Mark Sinker
Mid-70s: routinely read school copies of Sounds and NME
1981?: in reaction against stupid review of first Raincoats LP, I stop reading Sounds forever.
Late 83: reviews being run in NME; relevant section editors lukewarm at best.(I am not very good yet, but luckily refuse to acknowledge this).
March 85: if The Wire is excited someone young-ish has begun reviewing for them, they hide it well.
1986: regime changes at NME and Wire work out well for me: both now let me write at grown-up length.
Aug 88: part company with NME over right to claim that U2’s Rattle and Hum is perhaps not that great.
Mid-‘91: UK jazz-as-fashion market declining; rather than fold, Wire shifts to ‘all-music’ coverage Nov ‘91: with strong views about how to play this transformation, I join Wire as assistant editor.
Dec 96: begin contributing to Frank Kogan’s Why Music Sucks.
email Mark Sinker at mark@evazev.demon.co.uk
Mark Sinker on the RBP podcast
66 articles
List of articles in the library
Sheila Chandra: Quiet! (Indipop)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 25 August 1984
A STAR IN 384 TAKES ...
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers: Shaw Theatre, London
Live Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 12 April 1986
BLAKEY'S ZERO-degrees activity is so blazingly exciting that it transforms everything round it, even when he's laying out completely. And these Messengers, mob-handed in suits ...
Youssou N'Dour: Voix d'Afrique
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 31 May 1986
2005 note: My very first full-length music piece for NME? I so much wish Youssou had not let himself be kidnapped by P.Gabriel. Marcello Carlin ...
The Fall: Watching The City Hobgoblins: The Fall
Profile and Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, August 1986
Author's 2005 note: In which I find my voice? In between all the "important rock does this" droning. ...
Jean Carne: Town & Country Club, London
Live Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 13 September 1986
O, EXTRA JOY! ...
Felt: Forever Breathes The Lonely Word (Creation)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 11 October 1986
...(ROCK IS dead?) I think we can do better than that. The thing about Felt (which was that they sounded like everyone else) hasn't changed. ...
James Brown: Stay On The Scene Like An Answerin' Machine
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 18 October 1986
MARK SINKER talks to God – alias JAMES BROWN – on the great black telephone. ...
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 7 March 1987
"I pre-empted the Doctor Martens thing, you know." ...
Paul Simon: The Boy in the Boycott
Report by Mark Sinker, Terry Staunton, New Musical Express, 4 April 1987
Is PAUL SIMON "a genius and a loathsome coward"? Does the lack of anti-apartheid statements on Graceland amount to condonation of Botha's regime? Or has ...
Live Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 16 May 1987
COLT 45 ...
Sonic Youth: Sister (Blast First)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 30 May 1987
FLOWERS IN THE DUSTBIN ...
The Lounge Lizards: No Pain For Cakes (Antllles)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 30 May 1987
LURIE SAYS he's got stuff to make Tom Waits weep. And this collection, has a verve and nerve to justify his sly pride. Something to ...
Sonic Youth: Super Sonic Sisterhood
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 20 June 1987
2005 note: Mostly what I read in this piece is what a fight it seemed to get anything said about "rock" in 1987, in the ...
Johnny "Guitar" Watson: Johnny Guitar Watson: Town & Country Club, London
Live Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 27 June 1987
THINK OF Peter Green, trapped in his chosen career archetype, degenerating from world-famous pop-star blues-man to dirty old tramp terrorising Richmond. The bluesman-as-outlaw-loner takes its ...
The Associates, Yello: Yello: Shirley and Company
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 27 June 1987
2005 note: Easily my favourite NME piece. Kudos also to the sub who chose the original caption: "Helvetica Bold" ...
AR Kane: A Steak Knife In Your Ear
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 22 August 1987
2005 note: NME had become a prisoner of its late 70s success legitimising punk: terrified of being caught in the lee of whatever the "next ...
The Bhundu Boys: Hip Hip Harare
Profile and Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 10 October 1987
The small man with the enormous moustache who examines passengers' bags for terrorist devices at the Air Ethiopia check-in desk has a problem. Every time ...
