Lankum – Loud And Quiet 162

Future Islands, John Francis Flynn, Sleater-Kinney, D Double E, Sprints, Salamanda, 1300, Beirut, Hannah Diamond, Rosie Carr, JPEGMAFIA, Joanna Sternberg, Albums Of The Year, and more

issue 162

Lankum

20 years in the making

DJANGO DJANGO

CHRISTINE AND THE QUEENS PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE (OUT NOW)

ALUNA

OFF PLANET (OUT NOW)

MYCELiUM (OUT NOW)

SHYGIRL

PARCELS

NYMPH (OUT NOW)

LIVE VOL. 2 (OUT OCT 20)

BECAUSE MUSIC

LSDXOXO

DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR EP (OUT NOW)

Contents Contact info@loudandquiet.com advertise@loudandquiet.com Loud And Quiet Ltd 445 Hackney Road London E2 9DY Founding Editor: Stuart Stubbs Deputy Editor: Luke Cartledge Designer: Ed Seymour Art Direction: B.A.M. Contributing writers Alastair Shuttleworth, Alexander Smail, Andrew Anderson, Ben Lynch, Colin Groundwater, Dafydd Jenkins, Daniel Dylan Wray, Dominic Haley, Dhruva Balram, Fergal Kinney, Gemma Samways, Guia Cortassa, Hamza Riaz, Hayden Merrick, Ian Roebuck, Isabel Crabtree, Jack Doherty, Jake Crossland, Janne Oinonen, Jasleen Dhindsa, Jemima Skala, Jenessa Williams, Jessica Wrigglesworth, Joe Goggins, Jumi Akinfenwa, Kyle Kohner, Leo Lawton, Max Pilley, Michelle Kambasha, Mike Vinti, Nadia Younes, Ollie Rankine, Oskar Jeff, Orla Foster, Robert Davidson, Reef Younis, Sam Walton, Shrey Kathuria, Skye Butchard, Sophia McDonald, Susan Darlington, Theo Gorst, Tom Critten, Tom Morgan, Tristan Gatward, Zara Hedderman, Zhenzhen Yu

Issue 162 In the 18 years of Loud And Quiet, I don’t think we’ve ever featured a band earlier in the year and then again on the cover of our December edition. It’s just always felt that however successful a group or artist might become in between, we discussed all we wanted to when we met them last. It’s not quite like that with Lankum, who have been a band in one form or another for the last 20 years, even if 2023 and their third (or fifth) album, False Lankum, has made it feel like they’ve arrived from nowhere.

How often does your favourite new band have a mountain of work for you to discover and enjoy?

Stuart Stubbs

Contributing photographers Andrew Mangum, Annie Forrest, Cielito Vivas, Dan Kendall, Eleonora C. Collini, Emily Malan, Gabriel Green, Gem Harris, Henri Kisielewski, Jake Kenny, Jody Evans, Jonangelo Molinari, Kyle Johnson, Levi Mandel, Mathew Scott, Matt Swinsky, Matilda Hill-Jenkins, Phil Sharp, Sophie Barloc, Timothy Cochrane, Tom Porter With special thanks to Alex Hall, Chris Cuff, Dan Carson, Frankie Davison, James Crosley, Jamie Woolgar, Liv Willars, Kathryne Chalker, Neeliya De Silva, Matt Fogg, Micaela Cohen, Nic Bestley, Patrick Johnson

The views expressed in Loud And Quiet are those of the respective contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the magazine or its staff. All rights reserved 2023 Loud And Quiet Ltd.

ISSN 2049-9892 Printed by Gemini Print Distributed by Loud And Quiet Ltd. & Forte

Sprints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Salamanda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1300 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Beirut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Rosie Carr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 John Francis Flynn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Sleater-Kinney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 D Double E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Future Islands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Albums Of The Year 2023 . . . . . . . . . . 57 Lankum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Customer Survey 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . 74 The Year in Songs 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . 77 03

The Beginning: Previously

Since the last edition of Loud And Quiet

V&A East Museum London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is set to open a new space in Stratford called V&A East Museum in 2025, which will launch with an exhibition called The Music Is Black: A British Story. Featuring new contributions and BBC archive material, the exhibition will address the social, historical and cultural context behind Black music in Britain, exploring the creation of everything from grime and UK garage to 2 tone, jungle, ragga, drum’n’bass, trip-hop, drill and lots more, as it charts the impact of early 20th century pioneers like Samuel Coleridge-Taylor through to Stormzy, J Hus

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and Little Simz. Of the exhibition, DJ Trevor Nelson has said: “There are so many different colours and shades of Black music, and so many eclectic styles that have emerged from the UK. The fact that we haven’t had a national exhibition on Black British music is quite surprising to me. I feel it needs to be documented.

But more importantly, to tell the stories that are untold.”

V&A East – which will be located at the Olympic Park – will also become the permanent home of the V&A’s David Bowie collection; an archive including more than 80,000 fashion items, lyric documents, set designs and awards.

photographY by gem harris

The Beginning: Previously Bandcamp

Meghan Thee Stallion

News of huge layoffs at Bandcamp became independent music’s biggest story (and shock) in mid October, as the streaming and commerce site had its staff cut by around 50%. The sudden layoffs filtered through Twitter as an increasing number of ex-employees announced that they had lost their jobs, despite the seeming success of the site through the pandemic and beyond. The cuts came after the site was recently sold to music licensing company Songtradr, with many of them falling on Bandcamp’s editorial team, which has been a huge source of discovery for independent music fans. It’s a huge blow to independent artists too, who have found Bandcamp to be the fairest online marketplace to share and sell their music since it launched in 2007.

Meghan Thee Stallion has launched a mental health website called Seize The Awkward, featuring videos of the rapper opening up about various topics, like checking in on friends and being vulnerable. It provides warning signs that a friend is struggling, conversation starters, tips for support, and resources to get help. There are also videos from other musicians like Noah Cyrus and Ava Max, and athletes like American football player Caleb Williams and wrestler Big E.. seizetheawkward.org

Kendrick Lamar On 2 November Kendrick Lamar’s company pgLang released a phone that really is just that – a phone without all the stuff phones now have.

The Light Phone has no internet capabilities and not even a colour screen, in an attempt to be a less distracting device. Others have tried to bring back such old school phones before, including the Nokia reissue of the 3310, but none have looked like The Light Phone, which was made in collaboration with tech company Light. Unsurprisingly, it sold out on the day of release, not just because of the Kendrick connection but because only 250 handsets were made.

They cost $299 each, which sounds surprisingly cheap until you remember that you can only call people on it.

Lana Del Rey As Lana Del Rey’s tour came to an end in West Virginia, she announced from the stage that she had been donating her tour profits to the cities she had played in. Although the specifics of exactly what she meant remain blurry to say the least, she told her audience that night: “Every ticket, every dollar, it is poured right back into the city. Because it’s not about that for me. And I know that that sounds cheesy, but I do it ’cause I love it.”

Show Me The Body On 27 October, New York hardcore trio Show Me The Body surprise-released a live documentary and a live album called Live & Loose In The USA to celebrate a year since the release of their album Trouble The Water. Fifteen live tracks make up the record, recorded at various punk shows in various US cities earlier this year. It’s accompanying short film premiered at Dead Brain Studio in LA on the day of release.

Daft Punk On 17 November Daft Punk released a new version of their final album Random Access Memories, that is completely without drums or percussive elements. The release came 10 years after the original album and followed a wider reissue of RAM that featured bonus material in May of this year.

illustration by kate prior

Sufjan Stevens As September grew to a close and the release of Sufjan Stevens latest album Javelin grew closer, the singer and musician revealed that he had been in hospital with a serious illness that would prevent him from promoting his new record. Through a rare social media post, he shared news that he was originally hospitalised a month previously when he woke up to find he couldn’t walk. His brother drove him to hospital where he was diagnosed with an auto immune disorder called Guillian-Barre Syndrome. Explaining that he won’t be doing any interviews or shows around the album while he recovers, he said: “Most people who have GBS learn to walk again on their own within a year, so I am hopeful. I’m committed to getting better, I’m in good spirits, and I’m surrounded by a really great team. I want to be well!”

Live Aid As Bob Geldof announced that Live Aid is currently being made into a musical, he was quick to answer all the questions you might have about it before you had a chance to ask them: this piece of “complex theatre”, which is named Just For One Day after David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ lyric, “isn’t a tribute thing. So, there isn’t a person dressed up as Freddie wearing a crap moustache. The songs drive the drama along,” he said. The songs will be those of Queen, U2, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Sting and others who performed at Live Aid, and the plot will centre around how the show came together, along with “a love story inspired by real events.”

From the team behind Mrs. Doubtfire, the Musical.

The Beatles But nothing this month compared to The Beatles releasing their “final” song, ‘Now And Then’ – an AI-aided track featuring a John Lennon vocal that Paul and Ringo then worked on in the studio, adding some guitars from George that were meant for a different song. In 1967 when The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper, Jimi Hendrix famously covered its title track at his show in London that evening. On the day ‘Now And Then’ was released Miles Kane posted a cover of it on Instagram. This is what we deserve now.

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The Beginning: Losing My Edge

We asked Hannah Diamond what her favourite song is, really SS: HD: SS: HD: SS: HD: SS: HD:

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Hi Hannah, you’ve picked a Whigfield track that isn’t ‘Saturday Night’.

No. It’s ‘Think of You’.

Is this Whigfield’s best single, then?

It’s an absolute smash.

Even better than ‘Sexy Eyes’?

‘Sexy Guys’?

Eyes. ‘Sexy Eyes’. It’s essentially ‘Saturday Night’ with Whigfield singing about sexy eyes instead. It is not good.

Well, ‘Think of You’ is an incredible song. It reminds me of a really fun era when I was doing my internship at Super Super magazine, which is where I met everyone from PC [Music]. We used to have this mix that Will Wright, the editor, had made for the office for when we did all-nighters to go to print. And this was one of his favourite tracks on that mix.

I didn’t know you worked at Super Super. What was your role there?

When I started I was the editor’s intern. I was incredibly shy and couldn’t even speak to anyone for some reason, and there was this defining moment when we had this shoot that got handed in that needed a retouch overhaul, basically, and I was like, ‘oh, I can do that.’ And they were like, ‘this girl who’s never spoken has suddenly said that she can do all this retouching and Photoshop’. So I started doing all of art direction, graphics, everything to do with the image side of things. It’s where I met GFOTY [Girlfriend Of The Year, Polly-Louisa Salmon], and through Polly I met

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A.G. [Cook] and Danny [L Harle] and everyone she went to school with. So this song reminds me of an era where I met my people.

It’s a shame it doesn’t have a choreographed dance though, isn’t it?

I actually feel like we’re in the choreographed dance era of songs again, because of TikTok. We’ve gone through this long period where it was really uncool to have dances connected to tracks – like ‘Cha Cha Slide’ and ‘The Ketchup Song’. It was considered so naff. But it’s progressed to something more advanced with TikTok. What’s going on there is pretty technical and everyone is killing it. We were doing fake maraca shaking.

