Nick - ProfilesArchive

About Me

I'm a writer, at least that's what I tell myself. I have also returned to full-time education for the 18th year in a row. When I'm not a writer or a student, I 'work' in a cinema, for the free films perk.

You can read examples of my journalistic endeavours at:

www.skinnymag.co.uk
www.stv.tv (the same stuff really)
www.uk-fusion.com
www.spikemagazine.com

most of it goes in the blog above anyway... a

My Interests

journalism, fitbawism, filmism, musicism

Music:

Here's a random sample:

RADIOHEAD/ Spiritualized/ DJ SHADOW/ The Flaming Lips/ Kraftwerk/ Autechre/ Maximo Park/ DAVID BOWIE/ Squarepusher/ The Smiths/ Sigur Ros/ BOARDS OF CANADA/ Underworld/ The Clash/ Yeah Yeah Yeahs/ Broken Social Scene/ Captain BEEFHEART/Mogwai/ Pixies/ Y'All is Fantasy Island/ Joseph Arthur/ The White Stripes/ The Charlatans/ Air/ Guillemots/ Gang of Four/ Aphex Twin/ THE WHO/ Four Tet/ Jackson and his Computer Band/ Joy Division/ Longcut/ Queens of the Stone Age/Bob Dylan/ old motown or soul collections/ The Beta Band/ Beck/ The Mars Volta/ Daft Punk/ The Beach Boys (Brian Wilson songs only)/ Lou Reed/ VELVET UNDERGROUND/ The Ramones/ The Needles/ James Holden/ Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds/Talvin Singh/ Neil Young/ The Strokes/ Interpol/ PJ Harvey/ White Rose Movement/ ELLIOT SMITH/ Jeff Buckley/ New Order/ My Bloody Valentine/ Kevin Shields/ A Tribe Called Quest/ De La Soul/ Beastie Boys/ TALKING HEADS/ The Victorian English Gentlemens Club/Sergei Prokofiev/ And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead.../ Bjork/ Bloc Party/ Herbie Hancock/ Miles Davis/ John Coltrane/ Iggy Pop & The Stooges/ Mark Ronson/ LEFTFIELD/ Nick Drake/ Pink Floyd/ Prefuse 73/ Sly & the Family Stone/ James Brown/ Smashing Pumpkins/ Television/ Arcade Fire/ THE KNIFE/ The Rapture/ Tom Waits/ Yo La Tengo/ BRMC/ Dead Prez/ Death in Vegas/ Head Like a Kite/ James Yorkston/ Jimi Hendrix/ Marvin Gaye/ New Order/ Robin Guthrie/ Roots Manuva/ Roxy Music/ Silvermash/ Sly & the Family Stone/ Tapes 'n Tapes/ ARCADE FIRE/ Sex Pistols/ The Streets/ The Roots and MANY more!

Movies:

(Almost) Anything by:
Scorsese/ Kubrick/ Coen brothers/ Coppola/ Polanski/ Herzog/ Peckinpah/ Ridley Scott/ David Fincher/ Mattieu Kassovitz/ Spike Lee/ Brian DePalma/ Michael Haneke
Recent favourites:
The Departed/ Zidane; Un Portrait du XXI Siecle/ Children of Men/ Little Miss Sunshine/Neo Ned/ Miami Vice/ Superman Returns/ 36 Quai des Orfevres/Down in the Valley/ Once in a Lifetime/ Hidden (Caché)/ Brick/ The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada/ Inside Man/ Tsotsi/ Thumbsucker/ Good Night, and Good Luck/ Syriana/ Walk the Line/ 21 Grams/ Broken Flowers/ Wolf Creek/ Jarhead/ The Beat That My Heart Skipped/ Brokeback Mountain
All-time favourites:
Mean Streets/ Fargo/ La Haine/ Goodfellas/ A Clockwork Orange/ Groundhog Day/ On the Waterfront/ Apocalypse Now/ The Godfather I and II/ Chinatown/ Easy Rider/ The Last Picture Show/ The Graduate/ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid/ Serpico/ Scarface/ Carlito's Way/ Raging Bull/ Zatoichi/ Treasure of the Sierra Madre/ The Shining/ L'appartement/ The Big Lebowski/ Blood Simple/ Lost in Translation/ The Sting/ The Usual Suspects/ Trainspotting/ Casino/ Shallow Grave/ Paris, Texas/ Donnie Darko/ Bonnie and Clyde/ 2001/ Full Metal Jacket/ Deliverance/ Southern Comfort/ Reservoir Dogs/ Pulp Fiction/ The Mission/ Midnight Cowboy/ From Hell/ Blow/ Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas/ The Thing/ Alien/ One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest/ Frantic/ Ed Wood/ Cinema Paradiso/ Roma/ Traffic/ Buffalo Soldiers/ Papillon/ The King of Comedy/ Seven/ Fight Club/ The Royal Tenenbaums/ The French Connection I & II/ The Wild Bunch/ Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia/ Dr Strangelove/ My Best Fiend/ Short Cuts/ Dog Day Afternoon/ The Elephant Man/ Y Tu Mama Tambien/ American Beauty/ This is Spinal Tap/ Annie Hall/ Manhattan Murder Mystery/ M*A*S*H/ On the Waterfront/ Saturday Night and Sunday Morning/ Casablanca/ Citizen Kane/ The Third Man/ Sunset Boulevard/ Dr Strangelove/ High Fidelity/ Fellini's 8 1/2/ Citizen Kane/ Barton Fink/ Aguirre; The Wrath of God/ The Passenger/ Busting/ Night Moves/ If.../ Vertigo/ Seven Samurai/ Infernal Affairs/ Napoleon Dynamite/ Oldboy and MANY more!

