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I see both JG Ballard and Chris Morris as surrealists of the everyday, and while Morris's media-themes and bizarre juxtapositions are frequently reminiscent of Ballard (whether directly influenced or not), Ballard's satirical side is often missed, as his humour is so deadpan: the whole...

indeed, Electric Head is an extraordinary album. I read recently that The Grid were doing new stuff. i don't think 'Swamp Thing' made it to number one. the charts are, as always, industrial shite. edit: not that 'Swamp Thing' is on Electric Head; it is on the arguably less satisfying but still...

http://mchammer.blogspot.com/ hammertime!

ooh Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls, my favourite album ever! i can't even begin to describe how beautiful it is, or why (although "murky sub-disco" is a good start!). i just love it. sorry that isn't very analytical, but that's the way it is sometimes with perfect pop... yes Movement...

part 2 of this just now was very interesting. the series looks at connections between art colleges and pop music and is presented by Jarvis Cocker. there was a substantial interview with John Foxx, who talked about how in the late 60s he designed an ultra-minimal electronic...

Just resurrecting this thread as i am re-reading The Trial at the moment and thought perhaps what separates Ballard's recent novels from more conventional thrillers is that they are sort of Kafka-esque detective fiction. The 'investigator' is implicated from the start, and can never get to the...

Fwiw, my problem with Super Cannes is that it reads like a literary novelist trying to write a thriller with 'big ideas' in, and discovering that writing thrillers isn't as easy as you'd expect. or it's like Ballard 'doing' a thriller, taking on its format and 'Ballardizing' it. i think...

say you think of a term/title/idea/thing which might form the basis of a new piece of writing. do you: a) think it through on your own, using your existing resources/influences, and create something which can then be added to everything else that happens to be out there (meaning web ramblings...

special Modernism thing in the Guardian G2 today including an article by JG Ballard.

i am also just starting to get into Radiohead, but i think its due to a change on their part rather than mine: 'Creep' is one of those horrible songs which i can hardly even bear to think about, let alone hear. i got the impression it was something they were trying to shake off too, and upon...

i read in Peter Ackroyd's London about an area of wasteground called Mount Mills, off Goswell Road in the Clerkenwell area, which was a 17th century plague pit where thousands of bodies were buried. i wandered round there and i think i found it, although there was no sign i could see; the site...

the quintessential indie artist of 2005 was AFX/Aphex Twin. as a friend told me on hearing some of the Analord tracks: "that's 'Cake' music. you need help listening to that." quite right too. great stuff.

hi, i picked up this thread and i hope you all don't mind some rambling thoughts... yes, indie as a genre or as an attitude, with some blurring of boundaries. the definition of the indie chart used to be clear, not sure about now: is there one, are Arctic Monkeys / Franz Ferdinand (Domino...

do you mean 'Venus' by Bananarama? i have a thing for that, although i don't own it. i can't explain it as i loathe Bananarama/SAW otherwise, but i have a fantasy of discovering some tatty 12" single of it in a charity shop, taking it home... :o anyway, where was i? erm, that recent Gorillaz...

sorry, make that rock and dance (damn genre colour-blindness...). oh, and the New Labour London-centric cultural tourism ickiness of it.

so, someone has had a go at mapping the history of pop music onto the London Underground map... my first thought was "ooh that's pretty/clever/funny"... second, "hang on, where's so-and-so, etc.?", and then (once my critical firewall downloaded from Dissensus eventually kicked in) "why i say...

maybe they'll melt the materials down, make new art with them and then install the new works in the same locations. or re-install the same works in different locations. theft/destruction as art, etc. see also urinal-bashing in Paris.

Required reading for Guardian Media sub-editors, maybe. I looked at a few issues a while back and it was like a kids' comic, the same eight or so headline acts each week, all male if I recall, like cartoony boys' gangs, featuring in their continuing adventures. The standard of writing was...

yes i totally agree on the Cabaret Voltaire front, i like how in their early material they used other group's songs like any other snippets of pop culture history to be filtered and distorted, like news broadcasts or political speeches. their track 'She Loved You' (sic) on 1974-76 stretches the...

ok i am really showing myself up here but what is schaffel?? i am somewhat clearer on the subject of the Frapp, and would say that beyond the singles, there is actually still quite a bit of common ground between Felt Mountain and Black Cherry, although a lot of the latter tracks upped the...