Are you on TikTok? I am but I’m figuring out how I want to be on there. Because being a public person doesn’t come naturally to me, actually.

Do you think you could film yourself doing a TikTok dance in a public place? Because I struggle to take a photo in public.

I do too! I get embarrassed getting my phone out to take photos of things in public, which is hilarious because I’m a photographer as part of my job. But I think it’s because I overly think about the intrusiveness of the camera in a public space. But when I see other people doing it, I think, ‘wow, slay! I aspire to be like you.’

If you weren’t listening to ‘Think of You’ when it came out, when you would have been 4, what were you listening to then?

My granddad had a very big tape and CD collection, and my favourite song when I was that age was ‘Baby Love’ by The Supremes. That was my fucking jam! And then I also borrowed a Donna Summer album from my granddad that Ioved.

Have you always had a love for positive, celebratory pop music then, or did you ever go through a noise phase, or something “less Hannah Diamond”?

I’ve listened to everything. I get bored and I historically spent a lot of time alone in my bedroom making art, and that gives you a lot of listening hours. I’ve always loved pop music, but I also had my indie era, where I was listening to Bloc Party all the time, or listening to Hadouken!. Enter Shikari. Then metal. When I was 11 I got really into trance because I was given a Gatecrasher CD by my uncle for Christmas...

That you’d expressed no interest in?

No. He just thought it was pretty fun. It opened a whole new world to me. There’s a musical archive in my brain.

words by stuart stubbs

10 YEARS OF PRAH RECORDINGS 2013 - 2023 a a a h e v n h s d k i e r n a o i A y o o n f a N n D t k b r a e / l z c l a H l l D Fa ng / Ora e H a e rs g i / g t n i r u e n k e r L c c e v i i a t l y / s i r m M O n L B o / e lS p s v e u n Y h E i o K s m b r / r u C C a p s o n er / G eo Ro t / N i ve n B y L g c m a n i / n R o a fl a ff n a / r i t Th i o n m S z S C A o / e r l y P t o s o n r / n i d n o r i n T a o Ge d / H / M h / c m i s s n t R n m a u a l o n l Ho m l i n s r y C o / Robi S u o k Umla i u e o h / b s T h s r t e s a F / O n r t i M o a / h J N u s W rot d / r e e t a a u h a k h t m o o c j i a & C R N Yem Y prah.co.uk

The Beginning: Bad Advice

‘Mariah Carey’ on surviving Christmas

Hi Mariah. I love Christmas, but every year I dread Christmas dinner as my mum still insists on serving Brussel sprouts.

Should I just tell her that I really don’t like them, or wait until after she’d dead? – Ian Craventhorpe, Essex This sounds like a “you problem”, Ian. But I do actually have a fix for this, and it’s simpler than you might think – you need a person for that. A sprout person. I’ve had many over my career, but in recent years my assistant (the one who is typing these answers for me for Loud + Clear) has taken on the role of eating anything I don’t want on my behalf. Predominantly sprouts. Her name is Claire. Or Smelly Claire. [Claire nods] Dear Queen Mariah. In my circle of friends, I’m known for giving not only the best hugs but the best Christmas presents too. You must have given some AMAZING gifts yourself over the years – are there any you can share? – Susan Caverly, Cardiff [Takes a moment before starting to slowly sing…] “I don’t want a lot for Christmas / There is just one thing I need / I don’t care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree…” Need I say more, Susan? Need I say more?!

Hi Mariah. I don’t know about you, but as I get older I struggle to get into the Christmas spirit like I used to. What do you do to keep the spirit alive? – Gavin Bexendrale, Portsmouth Not sure what that’s supposed to mean, “get older”… I don’t like that tone at all, Gavin. Personally, as I enter my mid 30s I still feel

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like the little girl I was growing up in the… [glares at assistant] … ’90s. It’s crazy to me to think that in 5-10 years I’ll be almost turning 40. Eek! I certainly hope I don’t lose the Christmas spirit like you clearly have, which I imagine makes you a very ugly person to be around. Should that even start to happen to me , I’m sure I’ll be able to rekindle my joy simply but watching the first Christmas film I ever watched as a child, Frozen.

Hi Mariah. I’m not sure if you have them in the US, but we have this shop Flying Tiger where you can buy all of your Christmas presents in one horrible store. Where do you tend to buy your selfie sticks and miniature tool sets for loved ones? – Eddy Ham, The Wirral Yes, yes, very funny. ‘Flying Tiger’. I should have known this was coming. When I asked for a flying tiger when I performed in Dubai it really wasn’t that big a deal. I was simply thinking of things I hadn’t already asked for, and this is just where we are on that.

What I resented was the promoter claiming that flyer tigers don’t exist, as if that’s my problem. You booked Mariah Carey, honey.

Dear Ms Carey. I truly love my job, but it’s a very demanding one, with a boss who, whilst very fair, does demand a lot from me, especially at Christmas. I’ve been mustering the courage to ask them for Christmas Day off. Would you agree that it’s not an unreasonable request? – anonymous, via email Nice try, Claire. Not gonna happen.

illustration by kate prior

How the Dublin group decided to become a punk band and their own form of therapy, by Jessica Wrigglesworth.

Photography by Sam Walton

Sprints “Let’s take things up a notch,” roared Karla Chubb, lead vocalist and guitarist of Irish punk band Sprints to a sold-out London Scala last month. The band had been on stage for about 45 minutes, and their fans, by this point beaming and sweaty, had not stopped moving for most of that time. As Sprints launched into new single ‘Up and Comer’ the place erupted with bouncy, chaotic energy, buzzing with joyful catharsis. “I don’t know what that energy was,” Chubb tells me a week later, smiling incredulously. “I think we’ve got such a good relationship with each other; we’ve played so much by now that we just know exactly what we want to do – it felt so secure in that show that it was like, no matter what you did, you thought it was gonna go well.”

Right now feels like a pivotal moment for Sprints, whose debut album Letter To Self will be releases in January. Having garnered a devoted fan base with just two EPs (2021’s Manifesto and 2022’s A Modern Job), 2024 sees the band ramp up their live schedule, with EU, UK, Irish and US tours in quick succession. “Now more than ever, we’re such a live band,” Chubb says. “That’s where we thrive.” It’s unsurprising, given the band was born at a gig. “We always say that the inception moment was when me, Jack [Callan, drummer] and Colm [O’Reilly, guitarist] saw Savages at Electric Picnic [Dublin] in 2016, and we were like, ‘God, this is the music we love – why isn’t this the music we’re writing?’”

At that point, Chubb had been playing with Callan and O’Reilly for a few years, having been in bands together since school, but they had yet to land on a sound that clicked. “The issue was that we all have such diverse music taste that we could lean in any direction if we wanted to. Jack and I share a big Motown passion, and we’re also massively into folk; the Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchells of the world, as well as the indie sleaze in the early 2000s that shaped our youth. But the one that we kept coming back to was that early ’90s kind of grunge noise: the Pixies, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth.”

Initially, Chubb admits, they were playing music that “maybe felt a little bit more approachable.” The Savages show set them on a new course. “We decided not to take the easy

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route,” she says, “and to just go into the heavy stuff. We got together with the purpose of writing really authentically and aggressively. And then we brought Sam [McCann, bassist] on board and it just felt really natural.”

Although Chubb is the lyricist, the rest of the band have been involved in the writing process since early on. “The way we work is very collaborative,” she tells me. “Pretty much from the inception of any song it gets shared with the guys and then we kind of rehearse them. We love to play live together. I think they don’t really form as songs until we rehearse them in a room.”

They’ve been prolific from the off. “We just kind of started writing and didn’t stop, and then the pandemic came and we wrote more and then we had two EPs under our belt before we knew it,” Chubb says with a laughs, “and now I feel like we blinked and there’s an album coming.” Dan Fox of fellow Dublin punk outfit Gilla Band produced both EPs, as well as Letter To Self, which they recorded over two weeks in the Loire Valley earlier in 2022. “Gilla Band were a massive influence on pretty much anyone in music and Dublin at that point,” Chubb notes. “You go to a Gilla Band show and you quite literally get battered around and come out dripping in sweat. You feel like this really cathartic release; I think that’s exactly what we wanted to capture.”

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PRINTS AND GILLA BAND are part of a wider cultural

moment in Irish music right now – one which has seen young Irish artists across genres garnering huge, global acclaim.

Fellow Dubliners Fontaines DC have been called the new kings of rock by more than a few, while Lankum’s latest record False Lankum has been considered folk music’s OK Computer, shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. CMAT, Kojaque and Just Mustard sell out venues all over the world.

“I would probably put it down to the socio-economic climate here,” posits Chubb. “Music, particularly punk music, has always been born out of aggression and frustration, and rising against the powers that be. I think there’s been a very, very difficult few years in Ireland, despite there being such posi-

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“We decided not to take the easy route... We got together with the purpose of writing really authentically and aggressively” tive cultural and social change at the same time, like with the abortion referendum [Sprints’ 2020 single ‘Manifesto’ was a call for equality, written during the referendum] and the marriage equality referendum. There’s been a lot of progress made, but we’ve also had a party in power for 12 or 13 years now that have progressively prioritised big money and venture funds and corporations over the greater good of the youth and the people here.” To that end, Sprints are in the minority as a group who have managed to remain in Dublin, with Chubb noting: “There’s been such a mass amount of emigration – out of groups of 20, 30 friends, I’ve got maybe two left in the city because it’s just so unlivable in terms of the cost.”

She points to music as a “positive outlet” for these frustrations. “When you can’t afford therapy every week because it’s so expensive, and we’re all living paycheck to paycheck and paying outrageous prices just to survive, then music and the arts have become that catharsis and a way to process emotions in a hopefully, healthy way.” Sprints’ own music often does just this. Letters To Self sees Chubb confronting past trauma and struggles with mental health, and at one point, on the sparse, heart-wrenching ‘Shadow of a Doubt’, suicidal thoughts. Given how fearless and upbeat her stage presence is, I wonder if she feels daunted by the prospect of performing these incredibly vulnerable songs to hundreds of people every night. “I’m probably more nervous for people to hear it on record than I am live to be honest,” she admits, “because I have no control over that anymore. And whatever performance I gave that day in the studio is cemented on record forever for the rest of my life, which is a little bit terrifying. Whereas live, it could change any day, any moment, any city. We can have total control of how

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that song is perceived and performed, which gives you a lot of power. It’s also up to me to reveal as little or as much as I want to onstage about the songs, whereas the record is so open for interpretation. I think that’s probably the scarier part for me.”

Recording in the isolated setting of Studio Black Box, in rural northern France, allowed the band to reckon with the emotional intensity of the record. “It’s the best way we could have done the album,” notes Chubb, “because it completely shut you off from the outside world. We were so detached from our personal lives the only thing that we focused on was the music and we were literally eating, breathing, sleeping the album. The impact of what we were writing, and the reality of that having to go out into the world became very real. So it allowed me personally to process and anticipate that. I think it’s always very daunting to put your personal and innermost insecurities on paper.

