• Monday Mixtape: Lee Ranaldo

    September 21, 2015 - By 

    The folks at The Thin Air have asked me to provide an eight song mixtape. I’ve been in the studio at the moment working on ‘that difficult third album’, as Clinton Heylin calls it, and so most of what I’m listening to at the moment is the stuff we are making. But within that activity is the acknowledgment of a host of previously-made music – references, riffs, textures, emotional tones – so the following selections reflect some of these various influences we have been obsessing over at the moment. In no particular order. Something From Pet Sounds or Smile We…

  • The End of an Era? How a Generation Got Beat Pt. 1

    November 27, 2013 - By 

    I looked down at my wrist. I held the scissors in my other hand, almost trembling with excitement. Or was it fear? I couldn’t say. Closing my eyes, I felt the pressure in my fingers, and heard the gentle sound of metal slicing through ribbon. After three years of wearing my ATP 2011 wristband, I removed it, like a surgeon operating on a tumour. I still hadn’t slept properly since The End of an Era Part 1, the first half of the festival’s great farewell, but the magic had been broken. If this was the end, then it was a…