Publications

anthologies, books, pamphlets

2019: A Hidden Landscape Once a Week: the Unruly Curiosity of the UK Music Press in the 1960s-80s, in the words of those who were there. An anthology of conversations and essays, memories and commentary from the heyday of British pop music writing. Ed. Mark Sinker. Strange Attractor, 312 ppp, pbk, illustrated, ISBN 1907222634.
2004: if....: a study of the 1968 film by Lindsay Anderson, about a guerilla insurgency at an English public school; BFI Film Classics, 96 pp, pbk, illustrated, ISBN: 1 84457 040 1
2002: ‘The Rise and Sprawl of Horrible Noise’: a history and polemic about the avant-garde music genre known as ‘Noise’, first published as ‘Tangents: Lester Bangs’ in The Wire #211, September 2001, republished in substantially revised and expanded form on the web (currently unavailable during reorganisation of website)

essays in collections

due in 2024: ‘A Long Loop through a Brief Time: What Terry Riley’s Tape Works Came from, and Where They Took Us’, collected in Ecstatic Aperture: Perspective on the Life and Work of Terry Riley, ed. Vincent de Roguin, Shelter Press.
2021: ‘CARDINAL R. TOTALE’S SCRAPBOOK: Torn Fragments of James, Machen and Lovecraft, Unpulped Among a Jumbled Trove of Songs by The Fall, Early and Also Late’, collected in Excavate!: The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall, ed. Tessa Norton and Bob Stanley, Faber & Faber. ISBN-13 : 978-0571358335
2013: ‘Roots and Antennae, Tongues and Flight: Boney M Aboard the Black Star Liner’, collected in Adventure Rocketship Vol 1: Let’s All Go to the Science Fiction Disco, ed. Jonathan Wright, Tangent Books. ISBN-13: 978-1906477738
2009: ‘What About Death, Again? The Dolorous Passion of the Son of Pop’, collected in The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, ed. Mark Fisher, Zero Books, 310 pp, pbk, ISBN 978-1-84694-348-5
2009 (date written): ‘A Splendidly Elaborate Living Orrery: Further Thoughts on Black Science Fiction and Transplanetary Jazz’, collected in Afrofuturism: Interstellar Transmissions from Remix Culture, ed. Tobias Van veen (collection still seeking publisher)
2003: ‘Math Destruction’ (see below) collected in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003, Da Capo Press, 336 pp, pbk, ISBN: 0306812363
2002: ‘Destroy All Music’ (about the influence on music of Futurism and the Art Of Noises), The Wire #180, February 1999, collected in Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music (Collected Essays from the Undercurrents Series), Continuum Books, 288 pp, pbk, ISBN: 0826464505
1999: ‘Concrete, so as to Self-Destruct: the Etiquette of Punk, its Habits, Rules, Values and Dilemmas’, in ed.Roger Sabin, Punk Rock: So What – The Cultural Legacy of Punk (Routledge)
1997: ‘shhhhhh!’ (about John Cage and musique concrete), Musical Quarterly Vol.81 No.2, Summer 1997
1995: ‘Music as Film’, in Celluloid Jukebox: Popular Music and the Movies since the 50s, ed. Jonathan Romney and Adrian Wootton, BFI Publishing

journalism from 2016
(4columns, LRB, tribune, wire, guardian)

2023 (Jan): review for 4columns of the Science Museum exhibition exploring science fiction
2022 (Dec): review for 4columns of Paul Gravett’s biography of Tove Jansson, creator of the moomins
2022 (Nov): blog for LRB about Twitter
2022 (Oct): review for 4columns of the V&A exhibition centred round Beatrix Potter
2021 (Dec): blog for LRB about the Beano
2021 (Sept): blog for LRB about Nigel Kennedy
2021 (June): review for 4columns of the V&A exhibition centred round Lewis Carroll’s ALICE
2021 (Jan): Covid has pushed pop culture
into nostalgia. It's time for something new: column in the Guardian, title a somewhat clickbaity distortion of the essay’s argument
2020 (Dec): Here Come the Drums: a review in Tribune of
Matt Brennan’s Kick It: A Social History of the Drumkit
2020 (Oct): review (print only) of documentary CREEM: America’s Only Rock ’N’ Roll Magazine (New Rose Films, 2019) in The Wire #441
2020 (Mar): review (print only) of book This Is Supposed To Be A Record Label – Staalplaat (Frans de Waard, Korm Plastics) in The Wire #433
2020 (Jan): essay (print only): The Inessential Collection:
essay about the cultural effects on music of the streaming omni-archive in The Wire #431
2018 (Dec): review (print only) of book PUNK: collected writings of Mark Fisher (2004–16) (Mark Fisher, Repeater) in The Wire #418
2016 (Nov): review (print only) of book Musics: A British Magazine Of Improvised Music And Art (Toop, Beresford, Ecstatic Peace Library) in The Wire #393

