[d/dn]

Tag: Music

“Shoegaze(r)” is more than an early-1990s English pop music genre. Come with me and explore the late 1980s and early 1990s on DDN-808AM … where shuffly beats, baggy trousers and fey looks are provided, plus complimentary NME.

  • Swervedriver: the good guys of early-1990s UK indie

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    3 min read

    As Crowded House said, “Now we’re getting somewhere”. Swervedriver were one of the greatest bands of the early 1990s. Full stop. And you know what? Their early success, like that of Ride, hinged upon a series of phenomenal EPs: Son of Mustang Ford, Rave Down and the incendiary Sandblasted EP, all of whose title tracks…

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  • Ripe—Cherry Ripe

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    3 min read

    Last night when I was thinking about who I would profile next in my exhaustive catalogue of early 1990s bands that have, sadly, disappeared, I became aware that I was perhaps being a little too shoegazer-centric. Hence the inclusion of Ratcat whom, to be honest, I was never really that into at the time, except…

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  • Ratcat ain’t that bad (and that ain’t bad)

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    3 min read

    You may notice a pattern appearing: the last two posts have mentioned the seminal influence of a particular EP—namely, Ride’s Play and MBV’s Glider—on my musical tastes and palette. Well, here we go again. It’s time to talk about Ratcat. I cannot emphasise enough the impact of Ratcat’s Tingles EP on both myself and the…

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  • “That band is Ride”

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    4 min read

    Of all the sad remnants of the early 1990s, you’d be pretty hard pressed to find anything sadder than the lead singer of Ride undertaking a tour of Australia, ten years after the band fizzled out, like luke-warm piss floating down an alleyway behind the Punters Club. That’s because the Punters doesn’t exist anymore, and…

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  • Straitjacket Fits: nu-gazers from nzlnd

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    2 min read

    Straitjacket Fits supported My Bloody Valentine on their tour of Australia in – help me somebody – was it 1993? and, in the words of one reviewer, “wiped the floor” with the grandparents of shoegazing. You may think I’m coming out of left field with this one but having recently listened to Flying Nun’s excellent…

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  • My Bloody Valentine: Whatever

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    4 min read

    I don’t think My Bloody Valentine ever put out a song or album with the word ‘whatever’ in the title but I should be wrong. My Bloody Valentine are the ultimate Whatever Band. If you’re talking nano, they don’t even register. They’re so early 1990s the NME website doesn’t list any of their records for…

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  • What is an EP? Defining the ‘extended play’ record format

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    3 min read

    What is an EP? Well, to start with, EP stands for an ‘extended play’, 12″ vinyl record, thus distinguishing it from a 7″ ‘single’ or a 12″ LP (‘long play’) record. In this sense, the definition of an EP reflects a happier, simpler time (perhaps) when records were all issued on vinyl, and cassingles, CDs…

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  • The power of muzac

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    2 min read

    For the first time in my life, i’m actually enjoying muzac. It hit me as soon as we got to Ho Chi Minh City – in our room, piped saxophone renditions of some of the greatest songs of all time (you fill in the blanks). The further we have got into this crazy trip, the…

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  • Branford Marsalis on Sting and his jacket

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    1 min read

    “He [Sting] will not look into the audience when he plays. He has this sense of decorum, because if he does look down, he’s afraid he will laugh. We threw dead chickens across the stage, all kinds of shit, trying to get him. Nothing …” … Marsalis finally got to Sting when the group appeared…

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