Decades tend to crest halfway through, and 1995 was
the year
of the Nineties: peak Britpop (Oasis v Blur), peak YBA (Tracey Emin's tent), peak New Lad (when Nick Hornby published
High Fidelity
, when James Brown's
Loaded
detonated the publishing industry, and when pubs were finally allowed to stay open on a Sunday). It was the year of
The Bends
, the year Danny Boyle started filming
Trainspotting
, the year Richey Edwards went missing, the year Alex Garland wrote
The Beach
, the year Blair changed Clause IV after a controversial vote at the Labour Conference. It was a period of huge cultural upheaval - in art, literature, publishing and drugs, and a period of almost unparalleled hedonism.
Faster Than a Cannonball
is a cultural swipe of the decade from loungecore to the rise of New Labour, teasing all the relevant artistic strands through interviews with all the major protagonists and exhaustive re-evaluations of the important records of the year, by artists including Radiohead, Teenage Fanclub, Tricky, Pulp, Blur, the Chemical Brothers, Supergrass, Elastica, Spiritualized, Aphex Twin and, of course, Oasis.