Tortoise / All Tomorrow’s Parties 2001 - April 2001 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - April 15th, 2001

West along the coast is the ancient market town of Rye; to the east, Derek Jarman’s driftwood garden fossilises in the shadows of Dungeness power station; between the two, a short walk from the crazy-golf course, lie the utilitarian chalets of the Pontin’s holiday camp in Camber Sands, East Sussex. Last weekend its family-fun facade…

Rowland S. Howard - July 2000 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - July 9th, 2000

You can recognise a Rowland S Howard guitar lick in seconds. A quavering, tremulous thing, half anaemic Duane Eddy, half spaghetti-western soundtrack, permanently hovering on the brink of collapse. But for the past decade, Howard has been missing in action, while his one time bandmate Nick Cave is recognised as one of the world’s finest…

Mr Sandman bring me a dream… - January 2000 Bucketful of Brains - By Stewart Lee - January 1st, 2000

OUT IN THE SOUTH WESTERN DESERT Tucson’s veteran “misunderstood genius,” Howe Gelb has been pushing various permutations of Giant Sand to make the finest mesh of country, punk and free improvisation available for two decades now. But his last album, Chore Of Enchantment, is arguably his most focussed and direct recording to date. If you’re…

How Morphogenesis popped Stewart Lee’s avant-phobia - January 2000 Unknown - By Stewart Lee - January 1st, 2000

In the early 90s multi-instrumentalist Mike Cosgrave was my flatmate in a shared post-student house in Tooting, South London. Today Mike has just released his third album, Deepwater Dropoff, with Celtic folk fusion group Sin è. Early line-ups of the group used to rehearse in our spare room, drowning out afternoon editions of Countdown as…

Sonic Youth - December 1999 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - December 5th, 1999

How does a four-piece rock band set about covering a composition like Yoko Ono’s 1961 Voice Piece for Soprano, a set of notes reading simply – “Scream. 1. Against the wind. 2. Against the wall. 3. Against the sky.”? Presumably, its copyright is infringed by millions of mewling babies or arachnophobic women worldwide on a…

John Fahey - September 1999 The Sunday Times - By Stewart Lee - September 19th, 1999

From the late 1950s onwards, guitarist John Fahey has forged a unique fusion of traditional American musics and avant-garde conceits, bending blues and folk templates into new forms and dousing them with found sounds. Today, Fahey is flattered by the collaborative attentions of underground guru Jim O’Rourke, Sonic Youth’s ever-adventurous Thurston Moore and experimental rockers…