Charlie Bertsch / 19 Aug 2020
England From Below
East Man’s Prole Art Threat
Because of its collaborative nature and broad range, East Man’s fine new album Prole Art Threat has the feel of an anthology.(...)
Culture
John Foster / 07 Aug 2020
Setting the Agenda
Young, Banerjee and Schwartz’s Levers of Power
Proportion explains a lot in life. This has become painfully obvious in the era of COVID-19 when the underlying sociopathy of the US president and of the party he leads can most clearly be seen in their signal failure to understand what the numbers mean.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 05 Aug 2020
Leftist Reputation
The Gang of Four Legacy
Has there ever been a more impressive debut album than Gang of Four’s Entertainment?(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 22 Jul 2020
The American Scream
Speaker Music’s Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry
Combining elements of minimal techno in the great African American tradition of Detroit and Chicago with dubstep, avant-garde jazz, and spoken-word, Speaker Music's new “emergency” album Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry delivers bass that is as compelling as it is challenging. (...)
John Foster / 17 Jul 2020
Famines, Pandemics and Politics
The Mike Davis Reader
Last week, I wrote at length about Set the Night on Fire, the definitive history of radical Los Angeles in the 1960s, co-written by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener. This might be the apotheosis of Davis’s career as a historian of the city.(...)
John Foster / 10 Jul 2020
Cities of Racism
Mike Davis and American History
Mike Davis is the most remarkable product of American intellectual culture working today.(...)
Charlie Bertsch / 08 Jul 2020
Uneasy Listening
Deadbeat and Paul St. Hilaire’s 4 Quarters of Love and Modern Lash
“War Games”, the opening track of Deadbeat and Paul St. Hilaire’s 4 Quarters of Love and Modern Lash, begins with the spacious minimalism perfected by the Rhythm & Sound records St. Hilaire sang on as Tikiman in the 1990s. (...)
John Foster / 26 Jun 2020
Always Fighting Fascism
Theodor Adorno’s Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism
No experience marked the life and work of Theodor Adorno so deeply as the confrontation with National Socialism. (...)
Charlie Bertsch / 24 Jun 2020
Colonial Bass
Zenobia’s Halak Halak LP
It doesn't take long to place Zenobia's new album Halak Halak – which translates as a slangy “Welcome, Welcome!” – in the Middle East.(...)
Joel Schalit / 19 Jun 2020
Think Difference
The Battleground’s Summer Book List
2020 will be remembered as the year race broke. Not in a popular sense, to refer to the 1991 Dave Markey documentary about American punk. Rather, as the year that diversity became a subject of crisis, again.(...)