I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss Susan Hill, given the strong feelings I have for the classical English supernatural tale as manifest from the Victorian era through to the first few decades of the Twentieth century. Perhaps it’s because I have a general dislike for pastiche in literature (if not in other genres) and, in the postmodern age in ( Read more... )

I came to this peculiar film from k-punk (with roots in Jameson, Žižek, Kojin Karatani, Joyce, Lacan and Hegel - how’d you like them lucubrations?) Extremely prescient and deeply paranoid, the work, in the unravelling-the-thread theme familiar to the conspiracy thriller, follows reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) as he investigates the ( Read more... )

It was with some interest that I embarked upon Mark Fisher (better known as k-punk)’s new work of theory - his widely- and justly-feted pop culture blog being one of the most impressive meldings of theory and cultural analysis online (and one which never strays into inaccessibility), as well as being impressively prescient. His new work deals ( Read more... )

While it's one of Collins’ lesser-known works, Poor Miss Finch does not fall into the category of his ‘thesis’ novels, and it remains a work with much to offer the reader. It does not measure up to the heights scaled by some of his other novels, but unlike those pieces, this is a novel which has, not characterisation and intricate plotting, but ( Read more... )

Knowledge may be power, but sometimes acquiring that knowledge seems too tiresome a task. In this light - and given that my professional life increasingly involves knowledge about global finance and economics - I’ve been attempting to get past the usual click:off response that my brain has in regard to anything about economics, in order to try to ( Read more... )

As far as krautrock goes, I’m more a fan of the kosmische, the ambient and the motorik moments than of the riotous long-form hippie-era free jams in which the genre had its inception - apart from Cluster, other favourites include Neu! (a band whose full potential is sadly only realised in a few songs), Harmonia, Kraftwerk’s Ralf und Florian, and ( Read more... )

This compilation of works on Rastafari and by Rastas is an excellent example of a sociological work which is nonetheless also 'of' and engaging its subject/s. Rather than a general introduction, this is more a work for someone with a specific interest in depending their knowledge of Rastafari culture generally - though there is an introductory ( Read more... )