A Boy’s Own Story, Part I.

Edmund White talks to Michael Langan about the thirtieth anniversary of A Boy’s Own Story, and how men and women have to learn to be gay. Part I of II.

“I felt, like most other gay people at the time, that we became gay not because some attractive older person showed us the way but in spite of all the horrible examples of gay lives that we encountered as children. Despite all that you still have a drive to become gay and it might be painful experience but people aren’t put off.”

Submission and power.

Shlomo talks about working with Björk, being crowned the World Loop Station Champion, and writing a beatboxing score for The Little Mermaid.

“Beatboxing is a live art form in its nature, in that it’s more than just the music, and you have to witness it live to really get it. But it’s also prone to being seen as a gimmick or a novelty act.”

Submission and power.

Following a 5 star review of their debut album, Dominae, Andrew Darley spoke with Leanne Macomber, one half of the synthpop duo Ejecta.

“Ejecta is a mysterious creature. She finds herself on earth after being reborn, or reanimated, or perhaps as a ghost who has just passed over into the next realm. Maybe even an alien. She is always depicted nude to allude to this displacement. Naked, she bears no signs of her culture or class. She is a timeless every woman in this sense.”

What My Mother Taught Me.

Laura White talks about her EP What My Mother Taught Me, and her decision to release it independently after her time on X Factor in 2008.

“Amy Winehouse was quite a vulnerable person and used her music to be honest about it. If people can hear her in my music that is fine with me because she was an amazing artist.”

The Summer of Love.

Andrew Darley talks to Cut Copy frontman Dan Whitford about the band’s new album, Free Your Mind, and his thoughts on dance culture.

“Once we’d finished writing all the songs for the record we noticed that “free your mind” was a repeated lyric through various songs, and it seemed to sum up a general feeling behind the record.”

Cultural mash-ups.

Andrew Darley talks to Sasha Perera about her new project Perera Elsewhere and her debut solo album Everlast.

“I think the music does take you somewhere else because it’s quite atmospheric and sucks you in quite fast. I like to think that I’ve been taken somewhere else and so I’m taking the listener there too. It’s an idealistic concept that there is something or somewhere called ‘Elsewhere’ which has nothing to do with harsh reality.”

Why America Forgets Its Mistakes.

The United States of Amnesia is an appreciative look at the life and work of the late Gore Vidal, and shows a man who was always ahead of time.

“Everything we chose was to show the lineage in his thinking, to show the consistency of his analysis, and how he was ahead of his time. He’s always been ahead. When you see it over and over again it really stands out. He was pointing this out all the way. Now he’s gone and we should pay attention.”

The Spirit of Uprisings.

Jenny Wilson talks about her album Demand The Impossible and the personal struggles that this record explores.

“I wanted to write about these two topics, but at first I didn’t know how to connect them. Suddenly I realized that my own body was a society itself, and the society a body. Both full of illness, bad things, happiness, wilderness, fighting spirit and fire.”

Words Are Dead.

Agnes Obel talks about singing songs of private emotion in public, and how she always talks music with Dublin’s taxi drivers.

“It’s a beautiful experience to make something and then somebody else sees something in it that you didn’t see and makes it his or her own. I also like the idea of people doing covers of my music and see the songs grow on their own.”

In The Shadow of Pinochet.

Andrew Darley talks to Julia Tarnoky about playing gender neutral in Juan Radrigán’s play Children of Fate.

“It is certainly exciting and part of the challenge is to realize and portray an unconventional character’s traits and aspects conventionally so that they can be translated to a live audience, and vice versa to realize a conventional character. It is about making the ordinary, extraordinary and the extraordinary, ordinary.”