Tag: travel

The Best Film of 2026: Sign ☮︎’ the Times

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, that skinny motherfucker with the high voice released a film in 1987 as well.

Of course, you won’t know my (scientifically correct) opinions on the accompanying album of the same name until the end of year list, but I think it’s fair to say that the March release of Prince’s ninth album had been reasonably well received in 1987. He chose to mark the release with a tour of Europe, which He’d grown attached to since filming ‘Under the Cherry Moon’ in France the year before. Prince never liked long roll outs and advance warnings for tours and gigs, preferring to perform as spontaneously as logistically possible when you’re filling stadiums. This was obviously very fulfilling artistically, but in practice it was a huge pain in the arse for the circle of people around you who were forced to put your insane ideas into practice with little to no notice. Like when you’re tour manager Jeff Mason and Prince has decided He has very specific designs based around the concept of the soon to be iconic record sleeve:

“Prince handed me an 8.5 inch by 11 inch piece of paper with some doodles on it. He was detailing a set. He just tore it from a notebook and said to me ‘Make this'”

Mason in ‘Prince: A Sign o’ the Times’ by John McKie

Shut up already, damn,

who in this house know about the quake?

11 Lorde: Virgin

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Today, I’ll go to Canal Street, they’ll piss in my ears

Hammer

Oh, wow, OK, to have such an honest admission on your album’s opening track is quite a statement! It sounds wrong to call ‘Virgin’ sex positive, per se, but it’s definitely Lorde’s most ‘sex aware’ record (counter to its title, I guess), and to ensure that it opens like this definitely warns listeners to leave their kink shaming at the door.

I fear that some of my oversees readers might not get the reference here, so think of this post as a bitesize educational supplement as well as the usual incisive musical journalism. Canal Street is about a kilometre walk away from my house, so I feel a degree of closeness to it to the extent that explaining the history and significance of the reference would actually be something of a pleasure.

If I’d had virginity I would have given that too

18 Disiniblud (Rachika Nayar & Nina Keith): Disiniblud

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

It’s pronounced Disney-blood!! And look at that little dude on the cover!!! ‘NeverEnding Story‘ coded and I am fucking here for it!!!!

that wink is rather salacious and I’m not sure if I like it

Although – and I hate to be pedantic about this – but as we all know ‘NeverEnding Story’ was actually a Warner Brothers property, so how does that fit into the whole Disiniblud (pronounced Disney-blood!!!!) thing? Actually, I’m not sure, do Disney own Warner Brothers now? I know that everything that has ever existed in any medium is now owned by either Disney or Netflix, so flip a coin I guess.

[as is most (bimbo it out)]

#17 Lava La Rue: Starface

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

It’s another concept album, kids!

And it’s a pretty great concept, not gonna NGL. A “Lesbian Ziggy Stardust”, as Lava themselves has christened it. ‘Starface’ is the name of a genderfluid alien who crash lands on Earth, puts their best human skin on, discovers that we humans are into some freaky-deaky shit, there’s some big battle which isn’t fully explained, Starface then falls in love in a brave show of support for inter-species relations (would have preferred it if they started fucking a walrus or something, but a human is alright, I guess), is dismayed by the fact that some people are on drugs, and ends the tale by (spoiler) debating whether they should return to their planet.

Malak Saher Nasr Abu-Sahlool

#35 And So I Watch You From Afar: Megafauna

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

First, before I talk about the latest euphoric audio assault by Belfast’s finest noise merchant, I’d like to take a moment out of 2024’s Necessary Evil to just pay our respects to the beautiful, talented and influential megafauna that we’ve lost these past two million years or so.

These good megafaunas have had a tough time recently, with 80% of all mammals that weigh greater than a thousand kilograms dying off in the last fifty thousand years. Pour one out for our fatty bombatty brothers. Yeah, we still mostly have our elephants and our rhinos and our elephant seals. And our motherfucking bisons, boy!! Have you seen a bison?? I don’t think we’re ready to accept how huge those big boys are! I’m not counting the big fishes, like the blue whale, because they’re always hiding down there, I’ve never seen one in a zoo, and fish are boring. But I think we have to accept that we have sadly lost the best and brightest megafauna. We’ve lost all the dinosaurs, for fuck’s sake!? That’s nuts! And, if we’re being honest, we lost a lot of Earth’s stability when the dinosaurs went: ain’t no genocide in Gaza if Deir al Balah is partially populated by motherfucking titanosaurs!! Oh, what’s that, America? You want to aggressively and violently suppress the world until it accepts your neoliberal world order? Well, try telling that to the giganotosaurus, yeah? The ichthyosaur will fucking eat all your submarines, son! However, like I said before, fish are boring.

Anyway, heads bowed, please:

Hadi Hayel Shehdeh Abu Dahruj