And this is the first time there’s an album of those songs as opposed to just three or four.”

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UT IF LETTER TO SELF is thematically heavy, it is also profoundly optimistic, full of that joyful catharsis that made the Scala show so special, and no doubt many of those planned for next year. It’s an overwhelming schedule, but they’re prepared.

“We’ve matured a lot in our approach to touring. Our first tour was absolute insanity – we came out of Covid not having played two shows, and I don’t think I had a voice by day four because we were falling into every pitfall; drinking and staying out late and sleeping terribly and eating shite. We’ve changed our approach a lot – now it’s all about prioritising the show. We’ve learnt the lessons, we’ve put the graft in, so now it’s just about hitting the ground running.”

Salamanda Korea’s most whimsical ambient duo, shouting out to all their fellow NFPs, by Skye Butchard

Uman Therma (aka Sala) and Yetsuby (aka Manda) have a clear connection. You can hear that in the fresh and whimsical ambient music they make together. Meeting around five years ago in Seoul, they’ve now made four albums, countless mixes, and have toured internationally while expanding the scope of their sound. Each new project is brighter and more inventive. So what is it that makes their partnership so strong?

“We don’t know if this has been a thing in other countries as well, but people here in Korea are obsessed over the MyersBriggs Type Indicator [a questionnaire-based ‘personality test’], including ourselves,” they say, in joint messages sent to me via email due to the language barrier. “We learned that we share the same type: INFP (or ENFP at times for Manda), indicating that we share curious, caring, imaginative and open-minded traits.

Don’t tell others but seriously NFPs are the best.”

The bottom of their message reads ‘NFPs are the Best!’ written in rainbow bubble writing. It’s in keeping with the playful approach they take musically. I’m curious whether that feeling is something they have to search for, or if it comes easy.

“We guess it’s natural for both of us. We never really ‘try’ to be playful, but we just love having fun! In fact, cute and silly memes take up most of our communications. Same goes for music. We do partially make music for work, but producing music itself has always been about having fun.”

Salamanda make music built on small moments: making homemade jam; the sun on your skin; the knock of a piano mallet on wood. Sweet melodic phrases play off a dreamy and melancholic backdrop as thoughts drift in and out. Their new record, In Parallel, released on K-Lone and Facta’s Wisdom Teeth, opens with the sound of children playing, on a track called ‘Nostalgia’.

“It was more about us feeling a bit nostalgic from the sounds that we used – the playground noise and children laughing sound samples and the antique melodies that we played unintentionally – than us being inspired by old memories.

“We approach sound samples simply as audio with certain sounds and later think about their origin. It’s quite fascinating to think about how these noises or sounds that you can easily hear in your daily life can become perfect materials for music that sometimes stirs something in your heart.”

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HERE’S A CLICHE that’s thankfully fading about ambient music being sonic wallpaper; yet we’re in a golden age for acts bucking that trend by incorporating weird or jarring elements into their tracks. Salamanda do exactly that.

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“We love weird and strange sounds even if they aren›t musical, as they can be fresh and intriguing,” they say. “At the same time, we like using the mallet instruments and the sounds of percussive instruments. Because we enjoy and are used to listening to and searching for those sounds a lot, they naturally seep into the tracks we create.”

Detached from their original context, Salamanda’s found sounds can become surreal dreamscapes. On ‘Mysterious Wedding’, Manda happened to witness and record the sounds of a traditional Japanese wedding ceremony.

“The ceremony itself was also very unique, with a married couple and their families following behind the instrumentalists and monks as they walked around the temple courtyard as the music played, then entering the temple.” they say. “Because the musical scale used in the ceremony music was different from the traditional ones in Korea, it felt mysterious and exotic.”

I’ve caught Salamanda while they›re back in Seoul after a touring stint. “It feels nice to be back with our friends, family and cats,” they say. Now, they prepare more live shows, armed with a more spritely and near-danceable collection of songs.

Salamanda has thus far left their dance excursions for their excellent mixes for NTS or HÖR, but In Parallel sees this side of them mingling with softer, more expansive moments.

I ask what they’ve enjoyed about touring most, expecting to hear about the Berlin club scene or a particularly fun set.

Instead, it’s a long wait at Minneapolis Airport.

“We were on our way to Montréal to perform at MUTEK, and because we missed our connecting flight we had to stay at the airport for 24 hours to take the same flight the next day. We were basically Tom Hanks in The Terminal. It was an unusual experience but we somehow managed to make it enjoyable, and this will definitely stay in our memory for a long time.”

2023

4AD

Lucinda Chua – YIAN

cumgirl8 – phantasea pharm

the GOLDEN DREGS – On Grace & Dignity

Velvet Negroni – Bulli

Buck Meek – Haunted Mountain

U.S. Girls – Bless This Mess

The National – First Two Pages Of Frankenstein & Laugh Track

Tkay Maidza – Sweet Justice

Daughter – Stereo Mind Game

Anjimile – The King

PLUS

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Air Miami, Brendan Perry, The Breeders, Lush & Pale Saints

1300 Industrial freestyles from a cabin in the woods,

by Nadia Younes.

Photography by Raghav Rampal & Elijah Flores

“It’s literally a five-way marriage,” jokes Rako, one fifth of Korean-Australian rap boy band 1300. They’re speaking from a studio space in Seoul, South Korea, where they’re working on new music in between playing shows.

The conversation is largely led by producer Nerdie, with Rako by his side while the other members – fellow producer pokari.sweat and rappers Goyo and Dali Hart – mill about in the background. Despite the high-octane energy we hear and see in 1300’s work, the group are remarkably subdued – perhaps even shy – but their bond is undeniable.

Like all great love stories, the connection was instant.

After meeting for the first time, it was only a matter of weeks before the five members were inseparable. “It was almost like a proposal plan, like ‘will you marry me?’. One day we separated the producers and asked them, ‘would you guys be our producers?’” says Rako – and the rest is history.

“I think now we’re at a point where we all know the strengths of everyone, so we’re able to [say], ‘I think you should go like this on this song,’” Nerdie adds. “I think that’s where you’re able to find someone’s personality, by pushing in that direction. It’s an understanding of each other mutually.”

That dedication to joint development shines through on their forthcoming, thrilling debut album, which feels like it has one foot in the past, one in the future and another in the present.

Industrial, trap-influenced beats that feel like an homage to early LuckyMe records merge with cathartic, angsty bars not unlike those of JPEGMAFIA, from the group’s trio of rappers who combine lyrics recited in both Korean and English. “It’s a very natural process for us… we just write and whatever’s more natural in our head just comes out,” says Rako.

In what sounds like the prologue to a horror film, the album was recorded in “a cabin in the woods” – as Nerdie describes it – in the Blue Mountains, situated in Australia’s New South Wales region. Perhaps the secluded setting is what contributes, then, to an album that’s shrouded in darkness and isolation; almost acting as a metaphor for lives lived between two cultures and

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never quite knowing where you belong.

“We just really let all of the emotion out, and the guys just vomited all over these songs,” says Nerdie. Rako enthusiastically agrees: “I think vomiting is the right word because we usually write lyrics before we start holding the microphone, but this time… I think most of my final lyrics came from me freestyling on the beats – and the other boys as well.”

The group’s sound and visual aesthetic is a real melting pot of Eastern and Western culture. They’ve previously paid tribute to their Korean heritage by parodying Park Chan-Wook’s 2003 film Oldboy in the video for their track of the same name, and covering K-pop artist Psy’s 2012 viral hit ‘Gangam Style’ for Triple J’s Like A Version (the Australian radio station’s equivalent to Radio 1’s Live Lounge). “All of our identity is being mixed, so we just take from whatever we like. There isn’t something we feel like ‘this is the thing that defines us’ or ‘this is the sound’; being lost is the sound.”

The (currently untitled) album’s lead single, ‘Lalaland’, is equally explorative, combining a sample of Kanye West’s ‘On Sight’ with lyrical references to Japanese manga characters Bakugo and Todoroki, while its video takes inspiration from cult ’90s horror film The Blair Witch Project. “I wanted to make a K-pop video but [they’re] quite expensive… so we were like let’s make a K-pop video but if we made it with no resources,” says Nerdie. What better way to make a low-budget music video than to take inspiration from one of the lowestbudget films ever made.

For a band still very much in their youth, there’s a lot to be said for the trust and belief all five members have in each other.

But 1300’s unconventional marriage shows that with hard work and dedication the spark doesn’t have to fade. “We’ve spent a lot of time together… and I think everyone knows now when someone says something to them it’s because we all want to do better and advance our artistry,” says Nerdie. “It’s a lifelong process; learning how to be with people is probably the most difficult thing in the world.”

Clarissa Connelly

Ana Roxanne

FRI 24TH NOV VORTEX JAZZ CLUB

THU 30TH NOV CORSICA STUDIOS

Militarie Gun

Sofiane Pamart

SUN 3RD DEC VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

TUE 5TH DEC THE DOME

TUE 5TH DEC SOLD OUT WED 6TH DEC UNION CHAPEL

Sarah Meth

Current Joys

Great Lake Swimmers

TUE 5TH DEC AVALON CAFE

SOLD OUT SUN 10TH DEC VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

MON 11TH DEC OMEARA

mark william lewis

John Francis Flynn

GHOST WOMAN

MON 29TH JAN CAFE OTO

WED 31ST JAN THE DOME

FRI 2ND FEB STUDIO 9294

Hayden Pedigo

Jeff Rosenstock

Helena Deland

MON 12TH FEB THE WAITING ROOM

SOLD OUT WED 14TH FEB THU 15TH FEB ELECTRIC BALLROOM

WED 21ST FEB THE LEXINGTON

Girl Ray

Alexandra Streliski

DIIV

THU 29TH FEB THE LEXINGTON

TUE 5TH MAR THE ELGAR ROOM ROYAL ALBERT HALL

TUE 12TH MAR O2 FORUM KENTISH TOWN

MIKE

Yard Act

Widowspeak

SAT 16TH MAR CAFE OTO

WED 27TH MAR EVENTIM APOLLO

FRI 29TH MAR LAFAYETTE

Tapir!

Louis Culture

Bingo Fury

THU 18TH APR VILLAGE UNDERGROUND

THU 18TH APR FOLKLORE

Uma

THU 4TH APR KINGS PLACE

Hurray For The Riff Raff

FRI 17TH MAY ELECTRIC BRIXTON

Ty Segall

FRI 28TH JUN ROUNDHOUSE

Nils Frahm SOLD OUT THU 11TH JUL SOLD OUT FRI 12TH JUL SOLD OUT SAT 13TH JUL SOLD OUT SUN 14TH JUL SUN 14TH JUL (EXTRA MATINEE ADDED) BARBICAN HALL

Beirut Zach Condon’s Arctic country album, made in the warmth of a funeral, by Hayden Merrick. Photography by Lina Gaißer Thunder and lightning underscore my conversation with Berlin-based composer Zach Condon; he needs headphones to hear over the rain pleading on his attic studio window. The elements performed a similar show for the Arctic cabin where he spent two dead-of-winter months crafting Hadsel, Beirut’s sixth album, named after the Norwegian municipality.

