Neil Kulkarni's Blog, page 2

An Interview With Me from 2013 by GodIsInTheTV Zine

Neil Kulkarni is well-known (but don’t call him (in)famous) as a straight-writing music and culture critic, with caustically acerbic opinions on nearly every aspect of postmodern Britain. We tested Kulkarni’s patience, taking in subjects such as UK race-relations, his hometown Coventry and the demise of the Melody Maker (spoiler alert: if you object to the word ‘C*nt’, do not read this article).

In your capacity as a music critic, you are known for your intolerance of reviews you see as ‘borin...

My Crisps Journey: 10 Packets Of Crisps That Have Stayed With Me

Although a guilty participant myself, like many I realised fairly quickly what the 'Pick 10 Albums That Stayed With You' thang on Facebook started becoming - a chance, like all lists, to prove the unimpeachably eclectic taste of the participant rather than actually reveal anything. It was the social-media equivalent of putting all your COOLEST albums at the front of your racks/on your record-player before going out of an evening (in the ridiculous hope that should you pull, whoever you'd mana...

Air Waves - 'Warrior' (Bandcamp/Western Vinyl)

Oh lord, this album just gets me.

I keep coming back to a line I wrote a lifetime ago: "Indie is four people getting together wanting to create something sublime and immortal having had their lives swallowed by pop and needing to do the same, surveying the infinite possibilities and deciding three guitars some drums and some good songs will just about do".

I wrote that line a lifetime ago when I was 21. Although couched in somewhat radgey phraseology what I was agitating for, set alight by the...

BLATTARIA - BLATTARIA (Fallen Empire Records)

 It doesn't help that whenever I hear double-kick drums I remember how ridiculous this looks from BEHIND a stage, where the drummers' legs always remind me of when Sooty & Sweep were seen 'running' but for a genre that's so often sells itself as the zenith of heavy darkness black metal beats are wonderfully weak sometimes, like an endlessly puckering oil-can denting and undenting itself.

Not so with Blattaria. I haven't heard blackened psychedelia as bass-heavy as this . . . EVER tbh....

Hatchet 3 - NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN 'BRAINBLOODVOLUME' ALBUM REVIEW, MELODY MAKER, 1995

[HEADLINE & STANDFIRST: TRASHED!We asked NEIL KULKARNI to review the new NED'S ATOMIC DUSTBIN LP. Instead, he's written one very long sentence, and one very short one. Well, you can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might get what you need"]
Ned's Atomic DustbinBrainbloodvolume (Furtive 478330 11 tks/41 mins/FP)
CHERRY RED doc wearing stupid Bronx hat and shorts combo sidewinding Carter shirt over PWEI long-sleeve stripey-tights pony-owning horse raced drippy please hit me ...

50 FT WAVE - 'BATH WHITE' ALBUM/EP REVIEW

Bloody kids. They won't let you do yourself in. They insist instead that you first work yourself to death.  Bloody music. Hate music sometimes, oft-times, most times these days. It won't let you sleep. It insists instead that you listen when all you want is a horizontal surface and oblivion. Nags at you because there's always new music. And because there's some people you trust dammit. If you're a writer or a reader or a lover or a fighter you care about rhythm and words and clarity and Kristin ...

Advice 1

Tried to read some new record reviews today. Failed.A note for aspiring pophacks from this failed one: when you're writing about an album, at some point you're going to have to step away from facts, trails of evidence, sales-figures, celebrity-endorsements/tie-ins, biographical regurgitation, what they're saying on Twitter, rubbish jokes, stuff about how great and funny you are, and actually write about how the album makes you feel, about what the experience of listening to it is like.I mean, yo...

WHY WE MUST BAN THIS UKULELE FILTH NOW

Top Eight Worse FUCKING Ukelele FUCKING Breathy-Voiced FUCKING Covers For FUCKING Adverts

I can't think of any more because I don't want my head to explode with rage.

1. Dogs Trust - 'I Only Want To Be With You
2. Renault Zoe - That's Entertainment
3. McDonalds - Rhythm Of The Night 
4. T-Mobile - Teenage Kicks
5. Lloyds Bank - Mad World 
6. Kia - Ever Fallen In Love 
7. John Lewis - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
8. Chanel No.5 - You're The One That I Want 
. 

My uke-hate I think came to a pe...

THALIA ZEDEK BAND - 'EVE' ALBUM REVIEW

The older you get, the more trust becomes important as a listener. As the artists you grew up with grow up with you, you come back to them and hear their growth, hear the changing cadence of what they play, the increased slump in the shoulders, the sharper jut of the jaw. You also hear all the things you love to hear from them, their personality, like an old friend. Sometimes, if you're lucky you can be witness to one of your heroes writing some of the best songs they've ever written. It reassur...

KHOST [Deconstructed And Reconstructed By] GODFLESH ‎– 'NEEDLES INTO THE GROUND' EP REVIEW

HOLY JESUS BASTARD SHIT ON A FUCKING MOPED WHAT A FUCKING RACKET.

Khost's 'Corrosive Shroud' was an ungainly, unpleasant, coruscatingly timely and consequently FEARsome slab of nastiness from 2015. Here they aim at PEAK MAXI-BRUM CARNAGE by giving the tracks to J.K Broadrick and letting him vivisect seven shades of splatterfest shite out of them. The results are the finest noise you'll hear all year, filling you with the kind of tension (as they describe it) 'akin to being in the proximity of a l...