Fergal Kinney

England

Music and Culture Writer at Freelance

Music and Culture Writer at The Face

Music and Culture Writer at The Guardian

Culture Editor of Tribune (also writer for The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Quietus, The Face, Jacobin & more.)

Articles

The lost futures of Stereolab

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Fergal Kinney

Nikolai Kondratiev was born in Russia in 1892. An influential theorist of the New Economic Policy under Lenin, in the 1920s he pioneered the idea that would define his posthumous reputation. Capitalist economies, he argued, underwent predictable cycles of about 50 years’ growth followed by stagnation. In 1938, Kondratiev fell out of favour and was executed under Stalin’s Great Purge. But after his death, his theory found acclaim in the West, memorialised as “supercycles”, or the Kondratiev wave.
‘We want to stop in our prime’: Saint Etienne on their final album and why pop is a dying art

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Fergal Kinney

In St Etienne, it is usually Bob Stanley who suggests the band’s tightly defined album concepts. What if you graft folk melodies to dance music? Make vaporwave about early New Labour? While finishing ambient pop album The Night, released in the dark of last winter, Stanley pitched an even starker one for its successor: the end of their band. “I didn’t think I was saying anything uncomfortable or shocking,” says Stanley, affable and understated, in a park near his Bradford home.
Saint Etienne on their final album, turning down Cher’s Believe, and why pop is a dying art

4 weeks ago | msn.com | Fergal Kinney

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
‘We want to stop in our prime’: Saint Etienne on their final album, turning down Cher’s Believe, and why pop is a dying art

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Fergal Kinney

In Saint Etienne, it is usually Bob Stanley who suggests the band’s tightly defined album concepts. What if you graft folk melodies to dance music? Make vaporwave about early New Labour? While finishing ambient pop album The Night, released in the dark of last winter, Stanley pitched an even starker one for its successor: the end of their band. “I didn’t think I was saying anything uncomfortable or shocking,” says Stanley, affable and understated, in a park near his Bradford home.
Creo: the North’s new fashion work space

1 month ago | theface.com | Fergal Kinney

“Creo is for businesses, makers, artists, videographers. It’s for everyone” “Though Creo offers various peak and off-peak membership packages, with areas to sit and have a beer, do not, under any circumstances, call it a members’ club”
Laissez-Faire Listening

1 month ago | tribunemag.co.uk | Fergal Kinney

It was all the fault of Scandinavian social democracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Sweden became a global centre for music piracy largely through a perfect storm of universal and high quality broadband, well-funded music education, and assertive personal privacy laws. Something had to be done. Record industry CEOs talked about the Nordic […] It was all the fault of Scandinavian social democracy.
Lennon, Ono and the Leftists

2 months ago | msn.com | Fergal Kinney

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Lennon, Ono and the Leftists

2 months ago | tribunemag.co.uk | Fergal Kinney

When John Lennon was murdered on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in December 1980, it was a tragedy that took place in that strange winter hinterland between the defeat of a Democratic presidential candidate and the inauguration of a Republican one. Ronald Reagan had just won a landslide victory over the beleaguered incumbent Jimmy Carter, whose 1977 inauguration Lennon and Ono had attended.
Northern Gothic: Rainy Miller Interviewed

2 months ago | thequietus.com | John Doran |Fergal Kinney

What do you do when the most exhilarating moment of your musical life has already risen and fallen by the time that you are just fourteen? For Jack Bowes, the electronic producer who operates under the name of Rainy Miller, this was the explosion of mid-00s grime in the Lancashire city of Preston. “Fifteen years down the line,” he says, eyes looking away and still visibly awed at the memory, “I’m still like, that’s the sickest thing that’s ever happened in my entire life.” It was, he says, insane.
King Charles III's implausible Commonwealth canon

Mar 10, 2025 | newstatesman.com | Fergal Kinney

When King Charles III was born on 14th November 1948, charts were still compiled from sales of sheet music – as they had been since the late 19th century. Top of the pops that week was So Tired by US bandleader Russ Morgan and Orchestra. The song, also released at the time on heavy and brittle shellac, had held the top spot for the previous six weeks. Its title was an apt summary of Britain in the immediate post-war era where tastes, like the footsteps in the nation’s dance halls, shuffled slowly.