“There were a couple hurricanes that were so brutal I thought the house was going to come down,” he reflects. With only a few sunlight hours each day, though, he lived indoors – spending endless nights zealously tinkering with five oversized suitcases’ worth of music equipment. Even the local church was at his disposal. “Oddvar would call and say, ‘Hey, we just had a funeral. The church is warm if you wanna go in there. It’s yours for the night,’” Condon explains.

“In some ways, I’m almost afraid the story is too cinematic,” he suggests.

It does resemble the hero’s journey narrative: crisis prompts adventure prompts revelation (in this case, a work of experimental folk that envelopes listeners and embalms the island’s vista). “The touring in 2019 just crashed and burned,” Condon says, referring to his cancelling of shows due to his mental health. “I was feeling like I’d failed. I sent a lot of people home empty-handed – fans and my fellow bandmates.” This period was exacerbated

by Condon’s nascent sobriety. “From the age of 15, I drowned everything in alcohol,” he shares, adding an analogy: “[When you] take a drink, every time you finish, you throw it in the backseat of a car as you’re speeding down the street. When you slam the brakes – which is getting sober – all of it comes to hit you in the back of the head.”

So when his partner floated Hadsel, “it represented everything I wanted as far as shelter and warmth and comfort, as well as an escape from civilisation and from my life, my reality,” he explains. The ensuing sojourn was Condon’s most prolific creative period since aged 15: “You don’t have any inner critics anymore because you’re just in awe, and you’re just amazed, a brand new mind again. My mind in that state can spit out a lot of expressive ideas.”

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These ideas were brought to life by the pump organ idling in a corner of the cabin, which he introduced to his tried and true companions: the funereal French Horn, a gatherum of vintage synthesisers, and his favoured ukulele. The latter – a baritone uke, which sounds a little like an acoustic guitar – served to channel a newfound interest: country music. “My partner was like, ‘You can’t just blast Arabic music all day in this cosy cabin; it doesn’t fit,’” he recalls. “‘What about country? That’s kind of mellow and warm.’

“We put on a Hank Williams record and that knocked something loose in me. It was like all my pretensions just fell away. Then I started listening to everything […] it was all these guys being like, ‘I’m lonely; I’ve got a drinking problem,’ and they’re so honest and almost ridiculously baron.”

Those familiar with Beirut understand why Condon’s lived 30-some years without country music. He told Loud And Quiet back in 2015: “If I could change one thing in this world, music wouldn’t have words.” And his lyrics are usually plucked from the atmosphere seconds before hitting record. “[First takes] are the most jam-packed with feeling,” he says, “and every take after that loses a little more. So I’ve often left those [lyrics] in, and people have asked me, ‘What does it mean? I’m sorry but I don’t really know either.’”

Though not a full U-turn, Condon admits that Hank made him realise, “Well, if these are lyrics, then I like them.”

That’s why ‘Stokmarknes’ is a diaristic account of his trip, and ‘So Many Plans’ mourns old friends but trusts they will return, and ‘The Tern’ advocates self-discovery, no matter how belated. He points to Cocteau Twins and Sigur Rós as demonstrating lyrics’ futility, but Hadsel’s poetry only deepens our investment in our hero’s journey; we have not just a reliable soundtrack but a reliable narrator, too.

And if you don’t believe me, believe Hadsel: “When I went back a few years later, I noticed that [the album lasts] the exact amount of time it takes to drive around the island. I circled the island and it was almost perfect. I was really happy about that.”

Rosie Carr 20

with thanks to photo location forma hq

The gardener and experimentalist behind an album of ambient ‘Tudorgaze’, by Ian Roebuck.

Photography by Jake Kenny

“Climate change is very real,” says ambient musician Rosie Carr gazing out of her window on an unseasonably hot October’s day.

“There’s some horticultural stuff I have read where people try and put a silver lining on it because now you can grow these amazing drought tolerant Mediterranean plants but, realistically, if you get a crazy hot summer and then a freezing winter then loads of plants just die.”

For artist and green-fingered Rosie, whose debut album Yew is composed of echoes of a garden, her environment – our environment – matters a great deal. Having spent the last two years simultaneously training in horticulture in the Essex countryside and recording the immersive world of Yew, it’s been all encompassing in her life. “I thought, well I really like gardening and it’s something I always do, so why not get an actual qualification in it,” she says. “My initial thought was that it would replace my art but then it became part of it. The place I did my training were very supportive and into these concepts like rewilding and our connection to climate change. A lot of the stuff that we were talking about was feeding into my sound making. It’s such an amazing way to draw people into an idea or a concept so it informed the album and evolved quickly.”

Rosie’s study blurred into her music as Yew began to take shape. Field recordings and home-made instruments from her back yard became part of her world-building. “That’s right.

Hang on…” she says, stifling a laugh and going to grab something from elsewhere before returning with two frankly bizarrelooking pieces. “These are moulded from Quikrete, this one has a bowl in it, you can plug it in here and it’s got a contact mic, so you can put marbles or water in it, it’s kind of a basic sound but I find it works well.” She stops to smile again before continuing: “Then this funny looking one has nails in it. I play this one in a number of ways but I have been using a whisk, it makes these different resonant sounds based on how high up the nail you hit or how wobbly the nail is. If you use different effects and guitar pedals you can shift the sound with various layers of reverb.”

It’s this noise distortion that lives at the heart of Yew and makes it so captivating: live recorders and synths sit next to feedback, drum patterns and of course those self-captured recordings of her garden life. “A lot of it was recorded on the fly on my phone as a voice note,” she says, “but there would be some stuff I would do on a Walkman on tape, so just via the speaker on the Walkman. 50% of it though is on a phone and then processed in different ways – I would put it to tape and then through Ableton before going back onto tape so it would be buried in a process; analogue to digital and back to analogue. I would be out with a colleague who is a bird song expert and they would say, ‘Oh listen to that, it’s incredible’, so I would start recording. One time I was in the garden and I noticed my squeaky wheelbarrow

so I would put my recording device in the wheelbarrow and then do a few laps around the garden. The first track on the album definitely has some wheelbarrow action on it.”

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HAT’S THIS ABOUT ‘Tudorgaze’, I ask, referring to a description on Rosie’s Bandcamp page, as if wheelbarrows weren’t esoteric enough. “Ah, you’ve heard that term for my music,” Rosie chuckles. “I think maybe it was my partner Johnny who made that up. A lot of the music on Yew is also these tapes that I found in a charity shop in Essex. They were home recordings of an album called Music of the Tudor Age, I got it for like 20p or something, and then a bunch of that stuff I would stretch out to times 50 and pick out elements of it, just single chords or notes, rearrange them into different melodies and then record them out on a four-track tape recorder. There are a couple of moments in the album where it gets really expansive and it’s quite difficult to work it out but they are people playing the recorder or a lute but stretched to times 50 and massively processed.” “‘Tudorgaze’ fits the vibe perfectly,” I agree.

“Yeah, for sure. It’s a bit shoegazey and the clue is in the name. The last track on the album, ‘Let me In’, has a dancey feel to it but the main hook is monks chanting, which is of course Tudor.”

Singing friars aside, it’s Rosie’s love affair with her recorder that holds her album together. “You’re right,” she says.

“I am most definitely a recorder player – it’s not very cool but I love recorders. I think even when they sound bad they sound great. I love that anyone can pick one up and make a sound out of it. I have done quite a lot of recorder workshops called ‘Recorder Mania’, I did some workshops at Supernormal Festival recently and described it on the poster as apocalyptic sound bath meets school assembly.”

Life after Yew is already richly complex for Rosie. “I am starting a PhD this week,” she tells me. “I am sure a lot of people feel that if you’re working or studying at the same time as being creative that can be such a force for creativity. Of course it can be exhausting too! It’s a practice-based PhD, so I am not writing a full dissertation and it resolves itself with exhibition or performances. I think my music will inform it, which is how I seem to operate best.” With a working title of ‘Creative Ecology and World Building in Community Gardens’, I ask what her professors can expect? “Well, the title might change, don’t hold me to that!” she says. “What I am thinking about is world building in a creative sense, like an album but then how it relates to the world beneath the soil, our connection as humans to microbial life and critters, what’s inside a compost heap… worlds within worlds. There is a social and political history to gardens as well – I guess it’s quite deep! I’ll do an exhibition or a performance if you’d rather not read the dissertation.”

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John Francis Flynn What traditional music means to the Irish musician pushing it forward, by Oliver Rankine.

Photography by Donal Talbot

It’s easy to get lost in the mythology that surrounds traditional folk music. Written by few but reimagined and passed down by many, its songs are reflections of the land and its people, with roots almost as old as time. For Ireland, trad music makes up the lifeblood of its community via songs that continue to hum through the valleys and echo through generations of huddled pub backroom performances. John Francis Flynn has arrived as the next in a long lineage of pop culture figures to reinterpret his

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countrymen’s most precious heirlooms, and he’s quick to reassure me, these traditions are still alive and well in Dublin.

“It’s been my community since I was a child,” he says, reminiscing alone in his living room. “I grew up in the trad scene.” Flynn has never known any other home than the northside of the Irish capital, having spent much of his youth cutting his teeth playing the flute and tin whistle. “I was definitely the odd one out in my neighbourhood, playing trad music, but I eventually started meeting like-minded people dispersed around the city. It’s a big community, nonetheless. These days, there’s trad sessions happening every day.”

Looking to escape the inner-city bustle, Flynn is soon heading west to stake out the winter amongst the flowing pastures and craggy coastline of County Claire. It’s a welcome change of scenery for a man who’s spent the past 18 months documenting a version of his home that is scarcely pictured within the pages of garish tourist brochures. His genre-bending new album, Look Over The Wall, See The Sky, pays homage to a real Dublin, known only to the Irish folk that live there.

It’s these hidden natives, and the centuries-old stories passed down from one lifetime to the next, that inspires much of Flynn’s music, as well as the stockpile of folk songs before him.

“I’m interested in all aspects of traditional music and folklore,” he says, pondering the origin of his muse. “I’m interested in how it functions in society, in terms of how you can learn about your past and where you come from. But also in a spiritual way, in terms of how it’s evolved through people in a sense of where the music has travelled and how that can change songs over time. It reveals a lot about us as Irish people.”

The dancers, poets and musicians – or “trad heads” as Flynn likes to call them – who make up Dublin’s eclectic traditional arts scene are all frequenters of the city’s cultural hangouts, the Cobblestone pub being its fabled stronghold. “It attracts people from all over the world. It’s very real to the point that it’s a living, breathing epicentre of culture,” he says, taking me through the revolving door of Celtic troupes who travel from far and wide to make up the Cobblestone’s melting pot of heritage showcases.

