*sigh* it doesn’t have to be poptimism or nostalgic rockism for the rest of time. there is a third way…

I have a very long thing to say about this and why it's got bad that will quite soon be a blog post, but luckily for you I have to go do family stuff so can't go properly into now - but it is related to what I said in this book review, re failure to understand 21st c cultural abundance...

this nails a persistent frustration of mine. also, writers are often just poorly versed in the history of the artists they revere… critics talk about “the next Brian Wilson”… Brian Wilson was reviled for the vast majority of his career and his creative peak was the beginning of a commercial decline

Trump’s Board of Peace logo is basically the UN logo, except dipped in gold and edited so the world only includes America.

My book SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS details how we got to the music landscape Liam Inscoe-Jones explores in his own brilliant new book Songs In The Key Of MP3. Liam uses five groundbreaking icons (Dev, twigs, 0PN, Earl, SOPHIE) to trace connections in the genre-fluid 2010s. I was thrilled to chat with him:

I didn’t think it would be easy, but it can’t be overstated how much of an uphill battle it’s been to get old institutions - many of whom who treat music writing as the medium itself ended in 1999 - to engage with a book about the music of today. Nonetheless, we keep moving onward ⚡️

You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today. This could be you.

Christmas haul at FRBH Towers with @liaminscoejones.bsky.social @danhancox.bsky.social and this hot new band Finitribe

A final shoutout of my book for last-minute shoppers… It’s ideal for any music fan this christmas and remains the only major book to dive deep into music post-2010, from Earl Sweatshirt to FKA twigs, from SOPHIE to Oneohtrix Point Never, from Charli XCX to Danny Brown. Link below to grab a copy x

pretty much done for 2025! This year I released a book, gave a talk at one of the best festivals in the world and published interviews with Caroline Polachek Daniel Lopatin Nicolas Jaar Josh Safdie Stella Donnelly Perfume Genius Richard Russell Sudan Archives Annahstasia Excited for ‘26

These are my top ten songs of the year:

Here are my 150 top albums of the year:

Album of the year! Me for @theartsdesk.bsky.social - also with some further thoughts on @liaminscoejones.bsky.social's ideas about streaming age musicians, on the rude health of the We Out Here generation, and Soft Music for Hard Times. www.theartsdesk.com/new-music/jo... @brownswood.bsky.social

Yeah exactly this, and it's just this that @naomialderman.bsky.social nails down here: the skills of taste, discernment and historian-like research will not be erased by AI, they will be MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER.

Wrote about Perfume Genius and Makaya McCraven for the good people over at The Line Of Best Fit. Their number one is absolutely undeniable too

the age of abundance and the rising tide of machine generated slop which will be indistinguishable from generic music but unable to hold a candle to the innovations to real artists all emphasise the need for a healthy critical ecosystem, and argue for the critic as curator first and foremost

Video shows Israeli forces shooting Palestinians dead moments after surrender

Thank you @resident-music.com for selecting 168 SONGS OF HATRED AND FAILURE by @keithcameron2.bsky.social as your #1 book of the year! And for choosing @danielrachel.bsky.social, @audreyjgolden.bsky.social, @liaminscoejones.bsky.social, @reversediorama.bsky.social + Budgie on the best of 2025 list 🙏

I reviewed the new twigs

I reviewed the new OPN for tQ

Really loved putting this together with Chal, a true legend of the game

In our atomised, fragmented society, newness in pop music can be increasingly hard to uncover. Tribune invited Chal Ravens to discuss the rate of innovation — and the cultural position of music in the 2020s — with fellow music journalist @liaminscoejones.bsky.social tribunemag.co.uk/2025/08/afte...

For the last month I’ve been listening to little else but the new Danny Brown and Armand Hammer albums. With the albums finally dropping tomorrow, I went long with some thoughts over on my Substack open.substack.com/pub/thesixth...