Profile and Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 14 November 1987
SONGS HAVE become fragile. The things that held them together – the value of the individual voice, the neat edges of recorded product – are ...
Ronald Shannon Jackson, Last Exit: Ronald Shannon Jackson: A Jackson In Your House
Profile and Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, January 1988
Lone-star sticksman Ronald Shannon Jackson — the percussive power behind Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Power Tools and Last Exit — plays rough with ...
The Fall, Madness, The Smiths: England: Look Back In Anguish
Essay by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 2 January 1988
"Oh, grassy dale and lowland scene/Come see, come hear the English Scheme!" (The Fall)"You might sleep, but you will never dream/Oh, Manchester! So much to ...
Tony Terry: Forever Yours (Epic LP/cassette)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 2 January 1988
WONDER FULL ...
Pussy Galore: Total Hot Babe-dom
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 30 January 1988
"LAST NIGHT we were onstage, and it was like people were screaming and stuff, thrashing around – I don't know, it's like my initial reaction ...
Pere Ubu: The Modern Dance (Fontana)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 13 February 1988
IF PUNK was an ugly kid's crazed revenge on old age, an obliterating mayhem, there were other ways the clogging and the arrested adolescence of ...
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, March 1988
PIXIES QUOTE The Fall (a mangled snatch of 'Stephen Song' in 'I'm Amazed'), so we can: "They pass my home at night/oh they are NOT ...
Jean Carne: You're A Part Of Me (RCA LP/cassette/CD)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 5 March 1988
IT'S A SECRET inland sea, this late-nite soul: and Jean Carne's voice is an inlet in that sea, away from the wrong of the world. ...
Butthole Surfers: Riding The Shock Wave
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 16 April 1988
IN TEXAS, even daylight isn't ordinary. You can stay indoors and sleep, hide from the noon-time sun that way, but the overlit world outside is ...
Living Colour: Black Rock Coalition: Living Colour’s Vernon Reid
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 23 April 1988
2005 NOTE: This piece is a mess, though the underlying concept was good, and besides, the whole paper was a mess at this stage. I ...
Teena Marie: Naked To The World (Epic LP/Cassette/CD)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 30 April 1988
THE WILD white girl of Motown (rtd.) links up with Rick James again, and reminds us of a whole slew of things we were forgetting ...
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 30 April 1988
WHIPPED CREAM ON A BARBED WIRE PIE ...
Soul Asylum: The Thin White Nose-Candy Line
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 28 May 1988
2005 note: I don’t think I ever played one of their records ONCE in all the years since I interviewed them (haha a "sensible Clash" ...
James Brown: I'm Real (Polydor)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 11 June 1988
HE ISN'T, of course. He's Mr James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, the Funky President, the Original Disco Man. He's a numbing backbeat tightened to ...
Report and Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 10 September 1988
2005 note: Collapse of post-comm Balkans into internecine war hinted at, kinda. Well, only if you read WAY between the lines I think. Another submerged ...
Interview by Mark Sinker, Rock's Backpages Audio, October 1988
The erstwhile Neville O'Riley Livingston ruminates on the Wailers' legacy; on returning to England after 16 years; on the poor state of reggae today and the serious side of the Jamaican genre; on Ziggy Marley as a successor to his father Bob; on political violence in Jamaica and Peter Tosh's untimely death; on the rise of African reggae and his new album Liberation.
File format: mp3; file size: 37.3mb, interview length: 38' 49" sound quality: *** (background noise)
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 8 October 1988
"Bunny had fashioned a guitar out of a large sardine can with a bamboo stalk and electric wires. Another friend, Peter MacIntosh, obtained a real ...
Luther Vandross: Any Love (Epic LP/Cassette/CD)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 8 October 1988
NO LOVE MACHINE ...
Billy Bragg's Brave New England
Report and Interview by Mark Sinker, The Observer, 27 November 1988
2005 comment: Neil Spencer didn’t rate me or want to use me, according to Jon Savage – who told him (Sav told me) not to ...
