That brings me to meeting Miki. This is the bit of this writing that I have been putting off. It’s sitting here twenty pages and nearly eighteen months into the process. Here goes. About a year before we published our book, Rob, Helen and I hosted a conference at our university campus. Titled ‘Twisting My…Continue reading Label of Love – Me and 4AD: Part 6 Meeting Miki

Jesus, where do I start with Kristin Hersh? This is going to be the hardest bit of this to write. She is slippery and phantom like. She never stands still. She is ambiguous and all powerful. If someone asked me what 4AD looked like and sounded like, it would be a glance at her shadow…Continue reading Label of Love – Me and 4AD: Part 5 Big Stack of Thick Books

I’ve been to three Belly gigs and they were all marvellous. The second one was 21 years after the first one. The third one was two years after that. This is the way now with bands you love. In the book that I put together with my colleagues Helen and Rob, we examined the ways…Continue reading Label of Love – Me and 4AD: Part 4 Cool Thing in Leeds

What is it about the start of Cannonball? How can something so quiet and unassuming make people lose it? Whether it’s a crowd of scenesters at a gig or a cabal of middle aged caners at a house party, the response is always the same. Why does Josephine Wiggs’ bass sound so good? How does…Continue reading Label of Love – Me and 4AD: Part 3 Off Centre Strawberry

Pixies (never the Pixies) are a band that I can’t seem to shake. They (along with Neil Diamond, my mum’s favourite) have been ever present in my musical life. Sometimes they dip a little off the radar but never enough so that their surfy art school anger stops beeping entirely. Lately, I’ll admit, it’s been…Continue reading Label of Love – Me and 4AD: Part 2 Venn Diagrams

To misquote Wham, last Christmas I had a weird email exchange. I shouldn’t have even been checking my work email but there was a lull between my morning Toblerone and War Games starting on ITV4. More out of muscle memory than anything else, I flicked outlook open on my phone. Among a metric ton of…Continue reading Label of Love – Me and 4AD: Part 1 Plastic Bags