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I kind of want to try to make a line in the sand here. It feels like a lot of music books that I've read in the last decade or so have followed a pattern of picking a topic, making some broad-brush argument for why it's interesting, and then essentially just picking a bunch of relevant artists...

Idle thoughts... I went to a synth history event last year, and one thing that was noticeable was that the people who'd brought along synths to exhibit were mostly "of a sort": middle aged bloke, kinda lower middle class, cropped hair, bit of a beer gut, cargo shorts. This set off a bit of a...

Right, the results are in and I've done some stats bashing in Google Sheets. The worst and best provincial cities of Britain, as scored on their musical legacy by you, the people of Dissensus, are as follows: Newcastle: -12 Glasgow: -10 Brighton: -8 Belfast: -1 Bath: 0 Ipswich: 0 Blackpool: 1...

Right, the authoritative alphabetical list of everything musically significant ever to come from a provincial British city is below. And what a list it is. I'd like people to give me up to twenty that they consider "best", and up to ten that they consider truly malign. Ordering isn't...

Right, I'm going to try it and see whether I live to regret it. An authoritative and objective assessment of the musical legacies of the major urban areas of the UK outside of London. The rules: we start with a list the biggest non-London urban areas of the UK, per Wikipedia. First we'll list...

Greetings, Earth-Nerds! I'm after recommendations for interesting science fiction or fantasy books for some escapist fun. Mystery, suspense, plots within plots, unspeakable secrets lurking in decaying space stations, dark rituals in underground temples, planet-sized alien intelligences orbiting...

Sorry, not a Suicide thread. Alison's spending five months in Brussels starting fairly soon, so I'm probably going to be spending a fair bit of time over there. Does anyone have any clues about what's going on musically? We're up for weirdy-beardy Cafe OTO type stuff or alternatively anything...

Yeah, sorry, another Dissensus Travel Guides thread. Meself and the missus are going to Berlin in a couple of weeks, staying Tuesday to Sunday. Has anyone got any advice on stuff we should do while we're there, beyond the obvious Big Culture type stuff that's in all the guidebooks. We'd be...

We're going to be over there from Thursday AM to Monday PM - does anyone know of anything good musical / cultural happening? Or where to find out what's going on? Cheers!

Boring travel advice thread ahoy! The other half is going to New England for a research trip just before Easter, and I'm going to head over to join her for a week or so at the beginning of April. Probable schedule for the two of us is most of a week in New York and a few days seeing somewhere...

Anyone else read this? History of black music scenes in London from about 1920 to the present, written by That Bloke Who Wrote Bass Culture. I generally found it pretty interesting - there's a bit of a cosy, celebratory vibe to the whole thing, but there's loads of stuff about scenes that I...

(Title for the benefit of Mr Tea...) I quite fancy reading some of Michael M's stuff, partly based on a vague conviction that there must be some vaguely countercultural fantasy stuff out there somewhere that isn't just dystopian sci-fi but with wizards, and also that he might be part of it...

So yeah, for various complicated reasons I'm meant to be learning a bit of Italian. As a bit of a side exercise in listening comprehension, I thought it'd be good to track down some decent italophone music to listen to. So suggest some... Any style is good provided it's got halfway...

Which is best, innit? Anything from backstreet formica-tabled canteens to upscale michelin starred "modern indian" can enter, although given that this is Dissensus I'm expecting a strong bias towards the former. Bonus points for veggie only, BYOB, regional specificity, rude staff etc. About...

So I like to think that I'm not normally a mindless swallower of neo-imperialist propaganda, but the Falklands have got me beat. As far as I can see, the Argentinian position boils down to a) we want them and b) Britain is an inherently colonial power and Argentina is an inherently...

Some of the usage on here reminds me of the Dylan Thomas quote to the effect that an alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do. But what actually defines "middle class" as a socio-political grouping rather than a lazy perjorative used almost exclusively by people who are...

I don't think we've already got one of these, but I thought it might be handy to have a rolling thread for potentially interesting stuff on the telly - I don't read the listings that thoroughly and wouldn't want something like a documentary about young avante-garde alpenhorn players coming into...

Let's have some! Any genre any era. I guess I'm kind of after the more moody / introspective side of things, but the basic criterion is a focus on synth textures and not much else. It's a tendancy that I've always been sort of aware of, but couldn't name many actual examples of. Here's some...

Kind of prompted by the Burial / Thom Yorke thing... Is there really any point in this sort of thing? I can get with the DMZ thing where you do a decent initial run of a tune for the people who are into it at the time and then steadfastly don't repress when it sells out. And I haven't really...

The town, not the university. I'm moving there in about a week, and wondering what's going on in terms of art / music / culture / food / whatever. I've lived there before and still go back from time to time so I know the basics but has anyone got any pointers on more underground or out of the...