Tag: Interviews

19 FKA Twigs: EUSEXUA Afterglow

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

OK, so how am I going to approach this? You know I really hate spoiling my own list, so I’d hate to perhaps let it slip during this post that maybe there’s another FKA Twigs album later on this year’s countdown. Maybe! Nothing in this introductory paragraph should be read as any sort of confirmation!! But you also know what a genuine and straight talking man of the people I am, and it simply wouldn’t be in my nature to lie to my wonderful readers that I love so much, and say that a certain album isn’t going to be featured… Or lie and say that it will feature!! Nothing in this introductory paragraph should be read as any sort of confirmation!!! People are calling me the most trusted voice in music. Everyone’s saying it. Sports Illustrated are saying it. I can’t abuse that trust.

I guess, all things considered, I’m probably better off just not mentioning that other album at all. That hypothetical other album I mean!! Nothing in this second paragraph should be read as any sort of confirmation of the existence of any other album!!!! That probably makes the most sense. I mean, it’s not going to be easy, considering that that hypothetical album is named in the title of this one, but hey, let’s give it a go, aye?

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38 Clipping: Dead Channel Sky

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

opening line of William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’

C-c-c-c-c-c-c-cyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyberpuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu̸̖̬͑͑u̴͇̍̌͂ů̵̢̼̳u̷̮͑ů̵͖u̶͉̐̒u̸͙̱̾ṵ̵́͗̚u̶͕͙̽̑͝ṷ̸͓͌ṳ̶͉̊̈̓ụ̵̢̃u̶̗͋͘u̶̡̗͊̍̇n̴̫͕͆k̴̢̃͘!̶͇̭̹̎!̵̨̭̬̀͐!̴̲̙̂͝

*start up modem noises*

Aw, dude, in the future you’ll be forced to eat algorithms, which will be injected straight into your anterior insula and be called “structuralising the framework”. You’ll be able to choose your newborn baby’s sex, race, Twitter handle and initial .README file, and births will instead be called “Day One Updates”. And these day one updates won’t come out your fanny like before, they’ll be shared through ethernet cables and your happy day will be marked by receiving a Steam download key. And and and and and people won’t even have sex anymore, they’ll just… like… merge their Javascripts or some shit. You want to do some shopping? Club Penguin. File your taxes? Club Penguin. Carry out a terrorist attack? Club Penguin. We may currently live in the age of ‘Everything Computer‘, but the future will be Everything Club Penguin. Billy Idol tried to warn us but we didn’t want to listen.

Like a shock to the system

The Holy Bible: The End of History, the End of the Manic Street Preachers, and the Greatest Album of All Time

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

He felt very privileged to have the opportunity to articulate a lot of what he feels, but I think it weighed him down because he didn’t think anybody believed anything he said.

JDB to RAW 1994.09.14

The Manics had only released one debut single when, in a summer 1989 essay in the American ‘National Interest’ magazine, Francis Fukuyama declared that the fall of the Soviet Union (with Communist China sure to follow) signaled the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism… the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism”. ‘The End of History?’ was a glorious pat on the back for the NeoCons and the Western chauvinists: “Look, everyone! We were right all along! All these Communist states are failing completely of their own accord and we’ve just sat back and witnessed the natural crumbling of an all feasible alternatives! Go, unmoderated capitalism! And can we talk about the age of consent? No, actually, what you’re referring to is hebephilia…*”.

(*all direct quotes. Libertarians gonna libertarian)

By the time Fukuyama had been confident enough to remove that question mark and release the 1992 book ‘The End of History and the Last Man’, The Manics had released around ten further singles and a debut album – ‘Generation Terrorists’, which famously did not sell 16 million copies – that were all essentially angry ripostes to Fukuyama’s thesis. Rather than rejecting themselves to the alleged demise of all ideological disagreements and the all conquering discouragement of revolutionary thought, they were going to be a band so huge that they would change the very world itself. If they were the only thing left to believe in, so be it, but they would always passionately highlight that alternative, they would always be that alternative.

They couldn’t though. Five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall; after it was widely accepted that Communism no longer represented a clear and present enough threat to scare Western capitalist nations into some pretense of proper care for their citizens above basic profit. After neoliberalism became the one accepted doctrine despite nobody ever wanting it, The Manics plunged into the abyss of capitalist horror and released ‘The Holy Bible’. On the (cough) thirty first anniversary of the record’s release, here’s my long promised/threatened review of art’s greatest paean to the fall of Communism, and basically far too many words explaining why it’s the greatest album ever.

see my third rib appear

#23 Bella Technika: Solid State

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Ok, are you sitting down? Are you paying attention? Are your ears perked and your soul open? Is your Mana marvelous and your Qi chunky? Then eyes front, attention please:

I’m going to tell you absolutely everything I know about Bella Technika:

  • They’re called ‘Bella Technika Yeah, you might have been wondering if I was going to count that as a thing I knew about them, but as you’ll soon see this is going to be quite slim pickings so I’ve got to take what I can get.
  • I’m, like, 90% sure they’re from Belgrade, Serbia Pretty sure. I’m about 99% sure they’re Eastern European, and I found one review that mentioned Belgrade so I was like “yeah”.
  • This is their second album Now, I wasn’t sure of this, because when I named their previous album ‘Section’ as the 33rd best album of 2019 I was even more beguiled by these mysterious Serbians than I am now. This year though? No, not getting fooled again, I’ve done my own motherfucking research, sometimes as far as the third or fourth page of Google results, and ‘Section’ was actually an outstanding debut record.
Bassam Mohamed Jamil Al-Maqousi