Ed Gillett

Only ever said *in public*

‘We can leave knowing we left a mark’: how Corsica Studios transformed London nightlife – and why it’s closing The beloved south London club has announced it will shut next year as redevelopment of the site goes ahead. Founder Adrian Jones, DJs and promoters look back

A great pice by @ehgillett.bsky.social that captures the bittersweet nature of the moment. It is OK to celebrate the fact Corsica goes out on a high, and I hope Adrian gets to enjoy the pressure being off for a bit. Mission accomplished indeed.

In all honesty, it’s not rhetoric any more. It’s not narrative. I’ve experienced more racism in the last 4 months than I can ever remember. The wheels are off in the UK and it’s being led by 3 political parties.

He Grew Obsessed With an AI Chatbot. Then He Vanished in the Ozarks Jon Ganz committed a terrible crime in his youth, but he survived prison, fell in love, and started over. His new life unraveled in a way nobody could have predicted.

This is the biggest, toughest article I’ve done about so-called “AI psychosis.” It’s the story of a man who committed a horrific crime in his youth but served his time and against all odds found love and a new life—one that completely unraveled after he started talking to Google’s Gemini chatbot.

‘We can leave knowing we left a mark’: how Corsica Studios transformed London nightlife – and why it’s closing The beloved south London club has announced it will shut next year as redevelopment of the site goes ahead. Founder Adrian Jones, DJs and promoters look back

Whenever anyone asks me about my favourite clubs in London, Corsica Studios is my go-to answer. It’s given me some of the best nights of my life, I’m gutted to see it close, and I’m very grateful to them for trusting me to tell the full story in the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

He’s incredible. Maxinquaye gets all the plaudits, and is as good as everyone says, but Pre Millenium Tension is the one for me: deeply sinister but also bleakly beautiful, and completely singular.

Sure, but I think Oasis are about as close as you can get to a properly universal UK-wide cultural event in 2025, which is sort of the whole point of the piece. Like I say, if you disagree with the premise then fair enough.

Why Oasis' Reunion is the Perfect Soundtrack to Britain in 2025 | The Quietus It’s high summer in the middle of the decade. An increasingly unpopular and authoritarian government languishes in the polls, England put four past the Netherlands in the group stage of the Euros, and...

Oasis' reunion has been the musical event of '25 (never knew I had so many pals into them *Larry David Stare*), thanks to @ehgillett.bsky.social for a thoughtful essay on how they fit into the current British political landscape and what aspects they helped usher in:

thequietus.com/opinion-and-...

Also - as the piece points out - a lot of today’s fans weren’t even alive in the 90s! I was 10 years old when Definitely Maybe came out, and completely missed the debate at the time. For as long as Oasis continue to dictate pop culture, I reckon it’s worth having these conversations!

People can enjoy what they like, and the piece is pretty clear that people’s enjoyment of the reunion shows has generally been a good thing. I haven’t seen much (any?) other writing putting the gigs in a wider context though. Fair enough if you disagree!

Why Oasis' Reunion is the Perfect Soundtrack to Britain in 2025 | The Quietus It’s high summer in the middle of the decade. An increasingly unpopular and authoritarian government languishes in the polls, England put four past the Netherlands in the group stage of the Euros, and...

Oasis reflect both the best and worst aspects of modern Britain, which makes the wholly uncritical response to their reunion quietly unsettling. I’ve tried digging into the knottier realities of their legacy for @thequietus.com.

thequietus.com/opinion-and-...

Dam been writing a book about this and she just TikToked it in 90 seconds.

last night as i was trying to wind down for bed i had a unified theory of what the fuck just happened, and i wrote it down, and filed it under "well, i can't talk about this on main without sounding insane until and unless the perp gets caught and is provably a groyper"

anyways, great news! (1/X)

I know jumping to politically-advantageous conclusions is just what we do now, but its still striking how many right wing folks have immediately jumped to "violent leftist," as if there hasn't been a sustained, decadelong hate campaign against Charlie Kirk from those to his right.

Of course they’re not exactly the same. But in both cases there’s an assumption of an alternative course being available, which in reality isn’t there to be taken. Starmer, McSweeney et al can’t change because the current approach genuinely reflects their values.

It’s similar to the old canard that Blair would have loved to be more left-wing but knew the electorate wouldn’t wear it, when he said multiple times he’d have adopted exactly the same stance even if it wasn’t popular. What we’re seeing now is that precise sentiment in action.

Right, because it’s ideology rather than strategy. It’s not that they don’t see the alternatives, it’s that they’re making a deliberate choice to pursue this approach, because it’s what they genuinely believe in.

Those “credible policy commitments” in full: mandatory flag-shagging twice a week, refugees and trans people can go fuck themselves, more austerity, every other big decision ducked. And they wonder why people seek out alternatives!

Everyone has their own fantasy land, as you put it, and they’re all basically correct to some degree. There have been particular regressions with austerity, Brexit and Covid, clearly, but each of those were merely building on the declines and compromises of preceding years or decades.

My general suspicion is that the UK as a whole has been steady, gradually collapsing for at least 40 years, even if each of us has a period of our lives where we’re insulated from / ignorant of that wider trend to some degree.

This is both correct, and not radical enough: we should ban 99% of all privately-owned cars from inner cities. Blue badge holders, emergency services, finite number of permits for commercial deliveries, buses, bikes, and that’s it. No able-bodied person in Zone 1 actually needs a Land Rover, sorry.

Yep, the superfence was later but I thought 97 had seen some improvements? Maybe I’m misremembering. 95 was definitely the big year for break-ins though. 97 was insanely rainy & muddy, which might have dampened demand.

I think 94 and 95 were the really bad ones for crime weren’t they? Fallow year in 96, then they came back with a much bigger fence.

Yeah for all of Glastonbury’s qualities it’s not exactly tranquil is it. I love the insane scale of it, but I can see how something like Houghton does that smaller, more manageable side of things much better.

There are a few more spots like that now I think: the woods / tree stage, shady bits in silver hayes, redesigned shangri-la, strummerville, green fields obviously. Definitely more needed though, and only going to become more of an issue with climate change.

Yeah that sounds rough. 2024 was my first time in years, but I felt like outside the big pyramid / other arenas there were enough bars & shaded areas to bounce between. Packed a UV-resistant brolly this year which also helped a lot!

Lack of shade is a big issue, but at least amongst the people I chat to there’s a broad acknowledgement of this & steps being taken by the fest to provide more shaded areas, particularly given the last few years have been scorching. When did you last go?

Also has the benefit - if you can think of it that way - of totally ignoring the moral and social implications of all of this, and looking strictly at costs, outputs and efficiency gains.

This from Goldman Sachs last year (both the podcast and the Jim Covello bit of the investor report linked to from the text) is a really solid, coherent argument that AI hasn’t yet shown how it can deliver a return on the investment required. www.goldmansachs.com/insights/gol...

Doubly true of music journalism in my experience. Writers & bloggers were always likely to be replaced as gatekeepers / tastemakers by influencers and video creators, but the implosion of Twitter and the exodus to Instagram has massively accelerated that shift.