Arts & Ents – a links special

Kiran Shah testing Ewok costumes for Return fo the Jedi.

This week I noticed a bit of a theme in my text document of interesting links, so I pushed the sirius-news-is-sirius stuff out during the week and saved all the stuff on "the arts" for the weekend, just like a proper newspaper!

Why Radiohead are the Blackest white band of our times.

You can filter people based on how they respond to this headline. If they find it intriguing and want to know more, they're my kind of people. Otherwise, meh. Written from the perspective of a Black girl Radiohead fan, she picks up on ideological similarities with Black culture as much as, or more than, the music. This is not to say Radiohead did this on purpose – once the art is out there it is in the hands of the audience, and subjective audience interpretation has always fascinated me. This is also the first time I've really noticed the capitalisation of Black, signifying its use as a culture rather than a colour. (Guardian)

Bob Mould, alt-rock's gay icon, takes on American evil: 'My head's on fire!'

Nice interview with the Hüsker Dü / Sugar frontman who I've kept tabs on over the years mostly due to m'good friend Jez's next level man-crush. I'm even going to recommend you check out the comments, which I never do, as they add multitudes. The new album is pretty sweet. (Guardian)

How Flash games shaped the video game industry

It's kinda mad that Flash is being effectively discontinued this year. It felt like it defined the internet for a while in the 2000's. For websites Flash was a gigantic pain in the arse, so I don't miss it, but this rundown of simple games people made with Flash brought back some very fond memories. I found myself wanting to play Canabalt again – thankfully a bunch of games are linked to at the bottom of the page so I loaded it up, clicked to allow the hoary plugin to run, and boom, off I went. (flashgamehistory)

'Fiery, chaotic and full of emotion': This Heat, the band who tried to change everything

One of my favourite things is discovering a piece of culture from my youth that I'd never heard of before, especially something that has been cited as an influence by people I admire. I'm never ashamed of my ignorance, just really keen to correct it. I love their music. I'd possibly describe it as psych-prog-punk, but only because they spanned those 70s eras. It's really like nothing else of that time. From the interview I really admire their desire to reach out to everyone, not to just play to insular same-faces crowds. (Guardian)

Kiran Shah: The hero with a thousand faces

I'd come across Shah in the Lord of the Rings DVD extras back in the day but I had no idea as to the extent of his career as a scale double for some of the major films of the last few decades, playing characters in the distance against smaller, more economic sets. This is on top of his actor work, in and out of costume. A great profile and insightful interview. (CNN)

Nurse with Wound list

The 1979 Nurse with Wound album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella contained a long list of musicians and bands considered influential. It ranges from the expected to the almost willfully obscure, so if you were looking for a listening project over the next lockdown… (Wikipedia)

Recommended Movie: One More Time With Feeling

We're currently watching this 2016 documentary in bits over the weekend, because it's a bit too itense to watch all at once, for the first viewing anyway. In many ways a sequel to 20,000 Days on Earth, this sees Nick Cave, deep in mourning for his recently deceased son, finishing the recording of the Bad Seeds' album Skeleton Tree. Here's a clip that pretty much sets the tone. (Rent/buy on AppleTV)