essay i mentioned previously on how independent music gives you the basic tools for organizing even if you didn’t realize you were building those skills, and how great it’s been to watch people hit the ground running

🔴 BREAKING: Labour Together paid controversial PR firm £30k to investigate journalists who were digging into how its undeclared funding Reporters from Sunday Times, Guardian and other outlets targetted *And* Morgan McSweeney knew about it Full story: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/exclusive-...

Wes Streeting wants people to forget. Never let him forget.

Pleased to see the jury make this decision. We need to have eyes wide open this is exactly why the Government wants to abolish juries. People protesting against a genocide are not the criminals here - it's the politicians who continue to provide cover. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Promentalshitbackwash-psychosis enema squad (the doo-doo chasers) (Funkadelic) You Ain’t Gonna Know Me Cos You Think You Know Me (Louis Moholo-Moholo)

Thanks to @drstewartsmith.bsky.social for the excellent review of Diego Caicedo's Eidos Daemonium and Ivo Perelman & Nate Wooley's Polarity 4 in the latest issue of @thewiremagazine.bsky.social!

Also I’m bound to point out: yet another issue on which the left were obviously correct, years ago

Duncan Williamson coming to my primary school and sharing his stories was a formative experience. What a wonderful resource.

🚨 BREAKING: The CCA is "No longer able to continue operating and is entering liquidation." Tomorrow we're publishing the inside story of how it all went wrong for the arts organisation - read our first report and sign up below 👇 www.glasgowbell.co.uk/cca-liquidat...

Looks good. Hard to top Robert Mugge's Joyful Noise (1980), but there's some enticing archival footage, and the presence of Fred Moten, Brent Hayes Edwards and others as talking heads suggests they're doing it right.

Dick Gaughan with 'Now Westlin Winds' or 'Song Composed on August' by Robert Burns.

The Cramps @ Emerald City, Cherry Hill, NJ. May 8, 1981 (Full Show) . Shot by the great and wonderful Rich Lustre of Sic Kidz Lights by fab Rick Schmidlin on this tour if not mistaken ! Lux Interior, Poison Ivy, Kid Congo Powers, Nick Knox . What a gas it was! youtu.be/Kx0f_posfFg?...

If you enjoyed reading my chat with Thurston Moore about Black Woman @thequietus.com, check out this guide to the music of Linda Sharrock I wrote a few years back.

I can't trust politicians who are anti-trans. Not because I'm "only searching for perfection" which is what centrists will be accusing me of for the rest of my life, it's because if you're not pro-trans you'll be garbage on lots of other issues too. Being anti-trans NEVER exists in a vacuum.

With a focus on the years between 1960 and 1980, Thurston Moore provides Stewart Smith with ten entry points into the wild world of free music. Now Jazz Now100 Essential Free Jazz & Improvisation Recordings 1960-80 is out now via Ecstatic Peace buff.ly/diU2uZn

“Record nerds unite!” Had the pleasure of geeking out with Thurston Moore about classic free music LPs on the release of his, Byron Coley & Mats Gustafsson’s monumental new tome Now Jazz Now. He selects 10 essential recordings to liberate body & mind @thequietus.com thequietus.com/interviews/s...

The dream team of Mariam Rezaei & Bill Orcutt makes their live debut at Brooklyn’s Roulette in March 🔥🔥🔥

good article here on bc daily from a while ago: daily.bandcamp.com/features/dog... also see our own @drstewartsmith.bsky.social on dawson! daily.bandcamp.com/features/daw...

Again: Starmer is less popular than Truss and Johnson because he was supposed to not be this, he was the lifeline people desperately reached out for. But the job of the Labour right is to say, no, fuck you, whoever you vote for, it's just us again. Be grateful, peasants.

There’s a fair bit of jazz/hip-hop crossover about, some more convincing than others, but the most exciting stuff for me is operating in an open-genre space where it’s more about sound and interplay than a conscious fusion…

Right Said Fred Again

Viennese vinyl haul. Top 3 from Alt & Neu (the middle Bley is a record club edition of Tropic Appetites), rest from Substance. Merry improv Christmas!

hello just a reminder you should never work with or buy from last night from glasgow because they are run by transphobes x

Highest possible recommendation!

a blessed 84th birthday to the greatest, Wadada Leo Smith 🙏🏾❤️♾️

Eight Palestine Action activists are being left to die in prison – all without even facing trial. We must force the government to act, before it’s too late ⬇️ https://goodlaw.social/3e3320

In memoriam: Asad Haider (1987–2025).

