The Portal

Remembering David Thomas and Much More in This Week's Archive Dive

In this week’s incarnation of The Portal we’re celebrating David Thomas of Pere Ubu, who sadly passed away last week, with three archive articles: reflections on 1978 album Modern Dance, a Strange World guide through their discography, and an interview with the great man himself from 2013. Over the weekend it emerged that Alexander Hacke, whose bass playing had done so much to define the sound of Einstürzende Neubauten, had quit the group – below you’ll find him talking to Jeremy Allen about his solo career, from drunken country and western to an album inspired by the joys of Blackpool. Also this weekend hundreds of people took part in a watery trespass asserting the right to swim in the UK’s waters, so we’ve dug up Gary Budden’s Black Sky Thinking advocating for this form of civil disobedience. We’ve also got Tanya Donnelly’s favourite albums in the Baker’s Dozen, how The Wicker Man relates to Brexit Britain, and Bill Brewster’s Organic Intelligence on the Balearic sounds of Scandinavia.