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Robert Barry

@monsterbobby.bsky.social
2.3K followers 1.2K following 612 posts

Freelance writer (The Wire, Tribune, Art Review, Mubi Notebook, &c.). Musicker (Far Rainbow, The Pipettes). Reviews Editor at The Quietus. Author of The Music of the Future (Repeater, 2017), Object Lessons: Compact Disc (Bloomsbury, 2020). Idiot.

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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
There is a new issue of The Wire out now and I have contributed reviews of Oslo's Ultima Festival, a book by Jacob Smith about New Age music plus a profile of Concentric Group, an artists' record label forged at the Bauhaus.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
i won’t click on this cos i don’t like spotlfy (but yh ok i get it fine) however my ambient sense is 20s pop mostly better than 10s (w/ caveat prob a lot of the pop i like quite possibly a bit polachek zone)
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
apparently John Cage really hated the vibraphone.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
i mean obvs there’s lots of guitar music i really like but almost all the music i most dislike is guitar music.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
“Gotta say” was probably inaccurate there. I didn’t really have to say (but then also maybe you didn’t really either).
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I think I like them all? Maybe if pushed I’d say electric guitar but probably only because that’s the only one i can sort of play.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Gotta say I quite like choosing texas. Think it’s basically a fine pop song and have absolutely heard it dozens of times (some of them even of my own volition). It’s fine if you don’t or haven’t but that‘s not like a personality or anything.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
At Neiderdorf’s annual potato festival “the original” in northern Italy. Disappointing lack of potato-themed content tbh
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
everything is simultaneously both AI and cake.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
by far my fav F Mac record
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Apollo @apollo-magazine.com · 22/09/2026
‘Mendieta is rarely thought of as a “media artist”, in the mould of Nam June Paik or Trevor Paglen, but whether drawing on paper made of tree bark or shooting on 16mm film, the physicality of different materials is at the forefront of her work.’ Robert Barry on Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern.
buff.ly
Ana Mendieta’s singular vision is sharper than ever
A major retrospective at Tate Modern reveals an artist whose talent burns more brightly than ever, writes Robert Barry
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
if you know you know
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Texted a friend yesterday and he wrote back to say he was on the Côte d’Azur. I said, Nice? He said, very!
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Every time fly into norway and look out the window I think of Slartibartfast. A well-deserved award, I think.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I think maybe it’s just that it makes it easier to book ahead so more people do and things get booked up. People book tables at the pub these days which was very much Not a Thing before.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
read an Eric Ambler book recently and got really nostalgic for a time when you could just decide to go to a place and get on a train and go to that place without spending weeks planning and booking things in advance. weird how the instantaneity of the net has actually made spontaneous travel harder.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
One of two mirror balls installed by Charlemagne Palestine in the Tonspur passage in Vienna’s museum quarter.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
i definitely laughed a fait reading vanity fair but for absolutely fall about laughing it’s the Marx bros, esp. Night at the Opera. or maybe Keaton in Sherlock jr.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is the Seinfeld formula, no? No hugging, no learning.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
am being relentlessly pursued the length and breadth of this train platform by a wasp. hate to be a cop but if it boards the train i’m gonna have to call the conductor to inspect its ticket.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
the way apple maps actually makes street names smaller when you zoom in should be considered a hate crime against people over 40.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
kicking off Lasse Marhaug’s marathon 24-hour noise concert at the old studios of the Norwegian national broadcaster…
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Last week I was Eupen in the east of Belgium, watching people make sounds out of ceramics, kilims and burning microphones. Read my report on Meakusma Festival @thequietus.com here thequietus.com/quietus-revi...
thequietus.com
Don't Resolve the Dissonance: Meakusma Festival 2026 | The Quietus
It was when he started swinging the second microphone that I started to worry. It was a fairly confined space. The first mic had already gone flying off its lead and smashed against the wall. Shruggin...
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I think I noted during the recent Belfast riots that a certain kind of man is not really interested in protecting women & girls; he's interested in protecting the exclusive right of his kind of man to abuse and control women and girls.
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Alex Hern @hern.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Mental how many people drive innit
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
next week on firstfloor dot com: Sia Not Actually That Little 12 Year Old Girl!
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
ah that’s nice. say hi back from me!
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
If this is the eccojam potter then vaporwave potter must be just around the corner. not looking forward to hyperpop potter.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I have that record! It's great (much better than Baggy Trousers or Don't Stand So Close To Me)
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Thanks Elias!
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Ok so for once I don't actually have any writing in the new issue of The Wire. BUT you should STILL BUY IT. Because *even without me* it remains – somehow, incredibly – a fantastic magazine.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
this guy made two (very) good films over four decades ago and nothing but shit since, yet people still treat him like he’s some sort of cinematic colossus.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
It's funny how, any time someone makes a vaguely fact-based historical drama movie, if they cast Jeremy Strong as a real historical figure, you know 100% for sure the director thinks that person is an absolute tool.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
When I heard Tim Curry had died, oddly perhaps, because I do love those films, what first sprang to mind was not Rocky Horror or Clue, but an exchange from early on in Skolimowski's The Shout: "He's not entirely normal," "What's normal?"
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Very Lacanian album title, too! Very much a record I am having trouble filing appropriately.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Kinda fascinating that the guy behind this mad 45 year-old record of ARP synths and eerie ritualistic chanting finneganswake.bandcamp.com/album/silances is also the author of a comprehensive index of the seminars of Jacques Lacan www.lacanonline.com/2011/01/henr...
finneganswake.bandcamp.com
Silances, by Henry Krutzen
9 track album
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more mr. spice guy @juniorhoncho.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
if someone earnestly brought up either their own or anybody else's IQ in conversation i would walk away while they're still talking. incredibly boring and unpleasant type of stupid to be. homie you got brain damage from an online quiz. wow 135 that's so smart, what hogwarts house did you get
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I love the rendang flavour Indomie!
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Peter Watkins' biopic of Edvard Munch is, I think, the only exception to this rule.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
god i’d forgotten about the existence of that reboot. i never saw it. it looked awful though. the original series was great though - to a significant degree due to the presence of dean stockwell. but i haven’t rewatched tecently so can’t speak to how well it’s aged.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Quantum Leap, also, had a great last episode.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
The last scene of Twin Peaks: The Return is pretty much unbeatable imo.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
How to Blow up a Pipeline, maybe?
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
check out the jatekok score follower videos on youtube. they’re great fun!
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
i feel like Kurtag should be more popular online. like here’s this guy making all these funny little bits of music, they’re a bit wacky, a bit silly sometimes, but they’re a minute long so🤷guy basically invnted tiktok but it’s contemporary music.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
I really love Joni Mitchell's records, but for years I avoided ever listening to Blue out of some sort of instinctive aversion. Now, much later and much more familiar with Blue, any time I do hear one of the songs from that album I can't help but think, shit, I was right all along! That album sucks!
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Helen Barrett @helenbarrett.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
No one is going to read your press release.
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Ooh, what is that? I mean, who is the publisher?
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
It's definitely made me want to cook more!
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Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I'm enjoying both the new M. John Harrison novel and this – www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc... – forthcoming from Verso.
versobooks.com
The Full English
What is English food? The award-winning podcaster Lewis Bassett is a chef in search of an answer. Whether examining the recent invention of sourdough or the aristocratic assumptions informing the rewi...
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