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

The fact is no presenter has ever had to leave the BBC for expressing conservative views, or even explicitly endorsing a right-wing party. Was never a problem for Jeremy Clarkson. Was never a problem for Andrew Neil. Was never a problem for Alan Sugar

Radio 4 and BBC and Channel 4 News and all the papers completely skewing the Peggie story so your average person will have no idea what actually happened. Doesn’t this make you furious? Integrity in journalism is dead, not just in the US

If the reporting on the Peggie decision tells us anything, it should be that the way news gets reported in this country has little to do with truth, and much more to do with narrative - as well as whose heavily spun press release lands on journos desks first.

The real victim at the centre of this absurd case is very clearly Dr Beth Upton To witness the way in which she’s been dehumanised and vilified by Peggie and their (Sex Matters) legal team, the tribunal judge, the British media, and UK politicians has been beyond horrifying Solidarity Beth

The institutionally transphobic media are already trying to spin this as an outright victory, but the truth is that most of her claims were dismissed, there’s no trans bathroom ban, and the judge recognised Peggie’s vile comments about Pakistani flood victims & trans people for what they were.

"I was introduced to Herbie Nichols' music when I still considered myself to be a mainstream jazz singer. It was also a moment when I was reconsidering whether or not I wanted to be a mainstream jazz singer." Fay Victor: Giving Voice to Herbie Nichols pointofdeparture.org/PoD93/PoD93P...

Known as Palestine's Nelson Mandela, he has been in prison for more than 23 years and subjected to brutal abuse.

transphobes using money and power to bully little kids is absolutely no different from mobs turning up to intimidate refugee families, and you should treat anyone who so much as excuses either of these things with complete contempt

We're watching the wholesale burning of every scrap of dignity afforded to trans people in the UK, their rights, their medical services, their employment, their place within society, their bodily functions. It is a disgrace, and a disgusting stain on the government and media of this country.

I've got an EOY essay in here about the dialogue between jazz/improv, underground hip-hop and electronic music, and the exciting new open-genre music emerging from it. Plus a full page of jazz & improv reviews, inc the incredible @xcrswx, Marilyn Crispell, Angharad Davies & John Butcher...

There's not a single anti-trans campaigner or group with a major platform on twitter who haven't posted *horrifying* things and it's a stain on our entire media ecosystem that not a single major outlet has done even basic reporting of it.

What do we keep saying? That the Reasonable Moderates are the midwives of fascism. And what keeps happening? The Reasonable Moderates insist on proving us right

Always nice to find an OG Ogun in the wild. A hidden gem in the vocal jazz section at Newcastle’s Beatdown. Jaimie Cullum it ain’t!

What a rotten state of affairs that a teenage girl had thrust upon her the responsibility of being the only adult in the room because actual grown adults refused to recognise her either as a child or, more importantly, as a human being. A sad indictment of a pitiful society.

"Reform would be worse" is both entirely correct and entirely irrelevant until polling day 2029. What matters right now is that Labour's approach is morally repugnant on its own terms, *and is empowering Reform*. As things stand today, its not Labour or Reform. Its Labour *then* Reform.

Went deep on the awesome new [Ahmed] album @thequietus.com The greatest band in the world. @cafeotodalston.bsky.social thequietus.com/quietus-revi...

Everything that’s wrong with Scottish media in one picture.

scottish librarians, academics, writers etc see below

Don Cherry was born in Oklahoma City on this day in 1936 📸 Dany Gignoux, Lyon, France, 1981

It's the anniversary of Section 28's demise. By me: "Section 28 was largely a creation of the right-wing press, and many of the people, publications and proprietors who contributed to the anti-gay panic back then are at the forefront of the anti-trans panic today."

A Government of cowards. Rather than tackle inequality - they've gone for pensioners, disabled people and now it's people fleeing war and persecution. They can't get away with this. Join.greenparty.org.uk

Now archived @wfmu.bsky.social Hikmah (Wisdom), Sufism and Free Jazz: Pat Thomas Interview STREAM ▶️ wfmu.org/playlists/sh...