Demob Happy

Album Review: worriedaboutsatan – Arrivals FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT 8.5/10 Will electronica make a comeback at the end of the decade? It seems that having gone organic in the 00s with folktronica, many electronica artists have been second-guessed recently by folk artists (from Bon Iver to Iron & Wine) augmenting their [...]

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Red Car, Calhau, Sao Vicente Another photo from my travels in Cape Verde last year. Sao Vicente is a windswept volcanic island with an anomalously vibrant city in Mindelho. On the other side of the island, Calhau was described to me as a weekend getaway for richer residents of Mindelo, but seemed a pretty desolate [...]

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Album Review: Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years 8.5/10 In a recent Pitchfork review Animal Collective declared that it must be “weird to be in a band with good musicians”, referring to the fact that they basically view themselves as electronic collagists than a band in the strict (i.e., formally trained) sense. It is [...]

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I’ve decided to start posting some of my photographs along with my reviews, particularly those taken abroad. This one was taken in Cape Verde in November 2008. Let me know what you think. Woman in doorway, Ribeira Grande, Santo Antao

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Book Review: Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road The Richard Yates back-story has passed into popular literary legend: the acclaimed author who never sold more than 12,000 copies per hardback, and whose works were largely out of print before being rediscovered posthumously and enjoying a revival. For a Yates novice such as myself this might seem [...]

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Album Review: Crystal Antlers – Tentacles 7/10 FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT Among the many acts hyped in 2008 there was a proliferation of new bands called Crystal something. Crystal Castles, Crystal Stilts and Cystal Antlers all came out of the leftfield to get blog love last year. Having been totally confused [...]

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Album Review: Dark Was the Night: Red Hot Compilation – Various Artists 8/10 Most posts of Red Hot Organization’s ‘Dark Was the Night’ compilation begin with a summary dismissal of compilations in general, and particularly those in the name of charity. If such projects are as bad as people say, ‘Dark Was the Night’ – [...]

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Book Review: Independence Day – Richard Ford I’ve just completed Richard Ford’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Independence Day’, and I have to admit it left me a bit cold. The novel forms the middle part of a trilogy of large-ish books (beginning with ‘The Sportswriter’ and ending with ‘The Lay of the Land’) narrated by a notionally [...]

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Album Review: Richard Swift – Atlantic Ocean 8/10 Often compared to Harry Nilsson, Richard Swift shares the 60s maverick’s category-avoiding, highly melodic and eccentic brand of pop rock. Swift, who prefers the analogue four track production techniques of the Nilsson era, recorded ‘The Atlantic Ocean’ – his latest for Secretly Canadian – in Wilco’s loft [...]

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Film Review: The Wrestler – Darren Aronofsky 8/10 My irrational levels of excitement concerning Darren Aronofsky’s ‘The Wrestler’ were not due to the hype concerning Mickey Rourke’s latest comeback, but rather from a misguided obsession with American wrestling from my adolescence. Not just the glossier WWF (now WWE) end, but the dingier minor leagues that [...]

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