Dialling from a Different Decade

2010 has been a bitch so far.

Alright so I mightn’t be trapped by a million metric tons of rubble in some Haitian newsagents subsisting on the contents of a Solero freezer. But the reason I’ve started this blog is because this harsh, barren excuse for a year has taken a lot from us already.

Barely a month in and Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger, ‘voice of rugby’ Bill McLaren, incredibly influential film director Eric Rohmer and bona fide Hollywood Legend Jean Simmonds have all died. In the music world, losses include folk singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle and Jay Reatard. Bands splitting include Fall Out Boy (also splitting opinion as to whether this is positive or negative), The Rakes and These Arms Are Snakes. Only this week, Thirty Days of Night records announced on Twitter their end was nigh, news almost as disappointing as the film with which they shared a name.

Which brings me onto the reason for starting this blog. You probably didn’t read, or have even heard of, a music website called Sonic Dice, but it meant a lot to me. Set up in 2007, Sonic Dice provided the standard news, reviews, features and comments, but upon a dizzying array of music genres. Everyone from Miike Snow to Born of Osiris were covered equally, reflecting my own eclectic tastes. I managed to get an unpaid reviewing gig by sending the editor a sample review in mid-2009, not long after graduating from University. Like most graduates I left the stimulating intellectual higher environment into the gaping chasm of unemployment. Fudging my way through the remainder of the year through a series of temporary jobs, I gained other writing posts but Sonic Dice continued to provide the bulk of my work. In late 2009 however, it suffered a colossal server meltdown and getting into 2010, was taken offline and is no longer a going concern. A vast swathe of my portfolio was axed with it.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying for the time being, this is a way of getting my work back online. Eventually I’ll begin contributing original material including reviews and some hopefully-insightful features on the current state of music. My degree is in English Literature and Philosophy; I read and I interpret, which also stands as my contribution to writing. Music is just another text waiting to be analysed, deconstructed and criticised.