Kingsley Marshall is an academic and journalist who lectures in film, and contributes music and film criticism, features and reviews to Clash, Little White Lies, Shook and Big Screen magazines in the UK, and Film International overseas. Since 2003, he has also contributed video game criticism and technology stories to the BBC, iDJ, Knowledge and Notion, and was appointed Technical Editor at Clash magazine in 2010, having launched a new tech and games spread – ClashClick – in issue #50.
His academic research primarily orientates around the use of sound (including music and effects) in film, and the cinematic representation of the real, including historical figures and events. He is working on a substantial project on the use of sound in contemporary war films – focusing on The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2009) – and is due to publish on Oliver Stone’s W. (2008) in Presidents in the Movies: American History and Politics on Screen, and on Frost/Nixon (Howard, 2008), as part of a separate collection (due in late 2011 or early 2012) which ties in with the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in.
Deconstructed is the archive both of that writing, and associated ephemera.
Kingsley began writing at the tail end of the 1980s – an expansive record collection having taken him from the turntables to the recording studio and, eventually, the word processor. In recent years, like some kind of musical Marty McFly, he’s made the return journey, and hopes to finally deliver on a record deal, originally signed in 1998, in 2011. He is aware that his album has taken longer than Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy and hopes that it too will enjoy similar levels of multi-platinum success.
He has written about all aspects of popular culture – from music through to film, video games, the internet and literature – for the BBC, MTV and Amazon, in the pages of anthologies on hip hop and soul, album sleeve notes and biographies, and over 20 magazines, including Mixmag, Blues & Soul, iDJ, Dazed, Touch, Darker Than Blue, Notion, DJ, Wax, Grand Slam, Knowledge, ATM, Stranger, Muzik, and Hip Hop Connection amongst others in the UK, in addition to Break It Up in France, 3D World in Australia, Zavtone in Japan, and Urb, Massive, BPM and XLR8R in the US.
Established in 1996 as a resource for cultural ephemera, Deconstructed also spawned club nights at a smattering of venues. Deconstructed Live has drawn upon the movers and shakers of independent music in an irregular showcase of contemporary music. Guests have included Ladytron, Bonobo, Caribou, The Big Chill, Rob Da Bank/Sunday Best, Tom Middleton, Mark Pritchard, Luke Vibert, Jamie Odell, Ian Simmonds, Quantic and Riton – DJ sets from whom are peppered across this site.
Heralded by the NME as one of the best nights in the country, The Guardian were kind enough to profile Deconstructed Live as, “one of those nights that nightclubbing was made for,” whilst style bible i-D went even further, describing Kingsley, somewhat bizarrely, as an “Orwellian-era disc-jockey and romantic poetry quoting soul boy.” If you take that as meaning he couldn’t mix his way out of a paper bag, and plays sets guaranteed to include at least Ennio Morricone record, then they were right on the money.
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Kingsley Marshall is an academic and journalist who lectures in film and contributes music and film criticism, features and reviews to Little White Lies, Shook and Big Screen magazines in the UK. He was appointed Technical Editor at Clash magazine in 2010, where he writes a technology and games column.