:: Sounds

Tripticks published 23/02/2017

It allows the traumas described by the album to seem objective, rather than just a subjective account of Edwards’ brilliant, overreaching mind. On The Holy Bible the relentless chronicling of modern-day evils becomes overpowering. Here the effect of the essay is – perhaps in tribute – similar. Yet, as an account of an artistic era, a description of a political context, and as an interpretation, Jones’ essay is validating. Its framework joined the dots of various concerns I have long had about the politics of the late twentieth century.

Guy Mankowski on a three-fold contemporary assessment of the Manics’ The Holy Bible.

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Post Punk Then and Now: a review published 22/12/2016

Post-punk is a term that most immediately relates to a period of cultural production that ran from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. A difficult term to pin down in the categorising stakes, ‘post-punk’ most specifically recalls a musical genre typified by agitated and spiky sounds. While this can be attributed to innumerable bands (Magazine, The Fall, Gang of Four) it is the hollow and haunting soundscapes of Joy Division that exemplify the resonance of Fisher’s term Capitalism Realism.

Guy Mankowski reviews Post-Punk Then and Now.

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‘Born to Be a Rebel’ published 25/10/2014

Down the line, after a stint mentoring the craft of a new generation of indie pop acts mostly centred around Scotland’s Postcard Records and a subaltern career delivering mail for the Post Office in London, rather than the dancefloor presence of Edwin Starr it is Edwyn Collins who has given Godard’s songs their second wind on this 2014 release, a significant recapturing and re-rendering of this Camden Town Banshees support set list (Collins himself re-recorded and largely owned ‘Holiday Hymn’ from this album as a Peel Session track for Orange Juice in 1981), both producing and releasing this clearly reverent album on his own AED Records.

Andrew Stevens enjoys Vic Godard‘s Northern Soul tribute 1979 NOW!

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