The Battleground

1 week ago | thebattleground.eu | Charlie Bertsch

The Oscar-winning documentary shows how precarious life is for the residents of Masafer Yatta, a collection of 19 Palestinian hamlets in the southern West Bank, and contrasts it with the more privileged existence of Israelis. Throughout the film, we see how the Palestinian community responds to the systematic destruction of their homes. Because there is no hope of challenging Israel’s military might directly, they must engage in asymmetrical resistance.

2 weeks ago | thebattleground.eu | Charlie Bertsch

When Richard Linklater’s 1990 film hit theatres, it was largely treated as a humorous novelty, distilling the character – and the real-life characters – in the state capital of Texas that would later inspire a campaign to “Keep Austin Weird.”As that slogan poignantly underscores, the high-tech boom of the 1990s and the high-income but low-curiosity white-collar workers who came with it soon threatened to deprive the mid-size city of the alternative culture that had made it special.

3 weeks ago | thebattleground.eu | Charlie Bertsch

Even the most beat-forward tracks, “Oneironaut sei wachsam” and “Die Ratten”, sound like they are being ripped apart by centrifugal force. Others, such as “Souterrain” and the finale “Nichts”, feel like dispatches from the ruins mentioned in the album’s title, pieced together from fragments that exhibit magnetic repulsion. Once you know that Das Kinn (The Chin) is the name Frankfurt sound artist Toben Piel chose for his one-man band, this makes a lot of sense.

1 month ago | thebattleground.eu | Ari Paul

Young men are seen taunting and harassing her while a police officer escorts her. Shot on the evening of 24 April, the recording only tells part of the story. The woman, who spoke with me on the condition that she remain anonymous, has lived in the neighbourhood for a decade. She is neither Arab nor Jewish and was not participating in the protests against a nearby talk by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister.

1 month ago | thebattleground.eu | Charlie Bertsch

Abyss draws from all of Anika’s previous work, which ranges from the crackly, dub-adjacent grooves of her eponymous debut, through the muscular post-punk she released with the group Exploded View, to the delicate, ambient-inflected soundscapes of 2023’s Eat Liquid. The result is a supple mode of Dark Wave, accessible to a broad audience, but still tough as nails.