What is Independent Culture?
Independent Culture is a music, movie and literature review site new to 2006. As I am sure you are all aware, the world of internet review sites is a crowded one where all the popular places are also the most hated. Forums and blogs litter google with their proclamations of hate for one bad review or another; such is the life of criticism it seems. At Indie Cult we are attempting to step away from the tried, tested, hated and repeated formula of subjective media criticism.

To listen to and rely on a single person’s opinion requires a degree of writer empathy; to trust the article you must first trust the writer and when this is an exaggerated and egotistical internet persona things can start to get messy. We don’t expect you to trust us off the bat; in fact we actively support your attempts to find a variety of unbiased resources. For this reason we have an open (but spam moderated) comments and track-back system to encourage discussion and the posting of alternate resources—if you hated the review and can provide constructive criticism for other readers we will welcome and publish your comments. We have also implemented author pages and author RSS feeds such that if a writer consistently provides you with good recommendations you can easily look up more articles or quickly find out about new ones using syndication. In fact all our content is syndicated: individual categories, archives, comments, authors, and lots more exciting offerings coming soon. We hope to develop an active and passionate community of more than ordinary media enthusiasts. By providing a rounded discussion the reader has enough information from a collective of informed fellows to make an unbiased decision. This way truly great works can excel and niche acquired tastes can flourish in their own environment.

Rife subjectivity pollutes this critic’s world; everything is labelled, listed, categorised and rated.

We’re having none of this.

No Ratings.
Placing a piece of original art on a numerical scale alongside everything else is insulting and entirely opinionated. At the end of a live show a reporter asked the artist, “How would you summarize your performance in two words?” to which they replied, “If two words could adequately surmise my performance then I would not play, perform or sing for you, it wouldn’t be worth it”. A rating is an unjust and overly simplified article addendum, when all media is of high standard it merely detracts from the piece. It acts as a one word conclusion that holds weight on an invisible scale doing justice to no one.

No genre limitations.
If we like it and find that is deserves our attention we’ll write about it, let it be the billboard number one or the quaint noise-electronica song all about chemical compounds. To say “don’t review hip hop” or to sweep certain genres quietly under the couch is to turn your back on the potential for surprising unbridled original new music.

Not just the new and popular.
When a piece is released into the public domain a slew of review sites quickly snap it up and devour it before moving onto the next big new thing. It seems that if it’s new and can be sold it must be reviewed, whilst older overlooked delicacies never get the limelight they deserve, at least until they get a major new re-release. So many great acts have passed under the radar and to ignore them is just plain rude. Without the gold diggers or the diamond mines that million dollar beauty stays underground. The recent emergence of Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake is testament to this philosophy. So, whether it is an old pre-jazz Kentucky blues track or a pre-Moog electronic revolution we’ll want to tell you about it. We also treat each article equally, no prejudice will be shown between signed and unsigned acts or big budget and small indie films–the medium will be judged on its integrity alone.

What is a “showcase”?
A showcase is something that we have collectively or individually decided is the zenith of its class, an embodiment of artistic perfection if you wish to use fancy phrases. It’s a lengthy article ’showcasing’ something we love so much that we want everyone to know about it. A showcase covers general aspects of a medium such as artists, films (trilogies, collections), directors and authors rather than specific albums or books (though exceptions have been made).

What is a recommendation?
‘Recoms’ are regular and specific articles that recommend albums, films, books and artists. The basis; either the senior indie cult team unanimously or an author individually decides upon a subject they have particular enthusiasm for, something that is not widely enjoyed and deserves greater recognition—whether it be fantastic new music or a foreign art film from the thirties.

Integrity
Splatterings of ads, affiliate schemes, flash banners and paid for promotions haunt sites. We pledge never to infringe your site experience by bombarding you with adverts and we will never EVER take money to give something a top-spot review. We will however accept and write about demos, art, albums or short films sent to us, by anybody. We want to persuade you to send us your work and are always happy to dedicate articles to upcoming artists, unsigned bands or your personal opus.