Biography
As a freelance writer and critic, David has contributed to a range of publications around the world. Essays, profiles and reviews covering a spectrum of art, music, film and other cultural concerns have appeared in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Sight & Sound, Total Film, New Statesman and Eye: the International Review of Graphic Design. David reviews comic books and graphic novels for The Observer. His work has appeared in mainstream music titles, including URB in Los Angeles, DJ in London and Superstar in Berlin, and his essays have been translated for the Colombian arts journal El Malpensante. David also contributes to numerous websites, most notably with Bad Faith, a regular column for 3:AM, which examines the resurgence of religious zeal and other strange phenomena. He is also an executive board member of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, based in Amherst, New York, and contributes to the CSER journal.
Past articles have profiled Joanna MacGregor’s SoundCircus label, the New York illusionist David Blaine and Chris Ware’s award-winning graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth; others have addressed the rise of psychometric testing, the necessity of silence and the homoerotic subtext of the comic book superhero. David’s most recent work includes an extended critique of branding gurus and an astringent debunking of cultural equivalence.
In 1994, David co-founded the internationally acclaimed Emit record label. He remained the label’s A&R director for five years, developing a catalogue of innovative electronic music, with seminal albums by Woob, Undark and Slim and collaborations with Brian Eno, Carl Stone, Michael Brook and David Sylvian. The eighteen albums in the Emit series have been hailed as “innovative and hauntingly beautiful” (The Wire) and “the most prestigious musical series of the 90s” (Coda). And few labels can claim to have had their recordings simultaneously praised in New Scientist and Playboy. David has recorded extensively for Emit and other independents, including Kai-Tonk in Japan and New York’s Instinct and Rey-D labels.
The ambitious talking ape (above) is by Alan Davis & Mark Farmer, from Fantastic Four, vol 2, #3.
