Loops: Issue 02 (Main)

Issue 2 of Loops, the biannual journal dedicated to music writing from Faber and Domino Records, hosts essays from Andy Miller (Est-ce, est-ce ce bon?: Serge Gainsbourg in the Culture Bunker), Dan Franklin (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Fast: Napalm Death and the Possibility of Life's Destruction) and Frances Morgan on Red Square's Thirty Three and the resonance of re-discovery after the event. And then There's The Man Who Wasn't There, Paul Morley's spectacularly honest and revealing portrait of Michael Jackson and his legacy.

So much has been written; so little has been said. Morley unravels and indulges the myth to ask just who he was, how we came to piece him together through our collective desires and fears, and why his destiny so inevitably reflected the dysfunctionality of the culture.

This expansive essay takes a sober, brave and imaginative perspective on a story that was written before it was told and mythologised before it was considered. Morley sits alongside Simon Reynolds, Nick Kent, Lavinia Greenlaw, Owen Hatherley, Matt Thorne, Rob Chapman, Rubbish Raver, Miriam Linna, Mark Fisher, Tim Lawrence and Elisa Ambrogio in Loops' second outing.