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In today's episode, a conversation with Simon Reynolds, acclaimed music writer and journalist, and author of a new book, Still in a Dream: Shoegaze, Slackers and the Reinvention of Rock, 1984-1994. Twenty years after his acclaimed postpunk best-seller, Rip It Up and Start Again, Simon Reynolds tells the tale of what happened next: the underground explosion of noisepop, shoegaze, slacker rock and grunge that reverberated through the mid-Eighties into the early Nineties. Capturing the musical exhilaration of the era along with the alienation of youth during a period of ascendant conservative politics and glitzy mainstream pop, Still in a Dream celebrates a golden age of guitar reinvention, a second psychedelia of mind-blowing sounds pioneered by bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. In Britain, groups like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive escaped into shimmering dreamworlds while American underground rockers like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement blended apathy and urgency into thrilling noise. A propulsive and personal account from a journalist who covered this music in real time from the frontlines, Still in a Dream vividly recreates a period that was the last blast for the analogue culture of vinyl records and music papers, before the Internet changed everything. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781399618373/still-in-a-dream--simon-reynolds--2026--9781399618373

In this episode, a conversation recorded at the Melbourne launch of Jordan Prosser’s new work of fiction/sci-fi, Blue Giant, an unruly eulogy for millennial optimism – and a deranged love letter to a generation torn between helplessness and selfishness. Abby always believed she was destined for great things. But her dream career as an industry-disrupting fashion designer went up in smoke, and her aspirations to become a world-renowned yogi and/or save the endangered tigers proved equally fruitless. She’s in her early thirties, suffering the unbearable burdens of adulthood and anonymity, when she wakes up after a drunken bender with an all-new, all-consuming purpose in life: to be the first person on Mars. Perfect timing – Danish tech entrepreneur Tor Skovgaard is currently recruiting for a one-way mission to colonise the red planet. Abby knows this is it: her last-ditch bid for fame and glory. And if she can’t be humanity’s saviour … she’ll settle for being its martyr. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780702269240/blue-giant--jordan-prosser--2026--9780702269240

In this episode, a conversation with Avigayl Sharp, author of a blisteringly funny and transcendently deranged debut novel for fans of Ottessa Moshfegh, Patricia Lockwood and George Saunders. In Offseason, our fiercely observant but self-deluded narrator finds herself teaching at an all-girls boarding school in a remote coastal town. In between manic lectures that veer from Charles Dickens's Bleak House to the childhood maltreatment of her beloved Iosif Stalin and the generational legacy of the Holocaust, she implicates everyone she meets in her quest to pin down where exactly her own life went wrong. Avigayl Sharp was interviewed by author Raeden Richardson, to discuss this new book, process and craft, and the role of the novel in contemporary consciousness and culture. Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9781399637015/offseason--avigayl-sharp--2026--9781399637015