Press Reviews

• Jacqueline Crooks

  Nothing sweets me more than a music book that breaks the mould. This vibrant read amplifies here-and-now talents, featuring some of my favourite artists . . . It defies categorisation and captures the essence of what makes these musicians so captivating. Impossible not to love it

• Benjamin Myers

  A daring book that affords the multifarious music of the modern streaming age and its most innovative - and successful - creative outliers with the deep, long-form analysis usually reverentially reserved for the dust-covered past. An important and fascinating cultural document

• Richard Dawson, musician

  Tremendous, crisp writing. Liam strikes a perfect balance between the infectiously enthusiastic and the surgically thorough

• Algiers

  A beautifully researched and deeply engaging exploration of the boundary-pushers who redefined music and identity in a fast-moving, ephemeral era, laid out with such clarity and passion that this book feels as essential to understanding our present as Mystery Train and As Serious as Your Life were to theirs

• Telegraph

  Fascinating

• Huw Stephens

  A modern take on five fascinating musicians and the worlds which created them. Insightful, beautifully told and as exciting as listening to your favourite music. A total breath of fresh air

• Joe Muggs

  Wire

  A great primer [with] a deeper sense of mission . . . Twenty-first century culture can often seem glutted, but this book serves as a rejoinder not to get bamboozled by the algorithm blizzards into thinking it's nothing but simulacra and ghosts

• The Tribune

  This is speedy, enthusiastic stuff . . . Songs in the Key of MP3 impresses most in the sheer excitement with which its author views his subject

• The Arts Desk

  One of those books where you'll find yourself shocked that it didn't exist before: it's a mapping out of the modern musical landscape on terms defined by the artists who've come to define it