ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

I was going to complete a piece on 'Returnal' using the concept of a dialogue between a left channel speaker and a right channel speaker weighing up the merits of the music blasting out from their electrical pores. It started off as fun, got confusing and eventually gave me a headache. Too much ink. Now, sadly, I don't have the time to really examine this talented artist's latest work. I can say, a little blandly, that I like it quite a lot. There is a powerful tension at stake. Flickering, protruding splinters of noise holding back submersion into spiralling, hymnal harmony. Static in the cathedral. Disembodied echoes, traces unresolved. Over driven fractures, blue clusters on the mesmeric journey to the white-light zone. It's rather queasy, without an arc in sight, at once engaging and nauseous. I'm sure that the speakers would agree.

LAURIE ANDERSON

Laurie Anderson is spooky. She has a voice like no other. Droll, observant and detached, it spurns emotive expression. Her lyrics flirt with the sparse detail of haiku composition. Then there are the other voices. Electronic modulation wasn't her invention, Annette Peacock, for instance, plugged into an abrasive amp-throat chaos in the early 70s. But Anderson made it her own; warped narrative commentary and distracting aural semblances disturbing any conventional centrality. Her debut, 'Big Science,' still sounds striking and dead-on. Much of it has a bone-chilling clarity, seeming to pre-figure post-9/11 technological paranoia, delicate prophecies conceived with mantric precision and mathematical beauty. None of the albums she's made since have been quite so startling.

'Homeland' is co-produced by her hubby Lou Reed. She's had a profound influence on his work this century, as he's shunned songwriting to become a fully-fledged avant-garde experimenter. Anderson sticks to what she knows. Her calm, suggestive texts are backed up yet again by typical, art installation atmospherics. 'Only An Expert' deviates, it's an odd satire on our current cultural and political crisis set to some Ph.D. funkiness. But patience is rewarded in the pure, menacing brilliance of 'Another Day In America.' On this unsettling, darkly comic monologue, she affects the sort of treated, disfigured voice familiar from real crime television shows, in which the speaker's identity is deliberately masked and disguised. Broken poignancy creeped out by the inhumane. Here is an extract:

'There was an old married couple and they'd always hated each other. Never been able to stand the sight of each other, really. And when they were in their 90s they finally got divorced. And people said. 'Why did you wait so long, why didn't you do this a whole lot earlier?' And they said. 'Well, we wanted to wait until the children died.'

The lonely, morbid wisdom of everyday malice.

ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI

Lieutenant Columbo called upon Jessica Fletcher. 'Did you hear about the disappearance of Ariel Pink?' ' That's my case, don't get involved' she said. Cigars puffed, typewriters tapped.

'Worn Copy' was a muffled gem. Mr Pink recorded what seemed to be classic rock on the basest of matter. It was as if Todd Rundgren had dipped his master tapes into a sea of murk. The downgraded quality of the audio phonics held one at a distance from it's pop accessibility. A gas station radio pumping out meaningless pap through a gauze of grimed incomprehension. It inevitably went on too long, resembling a daft, manic kid showing off his latest magic trick. But still, what an idea, catchy tunes destroyed by pre-designed, wilful sludge. You felt like telling him to cut it out, joke's over, and that was, of course, entirely the point.

' I was a thinking 'bout hiring that Ariel Pink guy for the homecoming ball' Sue-Ellen Ewing told Alexis Carrington at the charity function. 'Damn you, he's mine' she replied. 'I've just signed him up for a million dollars.'

The re-runs. The Eighties have been soaked and saturated by a new generation. All that cheesed, banal 'liberation' butchered and left to hang out and dry by a stoned aesthetic. The hippies reincarnate, they were giggling at the woeful, selfish glitter, before deciding to reclaim it for themselves. Mr Pink was slightly ahead of the game, he watches it all, this knave of hearts, time to step forward, seek adoration, show them who's champ. Pass the Doritos, sip the Pepsi. 'Before Today' is a chance to reek in the hype. He stays true to himself, a taste of the tasteless, wedding party glitz with a glint of the bizarre. Another genre tomorrow, another revaluation, a cult artist continuing from where he took off. There is no great ambition on board to rock the boat, to marvel at musical expanse, the flatness is intentional and so is the gifted confusion-does he mean it? How is this meant to be accepted? Is he an outsider, the alien of paperback science-fiction decoding the irresistible shallowness of karaoke art? Or is he a smug, smart-ass for those in on the comedy? The layers of clouded interference on the 'merry-go-round' may have been erased, but the picture is no clearer. Perhaps, in some cases, a lack of artistic definition should be applauded.

DENNIS HOPPER 1936-2010

Out Of The Blue. Blue Velvet. Terrifying. Unforgettable.

DREAMING WILL

A new film.

AVI BUFFALO

Credits roll.

Tommy finished the article on the upcoming actor. He slipped on his turquoise Blondie t-shirt, and checked himself out in the hotel room's mirror. Then he took the i-pod from his bag and put it on shuffle. Headphones clamped, wraparounds fixed, he made his way downstairs. In the open air, the heat tranquillised his mind. He crossed the bridge with the toothless beggars selling their trinkets. He passed by the piper band, 'Money please,' and waited for the boat to arrive. Standing there, he spied the actor and his sidekick. Someone shouted at him in Italian to stop blocking the entrance. 'Scusi.' The actor eyed him suspiciously, pulling back his sunglasses. Tommy copied his movements. The boat arrived. As it sailed through the majestic paradise, Tommy bit his lower lip, remembering a moment from the actor's last film. The actor glared at the mirage in disbelief, before exiting at his destination.

