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My wife doesn't much like music. Well, she likes listening to pleasant tunes, but doesn't much care what they are or think about it beyond that. But then she's an art historian and I have much the same attitude to visual art - I like having something nice on the walls, but haven't the slightest...

You don't have to do it through halfords: http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/

I've heard little of the early stuff. I saw the Big Band live a couple of years back - and it was the first time I'd heard him - and they blew me away. Really funny, accessible, tough set. I don't like the food stuff as much, I find it a bit flimsy; I keep thinking about Matmos, who do that...

I think the fact that most of the people in this thread are not critics is a pretty strong argument against that... Not professional critics, maybe, but there's no-oneon Dissensus (or virtually no-one) who doesn't have a semi-professional interest in talking about music. Why would you be here...

Noon's books have aged incredibly badly, but I remember seeing him do reading a couple of times (once at the Zap, I think) and he was fucking great. His prose works so much better if you read it aloud in his (or Mark Radcliffe's) voice Glad to see mentions of Wyndham, whom I like far more...

Because it's a euphemism. It means black. If you're going for an urban demo you're aiming at black people. And it allows you to utterly segregate (in the US, I mean) culture along racial lines without saying that's what you're doing. That's the meat of the objection, I think, although I'm...

I love Medulla as a pure pop record, tho'. This may be a set and setting thing; I first heard it driving into Cornwall last summer on a gorgeous day on the shit stereo in my old car, and it just sounded sumptous and perfect for the moment.

anyway anyone got any jokes yet ? Well, apart from the fact that Bono is clearing his diary in case he gets the job...

World Music is just such a deranged category that anyone who uses it has to be a dimwit. I mean, I'm certainly not an expert on the subject, but any category that includes Mohammed Raafi, Nusret Fateh Ali Khan and Baile Funk just has to be meaningless. And the Afrocelt sound system are...

Everyone I like (Moorcock, Gibson...) loves him, but I find his fiction dull and unreadable and pompous. Lights Out has some great stuff, but even there I dunno; I've walked around the East End for weeks on end myself, so what, y'know? I don't buy his mythos, is the thing.

Some thoughts. 1 MIA/Dancehall=Sov/Grime doesn't fly cos Sov is bubblegum grime. The objection I keep coming back to about MIA is that she is - or aspires to be - coffeetable shanty house, the one whose album every mildly bohemian middle class couple buy to hear what the fuss is about all this...

I wonder if there were lots of Nathan Barley types during the Renaissance? Of course there were - look at Prince Hal in Henry IV - or even Hamlet, come to think of it.

Wasn't the reaction to Barley more "Oh, fuck off, Brooker, that joke was mildly funny as a single paragraph in 1999, but it can't possibly spread to an episode let alone a series" combined with "Jesus, Morris - what happened to you, man?"

I think we're all just getting old. When you're 16 everything is new and you can more easily spot and navigate the fractally complex set of codes that differentiate hip from square. I seriously doubt a 16 year old iD kid (or whatever the equivalent is) would have thought yr grocer looked cool...

Did you get anywhere with this, Mr Stel?

Ken McLeod is as good a place as any to start. His Fall Revolution quartet is stunningly good and is entirely built by setting up different societies and having them bump into each other. So The Star Fraction is about a balkanised UK following the collapse of a socialist republic, The Stone...

Yeah, that'd work, if you have the bandwidth - I certainly do.

Yeah - Oxford. I'm just mailing the address from your blog. And cheers...

That would be remarkably kind. Shall I email you?

Thanks all. hmm, wait or pay, pay or wait...