The regular congregation of musicians, art lovers and barflies that frequent the pub are by no means archivists. Flynn, who is a regular face within the community, explains: “I don’t think there’s any need to go preserving anything, it’s all there for you already if you want it. Traditional music is very much a healthy being. It doesn’t really need to be revived because it’s always been around.”

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But Dublin’s much-loved hubs like the Cobblestone are under threat. Inundated with tourists, and amidst a homelessness epidemic made worse by some of the highest rents in Europe, the Irish government continues to force through big business developments onto a city that’s buckling under the growing eyesore of unaffordable luxury hotels lining its highstreets.

“I think that when a city, in this case Dublin, is being bought and sold by property developers, it gets you to confront what it all means, and specifically what is more important, your home or some capitalist agenda,” says Flynn. “Dublin City has been turned into one big hotel. It’s being sold as this amazing place for music, culture, shamrocks and leprechauns, where everyone’s drinking and having the craic. But while people come to visit Ireland, the rush of tourists are pushing out those who can’t afford to live here anymore. We’re basically in a struggle to keep hold of our homes and communities.”

of fact, I did. There are currently about 40 different recorded versions listed on various internet folk music indexes, with Flynn’s rendition now fulfilling the youngest point of an eternally growing musical ancestry.

Being one of the genre’s most recent offshoots and contending with hordes of different song variations before him, Flynn still succeeds in finding his niche. Inspired by Irish counterparts Gilla Band, and more of Dublin’s experimental noise bands, his trad melodies strike harmony beside ambient electronics, tape experimentation and heady industrial clatter.

These foreign elements breathe life into trad music’s strict parameters being transportive of the city’s unremarkable factories, railroad stations and dive bars, placing an unsettling beauty in its true essence and character.

Structural changes to age-old folk tunes aren’t always received favourably by the most hardcore of trad purists, but Flynn seems unperturbed by any pre-set rules or directive. “I’ll

“I’d like it if people appreciated that Ireland is a real place, with real people. It’s not some Disneyland for fecking leprechauns” This painful reality is laid bare on Flynn’s recent single, ‘Mole In The Ground’ – a haunting rendition of Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s 1928 anti-establishment folk tune which has been expertly repurposed to articulate the plight of Irish people.

Choosing to fixate on the song’s most cutthroat line, Flynn’s deep guttural repetition of the words, “Drink up your blood like wine” sends the track spiralling into the blackhearted depths of capitalist gluttony.

A

SIDE FROM THE bleak nature of it all, Flynn isn’t too concerned about analysing each track’s exact provenance. “We wouldn’t consider these covers,” he says. “I guess you could pin something on songs like ‘Dirty Old Town’ – you might consider that a cover because it’s Ewan MacColl. But it also becomes Lou Killen, Shane McGowan, and every man and his dog who got round to singing it.” It seems the chronology behind trad more resembles a family tree than most instances of musical progression, with different songs crossing and merging with one another, each time being tinkered with until something new and unrecognisable is born.

“When you’re talking about ‘Mole In The Ground’, there’s so many different versions of that song. There’s the original from your man Lunsford, but artists like Jackson C. Frank also reused the tune on a different version, and under a completely different name.” Flynn is referring to Frank’s 1965 track ‘Kimbie’, an adapted rendition of Lunsford’s 1928 original, but uniquely reimagined via his own lyrics and melody.

“That’s just two variances of that song, but there’s loads more that have evolved beyond that as well. You end up thinking, where did that song come from? Nobody knows. If you did more research, I’m sure you could find a shitload more.” As a matter

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always sing songs to match how they should be sung. But I think if you’re respectful to the source material, and to the essence of the song and how you engage with it, you are within your rights to follow a different vision. I will always play in a traditional style and would never change that just to sound flashy. As long as you’re being honest with yourself, I think you’re probably doing a good job with it”.

Whilst most will agree that nationalism as a topic, particularly in the context of Ireland, doesn’t tend to rank highly in recommended dinner party icebreakers, something about non-combative folk music putting the ‘Irishness back in Ireland’ feels oddly unifying and palatable. Whilst Flynn doesn’t at all claim this as his driving force, his distaste for the usual shamrocked propaganda, or “paddywhackery” as he often refers to it, feels difficult to miss. “It makes me sick,” he says with genuine resentment. “I’d like it if people appreciated that Ireland is a real place, with real people. It’s not some Disneyland for fecking leprechauns.”

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HIS IDEA OF ‘an imagined Ireland’ poses a difficult question, and one that Flynn hopes to resolve by rewiring what we have come to expect from traditional Irish culture. “I want to challenge people’s perception of what Ireland is and how it’s sold abroad, because what they’re expecting is very different from actual reality. The ‘imagined Ireland’ is one thing, but I live in the real Ireland. A place that’s a real home and without all the paddywhackery. There’s this great expectation of something, but we’re actually trying to live here and can’t really afford it anymore.” Look Over The Wall, See The Sky offers an abstract fantasy, a fleeting glimpse of what could exist when all that is truly Irish remains.

Sleater-Kinney

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Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein need their legendary band, just like everyone else, by Gemma Samways.

Photography by Chris Hornbecker For a band predicated on tight friendships and feminist ideals, Sleater-Kinney’s recent history has felt a little disorienting.

After 24 years in the group, drummer Janet Weiss departed in 2019, alleging she was no longer deemed “a creative equal” by her bandmates. And while founding members Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein forged forward as a duo, 2021’s self-produced lockdown LP Path of Wellness received a largely lukewarm reception, with critics painting post-Weiss Sleater-Kinney as something of a diminished force.

If comeback single ‘Hell’ proves anything, it’s that nothing could be further from the truth. The explosive opener from their forthcoming 11th LP Little Rope, it’s a nihilistic thunderclap, the arid atmospherics of the verses contrasted with a squalling chorus powered by buzzsaw guitars, Tucker’s primal howl and the pulverising percussion of touring drummer Angie Boylan. Speaking on a video call from their homes in Portland, Oregon, Tucker and Brownstein are rightly feeling proud of their latest chapter.

“When you give yourself over to art and to the subconscious part of your mind, you can have this moment of pure, emotional, almost spiritual realisation,” says Tucker. “I think that’s what [‘Hell’] is trying to do: I was trying to be an observer and also to have a human reaction to the situations we’ve conceded to in the past few years.”

‘Hell’ was written in the aftermath of the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which claimed the lives of 19 students and two teachers. As mother to a teenager and a 22-year-old, Tucker remains utterly horrified by how normalised gun violence has become in US society: “[At school] all the kids go through these shooter drills, getting ready for what’s going to happen when someone brings a gun into their school. Like, that’s now an accepted part of our culture, stitched into our routine.”

‘Hell’ also captures the cognitive struggle that underpins persevering in the face of seemingly continual setbacks. Brownstein explains: “There is a sense of direness, sure, but there’s also an irrepressible fight to live with the mess. It’s not even hopeful; it’s just a way of acknowledging that optimism is its own false prophecy. Because all of these false notions of heaven or progress – or however you want to couch enlightenment – like, that’s a contested space; a space that excludes other people constantly, whether it’s through legislation or governance or discrimination. These supposed utopian bases are actually not designed for many of us.”

She continues: “For me, the album as a whole is about saying, ok, what if living in the mess is the norm? Because if

we reimagine darkness as a place where we can exist with our transgressions – a space isn’t maligned or immoral but just an acknowledgement of fragility – then that is the space we want to be in. So much of the album is about recreating that darkness as a place from which to set forth and to exist and connect.”

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HE IMPORTANCE OF human connections was only reinforced by the devastating circumstances preceding the completion of Little Rope. In autumn 2022, Tucker was contacted by the US embassy in Italy trying to get in touch with her bandmate, having been listed as Brownstein’s emergency contact on an old passport form. Tucker passed on the new number, and the embassy rang Brownstein to break the news that her mother and stepfather had been killed in a car accident in Italy.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Tucker rallied around her friend, with music functioning as an important tool for healing.

“I’d send [Carrie] my ideas and she would text me to say she’d been working on the song for like eight hours straight. It was wild.” Brownstein smiles. “Playing guitar is like a ritual of love,” she says. “There’s something sacred about it; a choreography that reminds you that you’re alive.”

Similarly, Brownstein found herself seeking comfort in Tucker’s singing. “On the last five or six records Corin and I volley the vocal duties back and forth. But I just wasn’t in a place where I could do the kind of sassy vocal that you might hear on the verse of ‘A New Wave’, because that’s simply not where I was at emotionally. My voice was channelled much more through my guitar and so Corin did have to sing more. I needed to hear her voice: that’s part of what got me through.”

Brownstein deals directly with her catastrophic loss on ‘Don’t Feel Right’. Setting out her goals for the future to deceptively buoyant indie-pop, she sings, “I get up, make a list / What I’ll do, once I’m fixed.” By the song’s conclusion she’s succumbed to the sheer incoherency of grief, detailing her new daily routine in the couplet, “Drive around, drown the pain out / Warped from grief, can’t go home.”

And yet, Brownstein is the first to admit that singing honestly about her pain brought a sense of catharsis: “One of the most wondrous things about music is it’s a living thing. A song that was written in sorrow can become celebratory, it can become silly, it can become absurd. Every time you play a song, you experience it for the first time, and that is really the gift of being alive.”

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This determination to seize the moment is stronger than ever in the band. That’s why when Weiss left there was never any question that they might fold completely. “The thing about collaboration is that when you get older, you realise how fragile it is,” says Tucker. “You lose people around you, you’re parenting, you’re taking care of parents that are ageing… Like, there will be things that can and will stop the band. But [Sleater-Kinney] is a really important collaboration, and it’s something that brings me a lot of joy so I want to keep doing it as long as we can.”

“We really need this band,” Brownstein impresses. “After every record we have to reassess whether the band can speak to the moment and also to the present version of ourselves.

And if we can find the authenticity and the honesty within the vessel that is Sleater-Kinney, then there’s always an imperative to return to it, and to continue this ongoing conversation that Corin and I have had with each other for nearly three decades.”

Similarly, their sense of social responsibility remains undimmed, as exemplified by songs like ‘Crusader’. A blast of choppy post-punk, it finds Brownstein taunting, “You’re burning all the books in this town / But you can’t destroy the words in our mouths.”

Outlining the context, she explains, “[The song] acknowledges that things have grown dire. As a queer person, it’s hard to believe that we’re in a place again where our very existence is a threat to someone, particularly in the broader LGBTQ+ community where trans lives are being threatened and legislated against.

And the trespasses on bodily autonomy across the board are absolutely exhausting. But ‘Crusader’ imagines that instead of shrinking, you grow and resist smallness and self-effacement.”

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HEN SLEATER-KINNEY first emerged from the ashes of the riot grrrl movement, the idea of musicians publicly expressing political opinions still felt a relatively radical act.

Today, righteous anger appears almost a prerequisite, whether

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that’s Billie Eilish rallying against climate change or Phoebe Bridgers advocating for pro-choice charities. How heartened are Sleater-Kinney to witness a whole new generation of musicians putting their politics front and centre?

“I mean, I think it’s absolutely crucial,” says Brownstein.