I wrote about the new Armand Hammer for The Quietus, clocking up dangerous numbers without a miss now

Almost every acclaimed music book, year after year, is about the music of the 20th century, often about the *same* music from it. A quarter of the way into the 21st century, it’s getting a little concerning…

Jon is doing god’s work, beautifully written and this album is insane

This time next weeks Jacqueline Crooks - women’s prize shortlisted author of the phenomenal Fire Rush - and I will be in conversation at the legendary radical bookshop Housmans, talking music and literary writing… if you’re near kings cross, come through! www.eventbrite.com/e/liam-insco...

I reviewed the new Rochelle Jordan

The path forward begins in the workplace. We must advocate for a society built around collective strength, industrial cooperation, and democratic control. Read Eddie Dempsey on unions.

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

I wrote some words about the new Blood Orange album for The Quietus

my book gets a lil mention in this new review of the new blood orange album theartsdesk.com/new-music/al...

3) I keep hammering on about Liam's book, but with good reason. It embodies new ways of tracing the nature of artists' influence and position in the ecosystem, suited to the more fluid 21st century. To this conversation, it points out how real subcultures - skate, dancing, sex work - feed in.

Sorry not sorry to link to my own review, but Liam's book really crystallised a lot of this for me recently.

I remember in 2013 when I started making lists I struggled to fill a list of 50, now i’m past a list of 100 albums I liked this year and it’s august, perpetually astounded by the quality and quality of new music in the atmosphere

I’m in this! Spoke to Chal Ravens about newness in music 15 years on from Retromania, AirPods, the new Niontay album and other things, I’m really proud of how it came out

agreed, MIKE hasn’t dropped the ball once since 2016 and this is a joy to see. In the back of my book I list ten essential listens from each year and ‘Burning Desire’ is there but I’d go further, that’s easily one of the best albums of the decade so far

this 1 by @liaminscoejones.bsky.social

the way time and writing works is amazing, you can spend hours working on something and become convinced it’s the best it can possible be, leave it for two weeks, come back and it’s immediately apparent how to make things 10x better, it’s sick

that’s me. wholesome.

Wrote about more music of the ambient variety in column format for popular music web store and streaming platform @bandcamp.com's editorial arm 💯 daily.bandcamp.com/best-ambient...

Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath were a product of post-war Britain’s industrial heartland. But today, for Birmingham, metal, and young working-class people, those conditions could not be further away.

Feat. Jim Legxacy, Blood Orange, Geese, John Glacier, Maruja, Deftones, Titanic, underscores, Che, Lupe Fiasco, Princess Nokia, rRoxymore, Nightcrwlr, Soul Wax, Sudan Archives, Ana Frango Eléctrico, Alice Glass + more… These are the best songs of July 2025 music.apple.com/gb/playlist/...

This is the main thing people don't know about books. The success of a book is largely governed by how many get INTO bookshops in the first place. If they don't order them in from the publishers, the majority of potential buyers will never get as far as seeing a copy.

#podcast I spoke to author Liam Inscoe-Jones about his new book Songs in the Key of MP3, that focusses on artists of Sophie, Blood Orange and FKA Twigs and how they emerged. How streaming/Socials have changed music, #playlists and the #charts and more www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2025/05/16/i...

hesitant to express that i agree with joe expressing his disagreement with the broad-strokes cultural collapse premise by co-signing an agreement expressed through the medium of my own disagreement (a reiteration of a reiteration, oh no), but I *do* agree with his disagreement, predictably

Millennials too. This book really was timely. Every time I see otherwise intelligent people going "oh god yahhh so true" on yet another video of that Meditations For The Anxious guy explaining how young ppl culture just just a facade of a performance of a simulacrum of a photocopy I die a little.

the post-Napster way of things is turbulence, with the past stirred in to the present and the unevenly distributed future. I'm a stopped clock on this currently but this book sums a lot of this up... my review... bsky.app/profile/liam...