A magical thing happened to me as a 13-year-old, alone in my bedroom – and no, it’s not what you’re thinking. With nothing better to do, I decided to try out a PS1 game demo that I think found its way to me through a relative who thought I
The words ‘skin orgasm’ make me feel a bit ill. ‘Aesthetic chills’ isn’t much better but at least it doesn’t bring my lunch back up. I’ll settle with ‘frisson’ – despite it still feeling a bit pretentious – as the best of a bad bunch. If you don’t
When the sunlight hits the trees, grass and even the pavement just right at this time of year, it releases a magical scent that floods my brain with endorphins. It awakens a warm fuzziness in my gut and puts a literal spring in my step. Despite my life looking pretty
As a starry-eyed teen under parental, educational and societal pressure to get a degree, I decided to study music production. What I really wanted to do was move to California and become an overnight ska-punk sensation, but that wasn’t in Tony Blair’s vision for Britain. I remember arguing
Getting older loosens your grip — literally, I’m told, and figuratively, I can confirm. At 40, I’ve started to feel the quiet relief of not giving a shit about what I’m supposed to like. The invisible checklist of acceptable taste - the bands I name-check, the genres I
In case you’re still gasping for air under the crushing weight of last week’s heavy issue, relax. This week is lighter, more melodic and more upbeat. If ‘Wrapped’ existed in the early 00s, mine would have been dominated year after year by the same few bands. Despite my
I started this blog because things have changed. My own taste has shifted. The way we find music has been turned inside out. It used to be easy to tell who was 'mainstream' and who was 'underground’, but those lines have blurred - and it’s made
In last week’s issue, I shared some tracks that my younger self would have hated - thanks to that guy’s pig-headed stubbornness and blinkered world view. This week I’m switching gears and choosing a list of songs I’d have loved… if they had existed at the
When I was 20, quite a big part of my self-image hinged on the music I listened to and the fact I could rattle off long lists of bands I liked that few other people I met had heard of. Isn’t that fucking ridiculous? But as a music production
Once, in my early thirties, I was invited to a party full of kids in their very early twenties. 10-ish years isn’t much of an age difference when you’re talking 80-90, 60-70 or even 30-40, but the decade between 20 and 30 may as well be a century.
I’m not a big fan of the algorithm (shocker). As I’ve increasingly let it do its thing, the playlists it produces have drawn on fewer songs narrowing the rotation further still. It’s like reading the TL;DR of a Cliff Note of an abridgement. Subscribe here Bands
This is F*ck the Algorithm, a weekly music discovery newsletter for people who grew up on punk, metal and noise - and are bored of hearing the same records forever. Algorithms are very good at feeding you your past, or serving you tunes that sound almost the same as