Thom Yorke Breaks Silence on Israel Controversy

Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke of Radiohead talked with Rolling Stone about the Israel controversy earlier this year:

I’ll be totally honest with you: this has been extremely upsetting. There’s an awful lot of people who don’t agree with the BDS movement, including us. I don’t agree with the cultural ban at all, along with J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky and a long list of others.

There are people I admire [who have been critical of the concert] like [English film director] Ken Loach, who I would never dream of telling where to work or what to do or think. The kind of dialogue that they want to engage in is one that’s black or white. I have a problem with that. It’s deeply distressing that they choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public. It’s deeply disrespectful to assume that we’re either being misinformed or that we’re so retarded we can’t make these decisions ourselves. I thought it was patronizing in the extreme. It’s offensive and I just can’t understand why going to play a rock show or going to lecture at a university [is a problem to them].

Review: Swordfish – Rodia

Swordfish - Rodia

Swordfish have started to garner a lot of attention with their new album Rodia. Washed Up Emo streamed it prior to its release and Ian Cohen wrote about “Ghost Song” over at Pitchfork. However, neither of these things determined whether or not I’d listen to the band. I listened because I trust Take This To Heart Records to consistently release music that I enjoy. I had never heard about Swordfish before they signed to the label, and I bet this won’t remotely be the last I hear of them.

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