Richard Youngs is a forty year old librarian, transplanted from a childhood in Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire to Glasgow, from where he maintains musical connections with an international network of similarly independent, but musically disparate, cult figures. The first Richard Youngs album I ever heard was Making Paper. It was released in February 2001 on the…
The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction pictures Albert Camus smoking a cigarette on the cover, and struggles to define its terms. A cult writer should have died, ideally in mysterious circumstances, leaving behind one seminal work and a whiff of wasted potential. The obscure Welsh mystic Arthur Machen, (1863-1947) almost qualifies as a cult, but…
Peter Tasseledbat is the head of Endemetriol Productions, the London based production company responsible for a host of hit Channel 4 shows including Teen Street, Street Slag, Shit Street, Teen Shit, Street Teen, Slag Shit, Teen Slag, Slag Teen, Street Shit, Shit Teen, Slag Street, Shit Slag, The Friday Night Project, Big Brother and Celebrity…
John Martyn’s 70’s, folk-fusion experiments with the echoplex guitar pedal have led to the lazy byline, ‘godfather of trip-hop’, but this is to damn him with ludicrously feint praise. The Don’t Look Back series of concerts, in which artists perform an album from beginning to end, encouraged Martyn to revisit his finest hour, 1973’s Solid…
On a silent Sunday afternoon, fourteen years ago, I was waiting for a bus on Kings Avenue, Brixton, South London. In the bus shelter, a shaking man with a Special Brew can met my eye. I’ve always been someone strangers feel entitled to talk to, but few of my long conversations with racist pensioners in…