Interview with The Restarts
Our Music editor Tim Forster brings us another great interview, this time with left-wing punk band The Restarts!
Photo by Joschi Herczeg
Where would you place The Restarts politically? You started in the mid 1990s, has your politics changed over… Continue readingFrom Tomorrow and Beyond: An Interview with The Oscillation
Credit: Elodie Cretin
Investigating the various bands at this year’s Camden Crawl I came across ”The Oscillation’ a band who have had various incarnations and at present consists of Tom Relleen, Valentina Magaletti and founder member Demian Castellanos. After listening to a couple of tracks I visited their website which comments, ‘The Oscillation’s third album “From Tomorrow” is an attempt to find some kind of new mental and spiritual zones, away from the psychological effects of the modern urban landscape, and the curious emptiness of the digital social world that we are forced to inhabit. The introversion of these bleak and unsettling conditions are reflected back as music with all the ambiguous emotions of hope, despair, aggression, indolence and narcoleptic bliss’ (4). Intrigued I contacted Demian who was kind enough to agree to an interview.
Q. Picasso wrote about art washing away the dust of everyday life from the soul (1). Is that something you would aim for with your music, that it would wake people up? Continue reading
“Out Among the Stars”, Johnny Cash
“Out Among the Stars”, Johnny Cash
The thought of yet another set of tunes released by the Johnny Cash gravy train wasn’t something I thought I’d give any heed to. I couldn’t help thinking “What would the man in black say about his horse suffering yet another unmerciful flogging by the money men?”, but after listening to Out Among The Stars, I’m damn glad I did.No matter what you might wonder about the reasons behind releasing another Johnny Cash album, the truth is that this gives a beautiful glimpse into the other side of Nashville in the early 80s where the glitzy rhinestone cowboys were kings. There was no room for this sort of music then, which is why it probably sat unreleased in a vault in the Cash homestead for over 30 years. This is outlaw music being made at a time when it wasn’t wanted.
The story goes that it was his son John Carter Cash who found the recordings and decided to have them released. I guess we’ll never know if that’s the truth or just another dab of nostalgia painted onto the legend, but it’s clear that, despite the well documented battles he was having with addiction during this time, these tracks are classic Johnny Cash.From the opening bars of Out Among the Stars, which laments the sad tale of a young boy who robs a liquor store in Texas because he knows the police will shoot him, to the closing refrains of I Came to Believe, what this record does is allows the weak person in us all to become strong. The young boy in the opening tune knows that the police, when shooting at him, are aiming at the demons in their lives. A massive insight and pure classic Cash. Continue reading
Chumbawamba December tour dates
Picture cover stars of this month’s Freedom anarcho punk veterans Chumbawamba are doing a short December tour after their successful acoustic performance [pictured] at Occupy London on the steps of St Paul’s during the student demo on Nov 9th … Continue reading
Anarchist Hip hop UK tour
Test Their Logik, the Toronto based hip hop crew, are currently half way through their first ever UK tour. We recommend you catch them at least once while they are over here. They will be performing at this year’s… Continue reading
Royal Mail Honours Anarchist Artist
Paul Cannell, the artist responsible for the artwork of Primal Scream’s classic 1990s album Screamadelica, has had the image commemorated on a new set of Royal Mail stamps. The Post Office has chosen ten album covers as part of a… Continue reading
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