The Question in Bodies, Appendix 2: Fembot Pop

Charli XCX, “Femmebot” (2017)
Robyn, “Fembot” (2010)
Janelle Monae, “Electric Lady” (2015)
Grimes, “4ÆM” (2019), “We Appreciate Power” (2018)
Poppy, “Time is Up” (2018), “Hard Feelings” (2018)

There's a sense in which – as a person whose gender identity, although in a state of flux for as long as I can remember, is for the sake of safety usually expressed as male – I don't really get to make instructive statements on feminist issues. I can't. Empathy can only go so far: I've been told I'm empathic, but I don't think I am, particularly. What I am is observant, vigilant if you like. So all I can do here is observe, and report. I hope that's OK.

This post  comes with its own Spotify playlist, so if you're lucky enough to have Spotify, feel free to listen along.

Cult Cinema, Appendix: God only knows what you're missing

See the Beginning Stages of... The Polyphonic Spree (2004)

1. So over the last week or two I've written about Tetsuo, Salò, Eyes Without a Face and The Skin I Live In. It's time to have a close watch of something that isn't traumatic, something easier, at least in some ways. Let's find something more affirming.

2. I know that I said I wasn't going to do documentary films in Cult Cinema. And I'm not. But a concert film, that's a slightly different matter, and this concert film in particular, that's different, too. Go with me here.

Come, They Told Me

Some things wound us, things so trivial to others. Wounds so deep and so abiding. Some things open them up. This is the worst time for that.

The Stone Tapes: On Stories, Folklore and Stones

Kat Beem and Matt Peach.

As I mentioned yesterday when I reviewed the reissue of The Stone Tapes' Avebury album, Kat Beem and Matt Peach had kindly agreed to an interview.

For Frank #5

It's time for some more music reviews. Including an apparent 70s pastiche but not, a new album by an old favourite, a discussion of something that I am not sure that I am young enough to be allowed to understand (the clue's in the opening picture), and a redux of aural psychodrama.
 

In Music #3: One Life Furnished in Early REM

I remember when REM split up.

In Music #2: Musical Russian Roulette

When I wrote this, in 2012, I had been Artist in Residence at Swansea University for about a month, and I was in the middle of preparing to stage and perform my first performance show. 2012 was my annus mirabilis, and was all the better because I had recognised it as such while it was happening, and was able to enjoy it while it happened.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I had spent a year not listening to music, and when I reconnected with music, thanks to an mp3 player that my friend Emily had given me, I found that something had changed. I'd decided to shove the whole contents of my mp3 library onto it, and put it onto shuffle for a month, just to see what came out, what moved me. This is the account of one day in October 2012, during my rediscovery of music. 

In Music #1: Miss Angie

I just pulled them out, and thought, "I wonder if I still have the stickers," and I do! This was quite exciting.

(I thought it might be fun to resurrect some of my music writing. A lot of what I've written in the last few years has been about music I love... but some, some has instead focussed on touchstones for my life that have affected me in other ways. This is the first.)