Volume 5, Issue 1 – August 2021
Guest Editor: Dr Ash Watson (UNSW Sydney, Australia)
Popular Music Fiction
“Perhaps only imagination, in its full processes, can touch and reach and recognise and embody… There are many other kinds of writing in society, but these now—of past and present and future—are close and urgent, challenging many of us to try both to understand and to attempt them” — Raymond Williams
“Good prose is like a windowpane” — George Orwell
Inspired by the work of the Guest Editor for this issue, Ash Watson – Creator of SoFi Zine and Editor for the Fiction Desk of The Sociological Review – this issue of Riffs bring together work that uses fiction to critically explore issues within popular music and to communicate this to a wide audience.
Read the full issue here, or click on the individual pieces below.
Cover shoot (of Lady Sanity and Swampmeat) by Ian Davies 2012 – 2026 | All rights reserved. Cover design by Rosie Clark.
Issue design work by Iain A. Taylor. Riffs front original cover design by Adam Williams.
Ash Watson – Editorial
Ben Assiter – Dancing with Death: A speculative ethnography
Ian Inglis – Kite in the Sky
Kevin Quinn – The (N)early Man: Arriving too soon, thriving too late by Farley Ruskin
Emily MacKay – Tin Can Alley
Paul Raven – Rust (City) Never Sleeps