Author: J T. Ramsay

  • Anomie and bonhomie isn’t just an album, it’s a lifestyle.

    San­sho the Bailiff does­n’t haunt me like Uget­su, but Mizoguchi does things with light and tex­ture unlike any oth­er film­mak­er. Recommended. I’ve been in a mid-year rut with music. I’m dis­ap­point­ed in the New Pornog­ra­phers’ Chal­lengers on first lis­ten; I haven’t heard any good buzz about Spoon’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [aside from the…

  • It was like going to the movies during the day.

    Though it’s gone down­hill recent­ly, Cin­e­marati will be sore­ly missed. There’s always Film­brain…I hope! And here’s some­thing I applaud over at Self-Styled Siren!

  • We sipped from a freon tank together for relief.

    I think we as Amer­i­can music crit­ics expect too much of British artists. We want 1984 and Bil­ly Liar. Por­tishead and the Kinks. So I had to laugh when I saw Wiley on the cov­er of The Wire this month. Do they not know that the whole world went post-grime the moment Lady Sov first…

  • It’s about love and death and revenue sharing. Up-selling abounds.

    I’m not sure that Hype­bot’s six part series on eMu­sic’s recent tur­bu­lence was any­thing more than sound and fury sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing, or at best, very lit­tle about dig­i­tal music at all. Seems to me that it was more about the blood in the water than any­thing else, and like fren­zied sharks, eMu­sic rep­re­sen­ta­tives took the…

  • The landslide didn’t bring me down. It was the avalanche that hit first.

    I’ve been swamped. I love duck­ing in here like I’m try­ing to get out of the rain…which is a nice segue [cough] into: Rihan­na — ‘Umbrel­la’ [I’m inter­view­ing her lat­er this week. It’s about that time for R&B pro­tec­tion bal­lads. There’s a war on, after all.] Mutant Sounds. I was a lit­tle tired of Chocoreve [even…