Simon Reynolds's Blog

Had a fun chat with Lawrence of Mozart Estate / Go-Kart Mozart / Denim / Felt legend, condensed into this pithy Pitchfork Q+A Kieran on Kirkslop (it's what you think it is) for GQDid a bunch of interviews while in Argentina - this one by Romina Zanellato for Cenital is a good read (and can be easily flipped into English). Another one worth a look is Carlos Priego's for Le Tempestad&nbsp

A couple of things to read:Kieran spends a "messy evening" with Bassvictim, whose music is one of the rare things he's alerted me to that I actively enjoy, but who sound rather alarming as an interview experience. And then this mega-post from Matthew Ingram at Sick Veg which is not just something else worth reading but a gateway to an enormous number of other things worth reading. In

Me and Kieran are going to Argentina this week for the 20th anniversary celebrations of Caja Negra, the Buenos Aires publisher who have put out nearly all of the books of mine that have been translated into Spanish. Actually it takes four to tango because the panel event we are doing on Saturday November 15 at 7pm at the Deseo Club is a quadraphonic colloquy with Argentinian writers Pablo

A couple of related pieces from Kieran Press-Reynolds:1/ A sharply observed portrait for GQ of the trio behind the popular left-wing podcast TrueAnon. The show started out with deep descents into the foulness pit of Epstein-Maxwell, but quickly diversified, becoming "an oracle of our hysterical times," K writes. "In an online slopscape dominated by far-right furor and mercenary

Here's a funny and sharply observed report by Kieran Press-Reynolds on a  "no phones" event called OFFLINE, the brainchild of  ex-politician / President-wannabe Andrew Yang. People pay through the nose to reconnect briefly with undistracted living-in-the-here-the-now. Cool animated graphic by the team at Rabbit Holed / Pitchfork depicts Kieran and Yang both fondling some Astro-turf.

Poptimism - the debate that refuses to die, yet never goes anywhere. Deadlocked, yet churning. The recent rechurn stirred up memories of the fierce arguments of the early 2000s - 20-plus years ago! Supposedly, during these initially amiable, soon adversarial blog back-and-forths, it was me that came up with the term "poptimist".  Probably not true, in fact - but certainly I

 Fun piece by Kieran Press-Reynolds looking at oblique strategies for digging up weird music, with a hierarchy of engagements mode from basic to ultra-obscurantist.I had to look up the word "ran-through" 

My friends Oliver Wang and Sharon Mizota are conducting a survey of music critics who currently work in America.  Please participate if you fit the description and can spare a few minutes to leave some completely anonymized data. Message from Wang / Mizota below:Calling all pop music critics! Please take the Critical Minded Pop Music Critic Survey. This survey is open to pop music critics

 Writer-photographer Pat Blashill is a very old mate. We've been friends since 1989, after working together on some stories in New York for Melody Maker - he did the artist portraits and I wrote up the interviews. One of them was Sun Ra, would you believe!Before he moved to New York, Pat was involved in Austin's punk-and-after scene, documenting the mayhem in real-time with his camera. That

Hasten to read - while the paywall is relaxed for 24 hours - this fascinating conversation between Kieran Press-Reynolds and Shawn Reynaldo (no relation) for the latter's substack First Floor. Kieran talks about being a Gen Z writer about music + memes + internet subcultures - or as Reynaldo puts it, "mapping the brainrot continuum". There's also some glimpses into Press-Reynolds family life