Enya

Inside the void there is just paralysis. I need help from the outside. I need the right atmosphere to regroup. I need better lighting to heal myself. I need the right soundtrack.

I was the victim of that empty space in which anything and everything can happen.

A choice against something has power, it has resistance.

My taste devolved from an involuntary physical reaction to a wilful but desperate act of self-definition.

Is it actually possible for all critics to happen to like the same ten records? Shouldn’t these lists be titled ‘Consensus Choices for Coolest Albums’?

When I first saw Jarvis Cocker perform, I felt as if I was watching an awkward 12-year old boy dance in front of the mirror using a hairbrush as a fake microphone. A nerd’s revenge fantasy come true! Every musician I know is still channelling epiphanies from this musical Garden of Eden of their childhood, before they bit into the apple of self-awareness

Vibrato is a bit like my formerly beloved jazz fusion: technically very difficult to learn but even more difficult to listen to

It was the beginning of a long and painful goodbye to my worship of show-offs. Why had I spent so much time venerating these fast-fingered con artists? Looking back, I see them for the fakers and charlatans they were.

I was one of those fakers. I’d been (mis)using music to impress people, instead of connecting with them

My friend Mocky calls Frank Sinatra the first techno artist, because he used the microphone to place his voice right against the ear of the listener, whispering sweet nothings in a kind of proto-ASMR.

A singer’s voice has to be believable, even though singing itself is performative