lemon revolution

More Life, Drake’s latest album, has been the set of songs I’ve returned to most this summer. Released originally as, according to Drake, a ‘playlist’, Drake’s lyrics explore exactly the same topics we expect him to: isolation and success, sadness and fame, love and heartbreak. It’s the sublime instrumentals - which Drake doesn't receive a single credit for - that keep his music alive and keeps the listener coming back. Whether or not Drake has much choice over the instrumentals, and to what extent his record company aims to manufacture a certain sound for him is unclear - what is clear is that Drakes sound is one which captures the furious moment in which we live like no other. The range of samples at use here is eye-catching, with distorted snippets from The Ojays, Jennifer Lopez and Swedish singer Snoh Aalegra being woven through a rich texture of synths, beats and electronic notes. Just what is about this backing sound, then, that makes this music so good? Mark Fisher ...

Fairly old tune now but the industrial beats, the sense you're listening to the tune through a smoke-filled tunnel, those elongated strings, longing and reaching for something they never touch, the quick transitions of Ocean's voice from vulnerable affirmation to cathartic wail, and then the lyrics: hard to think another song which sums up the haunting emptiness that is the modern consumer experience more than this one I think I started something  I got what I wanted did-did nah can't feel nothin' superhuman even when i'm fucking viagra-poppin' and every single record auto-tunin' zero-emotion muted-emotion pitch-corrected computed-emotion I blame it on the...

Desolation Row is the final track on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 album. Unlike the album’s other tracks, Desolation is an entirely acoustic number, travelling out long at 11 minutes 21 seconds. The song begins with a downbeat two strum, limping acoustic strings slowly tick and rick upon adoor. After four or a five seconds, just before Dylan’s voice enters, a second acoustic begins to whine, softly winds around the strumming dumbing beat, drifts in and out: light notes, small streaks of brief fire amid darkness. They’re selling postcards of the hanging They’re painting the passports brown Noted for its wide range of canonical references, including Ophelia, Robin Hood and TS Eliot, Desolation Row is considered to be Dylan’s most literary effort. But the song holds so much more than just that. Desolation Row is one of the saddest songs I have ever listened to, a song about dejection, the final whimpers of a dying dream. Highway 61 was written only a year before Dylan’s infa...

What next for the Conservative Party, then? Robert Halfon, the old Skills Minister was on the BBC three days ago insisting that the party was in need of a 'fundamental rebranding' from the Conservative Party to the Conservative Worker's Party, which should stand for election on the basis of a worker's charter. Of course, this shows just how far Corbyn has managed to swing the debate. Indeed, Theresa May's speeches since the election result have included the vague promise of a 'country that works for everyone', and there's no doubt that the party will be searching for a new campaign, a new message, after the disaster of her most recent campaign. Turnout at the most recent election was 68.7%, the highest since 1997. The Conservatives  are aware of two things: 1) That the wealthy are overrepresented within the actual voting population. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to not vote 2) That Corbyn's strategy is to try and mobili...