A Better Break

Seeing B.C. Camplight When You Think You’re Gonna Die

First, a confession: I am writing this review eighteen months after it happened. Hot off the press, eh? I was going to lie and pretend it was written the next day and that you, dear reader, only stumbled on it now, thereby making you the Johnny-come-lately rather than me the… tragically unprofessional “reviewer”.

But then I thought I could spin this astounding contravention of usual journalistic practice into a uniquely dick-ish positive: namely, what is the truest review? The head-swirling one, all aflutter from the ambush of the moment? Or the one that stays with you for life - the one that gets repeated for years… the lasting, monolithic record?

reviews, musicIsabelle KosciuskoMay 11, 2021Tim Wilderspin

Ian Curtis - The Patron Saint of Exhaustion

In the last couple of years we’ve seen the 40th anniversaries of Joy Division’s two hugely-venerated albums ‘Unknown Pleasures’ and ‘Closer’. These are two of the most important records of my life, so I’ve probably read more about this band than any other, and that got me thinking: what single discovery always stands out for me? And can I add any observations to the existing mountain of study?

Perhaps the insight I find most fascinating - and pleasingly ironic - is that this band, so heavily-scrutinised for over four decades, apparently never dwelt for a moment on what they were creating.

Joy Division, music, reviewsIsabelle KosciuskoApril 27, 2021Tim Wilderspin

Memories of a Free Party

The imminent arrival of a ground-breaking documentary - ‘Free Party: A Folk History’ - about the British free party scene of the late 80s/early 90s, has stirred some stark memories and buried feelings within me; for I was part of the DJing and music-making side of the DiY sound system, based in Nottingham.

DiY were renowned for organising free parties in diverse rural settings: “new age” travellers’ sites, disused airbases, quarries and woods; but, unlike some of their contemporaries - like Spiral Tribe - they eschewed fast, raucous break-beats in favour of the sparser, more melodic stylings of deep house, usually imported from New York or Chicago.

memories, music, free partiesIsabelle KosciuskoApril 28, 2020Tim Wilderspin

Review of BEAK> and Snapped Ankles at SWX, Bristol, 20/05/19

I’d heard the recent BEAK> single, ‘Brean Down‘, on 6 Music and liked it a lot – a noir and squalid atmosphere rendered invigorating by delicious choppy drums, with vocals that sounded like they were recorded in a bus shelter between gasps of butane. All I knew was BEAK> was Geoff Barrow of Portishead’s new outfit, although they’d actually been around ten years. So it was an easy decision to see them live, instead of staying in, as usual, to do the slo-mo hop-scotch around the creaky floorboards outside our toddler’s bedroom.

reviews, music, indieIsabelle KosciuskoJune 13, 2019Tim Wilderspin

The first time I heard 'Sulk' by Associates

1982 was a very difficult year for me, one of the hardest of my life, but it was also a year in which the most astonishingly potent and unprecedented music avalanched forth from all directions. There’s something about being around 13 that makes everything you encounter cut so deep. You are like fresh, wet concrete and the imprint of any hand remains for life.

My inner world was already being sculpted, via my Walkman, by unorthodox talents such as Japan, Ultravox, Visage, Soft Cell and, by way of contrast, Dexys.

music, memoriesIsabelle KosciuskoMay 15, 2019Tim Wilderspin