Open Up To Me (Kerron sinulle kaiken) is Finnish director Simo Halinen’s award-winning 2013 drama portraying the tribulations of Maarit Majantie, a middle-aged trans woman. Continue Reading

The paradox of all great ambient music is that it sounds easy to create, but it isn’t. All the different parts are simple, but the Continue Reading

The restless musical spirits of siblings Nicki and Patrick Adams have found a pared-down yet bracing place to land on their latest musical collaboration. With Continue Reading

Once upon a time, wearing a Jacques Derrida T-shirt was a hip way to declare one’s cerebral aspirations but to do so now is more Continue Reading

“Enola Gay”, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s (OMD’s) wonderfully indulgent synthpop classic named after the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, has just turned Continue Reading

Vancouver-based Kieran Jenkins is one half of the electronic duo with post-rock influences Sampson Mews. As OAKUM, he experiments with more energetic and atmospheric sounds Continue Reading

For a television show that centers on a masked, male individual, the final episode of Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian Season 2 (which premiered on Disney+ Continue Reading

By now, creative music fans know Susan Alcorn for her feat in bringing the pedal steel guitar to New York’s downtown music scene, with guitarist Continue Reading

The worlds that the Shanghai Restoration Project create are unfailingly sublime. Soothing, the group intrigue with their intricacies rather than overwhelm. Over the last 15 Continue Reading

I first noticed Maxwell Stern from a pleasant, unassuming tweet that somehow snuck into my usually gloomy feed. Stern’s tweet said something about not really Continue Reading

When Elvis Costello crashed into the consciousness of rock fans in 1977 with his debut album, My Aim Is True, he seemed like the bastard Continue Reading

One of the exciting aspects of the explosion in queer studies in recent decades has been the growing body of work on place-based queer histories. Continue Reading

Take heed that thou wash said the Angel to Dante before opening the gates to the Purgatory with two keys, a silver key for remorse Continue Reading

While the Bee Gees are most famous as the emissaries of disco thanks to the monstrous success of the soundtrack to the movie Saturday Night Continue Reading

Christian Petzold’s lengthy collaboration with actress Nina Hoss, from Wolfsburg (2003) to Phoenix (2014), saw the pair become inseparable. With the back-to-back films of Transit Continue Reading

In December, we featured upcoming London neo-soul artist Kianja’s single “I Get By” on the PopMatters Picks playlist. It’s an upbeat piano-driven number born of Continue Reading

“This is sacred music written for my own personal practice. If it is at all utilitarian, I hope that it encourages you to create something Continue Reading