For the first post on lofi hip hop before and during COVID-19, please see here. Lofi as a genre, and its antecedents To what extent can lofi hip hop be considered a genre, and to what extent do its producers, curators, and listeners participate in a virtual community? At present, there is a broad understanding … Read more
Introduction In the past, I have joked that I do not trust anyone whose YouTube suggestions do not include lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to. Since the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic, as we (privileged sheltered) have receded to our homes to continue day-to-day life, leisure, and work, we have adopted … Read more
Introduction This blog post examines YouTube comments on ‘WAP’, performed by Cardi B and featuring Megan Thee Stallion. The aim is to demonstrate some of the data collection and thematic analysis methods that inform the Digital Flows research project, so it can be considered a small pilot study of sorts. In what follows, I’ll introduce … Read more
It’s a strange time to have good news to share: I certainly don’t want to vaingloriously distract from the difficult global circumstances, but perhaps it’s nice to hear about exciting new opportunities. With that in mind… I’m delighted to announce that in September I’ll be starting as a Research Fellow at University College Cork (Republic … Read more
I’m giving a prerecorded online presentation for the 15th IASPM UK&I conference. My paper is in Session 1: Multiculturalism and Diaspora., a session which features some excellent scholars. I highly recommend watching Mykaell Riley’s keynote, which details the Bass Culture project, as well as the other individual papers. My paper is titled “This is London … Read more
Today I received the first printing of On Popular Music and Its Unruly Entanglements, published by Palgrave Macmillan at the very tail end of 2019. (Happy New Year!) Edited by Nick Braae and Kai Arne Hansen, the book includes eleven essays that explore the myriad ways popular music is entwined within social, cultural, musical, historical, and media networks. My chapter … Read more
Metal Music Studies issue 5.3 has just been published, featuring my article ‘Breaking down the breakdown in twenty-first-century metal‘. In the article: I introduce the breakdown as a formal structure identified in certain styles of modern metal, especially metalcore. Breakdowns are widely considered to be distinct sections of a song, much like a verse or chorus: … Read more
I’m excited to announce that I’m joining the editorial advisory board of the Intellect journal Metal Music Studies. MMS is the official journal of the International Society of Metal Music Studies, and a wonderful hub of research activity spanning broad areas of metal music and culture. More information can be found on the journal’s official … Read more
Some good news to share: I’ve been offered a contract by Routledge to write a research monograph. The book is provisionally titled How Music Empowers: Listening to Modern Rap and Metal, and it will be part of the Music and Change series. I aim to submit the manuscript around the end of 2019, so given typical publication time you can expect to … Read more
Metal and punk are commonly received as separate domains of musical activity, but there are many crossovers and consistencies between them. This was the primary charge of ‘Doing metal, being punk, doing punk, being metal: hybridity, crossover and difference in punk and metal subcultures’, a two-day conference held at De Montfort University (DMU) Leicester in … Read more