Articles

HiLobrow hero: Sun Ra

by Matthew De Abaitua • 28/06/2010

In praise of the otherworldly genius of Sun Ra.

by Matthew De Abaitua • 27/04/2010

My brief appreciation of Russell T Davies, the man who revived Doctor Who

by Matthew De Abaitua • 02/04/2010

Just got this from Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler. It is the first page of my essay in the new issue of The Idler, and it looks beautiful.

by Matthew De Abaitua • 03/02/2010

My brief appreciation of Grant Morrison, based on my interview with him in the early Noughties, an interview I spent mostly halfway up a step-ladder and wrapped in the American flag.

by Matthew De Abaitua • 24/01/2010

I was being fitted for my wedding suit when Raymond called. I told him that it wasn’t a good time to talk, that I had a tailor attending to my inside leg on a hot day. Raymond ignored me and said: “You promised me that, if I ever really needed it, you would move heaven…

by Matthew De Abaitua • 16/01/2010

Continuing the series of excerpts from my essay on the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, due to be published in The Idler in 2010. A prehistoric track stretches across 250 miles from the Dorset coast to the Norfolk Wash. For over five thousand years, people have walked or ridden this trail. The first section we…

by Matthew De Abaitua • 16/01/2010

Few cultural scraps are as redolent of lo-fi VHS genre pleasures than a movie trailer with JOHN CARPENTER’s (born 1948) name above the title and his own analog synth score. Carpenter’s breakthrough was Dark Star (1974), a wiseass repudiation of 2001: A Space Odyssey’s intergalactic awe. Bits of the movie’s code can be discerned in…

by Matthew De Abaitua • 11/01/2010

It’s hard for 21st Century whippersnappers to appreciate the impact Nigel Kneale’s 1950s Quatermass serial had on the nation. Back when there was only one channel, and the programmes all went out live, a writer could step out of Alexandria Palace, look out across the TV aerials rigging the dark London skyline and know that…