Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 07/10/2026There 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. 071
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026i 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) 120
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026apparently John Cage really hated the vibraphone. 110
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026i mean obvs there’s lots of guitar music i really like but almost all the music i most dislike is guitar music. 120
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). 000
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026I 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. 130
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Gotta 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. 100
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026At Neiderdorf’s annual potato festival “the original” in northern Italy. Disappointing lack of potato-themed content tbh 000
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 26/09/2026everything is simultaneously both AI and cake. 010
Reposted by Robert BarryApollo @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.lyAna Mendieta’s singular vision is sharper than everA major retrospective at Tate Modern reveals an artist whose talent burns more brightly than ever, writes Robert Barry 062
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Texted a friend yesterday and he wrote back to say he was on the Côte d’Azur. I said, Nice? He said, very! 020
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Every time fly into norway and look out the window I think of Slartibartfast. A well-deserved award, I think. 110
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026I 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. 010
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026read 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. 121
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026One of two mirror balls installed by Charlemagne Palestine in the Tonspur passage in Vienna’s museum quarter. 040
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026i 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. 020
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026This is the Seinfeld formula, no? No hugging, no learning. 030
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026am 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. 020
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026the way apple maps actually makes street names smaller when you zoom in should be considered a hate crime against people over 40. 040
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 12/09/2026kicking off Lasse Marhaug’s marathon 24-hour noise concert at the old studios of the Norwegian national broadcaster… 040
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Last 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.comDon't Resolve the Dissonance: Meakusma Festival 2026 | The QuietusIt 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... 000
Reposted by Robert BarryRebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 08/09/2026I 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. 412795620
Reposted by Robert BarryAlex Hern @hern.bsky.social · 06/09/2026Mental how many people drive innit 4643
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 04/09/2026next week on firstfloor dot com: Sia Not Actually That Little 12 Year Old Girl! 000
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026If this is the eccojam potter then vaporwave potter must be just around the corner. not looking forward to hyperpop potter. 110
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026I have that record! It's great (much better than Baggy Trousers or Don't Stand So Close To Me) 010
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 02/09/2026Ok 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. 393
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 30/08/2026this 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. 130
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 28/08/2026It'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. 020
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 27/08/2026When 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?" 060
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 24/08/2026Very Lacanian album title, too! Very much a record I am having trouble filing appropriately. 020
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 24/08/2026Kinda 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.comSilances, by Henry Krutzen9 track album 160
Reposted by Robert Barrymore mr. spice guy @juniorhoncho.bsky.social · 01/03/2025if 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 61030100
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 17/08/2026Peter Watkins' biopic of Edvard Munch is, I think, the only exception to this rule. 120
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 16/08/2026god 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. 010
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 15/08/2026The last scene of Twin Peaks: The Return is pretty much unbeatable imo. 100
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/08/2026check out the jatekok score follower videos on youtube. they’re great fun! 010
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/08/2026i 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. 120
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 13/08/2026I 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! 110
Reposted by Robert BarryHelen Barrett @helenbarrett.bsky.social · 13/08/2026No one is going to read your press release. 0307
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 10/08/2026Ooh, what is that? I mean, who is the publisher? 100
Robert Barry @monsterbobby.bsky.social · 10/08/2026I'm enjoying both the new M. John Harrison novel and this – www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc... – forthcoming from Verso.versobooks.comThe Full EnglishWhat 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... 100