Launched in July 2009, Loops is a new biannual journal of music writing from two great independents, Faber and Faber and Domino Records.

It offers a landscape for today’s exceptional writers to engage with subjects, individuals and issues that colour all corners of the pop music world. Free from the shackles of release schedules, Loops provides a space for artists to publish tour diaries, non-sequiturs and think-pieces and an opportunity for writers to stretch out and go off-map to share their thoughts and ideas.

Our debut issue, here available as a trial, includes contributions from Nick Cave, Hari Kunzru, Nick Kent, Jon Savage, Amanda Petrusich, Kevin Cummins, James Yorkston and more.

Issue 2 hosts essays from Andy Miller (on Serge Gainsbourg), Nick Kent (on 1973), Matt Thorne (on Prince) and Frances Morgan (on Red Square), as well as an incredible lead piece by Paul Morley on Michael Jackson. A spectacularly honest and revealing portrait, Morley’s expansive essay 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. Morley sits alongside Simon Reynolds, Lavinia Greenlaw, Owen Hatherley, Gruff Rhys, Travis Elborough and DBC Pierre in Loops’ second outing.