Film Quarterly (2007-12)

2012: ‘POLCATS: Debating Chris Marker’s
A Grin Without a Cat’
Mark Sinker discusses director Marker’s epic history of the New Left (and the tasks of the critic) with then-editor of FQ Rob White
Winter 2009-10: ‘Catcalling’, on Chris Marker’s ‘A Grin without a Cat’
Fall 2008: ‘Ghost Law’, on the documentaries of Adam Curtis
Winter 2007-08: portmanteau review of and essay on ‘Control’, ‘Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten’, ‘This Is England’
(topic: punk and other youth subcultures on film, nostalgia)

Sight and Sound (1994-date)

2010: ‘Selling England by the Pound’, July,
on overlooked British cinema from the late 60s and early 70s
2010: ‘Alice through the Lens’, April,
a history of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece in cinema
1999: ‘The Trucam Show’, July
(topic: the webcam phenomenon)
1999: ‘One Deadly Summit’, January
(topic: on the IMAX-format movie Everest)
1998: ‘Here’s Looking at You, Kid’, September
(topic: Glam Rock as a precursor of Queer)
1998: ‘Y is for Youth’, June
(topic: a guide to ‘Teenage’ as a theme in movies)
As well as regular film reviews 1994 to date: most recently of Pat Collins’s Silence

Children’s Literature in Education (2005)

2005: ‘Talking Tolkien: the Elvish Craft of CGI’, vol.36, No.1, March issue, co-authored with Dr Victoria de Rijke, Reader in Arts and Education at Middlesex University

Village Voice (1990-2003)

2003: ‘Slay Miserables’, 24 March
(topic: the Buffy the Vampire Slayer single-episode musical ‘Once More with Feeling’)
2002: ‘Math Destruction’, 6 November
(about Yannis Xenakis, influence and originality in avant garde composition)
1990: ‘Lost in Space’, 31 July
(covering the 6th Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers in Groningen)

The Wire (1986-2001)

2001: ‘Tangents: Lester Bangs’, #211 Sept
(topic: history and polemic about the avant-garde music genre known as ‘Noise’ (see above)
1999: Epiphanies: Cecil Taylor, #190/91 Dec/Jan
1999: ‘Destroy All Music’, #180 Feb
(topic: what Futurism and the Art Of Noises did for music) (see also above)
1998: ‘A Huge Ever-Pulsating Brain’, #171 May
(portrait of Robert Moog, synthesiser pioneer)
1996: ‘Faith No More’, #148 June
(topic: breaking recording contracts as an aesthetic device – Neil Young, Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Frank Zappa, Lennon & Ono)
1995: ‘Singing the Body Electric’, #139 Sept
(topic: Leon Theremin and other pioneers of electronic instrumentation)
1995: ‘Darkness at the Edge of Town’, #138 Aug
(topic: Pere Ubu on record)
1994: ‘Din Locator’, #124 June
(topic: interview with New York avant-gardist Phill Niblock)
1993: ‘A Year in Revolt’, #111 May
(topic: 1968 25 years on: its legacy in music)
1993: ‘Art Snob Eat This’, #110 Apr
(topic: Radical taboo-busting in art and music)
1992: ‘Back from Another World’, #105 Nov
(topic: Stockhausen’s music considered as a psychotropic experience)
1992: ‘Uncaged’, #104 Oct
(topic: John Cage obituary)
1992: ‘Taking Modern Culture by Strategy’, #104 Oct
(topic: Interview with Brian Eno)
1992: ‘Can I Be Frank…?’, #103 Sept
(topic: Singing and songcraft from Sinatra to Costello)
1992: ‘A Brief History of Troublemaking’, #99 May
(topic: Dada, Fluxus, punk and the rest)
1992: ‘Deep Background Noise’, #96 Feb (‘Music & Technology’ theme issue)
(topic: the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop)
1992: ‘Loving the Alien/In Advance of the Landing’, #96 Feb
(topic: Black science fiction as a theme in music)
1991: ‘Last Rites’, #89 July
(topic: guide to Stravinsky’s CBS recordings of his entire oeuvre)
1990: ‘Free Samples’, #77 July 1990
(topic: the new sampling/dance-music avant-garde)
1986-90: ‘The Sound of Africa’, monthly Wire column on African music
1986: ‘Message from Mali’, #33 Nov
(topic: first UK interview with Malian singer-star Salif Keita)
As well as regular interviews and disc and book reviews 1983-2000.

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