Television:

95% of TV is terrible, if not annoying. In the other 5% there is The Sopranos, The Simpsons, anything by Armando Ianucci or Chris Morris, The Office, Weir's Way and Shameless.

Books:

Some books I like:
Slaughterhouse Five
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
American Psycho
You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free (Kelman)
The Journalist's Handbook
A Clockwork Orange
Sozaboy (Ken Saro-Wiwa)
Revolution in the Head: the Beatles Records and the Sixties
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Ulysses
Lanark
Trainspotting
any Gary Larson cartoon books
Psychoraag (Suhayl Saadi)
The Outsider
Flaubert's Parrot (Julian Barnes)
Heart of Darkness
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Down and Out in Paris and London
Halliwell's Top 1000 Films
Tiger Pig (my fav book when I was 3)
Tom Weir's Scotland
Confessions of a Justified Sinner
A Disaffection (Kelman)
How Late it Was, How Late (Kelman)
The Busconductor Hines (Kelman)
Scottish Football Yearbook Season 94-95
Bartleby, and other stories (Melville)
Lonely Planet France
The Onion Vol 15
Post Office (Bukowski)
The Road to Los Angeles (John Fante)

Heroes:

Family, friends, all the good good people. Tom Weir RIP.

My Blog

ALBUM REVIEW - Venetian Snares, 'Hospitality'

Venetian Snares - Hospitality Falling into the more glitch-driven, Aphex-influenced camp of IDM, Canadian Aaron Funk, aka Venetian Snares, is the most notable foreign exponent of this predominantly ...
Posted by Nick on Wed, 01 Nov 2006 04:42:00 PST

INTERVIEW - Head Like a Kite

Head Like A Kite Music, Movies and Memories The movie soundtrack is often downgraded in importance when compared to the more typical album format, on the grounds that it's partly functional rather...
Posted by Nick on Sun, 29 Oct 2006 01:41:00 PST

INTERVIEW - Y'All is Fantasy Island

Y'All is Fantasy Island - Inspired By Cabin Fever "My mum listened to the album and said, 'It really is miserable stuff'" Falkirk trio Y'All is Fantasy Island first attracted attention this summer w...
Posted by Nick on Sun, 29 Oct 2006 01:36:00 PST

Recent Reviews

Here is a bumper package (I'm not an ad-exec, honestly) of my recent ramblings, as published by the venerable Skinny Magazine. I could have posted them separately, and sorted out the MySpace punc...
Posted by Nick on Tue, 24 Oct 2006 01:17:00 PST

Vive l'Ecosse!

Easy! Easy! Easy! That's what we were chanting after Scotland went 1-0 up against possibly the 2nd best fitba team in the world yesterday, and held onto that sliver of a lead until the end. Of course ...
Posted by Nick on Sun, 08 Oct 2006 03:38:00 PST

ALBUM REVIEW - Milburn 'Well Well Well'

* * * They are a young gang of tousle-haired friends, they come from Sheffield, but they are not, repeat not, the Arctic Monkeys. Milburn must be sick of the comparisons with their High Green estate ...
Posted by Nick on Sat, 07 Oct 2006 06:02:00 PST

ALBUM REVIEW - Head Like a Kite, 'Random Portraits of the Home Movie'

* * * * Head Like a Kite - Random Portraits of the Home Movie The brainchild of Seattle resident and Sushirobo guitarist Dave Einmo, Head Like a Kite's debut album takes its inspiration from the...
Posted by Nick on Sat, 07 Oct 2006 05:55:00 PST

ALBUM REVIEW - Sean Lennon 'Friendly Fire'

* * * * Being the son of one of the twentieth century's musical icons is a famously double-edged sword for Sean Lennon. While he hardly has to say a word to generate buzz around his work, his music w...
Posted by Nick on Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:02:00 PST

FILM REVIEW - Children of Men

Alfonso Cuaron / Italy-Romania-UK-Spain / 2006 / 15 Starring: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Claire-Hope Ashitey * * * * Children of Men ope...
Posted by Nick on Tue, 26 Sep 2006 05:59:00 PST

INTERVIEW - Victorian English Gentlemens Club

"Our first intention is to be poppy, and our second intention is to avoid being cheesy." To be honest, such humble intentions hardly begin to explain the deranged brilliance of The Victorian English ...
Posted by Nick on Sun, 17 Sep 2006 06:00:00 PST