An interactive album cover! I loved the fact that this album was so illustrative, explorable and had the ability to interact with it. The album marked a shift for the band from rock to a more folky feel to it. It also includes one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs, “Since I’ve Been Loving You.” The live performance of that from The Song Remains The Same at Madison Square Garden is fantastic with Jimmy Page on top form with one of the best blues guitar performances I’ve ever heard. Picked up my own copy in Clocktower Records, Bridport, last year.

Steve Hillage
Fish Rising (1975)

A rather striking album cover that definitely catches the eye. It screams psychedelia and when “Solar Musick Suite” kicks in on side one it settles you down, picks you up and throws you about for 16+ minutes of the most intricate composition of music around. It feels like an album in itself and is comprised of four parts. It’s genius. The rest of the album gets a bit weird and feels more akin to his previous work with Gong. But that one song is something I’ll never get tired of listening to.

Pink Floyd
Animals (1977)

This is such an iconic image. Living in Northern Ireland I had no knowledge of Battersea Power Station, but the name, the striking image of it against the skyline, with the evening sun casting shadows, made it even more dramatic. The four towers, coughing smog into the sky and this small but giant pig floating between them. It’s equally dystopian and surreal, perfectly matching the album’s concept that focused on the social-political conditions of mid-1970s Britain. For me, it features some of the best performances of all their albums from Gilmour and Wright.

Fun fact: the pig broke free on the second day of the shoot and was blown over to Heathrow, resulting in panic and cancelled flights.

Talking Heads
Stop Making Sense (1984)

With A24’s recent release of the live performance of this album—is there anything they do that isn’t a must-see?—it’s the perfect time to bring this back from the vaults. Without a doubt, one of the best live-performance films ever made. It’s fantastic. Beautifully shot, lit, choreographed. It starts and builds and ebbs and flows like nothing I’ve seen. I went to see it recently at the Hackney Picturehouse and it blew me away. Slippery People has one of the best backing vocal performances of any song I’ve heard. My Dad played this a lot. No wonder. Back to the cover! Pretty straightforward, featuring the iconic suit from the performance.

Orbital
III (1991)

Not strictly an album, not even a song I listen to a lot, but it represents a huge change in my life and Northern Ireland. Up until 1989, the majority of the music I listened to was from the past. Hendrix, Floyd, The Doors. But in 1990 that all changed. I left school at 16 and found myself involved in a world of new music via a growing rave scene. At that time Protestants and Catholics were still divided. It was a brutal time of tit-for-tat killings. But if you had the right intel you could drive out to the middle of nowhere, follow a rough track or stumble through a forest, and find a rave.

It’s widely accepted that the influx of ecstasy at that time played a part in breaking down barriers between young people who attended the raves and clubs in Northern Ireland.

Orbital were one of the few bands that agreed to come and play in Belfast at the time. Many refused. They had such a good time and were given a hero’s welcome and the trip left such an impression on them they named a track they had been working on at the time after the city.

Portishead
Dummy (1994)

One of those occasions where the album cover looks like the record sounds. Mysterious, timeless, slightly sinister and eerily beautiful. This album still sounds fresh today. A blend of hip-hop beats, jazz guitars and velvety keyboards. It’s comfortably uncomfortable.

In 1995, I took the National Express coach from my flat in Liverpool to London, then onto Bristol and hitched to my first-ever music festival, Glastonbury. Climbed over the fence and spent the next five days listening to Oasis, Prodigy, The Cure, Orbital and much more. Despite the caliber of the main stage acts the performance that went down in Glastonbury history was local outfit Portishead playing in the acoustic tent.

The story goes they were offered the pick of the stages after winning the Mercury Music Prize that year but opted for the low-key acoustic tent. The performance was anything but. “It crackled with electricity” Paul Stokes wrote in the NME and that’s the perfect way to sum it up. It was heaving, with thousands stuck outside. I was on my own, but felt right at home amongst a crowd that felt they were seeing something truly unique. The best live music experience of my life to this day.