“But when I think about a figure like Sinead O’Connor, I don’t see a lot of people taking the career and financial risks that she did. So, while I’m grateful that so much has shifted, and that a lot of the top-down hierarchies have started to erode, I think that as we move towards this very branded, commercialised society, that it is – in some ways – easier to speak out.”

She continues: “There are certainly people in the activist community who are risking career, life and status for their political beliefs. But I think, as artists, it’s still hard to imagine the kind of bravery of someone like Sinead or Tina Turner or Nina Simone. You know, those were very different times.”

Times may have changed, but Little Rope reveals that Sleater-Kinney are driven by the same outsider spirit that permeated 1995’s self-titled debut. It’s there in Brownstein’s refusal to conform to patriarchal beauty standards during ‘Dress Yourself ’, and in Tucker’s vow to resist oppression on ‘Untidy Creature’ (“You built a cage but your measurements wrong / I’ll find a way, I’ll pick your lock”).

“That’s Sleater Kinney in a nutshell, right?” Brownstein laughs, when I quote the lyric. “We’re not a band asking for permission from the mainstream. Even as we age, that is so uninteresting to me.”

Tucker nods in agreement. “That’s the community the band came from: one with absolutely no interest even in winning people over, and just writing for ourselves and for other people who feel like outsiders, whether that’s other queer people, other women or whatever… You can still do great things while being trespassed upon or denied your rights. And we want to make sure that young people feel like they’re not alone in that struggle.”

D Double E The ongoing story of a grime godfather, told over a feast of oysters, by Oskar Jeff.

Photography by Tom Porter

“Jheez bruv, I need to put Danny Brown in a headlock!” exclaims D Double E as a dozen oysters are placed down in front of us.

He’s yet to meet the Detroit rapper, but his feature on Double’s latest EP suggests an animated chemistry that surely bleeds into a real life interaction. Danny, consider this your warning; come prepared for battle.

East London born and raised, D Double E came to prominence during grime’s initial rise in the early ’00s, cutting a distinct figure with an offbeat vocal style that perfectly matched the nascent genre’s frenetic energy. He’s long been known as your favourite MC’s favourite MC, hailed as the best to ever do it by fellow luminaries Dizzee Rascal and Skepta. Over the past two decades, he’s become something of an alternative national treasure, with his buoyant personality finding him in far-flung places, his 2019 Christmas advert for Swedish flatpack giants IKEA being a perfect example.

Today we’re sat in Double’s favourite seafood restaurant to discuss the new project, No Reign. No Flowers. and to celebrate a career that helped lay the ground for the next generation of UK vocalists. In real life, he’s a welcoming presence, his answers lightened with honesty and absurdist Cockney humour.

“You ever cheers an oyster before?” I ask. “Oiiii,” he

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responds receptively. We clink shells, sink ‘em, and we’re off…

— No Reign. No Flowers.— The new project is helmed solely by producer TenBillionDreams, who previously played a large part in the production of Ghetts’ acclaimed 2020 album Conflict of Interest. Ghetts and Double have a long history, way back to before grime was called grime.

Both were part of N.A.S.T.Y Crew, who alongside the likes of Pay As U Go, Slew Dem and Ruff Sqwad, are seen as key architects of the sound. The group was also home to Kano, Stormin’ and Jammer at various points in its fractured timeline. Ghetts appears on standout track ‘Glory’, a victory lap of sorts for the pair.

Double met TenBillion by chance at the video shoot for Ghetts’ ‘Skengman’ single. “I realised he was best mates with my cousin!” he explains. “It was like, ‘We’re family! Let’s get the number.’” Soon enough they were in the studio together. “We had a vibe. He showed me five tracks. I recorded three. Those three tracks ain’t even on the project! That was just the beginning.” I ask what the benefit of working with one producer is.

“The benefit is the movie. The scenes,” he says, gesturing an up-and-down motion with his hands. “It’s tailored.”

Danny Brown, the soon-to-be-recipient of a headlock, appears on ‘Afterthought’, the highlight of the EP. Danny’s long been a vocal advocate for UK music, shouting out everyone from The Streets to underground grime legend Darq E Freaker.

“For yeaaars, bruv!” Double nods. “Danny Brown’s just a mad spitter,” he adds. “I love his voice… He just always used to show love, man. He’s the original don.”

Nowadays, North Americans look back across the Atlantic for inspiration, be it the influence of London drill on current New York hip hop, or artists like Drake co-opting British slang and style, but this wasn’t always the case.

“They didn’t give a fuck,” says Double. “They used to extort us, 40 grand for a verse!” he recalls with fervour. “We were being told we weren’t real. Tea and biscuits! I used to gun down people from the UK that sounded like Americans. I didn’t like my UK army trying to sound like them.” I suggest we rewind a little, back to where it all started.

— The Early Days — The term grime, like punk or acid house, is now firmly welded into the accepted lineage of British music, and for good reason:

not only was it some of the most sonically arresting music to ever birth from the UK, but more importantly, it ushered in the first great age the British MC. UK hip hop, dancehall, jungle and garage had each produced iconic British vocalists through the ’80s and ’90s, but the sheer volume of unique voices that came to prominence through grime is incomparable.

D Double E stood firmly at the precipice of this shift in culture. “It was already a scene,” he asserts, “I just felt like some name came hunting us down. I didn’t like it because grime is dirt. I just thought it was something that would pass.” By this time, Double had been emceeing for years. “Up until then we looked at ourselves as artists capable of anything to do with picking up the mic.” I ask what made him pick up the mic in the first place. “I was emceeing in school, in the playground. I had a friend that used to do beatboxing… It weren’t nothing to do with being professional back then, we were just having fun.” Double likens it to playing football in the back garden; just kids being kids. A friend of his had a record player. “He had a lot of records.

Reggae, old skool dancehall, a few R&B tracks… I was on the mic, reggae dancehall sort of bars. That’s what we grew up on.”

Soon one deck became two, and jungle music began to infiltrate the record collection. The friends recorded tapes that

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“It was already a scene. I just felt like some name came hunting us down. I didn’t like it because grime is dirt”

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they distributed locally, complete with mock shout-outs to family and friends. “I’d be like, ‘Big up my cousin, and my sister,’ like I was on radio,” he smiles. “When the tape was done, I would give it to them.”

The operation soon moved from his friend’s bedroom to house parties, with Double in tow as resident MC. Then the pair caught their first club set, while still underage. “It was in a club called Palace Pavilion, but it had a different name [at the time]... this place was a real Jamaican vibe.” Did it spark something within him? “It didn’t really,” he admits. “It was more like, ‘Who are these guys?’ When I look back at it, it was just practice.”

Besides raves, pirate radio was the lifeblood of the scene.

A few years on from the bedroom tapes saw Double frequenting the local FM waves. “Around 18, I start slippin’ on a few stations,” he recalls. It was on Flava FM that he gained a show with 187, his crew at the time. At this point, UK garage had become the main sound. I asked Double if he’d noticed the sound getting darker, slowly mutating into what would become know as grime. “It was always there for me,” he states, before mentioning tracks like DJ Zinc’s ‘138 Trek’, E.S. Dubs’ ‘Standard Hoodlum Issue’ and Reservoir Dogs’ ‘Buddah Finger’ as examples of the darker garage sound. “They had that element in there,” he notes. “That’s when I came in. There was space for me… I’d felt stuck between hip hop and bashment growing up, until I heard the UK [sound].”

Through pirate radio, Double gained a strong reputation.

When 187 dissolved, he found himself taking a few months away from music, but incessant calls from friends eventually pulled him back into the FM orbit. The offer he couldn’t refuse was an invitation to feature with N.A.S.T.Y Crew, who had previously followed 187’s show on Flava FM. What began as a few guest appearances graduated into a fully-fledged membership to the group.

Before long, Double was back at the newly renamed Palace Pavilion performing alongside his new crew. While his reputation had surely been rising, it wasn’t till he stood on stage again that he was sure of it. “It was maybe three years later…” he observes. “I went on the mic and I said one thing, and it was just tremendous… We said our lyrics and everyone in the club knew everything we were saying… It was all because of radio.”

The reaction has been the same ever since.

— The Newham General — How all of this translates into a two-decade long career is a more complicated matter. For all the talent spilling out of the UK at the time, it took a while for most artists to find their footing within the industry. Some, like Dizzee Rascal, forged a path early on with iconic debut albums, before successfully veering into the pop realm. Others fell to the wayside entirely. Even artists like Skepta took a fair few missteps before rising to the top years later.

Double managed to remain a fixture on the scene, at first with his group Newham Generals, alongside Footsie and Monkstar. The group formed in the fallout of N.A.S.T.Y Crew’s implosion, and has remained to this day (though Monkstar has since left). It’s hard-nosed grime at it’s best, with tracks like ‘Frontline’

remaining some of the most formidable tracks of the era.

Double’s solo career took a little longer to take shape, release-wise. I ask him about his first mixtape On Tha Double, released in 2006. “That was fraud,” he declares. “It was nothing to do with me.” The first he knew of it was when he was walking through Wembley Market and saw it for sale at a stall. “It’s the first moment of the internet when you were able to make fake CDs,” he says. “It was burning season!” It’s interesting how these things become canon; third generation YouTube uploads of bootlegged mixtapes becoming integral parts of an artist’s history. “I don’t know how to feel about it,” he says. “To this day everyone always talks to me about it, so I feel like I need to give them some credit.”

So what was the first actual release? It’s hard to say. Double mentions a mixtape by Newham Generals entitled Welcome To Newham released on Dizzee Rascal’s Dirtee Stank imprint, but beyond a few old blog posts, it seems impossible to find today.

It’s further proof of how much of this era is lost to the current streaming climate. It was stuck between physical releases, radio broadcasts and the Wild West of the early internet. Much of the material is buried across forgotten servers, disused forums and broken hard drives.

But since then, Double has shone as a solo artist, both on his albums (released on his own Bluku label), and as a consistent collaborator. Singles like ‘Street Fighter Riddim’ and ‘Bad 2 Tha Bone (Wooo Riddim)’ not only cemented his mastery of grime, but stand as some of the most iconic tracks in the genre. Elsewhere, recent features for the likes of Mall Grab and Swindle have established his crossover appeal, and tracks with young British rappers like Unknown T solidified his place as a respected elder statesman. Then there’s the advertising campaigns for IKEA and Pepsi that propelled him further into the public consciousness.

Throughout our conversation, the urge to avoid categorisation is a recurring theme. “I met grime when I was 18 or 19.

What made me look at the mic is nothing to do with grime. What made me sit in my house and come up with lyrics, go radio, it’s nothing to do with it.” He’s very open when discussing his past, it just seems that the hyper-fixation of a certain era has left him at times exasperated. “I’m just trying to be human and not a robot,” he says. “If you could go back to your grime robot at home, and then push the button and everything is like back in the day, some people would just be happy with that.”

It’s important to point out this isn’t said with a sense of defeatism, more a sense of forward momentum. In some ways he sees himself as the same kid in the bedroom: “As little kids, give us the mic, any beat, and we’d have gone crazy,” he explains. “I’m big enough to attack what I want. Don’t cater for me [musically]...

