Thank you @fergalkinney.bsky.social for instigating too x

I go deep into the two albums, and also talk underscores, Jane Remover, Retromania, BRAT Summer and the new online rap canon, it also features some snippets from an upcoming interview with DJ Haram

we really do!!

Tom if you wanted to keep this dev hynes energy going then I think I may have the book for you… (you’re in it too actually) bsky.app/profile/whit...

Yeah, the downturn is crazy. The situation with music journalism/writing is, as I’m sure you’d expect, even more dire…

PS, where can we find the Simz interview Joe?

access to time and resources has always impacted the actual aesthetic of music which can either be utilised as part of an anti-establishment sentiment (Nicolas Jaar, Open Mike Eagle) or, from the critic/writer’s POV, can also still be picked at to uncover shifting material and cultural conditions…

thanks Peter, I didn’t mean to turn this into self promotion haha, but I simply spent 2 years trying to articulate these ideas better than I ever could in a quick-fire reply. If you do read, I hope you enjoy!

yes exactly! a moral litmus test indeed

there is also coherent scenes based around explorative, counter-cultural music which young music fans are very much tapped into, the scene around Backwoodz Records in NYC for example is just one. This music is critically acclaimed for a devoted following

youtu.be/yw_D2L6lYZA?...

over the 2010s there was a great deal of counter-cultural art of which - as Joe says - I cover in my book in detail, and I would argue tended to be more substantive than the outwardly “political” bands of say the early 90s as the counter-cultural efforts were embedded rather than simply declarative

I agree with Joe (thanks for the shout out as ever!), Gaza especially is a nexus for counterculture because, with the state-led crackdown on free speech, any art which is oppositional to the genocide is automatically counter-cultural. The upswell of untied voices on that front has been accelerating