Enjoyed writing this profile of South London punk band Sabatta for Bandcamp.
South London band Sabatta don’t like genre tags. They also don’t like rules and they especially hate fitting in. After finding themselves on the receiving end of a few white gig-goers’ limited understanding of punk and who can play it, bassist Debbie Dee coined a catchphrase based on a popular British home decoration brand.
Along roads blocked by construction work and shaking lorries carrying concrete blocks, buildings partly obscured by scaffolding hint at this part of east London’s constant “regeneration.”
I’m in Hackney Wick, what was once an industrial area of manufacturing warehouses, and now seems to usher in new-build flats at every turn.
But look, this is a music site and not one about the history of London, so I’m here to try and explore the ripple effects of this new construction on the musicians and producers who once used to consider this area the epicentre of their creative work.
Taking a new spin on the usual two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, discerning drinkers are searching for non-alcoholic versions of their usual beverages, making for exciting times in the market. Stephanie Phillips finds out more about the rise in demand for realistic non-alcoholic drinks.
Kah-Lo knows her brand identity. The Nigerian dance artist was up into the wee hours of the night before speaking to me, dying a wig her trademark shade of luminous green. It’s a brand that works well, as paired with her rainbow coloured outfits and shimmering round sunglasses, Kah-Lo stands out. As she says herself, “I ain’t no basic bitch”.
Beyond the Kodak full colour image, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t torn it up to her breakthrough hit ‘Rinse & Repeat’, a thundering collaboration with UK house producer Riton, for which she received a Grammy nomination.
Read the full article at gal-dem.
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The goal to ban avoidable plastic waste by 2042 has struck a chord, with retailers and manufacturers looking to innovations in food packaging to drive the industry towards a better future.
As the focus on environmental issues intensifies, there have been renewed calls for solutions to tackle an impending crisis. Statistics compiled by the Co-op from the Recoup UK Household Plastics Collection Survey show that only one third of plastic packaging in consumer products is recycled every year in the UK. Campaigners at Greenpeace have called for action because an estimated 12.7m tonnes of plastic enter the oceans a year, disrupting our fragile ecosystem.
In January 2018, prime minister Theresa May announced a plan to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste in the UK by 2042. Measures laid out in her speech included new funding for plastic innovation and the endorsement of plastic-free supermarket aisles with loose products on offer.
Read the full article at Lombard Content.
The patriarchy weaves a plethora of tall tales to keep its ego in check and the biggest of those is that women can’t stand each other. Even when we were pitted against each other by repugnant, morose men, we didn’t really want to tear each other’s eyes out.
In reality, you couldn’t find a better example of a deep bond than the one that exists in female friendships. Women are there for each other with a shoulder to cry on or a knowing piece of advice when you need it most. Nowhere is this seen more strikingly than in the music industry. We speak to some of the leading figures in the DIY U.K. punk scene to find out how their revolutionary girl gangs are tackling inequality in the scene and putting female friendships to the forefront of their work.
Read the full article at Alternative Press.
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
Did anyone really want to be popular as a teenager? I mean it would have been nice to experience life with perfect hair, teeth and skin, a natural disposition to do everything right, be loved by humans and animals alike and generally seem to have no worries. That might have been nice but, to be honest, it looked so boring when I was a teenager. As a chubby, awkward black girl growing up in the deepest, whitest area of Britain, I knew I was never going to be seen as normal enough to be popular so I never tried.
Read the full article at Black Ballad.
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
It’s a sunny Friday in June, and I’m struggling to make my way across a heaving room in Peckham’s DIY Space for London. I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with a bustling throng of people – a kaleidoscope of melanated shades – and the 20 steps it takes to reach a vantage point from which to see band the playing in the southeast London community centre’s main room feel like a thousand. Reader, I haven’t taken any mishmash of time-altering drugs. I just can’t make it more than a couple of paces at a time without being practically smacked in the face by everyone’s visible joy.
A woman thanks me for putting on the festival; another person says they’ve never felt comfortable in a punk space until now; someone else decides they wanted to see similar festivals happening across the UK. By the time I make it to watch Sacred Paws, guitarist Rachel Aggs is asking for “people of colour to come to the front” – a rejig of Kathleen Hanna’s Bikini Kill-era “girls to the front” demand. This is Decolonise Fest, and it’s the future of UK punk.
Read the full article at Noisey.
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
It’s a tired and outdated myth that women don’t look out for each other. The most negative assumptions of female behaviour would have you believe that we get jealous of our friend’s relationships, talk about them behind their backs or, worse, secretly desire to steal their partner.
The internet truly broke that woman-hating myth into tiny pieces when it was revealed that Rihanna, AKA the woman always living her best life at all times, was dating a new man.
Pictures of a contented Rihanna with her doting piece of arm candy frolicking in a pool on holiday in Spain set Twitter alight.
Read the full article at The Metro.
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
Asked who the greatest storytellers in the world are, I’d be tempted to point in the direction of black women.
Why? Well we’re full of stories, passed down to us by our mothers and our mother’s mothers.
We can convey how we feel with a slight raise of an eyebrow. Our tongues tease around language to find the most delectable word or phrase. If a suitable word doesn’t exist, we’ll make one up, enriching the world around us with a new word to add to the lexicon.
Yes, we’re full of stories, yet we rarely hear black women’s stories in the media – and only very occasionally in the cinema.
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
Lead singer in Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin, Kathleen Hanna was the central figure in riot grrrl, a feminist punk movement born in the US in the early 1990s. She’s also known for inspiring Kurt Cobain to write one of Nirvana’s most famous songs after spray painting “Kurt smells like teen spirit” on his apartment wall.
Travelling through Hanna’s life up to the present day, The Punk Singer shows Hanna struggling with her diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease and the treatment she has to endure. While the film was made with Hanna’s fans in mind, treating them to unseen footage and candid interviews with contemporaries such as Kim Gordon and Lynn Breedlove, there’s an emotional honesty on display here that should prove affecting even to viewers with no understanding of Hanna’s work or influence. Sini Anderson’s film is a superb portrait of a once vibrant music icon looking back at her glory years with wonder.
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
When director Julie Dash created the groundbreaking Daughters of the Dust (1991), a multigenerational tale of black women from the Gullah sea islands struggling to hold on to their culture, little did she know that 25 years later her work would be held up on the world stage thanks to one of the music industry’s most influential artists: Beyoncé.
The singer’s breathtakingly lush visual album, Lemonade (2016), tackled issues of black womanhood, southern traditions, race and female rage. Although Lemonade was the artist’s second visual album, it stands out as the first time the artist seems to have created music to soundtrack a standalone film. Given the subject matter and the detail paid to the cinematography, Dash’s film provided an obvious touchstone to inspire Beyoncé’s vision.
I don’t always get paid for my work, so if you’ve liked my pieces and want me to write more you can donate a couple pennies to keep me going in between paid work.
Stephanie Phillips