Bookmarks is an fortnightly series of recommendations, recent addictions and subjects for further study.
Author Archives: Dancing to architecture
Future Echoes: The Last Time
In Future Echoes we look at the evolution and influence of those songs that split off in all directions. The Verve‘s Bitter Sweet Symphony has as strong a claim as anything by Blur, Oasis or Pulp to being Britpop’s defining statement. From the booming thump of the drums through exultant strings, to its “man on …
Little Brother: May the Lord Watch
Hip Hop is now old enough as a genre to have several generations of “back in my day” conservatives among its fans — people who believe that, by astounding coincidence, the genre produced its great work during the period which they first started listening, and all mutations since represent an unnecessary distortion of something that …
TGIF, AM I RIGHT
I’m sure you got it — Theme in Each song in yesterday’s playlist was a big iconic sample, usually used in a song that became far more famous than the original. For fun and completeness reasons: here’s the corresponding songs, arranged in the same order. Little shout outs due in particular to Montell Jordan, the …
Thursday. What a concept.
Thursday is themed playlist day at Dancing to Architecture. Today’s is a fun one, and a two parter. You will no doubt pick the theme after two or three songs — if that — but I won’t spoil the fun by telling you before you’ve listened. Regardless of whether this combination of songs makes sense …
Post Colonial Studies, part 1: Angola
In the second half of the 20th century, as African nations attempted to rediscover themselves after colonisation, the view on art and culture espoused by Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah became particularly influential — the idea that, beyond gaining the ability to self-govern, Africans had to “decolonise the mind”. Colonisation, after all, is not just …
Bookmarks, August 15
Bookmarks is an ongoing* series of recommendations, recent addictions and subjects for further study. No theme as such, except that it will be largely new music (or at least new to me) — but I’ll invariably cheat occasionally and throw in an older favorite that’s come back into my mind for one reason or another. …
“Alive on arrival”: The music of the Wu Tang Clan
One of the biggest compliments I can pay Of Mics and Men is that it managed to make me view the music of the Wu Tang Clan differently. One of it’s biggest weaknesses is that this relies on you already having an in depth knowledge of the group’s work. The following is the sound track …
Continue reading ““Alive on arrival”: The music of the Wu Tang Clan”
Wu Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men
Of Mics and Men, Sacha Jenkins’ four part documentary on the Wu Tang Clan — screened over two night at the Melbourne international Film Festival — is by turns as thrilling, moving and disjointed as the group it chronicles. The focus is primarily on the ‘Clan’ element of the Wu. The series is never more …
Vale Toni Morrison
“Young men on the rooftops changed their tune; spit and fiddled with the mouthpiece [… and when they] blew out their cheeks it was just like the light of that day, pure and steady and kind of kind. You would have thought everything had been forgiven the way they played” — Toni Morrison, Jazz.
Dancing to Architecture 