DJ Shadow
Endtroducing (1996)

The Jimmy Page/Hendrix of the sampler. Huge claim yet easy to understand why. Endtroducing was a breath of fresh air in the trip-hop world and released on the pioneering Mo’ Wax label. A cinematic masterpiece that blends found sounds from records from every era and genre. The LP cover, shot by B+, an Irish-born, L.A.-based filmmaker and photographer, features a few of DJ Shadow’s mates in Rare Records in Sacramento and in the same way an album cover could feature musicians, the vast array of records nods to the source and inspiration behind the album, vinyl.

Jurassic 5
Jurassic 5 (1998)

The album cover features the logo of the band and was designed by Chali 2na, a graffiti artist and one of the four MCs in the band with music coming from Cut Chemist and DJ Numark. I first heard this on cassette on my old pal’s car stereo on the way to a gig we were DJing at in Belfast. It was like nothing I’d heard before. It had funk loops that made it impossible to not nod your head and vocal performances that played off each other and combined for infectious choruses that made you happy. This was released amidst the boom of gangster rap and offered a nostalgic funk-filled return to hip-hop’s roots.

UNKLE
Psyence Fiction (1998)

A second outing for DJ Shadow, drafted in to work on the UNKLE album and another mention for Mo’ Wax. Featuring the iconic artwork of Futura, an American street art legend and a pioneering graffiti artist, the gatefold edition is still a stand-out release. The gatefold opens up to reveal little booklets fixed inside that feature different artwork by Futura featuring his signature alien Pointmen, who look like they have landed on Earth from the world the music came from. It has all the Shadow hallmarks of samples, cuts and that cinematic feel but features vocal performances from the likes of Mike D, Richard Ashcroft and Thom Yorke.

Divine Styler
Def Mask (2014)

Divine Styler doesn’t make many albums, but when they come around they are worth the wait. Def Mask, released on Gamma Proforma in 2014, followed the label’s consistent approach of matching underground music and art. This time out Will Barras takes the reins with a dystopian-themed limited edition gatefold. Barras’ work is always full of intrigue. He builds worlds full of depth, drama and characters that draw you in. You can’t help but wonder what is going on in each scene. They are static moments, yet full of movement, revealing a moment from stories that you yearn to dive into. In this case, the artwork perfectly reflects the science fiction laden vocals and production.

Super Mario Bros has grossed over $1.2 billion at the global box office so far. 

There are many reasons for the success of the movie, few of which I will be addressing here. But its popularity shows that the long purported death of cinema may be far off yet. 

We have seen countless images of empty theater seats over the last decade. Headlines have declared movie palaces dead, slain by streaming services. But I believe we are seeing not the end of an era, but rather a change of context.

The quality of writing and production in television has shown generational improvement, with the likes of Mad Men, Succession and Breaking Bad transcending traditional forms of network storytelling. But watching TV and streaming movies is still a relatively disposable experience. 

Conversely, sharing time and space with folks who have all chosen to leave their homes and buy a ticket to the same movie transports us to another realm. Such shared experience becomes, in the words of Quentin Tarantino, an “indelible snapshot” in the memory.

There’s been much talk of Top Gun: Maverick and Tom Cruise almost single-handedly saving cinema in 2022. Cinemark CEO Sean Gamble and Atlas Cinemas vice president Gabriel Saluan both credited the surprise smash hit with luring back audiences en masse. However, word-of-mouth sensations like Oscar-winning Everything, Everywhere All at Once also elevated interest and boosted diversity.

Though worlds apart in themes and tone, these films created unifying, shared emotive experiences for live audiences. They felt especially potent in a post-lockdown world.

Each took different approaches to put butts in seats. For Maverick, Paramount harnessed large-scale traditional advertising, while A24 leveraged cultural moments and grassroots buzz for Everything, Everywhere. Maverick also leaned into TikTok, with #TopGunMaverick racking up 3.6 billion views, suggesting that the platform could play a big role in driving future box-office bonanzas.

