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Sharon O'Connell

@messyectomorph

Music writer (dCS Audio, Electronic Sound, Metro, Uncut). Ex staffer at Melody Maker and Time Out. Coastal dweller. Art, film, books etc.

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05.01.2025
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Latest posts by Sharon O'Connell @messyectomorph

Attention night owls: the excellent “Sound of Metal” is showing on BBC Two at midnight.

08.03.2026 20:58 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Totally wiped after 7 hours of door duty last night but most tiring was no. of people baulking at entry price - £12. So, less than the cost of two pints - for SIX bands. Patience for explaining how they get paid, & why they obviously should, ran out pretty fast. Also, haggling? C’mon, people.

08.03.2026 11:43 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Laurie Anderson - The Wrong Way feat. ANOHNI (Official Audio)
Laurie Anderson - The Wrong Way feat. ANOHNI (Official Audio) YouTube video by Nonesuch Records

Revisiting this gorgeous, eerily abstract piece by Laurie Anderson, with ANOHNI - from her album taking Amelia Earhart’s final flight as its theme. #IWD youtu.be/z-xF1zBsunY

08.03.2026 11:01 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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‘A very dangerous person’: alarm as Pete Hegseth revels in carnage of Iran war Critics say brash, bombastic Fox News host out of his depth to guide US military through murky new Middle East conflict

Few profiles are as terrifying in their detail. The man’s a deranged monster, vilified even by his own mother. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

08.03.2026 10:22 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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Limited edition benefit sweatshirt for The Trans Continental Pipeline from Bikini Kill Limited edition benefit sweatshirt for The Trans Continental Pipeline from Bikini Kill

Good morning! It is Bandcamp Friday and today we are donating all profit from today's sales to the Trans Continental Pipeline, a nonprofit that helps trans folks move to Colorado from hostile states. We have a limited edition sweatshirt available ONLY today: bikinikill.bandcamp.com/merch/limite...

06.03.2026 13:55 👍 48 🔁 30 💬 1 📌 6

Me, too. “Well, we put bloody [insert name] on the cover in May, so they need to be in there.”

06.03.2026 11:12 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Haha, indeed. She looks like she’s had enough, by the end. Love her strange personal intensity, so inseparable from her music.

06.03.2026 11:07 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Aldous Harding - One Stop (Official Video)
Aldous Harding - One Stop (Official Video) YouTube video by Aldous Harding

Just 10am but already today's best news: a new album from Aldous Harding, "Train On The Island", is due on May 8. Terrific first single here. youtu.be/vyKaSM1FJ8w?...

06.03.2026 10:16 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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The House of Lords Digital & Communications Committee just published their report on AI, copyright & the creative industries, and their conclusions could not be clearer.

🧵 1/5

06.03.2026 08:53 👍 1528 🔁 870 💬 11 📌 130

Hilariously mistaken (& futile) on so many levels. The spirit of Jim Hacker is about…

06.03.2026 09:42 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Setting Official band site for Setting (Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles & Joe Westerlund). New album forthcoming on Thrill Jockey April 24, 2026.

Never met a piece of Nathan Bowles’ music I didn’t like but “Gum Bump”, brand new from his Setting trio, is irresistible: a lightly fried, improv-based mix of kosmische, dub, ambient techno & gamelan music. (LP out April 24.)
settingsounds.com

03.03.2026 19:01 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Bang on the button, clearly. But I shouldn’t imagine it’s going to stop any time soon. Late-stage capitalism is racing gleefully to the cliff edge, dragging us all with it. We’d need an entire overhaul of humankind’s twisted value system first…

03.03.2026 15:41 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This is indeed v lovely & I challenge anyone to watch it without blinking back a tear. If you’re cynically thinking, well, yes, he’s an actor so pushing emotional buttons is his business, then I double down on that challenge. (Also: sweetly, Timmy Chalamet is transfixed.)

02.03.2026 19:59 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

State-sanctioned criminality on a colossal scale. It beggars belief. As we face a hike in our water bills from April…

01.03.2026 14:46 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Well, Bobby G’s tribute to Noel Gallagher last night has surely seen off his rep as a rebel rock’n’roller sneering at the status quo - one big slice of obsequious pie, topped with cheese & ham. Kind of weird.

01.03.2026 09:49 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0

Reading your award acceptance speech off your phone (seemingly for the first time)? Okaaay… #Brits

28.02.2026 21:25 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Just turned on start of Brit Awards, curious to see Olivia D & Wet Leg: dear god, whoever wrote Jack Whitehall’s “jokes” should be put on the rack. Lead balloons galore…

28.02.2026 21:05 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
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‘I clicked on a button – and everything changed’: how a DNA test turned my life upside-down When I found out my father had been adopted, I was curious to know more about his side of the family. Nothing could have prepared me for what I would discover …

As family histories go, this is quite a story… www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

28.02.2026 16:34 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

They were kind of amazing. Next time!

28.02.2026 12:39 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Fantastic set from Mermaid Chunky last night: art pop, Balearic house, surreal recitations & psychedelic rave, all with wit & obvious glee. Plus sax, double-flute action & a lampshade hat the size of Wales. Bravo.

28.02.2026 11:12 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

When the hounds are closing in, go to war. Again.

28.02.2026 09:58 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

You’d think if you’d lost as dramatically & comprehensively as Matt Goodwin, you’d feel at least slightly chastened & wind your neck in for a bit, but no - the racist effluent is still pouring out of him. He’s rotten to the core.

27.02.2026 10:18 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Absolutely. Chinks of hope, at least.

27.02.2026 09:52 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I was boiling with fury for days afterwards. Knowing full well beforehand how deeply baked into the EA corruption, greed & cynicism are didn’t make it any less shocking a watch.

26.02.2026 23:51 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

A natural follow-through from CD revivalism, at a guess but
the figures reported here are surprising, especially re video rental memberships.

25.02.2026 18:33 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Absolutely this. Some people appear to believe Tourette’s is akin to being drunkenly outspoken & that the person is “just saying what they really think”. It is nothing remotely like that.

25.02.2026 16:51 👍 233 🔁 30 💬 4 📌 1
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The New Cue #571 February 23: Bill Callahan "Life is so good that death has to be good too."

On cortisol spikes, throwing a cat down the stairs & going back to caveman times: A-grade chat from Bill… open.substack.com/pub/thenewcu...

23.02.2026 15:51 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I now understand that when a sun icon is showing on the Met Office app, it just means the sky will be brighter than its usual Vantablack. For maybe 20 minutes. #thenewlucky

23.02.2026 13:34 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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‘We watched 9/11 from the rooftop, blasting the music out’: how The Disintegration Loops became a requiem for the attacks It is an epic piece of music that literally falls apart – and it perfectly captured the end-of-days chaos after the tragedy. Composer William Basinski and musician Anohni recall its febrile birth in N...

Hugely poignant read here, on the context & resonance of an extraordinary piece of music. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/f...

23.02.2026 08:58 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Tell me again, property owners, how “tenants have more rights than landlords these days”.
Rapaciousness on a galloping horse & it seems there’s nothing to stop this appalling a-hole. A fine (if enraging) piece of reporting here…

22.02.2026 13:16 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0