Black Sky Thinking
Essays, investigation and opinion on today’s cultural landscape
Black Sky Thinking
If You’re Going To San Francisco, Be Sure To Have Lots Of Cash
April Clare Welsh investigates the changing face of San Francisco, where minority groups and artists are being priced out of the city by the all-powerful tech dollar, and talks to activists and artists such as Erase Errata
Black Sky Thinking
The Verge Of Getting Down: Bill Brewster’s Funk Rock Rarities
We set crate digger extraordinaire, Bill Brewster another challenge. This week, make us a set culled from the less fashionable - mainly white, blue collar and European - backwaters of funk rock… he came up with some beauties
Black Sky Thinking
Nazi Rhetoric & The Dangerous Power Of The Waning Sun
Battered by Leveson and out of place in a swiftly-changing era of British politics, The Sun is arguably a lesser force than once it was. Yet, argues Joe Kennedy, Katie Hopkins' reprehensible comments on immigration and the complicity of newspaper staff who employ her suggest that as it declines the tabloid is lashing out with increasingly dangerous views
Black Sky Thinking
Join The Chant? Pop’s Endlessly Problematic Relationship With Politics
As senior columnists and musicians complain that younger generations are no longer both musically and politically engaged, David Stubbs argues that rock and pop have never been the defiantly countercultural revolutionary corps that many claim
Black Sky Thinking
A Pressing Business: tQ Goes Inside A Czech Vinyl Plant
The success of Record Store Day has come at the price of manufacturing backlogs at the US and Europe's few remaining pressing plants. Lauren Martin visits GZ Media in the Czech Republic and speaks to UK company Keyproduction to look at the manufacturing process of vinyl and find out how they work to meet increasing demand
Black Sky Thinking
Sonic Sabotage: The Noisy History Of Auto-Destructive Music
Sub Pop recently issued a deluxe version of Father John Misty's album featuring a "bulging thickness" in the packaging that warped the vinyl beyond repair. But, says Robert Barry, this is just the latest in a rich history of self-destroying art
Black Sky Thinking
This Is A Low: Blur, Asia & Cultural Appropriation
In claiming their new album The Magic Whip to be 'Asia-inspired', Blur have become the latest in a line of Western musicians to boil down the diverse cultures of the most populated region in the world into one nonsensical mishmash, says Sandra Song
Black Sky Thinking
Laughing In The Face Of Death: On Paris & The Charlie Hebdo Attack
Reporting back from last night's vigil for the victims of yesterday's atrocity, our Paris correspondent Jeremy Allen asks how it will affect French society and, optimistically, if it will galvanise the nation's left
Black Sky Thinking
Parallel Winter: An Essay On The Season By Richard Youngs
Before his appearance at Platform's celebration of the year's darkest, coldest quarter in Glasgow this weekend, the prolific singer-songwriter takes a moment to reflect on how a flu jab, a family away holidaying in Portugal and a lonely recording session in 2011 forever changed winter for him
Black Sky Thinking
The Byline: Wild Beasts’ Hayden Thorpe On Newcastle United
Wild Beasts' singer and adopted Geordie Hayden Thorpe speaks to Andrew Fenwick about the joys, sorrows and injustices of supporting Newcastle United under Mike Ashley and Alan Pardew. Hayden Thorpe photographed live by Valerio Berdini
Black Sky Thinking
The Byline: British Sea Power’s Noble On The Trials Of The Man U Fan
In the second of our series recounting independent musicians personal relationships with the beautiful game, British Sea Power's Martin Noble talks to Andrew Fenwick about eating crisps at Old Trafford, performing at an FA Cup Final and catching a glimpse of Sir Bobby Charlton's penis...
Black Sky Thinking
We’re All Apprentices Now: On Business TV & Contemporary Britain
As The Apprentice returns to our television screens, Phil Harrison looks at how the programme, and 'business TV' in general, reflects the grim reality of the work market and wider culture in capitalist realist Britain
Black Sky Thinking
Post-Dubstep, Post-Olympic: On SBTRKT & “Bollocks Music”
SBTRKT's new album Wonder Where We Land represents the apex of dubstep morphed into marketable navel-gazing romantic mithering. Is this closer to nu-folk than you might expect and the sound of post-Olympic Britain, asks Joe Kennedy
Black Sky Thinking
Mind Over Matter: The Quietus’ Survey Of Modern European Psychedelia
In our latest extended list feature, the Quietus staff and writers select a mighty list of the best, brightest and weirdest psychedelic music currently emerging from Europe. Lock the doors, shutter the windows, spark up a Bristol cone and prepare to be turned inside out...
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