TikTok becomes even more of a linchpin through its recent collaboration with Screenvision. This move aims to capitalize on the high level of immersion cinema offers to brands. We’re talking about theater audiences paying 75 percent active attention to ads, plus 100 percent viewability—numbers considerably higher than TV and digital platforms

“Now more than ever, our Upfront presents the opportunity to emphasize cinema’s empathic comeback alongside the year’s spectacular slate of upcoming films,” says Screenvision CRO Christine Martino.

Historically the two core ingredients of going to the movies have been: access to exclusive content and the cinema experience itself. Streaming’s ubiquity has made the former more challenging, so the latter will continue to gain traction, helping to ensure that the silver screen survives.

With big releases like Barbie, Oppenheimer, The Flash and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning in the pipeline, it’s safe to say that people will be getting off their sofas to munch popcorn in big dark rooms a while longer.

Sure, you could turn off the lights in your living room and nibble on a snack. But In the words of filmmaker and activist Michael Moore: “The movie theater is never going away. If that was the case why are there still restaurants? People still have kitchens at home.”

Today’s world is all about numbers, numbers and more numbers.

As data comes to rule our perception and shape our values, it increasingly fragments the beauty that lies in the intangible, the unquantifiable, the essence that makes us human. Looking through the lens of soccer, music and film, we can see the full effects.

In soccer, the demands of today’s game have replaced artists with athletes. The result? A game where fewer players make moves on their own. Systems have taken over, dictating a hyper-efficient efficient style of play, with  more control in the hands of managers.

There are benefits to this, as competition increases and the gap between bigger and smaller teams begins to narrow. The Premier League and recent FIFA World Cup serve as examples. But is it worth the sacrifice? While systems winnow out mediocre players, elite performers are are now few and far between.

You see fans judging players on Twitter based on their scoring stats. But this ultimately ignores the greats whose contributions can’t be so easily quantified, players who are artists on the pitch. Take Andrés Iniesta, arguably a Mount Rushmore contender for midfielders and a big contributor to Barcelona and Spain’s most successful era. Iniesta won’t go down as one of the greatest scorers, but few players can match his overall impact.

Fakest midfielder ever pic.twitter.com/LkMFXM5gqG

— TS??? (@TrujistaSancho) March 8, 2023

Teams are being trained to play within a system, shrinking the window for up-and-comers to express their imagination and perform outside the box. Cesc Fabregas, one of the greats, recently pointed out, “All the coaches now talk about the pattern of play. I’m not against it at all… But special talent is dying because of it. From a very young age, boys are being told what to do. Before there were positions but you could move more. These things are being lost.”

The same basic principle applies to music, an industry dominated by streams and sales, leading to less space for niche artists. Numbers don’t reflect quality, but they dictate label rosters and playlists. The result? An era of projects that have less replay value. No wonder the indie scene is seeing a resurgence. We’ve also seen artists take risks in order to evolve their sound, as with Lil Yachty’s latest album “Let’s Start Here,” where he explores an experimental psych-rock vibe.

New TikTok from Halsey pic.twitter.com/6qNlBGW0qr

— Halsey Updates (@HalseyUpdates) May 22, 2022

Artists are pressured to constantly feed TikTok. Some musicians have spoken against this, with FKA Twigs, Charli XCX and Halsey calling out their labels.

Then there’s the film industry. We live in an era where familiar action formulas receive big budgets as they promise the best box-office. The result? Fewer nuanced, thought-provoking features that encourage deep reflection. This has, however, led to streaming platforms grabbing market share, as independent houses like A24 offer less homogenous fare and spike in popularity. 

So, there’s an upside, with renewed exploration beyond the conventional. In search of something different, consumers look to the global horizon, seeking entertainment and diversion from fresh sources.

Grassroots soccer, youth teams and the women’s game have gained popularity. In music, previously staid listeners groove to Afrobeat, Amapiano and Latin American sounds. As for film, regions like Korea and Spain are enjoying a renaissance. Films like Everything Everywhere All At Once—which might have languished in obscurity a few years back—attract fans and kudos worldwide.

Perhaps In our search for rich entertainment, we’re growing to understand that our horizons shouldn’t have been so narrow in the first place.