United Kingdom
After a career in A&R, then as a session musician, I took a left turn into writing words. Have edited/written for Shortlist, BBC Three, the i paper, The Times, Vice, Wired and more, I enjoy writing about literally anything interesting, specialising in music, entertainment and the environment
Robyn's 'Dancing On My Own' is the most influential track of the 2010s (Photo: Mark Peckmezian) The idea of grouping artistic output into years and decades is quite an odd one. Inspiration doesn't follow a clock and the creation of music happens continuously - yet the human instinct is to try to find order and patterns in the messiness of existence.
In 2001, Kent Police believed they had finally landed the man they were under huge pressure to find: the cold-blooded killer who'd brutally murdered a mother and her daughter in a secluded part of the Kent countryside, on the 9th of July, 1996.
N/A Feeling overwhelmed by the existential challenge of climate change? You're not alone Dave Fawbert The headlines detailing extreme weather events seem to come at you day after day. Your social feed - and just stepping outside - alerts you to record temperatures being set.
There is no doubt that football stadiums are the modern churches. Places for congregations of believers to come together and worship, praying to the god of sporting fortunes that their team shall score more goals than the opposition, and may the referee be smited down, as he knoweth not what he is doing.
Lyrics are arguably the one element left in music that is unmistakeably human. Great tomes of theory have been written about how to make memorable lyrics that resonate with people emotionally - but there's no foolproof, conclusive route to success. What happens when you let a robot have a go at it?
Two years ago, I went to the excellent New Scientist Live event in London, headlined by a fantastical and captivating talk from astronaut Tim Peake, who enthralled adults and kids alike as he talked of his adventures on board the International Space Station.
The performance of electronic music in a live environment has been a thorny issue ever since synthesizers and sequencers gained a foothold in the 1970s. Three top exponents of their art -- Orbital's Paul Hartnoll, trance pioneer Paul van Dyk and The Whip's Bruce Carter -- tell how they make it work.
I'll be honest. Putting the Brass Eye DVD into the player, I was worried about how the series would have aged. More than two decades after it was first broadcast, how would it stand up to being revisited?
So Now That's What I Call Music! is about to get a telegram from the Queen as it reaches the grand old age of 100 releases over 35 years. It's both a staggering achievement and also, absolutely, completely, excellently inevitable that it has achieved this feat, - as I explain here - a Now!
