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Ngaire Ruth

Ngaire is a pseudonym for Ngaire Ruth
Ngaire Ruth

Ngaire Ruth has been a pioneer of the ‘unconventionals’ for other thirty years, in both print and online music journalism; writing with a feminist agenda. She started out in the underground cultural magazine Buzz, a rag that launched an award-winning editor, a successful rock manager, and a Nirvana’s press officer, as well as writers and photographers who gravitated towards the weekly music press. Ngaire worked at Melody Maker for over a decade as a fulltime weekly writer of reviews, interviews, and columns such as Studio Eye and Musicians’ Diary (1989-2000), firstly as NGAIRE, later NGAIRE RUTH. She conducted Blur's first interview in the Maker's Sidelines section and wrote P.J. Harvey's first live review. During the 90s she wrote features for various freelance issues as well as the Melody Maker, including Exit and Siren, in which she did the first P. J. Harvey in-depth interview, prior to her major signing, in response to her live review, and offered enlightening one to one conversations in interviews with Bjork, then of Sugarcubes with her solo career on the horizon, and John Lydon. She was the assistant editor for the independent magazine, Lime Lizard and a regular host of the regional television indie programme, Transmission.

Post-digital Ngaire moved into online journalism as a section editor for the online music magazine thegirlsare. She has also promoted events under the moniker Sketchy Sessions and is now a mentor for the music collective Loud Women, as well as other projects – podcast, book writing, author for the feminist archive, The F Word and occasionally, writing for Louder Than War and Electronic Sound. She is an academic and educator, and an off-page poet/performer, lecturing in her specialist fields at the Academy of Contemporary Arts, and leading the music journalism module.

photo: WUMNI

11 articles

List of articles in the library

By date | By artist | Most recently added

Test Dept.: Test Department: Subterrania, London

Live Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 5 January 1991

A GUY strolls in playing bagpipes over the hymn 'Jerusalem'. Two more people arrive and pick up huge bass drums, the type you'd expect to ...

The God Machine, The Rockingbirds, Silverfish, Sun Carriage, Th' Faith Healers, Therapy?: They Came, They Saw, They Camdened!

Report and Interview by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 6 April 1991

While all the major record company A&R men are scouring the country oop North for the next Happy Mondays, a revolution was spawned in Camden, ...

PJ Harvey: White Horse, Hampstead, London

Live Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 7 September 1991

THIS TIME next year you're going to wonder how you lived without PJ Harvey. It sounds clichéd, I know, but even the toughest Maker boys ...

Smashing Pumpkins: Underworld, London

Live Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 21 September 1991

AMERICAN bands are popular because they come over here and kick serious ass. Smashing Pumpkins are from Chicago and they prove more than our expectations ...

Steve Beresford, Jimmy Carl Black, Eugene Chadbourne, Lol Coxhill: Eugene Chadbourne and Jimmy Carl Black: The Bass Clef, London

Live Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 10 July 1993

MY TASK is to review two absolutely legendary figures (growing to four by the evening's end) who have laughed in the face of mainstream music ...

Blood Sausage, Skinned Teen: Skinned Teen, Blood Sausage: The Dome, London

Live Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 17 July 1993

NEW KIDS IN TOWN ...

Babes In Toyland: Forum, London

Live Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 2 October 1993

TOYS R U.S. ...

Bark Psychosis, The Levellers, Loop Guru, My Bloody Valentine, Transglobal Underground: Your Culture Under Siege: Criminal Injustice

Report and Interview by Carl Loben, Simon Reynolds, Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 30 April 1994

For decades, squatting, free festivals and illegal parties have played a vital role in alternative pop culture. The Criminal Justice Bill — which has been ...

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: Powerhaus, London

Live Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 13 August 1994

PECULIAR. GORKY'S are from Wales, and they sing in a mixture of Welsh and occasionally English. Apparently, the Welsh language often skips out vowels and ...

Kelli Hand: On A Journey (K7 10tks/67 mins)

Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 3 February 1996

KELLI HAND is a very cool woman from Detroit, home of a particular electronic techno inspiration, which has, in the past, been credited as the ...

Talvin Singh: The Blue Note, London

Live Review by Ngaire Ruth, Melody Maker, 17 May 1997

HOW ARE all the people in this queue going to get into a place that small? ...

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