Matt Colquhoun's Blog, page 17

2022: Year in Review

It’s been an odd year… I’ve spent most of it doing the following: settling into a new city, Newcastle Upon Tyne; finishing my second book, Narcissus in Bloom; starting my PhD; and having a breakdown. When I think about time spent blogging, I feel like I’ve actually neglected this space a lot this year. That […]

Patchwork: A Reflection

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything on patchwork. Years, in fact. But I still occasionally get messages or tweets that ask for an updated missive on the topic. I’ve generally got no interest in ever supplying one. At this point, I feel much the same way about patchwork as I do about […]

Abolition of the Family, Abolition of the Individual: Notes on Anti-Oedipus

What is it that moves over the body of a society? It is always flows, and a person is always a cutting off [coupure] of a flow. A person is always a point of departure for the production of a flow, a point of destination for the reception of a flow, a flow of any […]

New Tenderness 006

An hour of winter heaters for refrigerated kitchen shuffles to help you through the cost of living crisis. I had a lot of fun putting this one together… It has been getting me through just about every ill-advised venture outside. Tracklist The Waterproof Candle — Electrically Heated Child Ruth White — Mists and Rains Slacker […]

The Meds Stopped Working

One of the first posts to gain traction on this blog was about anti-depressants. After Timothy Morton outed himself as a particularly callous moron on the subject, I went through a few of Mark Fisher’s most famous comments on the pharmacological treatment of depression and how it is often used to cover over any analysis […]

“En este lugar nunca estuvo Pablo Ruiz Picasso”: Notes on Deterritorialization in Málaga

Kike España is showing us around La Casa Invisible, a squatted DIY venue and organising space nestled amongst the labyrinthine backstreets of Málaga. It’s an enormous building. The central courtyard is busy with local misfits and activists, spurning the usual tourist crowd. A cash bar keeps everyone watered amongst LGBT+ flags and a banner that […]

“En este lugar nunca estuvo Palbo Ruiz Picasso”: Notes on the Deterritorialization of Málaga

Kike España is showing us around La Casa Invisible, a squatted DIY venue and organising space nestled amongst the labyrinthine backstreets of Málaga. It’s an enormous building. The central courtyard is busy with local misfits and activists, spurning the usual tourist crowd. A cash bar keeps everyone watered amongst LGBT+ flags and a banner that […]

2022: Albums of the Year

I found it hard to keep up with a lot of stuff this past year, and so I’ve been eagerly gathering together the “end of year” lists of just about everyone who’s posted one so far, on Twitter or elsewhere. I’ll probably spend most of Christmas playing catch up. Though I don’t feel like I […]

Drug War, Time War

I enjoyed watching Synchronic recently, in which paramedic Anthony Mackie gets a brain tumour on his pineal gland and tries to solve the mystery of a designer drug that is disappearing people or causing them to suffer bizarre and horrible deaths. It just so happens that the drug affects the pineal gland specifically and allows […]

Make It Nu:Thoughts on Modernism and Rap Metal

In his forthcoming book for Repeater, Acid Detroit, Joe Molloy does a marvellous job of connecting up the dots between the city’s supposed golden eras of psychedelic — modernist, emancipatory, etc. — music with some of its more post-modern offshoots. He deftly navigates a trajectory I’ve always mistakenly thought of as a gulf. Returning to […]