Do You Feel Real, And If So I’d Like To Know…

Tom — 30 Jan 2000

I. 

The cod-philosophical question at the centre of pop fandom is this: is pop a genre or a state? Not all records designed to be ‘great pop’ – in the sense of being good for the feet, the heart and the bank balance – […]

Pokémon X And Why

Tom — 9 Jan 2013

GET UR FROAK ON
While most of my online acquaintances were geeking out today at the thought of a new David Bowie album, our house was far more excited by the announcement of new Pokémon games – Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, the first on Nintendo’s […]

The New Adventures of Tarkus

Al_Ewing — 24 Jul 2002

Tarkus vs The Strokes[…]

Omargeddon #36: Calibration (Is Pushing Luck And Key Too Far)

Bec — 20 May 2023

I waited ten years for a new Mars Volta record, and when it finally arrived, I began anticipating a follow-up ORL solo release. But wait – there’s more Volta! Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón is a total reworking of the self-titled album as ac[…]

Omargeddon #48: Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fungus

Bec — 7 Dec 2024

This is not my best-loved time of year: it’s cold, dark and tainted by too many unhappy holiday memories. All the decorations remind me of when I was very young, and how I dreaded the annual construction of our plastic fir tree, anticipating my dad[…]

Omargeddon #53: Saber, Querer, Osar y Callar

Bec — 10 May 2025

Hooray for me! Also several others, but it’s hard to get excited about that. Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio, the long-awaited Mars Volta double album I totally manifested is here at last, and it is a delightful compendium of traditional Puerto Ric[…]

Which Decade Is Tops For Pops? The Results, Decade By Decade.

Mike Atkinson — 17 Jun 2010

Finally, the moment of ABSOLUTE POP TRUTH is upon us! And my goodness, what a nail-biter of a contest this has been. Halfway through the voting, two decades broke decisively ahead of the pack, establishing a lead that proved impossible to catch up wi[…]

PROPER LONDON: Saint Etienne – “Foxbase Alpha”

Tom — 30 Apr 2000

Image © Mark from off of B3TA.com

April 2000, Piccadilly

The sun comes out over London and the Summer starts: everywhere you look you see people in love, snogging on the tubes and holding hands on the escalators so you can’t get past the[…]

Resisting Entropy – Mars Planets and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Food Science Day 2007 Experiment #1)

Tim — 3 Sep 2007

Mars Planets: the atomisation of the Mars Bar. An entropic dis-integration, the tendency of all things to become more chaotic, in confectionery form. I’m trying to resist the impulse to tie this stuff up to no-such-thing-as-Society atomisation[…]

Girl Talk

Tom — 28 Jul 2009

Here’s something I did for fun yesterday: a graph showing the % of UK #1 hits with female lead vocals, year by year. (Shared male/female leads counted half)*.

(Click on it if you want it a bit clearer).
The red bars are the percentage of femal[…]

Blog ’92: Introduction

katstevens — 15 Aug 2007

On my eleventh birthday I received a copy of a tape called “Rave ’92” through the post from my sister Grace, who was away at university. It was the second tape she had made for me whilst she was away, (the first being a random mix o[…]

Films about films (no-one has seen)

Pete Baran — 20 Jun 2005

Last week saw the release of not one, but two films about previous films. And I don’t mean Batman Begins (which should be retitled Batman Starts for Essex). Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the making of and the effect of notorious porn […]