I’ve learned that you’ve got to keep it moving.” As we finish up, he extends these thoughts to the new generation: “Where the youth are today: drill music, Unknown T – they grew from what we’ve done. But they’re also artists [in their own right].”

It’s true that this is all best viewed as an ongoing musical development, best left to morph at its own pace, and into whichever directions the artists see fit. D Double E is proof that with persistence and artistic conviction, there’s a good life to be found in it.

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Reviews Albums

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Albums

Rainy Miller and Space Afrika — A Grisaille Wedding (fixed abode) It might not feel like it, but electronic music in Britain isn’t in a great place right now.

Yes, they may be opening new mega-clubs in old Ikeas, and yes, Calvin Harris and Charli XCX are still doing huge numbers, but outside of the mainstream, things are far from rosy. As covered in Resident Advisor, DJ Mag and a study by the University of Sheffield, the past decade has seen a notable and rapidly accelerating decline in the diversity of dance music in the UK. Not long ago, even the smallest provincial town could offer at least a smattering of club nights and raves to break the monotony. It often took a bit of doing, but if you knew where to look, you could find anything from pinger-fuelled happy hardcore parties to sweatbox ragga nights, all within a bus ride of your front door. These days, though, the variety has gone, overwhelmed by a relentless parade of cookie-cutter house nights and paintby-numbers techno.

You can blame the creeping homogenisation of dance music on many factors. Certainly, the rise of streaming platforms and the dominance of popular genres at the expense of other, more esoteric styles are all playing a role. Yet the fact that it’s getting harder and harder to be economically viable as a small artist is causing a slow evaporation of regional scenes and a clogging up of the pipeline of new sounds. Apart from a handful of vibrant underground scenes, predominantly located in major cities like London and Manchester, the scarcity of venues becomes a roadblock to the birth of micro-genres and musical experiments that historically fuel innovation and reinvention. Fortunately, there are some noteworthy exceptions (or should that be holdouts) to be found, so long as you’re willing to do some digging.

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The rolling hills and freshly renovated mills of Lancashire may not instantly spring to mind when you think of vibrant, expressive dance music (despite a remarkable under-told history – see L&Q contributor Fergal Kinney’s recent work on the Blackburn acid rave scene as published by Rough Trade Books); yet in the face of economic headwinds and a shortage of venues, it’s the cradle of a small but vital scene that is nurturing artists and pushing the boundaries of innovative electronic music. One such artist is Rainy Miller. Hailing from Preston, his music reflects the memories and experiences deeply ingrained in his hometown, paying homage to Lancashire’s hidden stories. In the oversaturated landscape of UK electronic music, Miller appears hellbent on forging an authentic path, less concerned with mainstream recognition and more focused on creating a distinct voice. Fellow travellers Space Afrika, a Manchester-based electronic duo renowned for their inventive fusion of ambient, techno, dub and experimental sounds, are similarly on a mission to create music that resonates with the emotional fabric of post-industrial Britain. What sets both acts apart is their unique ability to channel the spirit of their urban surroundings, encapsulating the emotional and atmospheric subtleties of post-industrial Britain. Through a spattering of releases and mixtapes, including Space Afrika’s critically acclaimed 2021 full-length Honest Labour, both sets of artists have made a name for music that serves as auditory diaries of their towns, neighbourhoods and overlooked communities in the North West.

A Grisaille Wedding is the first official collaboration between Rainy Miller and Space Afrika and signifies something of a step change moment in their respective artistic journeys. Merging Miller’s knack for storytelling with Space Afrika’s expansive sonic landscapes, this record boasts ambition and a profound desire to immerse the audience in an ethereal realm. Using a diverse range of artistic tools to conjure the emotions and atmosphere of their home, this is no mere collection of moody dance tracks.

A concept album designed to juxtapose the oppressive grey monochrome of grisaille painting and the colourful joy of an occasion like a wedding, the fact that this is a reckoning between two different styles and approaches to music production should be obvious straight from the start. However, rather than spending the run time trying to resolve this creative tension, Miller and Afrika just run with it, transforming the listening experience into something resembling a Werner Herzog documentary; a fusion of fantasy and reality that beckons you into the distinctive psychogeography of Lancashire.

Billed as an intricate blend of Rainy Miller and Space Afrika’s signature styles, A Grisaille Wedding finds common ground through an emphasis on a profound connection to place. Building on the sense of post-industrial decay evident in both artists’ work so far, this album similarly employs a musique concrètelike approach to composition. Manipulating recorded sounds and layering sparse melodies on top of hazy atmospherics, the songs feel like they rise out of detritus, assembling themselves into collages built from found sounds and background noises. Similar to how L. S. Lowry would paint bleak townscapes that somehow fizzed with charm and humanity, this technique also has the effect of injecting the essence of Lancashire straight into the music, echoing the dichotomy between the isolated moorlands and the urban chaos of the city. This fractured approach to songwriting is perhaps why this album feels oddly accessible for what is – mostly a cold, pulsing techno record.

This emotion becomes apparent right from the start with the mournful organ in the opening track, ‘Summon The Spirit’ which evokes longing and introspection. As you listen further, you’ll notice subtle elements like a digital tape hiss, reminiscent of rain gently tapping on a windowpane. These details underscore the delicate balance between the stark realities of modern Britain and the ethereal, almost psychedelic allure of natural soundscapes. While these connections might not be immediately

Albums obvious, this record masterfully balances being profoundly relatable and spiritually uplifting. It’s akin to taking the bombastic, faux-spirituality of pop songs like Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ and reimagining it through a minimalist, strippeddown electronic lens. Nowhere is this interplay more evident than in ‘The Graves of Charleroi’, a track featuring the haunting vocals of Coby Sey. A quick Google suggests that the song’s title likely alludes to a lone graveyard near a bustling Belgian airport, a setting where the urgency of modernity collides with the timeless and the unchanging, and Sey’s whispered and fractured vocals evoke the feeling of quiet, contemplative isolation brilliantly. The result is a hymn-like experience that defies traditional song structures. It’s like a gospel song without a chorus, an invitation to the sublime.

In fact, it’s in the vocals that Miller, more known for his ability to infuse positivity into his songwriting, makes his presence most felt. Until now, Space Afrika’s previous work has often played with the idea of imaginative semi-fictional world-building, an approach which on paper at least feels slightly at odds with Miller’s kitchen-sink realism. However, on the record, the trio strike an intriguing balance between their two styles, landing on a place that feels mystical and deeply human. While the compositions often feel expansive and sometimes ridiculously lofty, lyrically, the album keeps its feet firmly on planet Earth.

Delving into themes of resilience, the joy of seizing opportunities, and emerging stronger in the face of challenges, the album’s relatively more buoyant tracks, like the singles ‘Sweet (I’m Free)’ and ‘Maybe It’s Time To Lay Down The Arms’ have a spine-like spirit of resilience running through them. These songs provide a window into an internal dialogue, delving into the complexities of accepting love and dismantling emotional barriers. They capture the wonder of recognising untapped potential while acknowledging the weight it carries.

A sense of a community carrying on against the odds seems to be the glue that holds A Grisaille Wedding together, and

this may explain why Miller and Space Afrika chose the contributors to this record. Packed to the rafters with guest vocalists, the album brings together a diverse group of musicians who are all pushing the boundaries in their own way, including independent and forwardthinking electronic artists such as Mica Levi, Coby Sey, RenzNiro, BobbieOrkid, Iceboy Violet and Richie Culver. This feels more than just a gathering of friends and fellow artists; it’s more curatorial and intentional than that, art rendered through the collab.

In addition to infusing their unique styles and artistic touches into what could have been just another frostysounding drone record, this gathering of artists hints at a broader message hidden behind the album’s overarching theme of resilience. These artists embody the spirit of innovation, thriving despite the challenges that cast a shadow over the UK’s shrinking dance music scene. This diverse mix serves as a testament to the unwavering spirit of electronica – a reminder that even in what might seem like a harsh musical landscape, creativity can flourish, a solitary flower in a desert.

8/10 Dominic Haley

99LETTERS — Zigoku (phantom limb) References to soundworlds, soundscapes and sonic spaces are vastly overused in music writing; most of the time such terms can be read as florid longhand for “it sounds like this” or “reverb”. So at the risk of being hoisted with my own petard (I hate it when that happens): this new album by Osaka-based experimental producer 99LETTERS is one of the most effective, cohesive works of sonic worldbuilding you’re likely to have heard all year.

There’s a lot going on here. Zigoku is bookended by two of its heaviest

moments, the scorched-earth techno of opener ‘Fue’ and the abattoir echoes of ‘Ousyou’; in between, there’s shapeshifting electronica (‘Kamaitachi’), eyedarting paranoia (‘Souzou’), moments of genuinely affecting, plaintive beauty (‘Nakimushinatori’) and much more.

Its lows and highs complement each other perfectly, the former dominated by a sense of anxious almost-tranquility, quivering prey staying as still as possible, the latter entirely dominant, apex expressions of industrial power. All this adds up to a record of remarkable internal coherence and organic movement, a constant dialogue of glinting electronics and acoustic verdance. 99LETTERS has created an entire world here, to explore at your leisure or peril. 8/10 Luke Cartledge

H31R — HeadSpace (big dada) Whilst many seek the safety of a pre-defined genre to nest their music in, H31R (pronounced ‘heir’) search for the opposite; as they ask on their lead single and standout banger ‘Backwards’, “Why you movin’ backwards?”. HeadSpace, the duo’s second record, is in no way afraid of the rapid movement of popular culture, rather, it uses it as a vehicle to challenge conventional ideas about the world we live in. No song on the record is longer than two-and-a-half-minutes, each littered with catchy, repetitive lo-fi electronic hooks perfectly engineered for TikTok. However, unlike the throwaway culture that’s so often encouraged by that platform, no track on this album is ephemeral – here, there is plenty to digest.

H31R is made up of New Jerseybased producer JWords and Brooklyn based rapper and vocalist maassai. Born out of their mutual desire to construct a synthesis between hip hop and club music, this duo have entered a new era

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Albums in their development. On Shadow Self, H31R seek to challenge the listener by asking who you really are when all your familiar surroundings are taken away.

Serving both as a dancefloor anthem and an introspective bedroom lo-fi tune, ‘Shadow Self ’ is one of many tracks on the album which are equipped with this duality of purpose and context.

As the title suggests, HeadSpace is primarily concerned with ways of thinking within a digital or cybernetic framework. ‘Train of Thought’ represents this excellently, focussing on how often clarity of vision can mutate into madness. This album is a mystifyingly brilliant portrayal of the contemporary brain in our digital age; it’s sometimes anxious, fast-paced and neurotic, but underpinning all that is the certainty of growth and regeneration which will undoubtedly propel us into the future. 8/10 Leo Lawton

Jumping Back Slash & BŪJIN — A Seat In Heaven (future bounce) Jumping Back Slash was born in the UK, but he was made by the house circuit and gqom scene in South Africa. After moving to Cape Town, the producer became entranced by the nation’s coarse take on dance music and never really left.

