Gareth Stack

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Selection of articles written between 2005 and today.

  • Pablo Honey – Radiohead

    Club Rock Shandy can be described as a fizzy drink, a soft drink, or a mineral. However, it doesn’t accurately fall into any of these categories, in most circles it is known as “liquid happiness”. It really is a case of the product being equal to more than the sum of its parts, with both Read more

  • It takes a nation of millions to hold us back- Public Enemy

    Public Enemy are supreme artist engineers, and when we hold the black proportion of the aural architecture to the pale of the morning light that their true brilliance is revealed. High mountains and dizzying lows, the crags and cliffs they build. Acid sharp and yet sweet as bitter honey, they velvetly spit and moan through Read more

  • The Beatles – Love

    Calla grew up when there was little of any worth to eat; no fruit for vitamin C and trace elements, no milk and broccoli for calcium, no fresh meat for iron or protein. Enamel never formed on her yellowing teeth and she seemed to catch every popular contagion. I met her in college, bundled in Read more

  • David Bowie – Low

    You stuffing letterbox with spit wet chunks of newspapers and glossy celebrity magazines. It’s closest come to outside in weeks and every muscle itches to get back to nest. Fingers slick and shaking, you gum steel mouth of door and away, afeared of stiff cool breeze from beneath frame. You stumbling back up carpeted staircase, Read more

  • DJ Dangermouse – The Grey Album

    Raps fuming echolalia has always produced a tension between creative expression and adherence to a set of extrinsic psychocultural narratives (bling!). Change orientated collectives like Rick Ruben protegees public enemy or proto realists Arrested Development have historically struggled with the ironic shackles of this most post colonial of genres. On this press Dangermouse forges a Read more

  • Jagged Little Pill – Alanis Morissette

    From the very moment of its printed debut in 1537, the jagged little pill was a homogeneous genre characterized by the equivocal Swanseaic use of language/graffitti and post-pop African style drumming, whose erotic and sometimes obscene / Catholic content was hidden at a deep dark semantic level. As Antoni Marzotica writes concerning the erotic poetry Read more