A ringtone. Sigh. Grimace.

'Hello' she said. 'I'm at the movies.'

'What? This is ridiculous' said the old man from the row behind.

'It's about a man on a boat. Speak later.'

The warm breeze blew and "What's In It For?" came on. He swayed to the endless harmonies- 'Oh oh ah oh'- and laughed at the way the singer sang about his muse, with her 'Bacon lips.' Released from the city grind, he danced in the yearning euphoria and stretched his long arms up into the sunbeams. He wished all the other passengers could share his happiness. 'Look over here, I feel so free, watch me, listen-'Oh oh ah oh.'

Tommy got off at the stop beside his father's bar. Tonight he was attending a rock legend's dinner party. He sat down and ordered a vodka martini, the seventeen euros waved. At the other side of the lounge was a girl he'd seen at the airport concourse yesterday. A dark haired sparrow who never blinked. He tried to smile at her, but she'd obviously cottoned on to a greater truth. Both weren't exactly sure who was following whom. She whispered in her friend's ear. Feeling sleepy, he curled up in the music.

'He's sleeping. Bad boy,' she said.

The old man rose out of his chair, and stood in front of her.

'Can You Please Be Quiet. I'm trying to watch the film.'

A 50's guitar gently introduced "Can't I Know." There was a slight unease, as if the singer was stepping quietly to the object of his desire. Barely there, and taking little turns in melody, until the tempo took hold and the conquest bathed this lingering apprehension in the lightest of liquidity. He opened his eyes, and saw an old man observing a talkative woman at the table beside him, they seemed so familiar.

COURTNEY LOVE

Listening to Hole's 'Pretty On The Inside' again, I was struck by the raw venom. It's relentless and poetic. Songs like 'Teenage Whore' and 'Good Sister/Bad Sister' involve you in the choked turbulence of one woman's experience. Slammed together with disgust, howled with distain, it never let's up in vivid horror. What had happened to her, where would she go to after purging her hatred and untamed emotion? Courtney Love divides people, some see her as a fuel of reckless honesty, others as a shameless opportunist. She is full of contradictions. A well read raconteur, a druggy mess, someone dying to be loved, someone hellbent on causing trouble. But always, without doubt, living right now, fluid in thought and opinion.

After the violent splurge of 'Pretty', she begged for solace in the mainstream. This wasn't a sell out, it was a cry for acceptance. 'Live Through This' is a great, wracked punk pop album, containing wild, sensational entertainment. 'Violet', 'Miss World' and 'Doll Parts' are thrilling feminist anthems, beautiful, valiant and harsh. 'Celebrity Skin' had many bittersweet songs, burnt by the L.A. sun, but was diluted by an unsatisfying production. After a long spell in the wilderness a solo album appeared and musically it was an ugly monstrosity. But 'America's Sweetheart' is tough and funny lyrically, the acid was unleashed once again, deceptively sloppy, sharp as a razor. She also appeared in two films by Milos Forman, 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' and 'Man On The Moon', both offbeat biopics centred on irrational iconoclasts. Receptive and natural, her acting felt untainted by Hollywood artifice. Then there was Nick Broomfield's morally dubious documentary 'Kurt And Courtney', which denies the integrity of an essay for a tabloid bogusness. The elitist and the naive may fail to detect the joker's parody or the clown's pathos.

'Nobody's Daughter' has a laboured history. Along with the infamous, self-proclaimed 'Joycean' rants, she uploaded, then deleted some very fine demos on her My Space page. They were moving, confessional songs coated in unobtrusive AOR arrangements. Love's vocal delivery was bruised and rasping, her words revealing a latent tenderness. She sounded her age, signifying a sage-like maturity. Then predictably this was all scrapped for the reformation of Hole without any of her former bandmates. Despite the absence of guitarist Eric Erlandson, a loyal deputy, 'Samantha' and 'Skinny little Bitch' roar in an accurate approximation of their original glory. She sounds fierce again, ready to chew and spit out all the pretenders half her age. But what of the remakes, the new versions of those touching laments, dissolving in cyber land?

With ex Material man Michael Beinhorn back in the control room, compression is turned up to the max. This makes 'Pacific Coast Highway' less a melancholic eulogy, more a feisty piece of work. Somehow 'For Once In Your Life' survives, as a brutalised country-rock lullaby. Yet many of the songs suffer from a methodical, unimaginative uniformity, a wall of commercial noise. Which is a shame, since her voice is often affecting and candid, at times stirring the heart with an expressive anguish. No more so than on 'Letter To God', Linda Perry's power ballad, which should be dreadful but is sung with such rough feeling that it twists into something riveting. She believes in every lyric, and this shot self-assurance places her in the mould of Dylan and Faithfull; essential, ravaged singers with enormous authority over anything they touch. And yes, praise be, past masters and mistresses of savage regret, 'Loser Dust' gives us the fingers up, being a very likeable slice of bubblegum. Crass, flawed, unfashionable. A rock 'n' roll rebel.