Interview by Mark Sinker, Rock's Backpages Audio, Fall 1988
La Galás talks about the impact of the AIDS crisis on her work; her latest album You Must Be Certain Of The Devil; the motivation for her work; how it informs the format of her current show; her concern for mortality. She also talks about her voice, on training it to become "the perfect machine"; her admiration for Gore Vidal; her fear of plane crashes; English free improvisers like Derek Bailey and Evan Parker; on San Diego and Berlin, and a whole lot more.
File format: mp3; file size: 130.8mb, interview length: 2h 16' 15" sound quality: *** (background noise)
Diamanda Galás: The Demon Diva
Interview by Mark Sinker, Melody Maker, 7 January 1989
As the AIDS epidemic spreads and all pop can do is turn a blind eye, Diamanda Galas is the only singer left to stand and ...
Joyce Sims: All About Love (Sleeping Bag 823 1291)
Review by Mark Sinker, The Observer, 10 September 1989
DISCO'S FUTURIST variants Chicago House and Detroit Techno are machine-age musics that prefer motion to emotion, leaving mainstream R&B seeming old-form and narrow — only ...
N.W.A: NWA: Straight Outta Compton (4th & Broadway BRLP 534)
Review by Mark Sinker, The Observer, 10 September 1989
NWA'S DEBUT, with a high count of F-words, savaging of bad policing, and ambivalent depictions of LA street drug-dealers, teen-gang wars and urban ruin, has ...
Review by Mark Sinker, The Wire, November 1989
THERE'S PREJUDICE and there's prejudice, but answer me this — what kind of a narrow soundworld do you have to be living in for the ...
Melvin Gibbs, Power Tools, Sonny Sharrock: Sonny Sharrock & Melvin Gibbs: New York Is Now
Profile and Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, March 1990
Guitar and bass tune up for the next wave of sonic assault, from Blind Willie's blues to M-BASE and beyond. Our man behind the amps ...
The Shamen: No Right To Party: Acid House
Report by Mark Sinker, New Statesman, 14 April 1990
2005 note: Unforgivable as actual real journalism – I made no effort to represent the anti-drug position – this still works as a snapshot of ...
Sonic Youth: Underground Rhapsody: Sonic Youth
Profile and Interview by Mark Sinker, City Limits, 30 August 1990
I GET BACK to Bay Ridge just after midnight, to find the guys in the house watching Sonic Youth on Night Music in the room ...
Interview by Mark Sinker, City Limits, 15 November 1990
THEIR FIRST champions over here told Galaxie 500 that the fabulous clammy whine of their music (electric, but only just) was the sound of the ...
Psychic TV: In Thee Oblique Midwinter
Interview by Mark Sinker, City Limits, 20 December 1990
JUST LIKE a dilemma, present-day Paganism has two horns: the old lore and its new form. Except it isn't always entirely clear whether those horns ...
Rain Tree Crow: Rain Tree Crow
Review by Mark Sinker, Select, May 1991
RAIN TREE CROW may be a one-off reformation of Japan, but they wouldn't want to be trapped by any of the preconceptions in that. The ...
Review by Mark Sinker, The Wire, September 1991
OH. EVERYTHING hasn't quite changed, after all. Frith's excellent retrospective last year, Step Across The Border, seemed to demonstrate how much more New York and ...
Black Flag: SST's Greg Ginn (1991)
Interview by Mark Sinker, Rock's Backpages Audio, Spring 1991
The hardcore label boss talks about setting up SST in order to release Black Flag's recordings; about learning how to run a label and the importance of independent distribution; the perception of SST and its subsidiary labels New Alliance and Cruise; SST's audience(s), the reactionary fanzine scene, and the challenge of selling "out-there" non-rock music.
File format: mp3; file size: 28.4mb, interview length: 29' 38" sound quality: ***
Public Enemy, Sun Ra: Loving The Alien In Advance Of The Landing
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, February 1992
"IN THE MEANTIME," he said, speaking relentlessly but mesmerically softly, as gurus will, "I finally went to Chicago. I determined not to be a musician ...
BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire: The BBC Radiophonic Workshop
Profile and Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, February 1992
SIX COMPOSERS, too shy to make claims for themselves, go to make it up. But Brian Hodgson, who's worked with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop since ...
Elvis Costello: Can I Be Frank…?
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, September 1992
2005 note: The original manuscript began and ended with some kind of lyrical gibberish swansong for the song as a music-form (in the age of ...
Elvis Presley: Elvis - The 50s
Review by Mark Sinker, The Wire, September 1992
PERHAPS THE most unexpected thing about RCA/BMG's Presley-project is how unexpected so much of it is. ...
Brian Eno: Taking Modern Culture By Strategy: Brian Eno
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, October 1992
2005 note: It’s not a sensible criticism of a conjuror that his craft does not involve actual real magical powers. Eno is fascinated by the ...
Brian Eno, Roxy Music: Brian Eno (1992)
Interview by Mark Sinker, Rock's Backpages Audio, Fall 1992
Pop's intellectual-in-chief on youth and cultural identity; the value of pretence and pretension; useful irony, contingency, and the accident of joining Roxy Music; problems of language; minimalism and the value of the recording studio; what "culture" means; deadlines; contributing to the cultural conversation; the importance of topicality; false impositions of cultural values; reading and hearing; criticism and empathy.
File format: mp3; file size: 86.9mb, interview length: 1h 30' 28" sound quality: ***
Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, October 1993
2005 note: Much of the cultural rhetoric surrounding funk is just teacher’s-pet attempts to plod-cram the music back into the squarest box available – I ...
Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, October 1994
Every month we play a musician a series of records which they're asked to identify and comment on — with no prior knowledge of what ...
Overview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, September 1995
The story of the first electronic instruments is as twisted and circuitous as their primitive, labyrinthine wiring. Mark Sinker goes in search of these often ...
David Bowie, Lou Reed, Neil Young, Frank Zappa: Contract Breakers
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, June 1996
2005 note: Savage Pencil did a nice illustration for this: John and Yoko hilariously naked, among other excellent things. It also elicited an angry postcard ...
Book Review by Mark Sinker, The Wire, February 1999
OF THE alliance at the heart of the original Velvet Underground, John Cale writes: "We hated everybody and everything. Other musicians were viewed as competition. ...
Pauline Oliveros: No Mo (Pogus)
Review by Mark Sinker, The Wire, August 2001
MADE AT Mills Tape Music Centre in California and the University of Toronto, Pauline Oliveros's 1965–67 electronic work includes I-V Of lV, Bye Bye Butterfly, ...
Lester Bangs: Loud Bangs and Bestial Noises
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, September 2001
In the 20 years since Lester Bangs wrote his 'Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise', the multi-mediated world has largely assimilated the hostile sounds he espoused. ...
hear'say: It’s All Just hear’say
Comment by Mark Sinker, Freaky Trigger, February 2002
HE SAID TRUST ME I’LL MAKE YOU A STAR SO I BIT MY TONGUE UNTIL HE’D FINISHED... ...
The Doubts Aired As Gags: Three Decades of Cross-Cultural Utopianism in UK Music-Writing
Book Excerpt by Mark Sinker, Strange Attractor Press, January 2019
Extract from Mark Sinker's introduction to A HIDDEN LANDSCAPE ONCE A WEEK: The Unruly Curiosity of the UK Music Press in the 1960s-80s, in the words ...
Streaming: The Inessential Collection
Essay by Mark Sinker, The Wire, January 2020
The explosion of music streaming platforms in the 2010s makes Mark Sinker yearn to get back off the grid ...
Covid has pushed pop culture into nostalgia. It's time for something new
Comment by Mark Sinker, The Observer, 10 January 2021
Hopefully this crisis marks the high tide of the tendency endlessly to remake, remodel and recycle the past ...
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