phase

Don’t ask questions, but I’m having a jazz moment.

As has been discussed elsewhere, I have a proclivity towards getting emotional when watching films on planes. Perhaps it’s the difference in air-pressure, or the single-serving capsular nature of flying. Some years ago, on a flight out of Dubai, the triple-whammy of The Wrestler, Changeling, and Gran Torino left me overwhelmed, hollowed-out, a remnant of a shell of a human being.

Slow down, dilettante

“You’re like a party, I heard through the wall.” — St. Vincent, 2011.

There is a fraying thread that separates true assimilation of an alien culture and mere appropriation of it.

Is tourism, or even tourism of the mind, a suitable fertiliser for the act of cross-breeding with forms of art outside one’s direct experience?

What, subconsciously, got me thinking about this was Fatima Al-Qadiri’s 2014 album Asiatisch, on which she uses her mind’s eye’s vision of China, coupled with the sensory overload actual images of the country have provided, to unwittingly alight upon the sound of sinogrime. But a deeper exploration of her unsettling art will have to wait for another day. Instead, I turn to three British releases of varying vintage.