VIDEOCRACY: Broadcasting Control over the Italian Psyche

photo credit: the bbp Erik Gandini’s Videocracy is an intriguing and distressing documentary film that explores Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire, and the deep impact that it has had on Italian society and culture. Gandini’s investigative endeavour was released in 2009, but the trailers were blocked on the six main Italian television channels, which are controlled by Berlusconi. It was a tacit form of censorship aimed at obstructing Videocracy’s popularity,... Read More

Bristol Bass Music Scene Report

photo credit: Brizzlebornandbred 2010 was an eventful year for the Bristol underground. Liam from the Liquid Steel Sessions, one of the most forward thinking Soundsystem crews in Sheffield has this report… 2010 saw Easton’s Dubstep wonderkid Joker sign a publishing deal with heavyweight label Universal and a landmark collaboration between some of the local scene’s luminaries and Jamaican Dub engineer Scientist. Curated by Tectonic label boss DJ Pinch, Scientist Launches... Read More

Interview With Alex Foti: Mayday Had Become A Funeral.

photo credit: cinocino In a special themed issue of Green Pepper, Foti and the Chain Workers Collective sketched a very attractive understanding of the work discipline of contemporary capitalism.  In their understanding, society had found itself in a situation of profound disjuncture with our working pasts – life today was defined by contingent employment rather than the traditional job for life.    Working through Chainworkers, Foti and others developed the Euro... Read More

The Conditions For Electronic Noise.

“So which path will lead us through the immense forest of noise with which history presents us?” (Jaques Attali, 1996, orig. 1977, p. 19) “In the imperial world the economist, for example, needs a basic knowledge of cultural production to understand the economy, and likewise the cultural critic needs a basic knowledge of economic processes to understand culture. That is a requirement which our project demands.” (Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, 2000, xvi) Part... Read More

Cowboys and Kymers

photo credit: Dave_B_ ’ve always preferred to think that you can get inside a country’s psyche faster by sitting in bars talking with the people who live there. My night-time walking tour of East Berlin’s seedy history and seedier bars led by a man dressed as a magician is a treasured memory of a great weekend blighted only by a tedious afternoon looking at the Reichstag. Skipping out on the “cultural” attractions of Barcelona to reel blindly around the Gothic Quarter,... Read More

Your Plaice Or Mine

photo credit: jovike I’ve no love lost for chips. I hate how the grease sits on your fingers, and lolls around on your tongue and gums like a layer of scum you can only tolerate when pissed. But contrary to personal taste, and a year away in Toronto where Caribbean roti shops and proper pizza dominated the diets of hungered commuters, a rabid curiosity around the chip shops back home arose. It led me on a journey into take-away culture – something of a half assed... Read More

This Way Up: Reimagining Argentina’s Shattered Economy From Below

photo credit: Mate Amargo blus Just recently Buenos Aires became a mass partying destination for Americans, all intent on a retail respite from the gringo trail that runs down the spine of the continent. It lends itself well to most of the disconnected vignettes that pass for travel writing. You give some harried mentions of local poverty, and assurances of stabilisation, then you roll into dishing advice on where to join the local urbane consumer class as it gets mashed... Read More

Interview: Ghislain Poirier Chews Le Gros

photo credit: baladop45 If the idea of a Montreal artist brings anything to mind its out pourings of bleak post rock drone and lo-fi indie noise, and certainly not Ghislain Poirier’s bombastic bass heavy productions. Montreal’s Poirier pioneers a tweaked take on production that uses musical echoes from the global south, alongside the best elements of the dark side of raves decade long come down. He hits Dublin in promotion of his latest album No Ground Under, out... Read More

The Unmaking of Hollywood Legends.

Some weeks ago through the freebie magic of Skype I talked to David Zieger the directer of the documentary Sir, No Sir. It’s a Displaced Films and BBC production that came out about two years ago, and focused on the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam. It consists in part, of interviews with veterans explaining why they resisted the war, and in some cases went as far as to defect. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile, by 1971 it was a movement that in... Read More

Interview: Going Beyond The Green Zone With Dahr Jamail

It’s a cliché that the media was the first casualty of the Iraqi occupation, but few reacted like Dahr Jamail. Made brazen by his travels off the beaten path between monotonous jobs, he packed a cheap digital camera along with a laptop and entered Iraq to go beyond the Green Zone and embedded reporting. The dispatches he circulated online, first through emails and then through his site, quickly grew into an essential resource for those in the west desperate for an alternative... Read More