The Audio Snobbery Podcast

There was a time, dear readers and loving disciples, when five of us decided that the world needed another music blog, on the rather thin grounds that we were the only people on earth who could be trusted to tell the difference between a record and a product. We called it Audio Snobbery. We printed t-shirts that read I am a snob and tried to hand them out at Primavera. People refused them. For free. A formative lesson in branding, that one. It turns out the punters do not, in fact, wish to wear such a declaration on their chests, no matter how lovingly the cotton has been screen-printed.

And yet — here we are again. Older. Slightly the worse for wear. Fatter. Fewer of us in the same time zone than we would like, more of us in possession of small humans demanding dinner. The blog is not going anywhere; it is, as The Beatles might say, resting as our commitments prevent us from putting metaphorical pen to paper. Your dear Snobs, ever the enterprising bunch, therefore decided to try a second mode of transmission: the dreaded podcast. Indeed, we are reduced to forcing you to listen to us, since putting a Snob in front of a keyboard is no longer a thing the world will permit.

So: The Audio Snobbery Podcast. On tape, in your ears, available wherever you receive these things.

The debut episode is live. Your dear Cuzomano is joined by none other than the marvellous Otacon, beaming in from the West Coast of the U.S. of A., and possessing the unenviable proximity to Coachella that this particular conversation required. The subject: Nine Inch Noize. Yes, that Nine Inch Noize. Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and—sigh, deeply—Boys Noize, performing twin weekends in the Sahara tent for an album of remixes which the internet has decided is the second coming, and which has left your weary correspondents feeling rather alone on a small, principled island. We discuss the spectacle, which was, infuriatingly, magnificent. We discuss the music, which was rather less so. We discuss the unhappy output of the late-career tag-along, and draw the painful, unavoidable parallel to Prince's Larry Graham era.

The format, broadly shall be two or three of us per episode, opinions deployed without apology, the occasional argument allowed to breathe rather than be edited into politeness. We will review records, eviscerate live shows, champion the overlooked, and (when the gods of scheduling and time zones permit) corral all five snobs into the same recording, at which point you should probably brace yourself.

So, we're back. Not much has changed: El Mascarado still hates Radiohead. We are working on it. We are not optimistic.

Episode one is up wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe if you like, ignore if you must, disagree violently if you have any sense of self-respect.

With love, as ever.