His latest release since carving out this niche is a collaborative album with BŪJIN, a Kenyan-South African polymath and freak-pop provocateur, by the name of A Seat in Heaven – the best project that either party has ever released.

The collaboration sees both parties reap rewards; the result is a heady cocktail of texturally futuristic production and entrancing vocal crescendos. The jaggedness of JBS and iconoclasm of BŪJIN are very much omnipresent, but there is a pretty and elegant side on show from the duo that makes A Seat In Heaven abso-

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lutely transcendent when they get it right.

‘Angel’ sees frenetic production wrestled into an intoxicating pop song, revolving around BŪJIN’s yearning vocals and low-end bass squall, whilst ‘Gemini Placements’ has echoes of Dean Blunt in its disembodied string sample and spoken-word delivery. The bone-crunching ‘Norton’s Whir’ is a highlight – gqom shards and shrapnel inside its reptilian grooves – whilst ‘Unfolding’, the heavenly closer, constantly threatens to become saccharine but only becomes more beautiful as it to it’s ethereal crescendo.

A Seat In Heaven is a hauntological deep soul record, a novel fusion of seemingly disparate elements that work so well together. 9/10 Cal Cashin

Myriam Gendron — Not So Deep As A Well (basin rock) A key member of New York’s glitzy literati circles a hundred years ago or so, Dorothy Parker is nowadays remembered mainly as a sharp-witted queen of a devastating putdown. Yet it’s the writer’s melancholy side – fueled by serial heartbreak and depression – that Myriam Gendron was captivated by following a chance encounter with a used volume of Parker’s poetry, leading to the idea to turn these old poems into songs.

Originally released in the US by Feeding Tube Records in 2014 and now issued for the first time in the UK and Europe by Todmorden’s reliably impeccable Basin Rock, Not So Deep As A Well is the deeply moving, quietly powerful outcome of the unlikely and unexpectedly seamless long distance creative union between the contemporary Montrealbased musician and a writer who passed away in 1967.

Comprised of little more than Gendron’s deftly picked guitar and reso-

nant voice, there isn’t much to distract from the fatalistic (yet never self-pitying) faith in the poorest possible outcome (“Scratch a lover and find a foe,” goes one resolutely unoptimistic line) that fuels Parker’s elegant poetry. The loneliness and often unfathomable sadness of the lyrics is perfectly accentuated by the kind of stark, majestically mournful melodies that sound like they’ve been lying in wait since the peak of Parker’s renown in the 1920s. So spellbinding is the more explicitly overcast material that the rare occasions when the clouds part to allow in faster tempos, higher spirits and other musical ingredients can seem like unnecessary interruptions to a deepblue, deeply beautiful reverie.

Faintly reminiscent of the unadorned environs of Leonard Cohen’s first albums or previous Basin Rock releases by Juni Habel, Nadia Reid or Julie Byrne (or heading back in time towards Parker’s era, solo acoustic folk-blues legend Elizabeth Cotten), Not So Deep As A Well is a genuinely timeless gem that deserves to be ranked as one of the top singer-songwriter albums of 2023, 2014 – or any other year. 9/10 Janne Oinonen

Vince Clarke — Songs of Silence (mute) There’s something strikingly human about Vince Clarke’s debut solo album. The silent partner in some of the biggest selling electropop groups of the last four decades – Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure – he’s pictured on the album cover in stark monochrome that highlights every etched facial line.

It’s a sombre design that reflects the tone of the ten tracks, each of which is based around one note, generated from a Eurorack modular synth, and which maintain a single key throughout. This self-imposed restriction helped him to

Albums cope throughout lockdown, and it pushed him away from the bright pop with which he’s associated.

The instrumental tracks build from and around ambient drones, with the ghosts of Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream hovering over ‘Cathedral’ and ‘Last Transmission’. Elsewhere, Dead Can Dance foreshadow ‘White Rabbit’.

Based on a repeated sequencer pattern, it conjures a frenetic energy that finally erupts into tribal drums.

So far so pleasantly background music, but it’s the incorporation of nonambient influences that really set it apart.

In the first instance these are drawn from classical, with Reed Hays’ sawing cello creating a sense of movement on ‘The Lamentations of Jeremiah’, and Caroline Joy adding operatic vocals that conjure the sacred work of Górecki on ‘Passage’.

Album highlight ‘Blackleg’, meanwhile, borrows from 19th-century folk.

Sampling a man performing anti-scab protest ‘Blackleg Miner’, it brings a note of anger that’s relatable to many of those on strike today. It’s these details that lend the album a spiritual, humanist quality that speaks volumes. 8/10 Susan Darlington

Beirut — Hadsel (pompeii) Perhaps Zach Condon had nowhere left to go but to the edge of the earth. For years, he revelled in playing the musical vagabond, the restless stylistic wanderer who took us to the Balkans, France and Mexico on some of his earlier releases and to the Santa Fe of his youth on more recent ones.

By 2019, long-time listeners felt they had already done a full lap of the globe with him; meanwhile, the man himself had done several, each world tour ending with a breakdown more severe than the last.

Eventually, his body followed his mind in

failing him, laryngitis forcing the cancellation of much of the Gallipoli tour.

He retreated to the very north of Norway, within the Arctic Circle, to the tiny town from which this exceptionally handsome record takes its name. It is bruised and beautiful, the sonic palette largely centred around the stately hum of the local church’s organ, as he sings songs that superficially deal with the majesty of the nature around him (‘Arctic Forest’, ‘The Tern’) but that, on a deeper level, feel like soulful reflections on convalescence, the trademark swells of brass carrying with them a nervous, but palpable, optimism. For so many years a poster boy for wanderlust, how ironic that Condon’s embrace of a slower, stiller life has produced, quite possibly, his finest record. 9/10 Joe Goggins

Harp — Albion (bella union) In 2012, Tim Smith left Denton, Texas folk-rock heroes Midlake (the band he’d fronted for over a decade) after unsatisfactory recording sessions. Shortly after, his marriage ended. These undoubtedly painful experiences – and the eventual reblooming of hope – are reflected on solo debut Albion, a slow-burning, reflective, often profoundly beautiful gem that merits the marathon wait.

Where 2010’s underrated Courage of Others supped from the cup of 1970’s flute-toting UK folk-rock, Albion finds devoted anglophile Smith (now working as Harp together with partner Kathi Zung) fast-forward a decade to the enduringly resonant British sounds from the ’80s: Joy Division, Cocteau Twins and especially Faith-era The Cure. In some ways, it’s not a radical diversion from Smith’s past work: were it not for drum machines and icy synths, ‘Throne of Amber’ would feel right at home on

Midlake’s 2006 bucolic psych-folk/rock masterpiece Trials of Van Occupanther.

At first, the contrast between Smith’s earthy, arcane songwriting and the frosty, permanently overcast aesthetic jars. Gradually, the permanently drizzly soundscapes bloom into a natural match to the fathomless melancholy at the core of Albion. It helps that nakedly beautiful songs such as ‘A Fountain’ feel more compellingly lived-in than the inspired excursions through an imaginary past Smith penned for Midlake.

The further Smith ventures from past templates, the better Albion gets.

The weightless, ever-ascending majesty of ‘Shining Spires’ suggests Thom Yorke retooling a horizontally heavy-lidded ’70s Roy Harper tune. Better still is the serene closer ‘Herstmonceux’ (named after a medieval castle in Sussex): “Quietly, the sorrow flees from me / Bright as day the soul no longer grieves,” Smith croons, letting the sunlight peek through the clouds. 8/10 Janne Oinonen

John Francis Flynn — Look Over The Wall, See The Sky (river lea) Depending on your folk knowledge, you’ll know anything between one and all the songs on John Francis Flynn’s second album.

What will be unfamiliar to all, however, is Flynn’s wonderfully strange interpretations of these eight traditional songs: this is a folk album in name only, light years from any musty hey-nonny-nonny reverence, imbued instead with, variously, electronic drone skronk, scratchy postpunk sensibility, and the sort of radical free space pioneered by those final two Talk Talk albums.

Perhaps its greatest quality, though, is that never are these arrangements just exercises in muso posturing; rather, without exception, each one

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Albums services its song in profoundly original ways. Accordingly, the rattling groove of ‘Mole in the Ground’, all tumbling guitar lines and looped cello, accentuates its anti-establishment spirit, ‘Within a Mile of Dublin’ fizzes with ecstatic explosions, and the post-rock approach to ‘Kitty’, layered with drone and hiss, is presented here with newfound three-dimensional intimacy. Then there’s the one that everyone will know, ‘Dirty Old Town’, here slowed to funereal pace and rendered impossibly mournful by the deployment of colliery brass, leaving something contemplative and calm where once was boozy singalong.

For those (like the present writer) who loved the soundworld of False Lankum but found its 70+ minutes too overbearingly monolithic for a single sitting, Look Over The Wall (a snip at just over half that) might be the perfect response: here’s a record that rejects folk’s stuffy orthodoxy as fervently as it embraces its characters and tales, is complex but never complicated, and always welcoming. With each successive play, it draws you in further.

9/10 Sam Walton

Nicolás Jaar & Ali Sethi — Intiha (other people) Nicolás Jaar has spent most of his career as a prodigious enigma/ master manipulator/producer wunderkind capable of splicing, cutting and magicking sound and rhythm where there shouldn’t be any. It’s a cerebral approach that goes beyond music, opening up a world of collaboration across music and visual art – from playing in Darkside with guitarist Dave Harrington to co-producing FKA Twigs’ Magdalene and working with Indian visual artist Somnath Bhatt, who not only handled the artwork for new album Intiha, but also connected Jaar with his collaborator Ali Sethi.

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Inspired by Jaar’s 2020 album Telas, Sethi set about sketching out his own builds in response, improvising vocals and Urdu poems. A lightning bolt for a serial improviser like Jaar, the result is a compelling blend of Sethi’s desire to resurrect ancient poetic forms lilting over Jaar’s contemporary, already genrebending production.

For once, this might not be Jaar’s show. Sure, the foundations are his but Sethi’s presence across these eight tracks is spellbinding. Where ‘Nazar Se’ is minimal and melodic there’s a spiritual slow build to ‘Raat Bahr’; where ‘Dard’ is delicate and drifting, Sethi’s vocals floating somewhere in the ether, ‘Chiragh’ is more scuffed and dramatic, the synths fraying with a crackle of electricity in the space and static. But lead single ‘Muddat’ is the star, finding the perfect balance between the ancestral ghazal vocal forms Sethi’s looking to resurrect and Jaar’s trademark itchy, shuffling percussive rhythms. Melancholic, buoyant, playful, it’s a brilliant expression of an album reimagined in a way not even a savant like Jaar himself would have considered. 8/10 Reef Younis

psychological processes and symptoms of mental illness. Lyrical vulnerability is pushed to a dizzying degree but not an ounce of it is met sonically. With whiteknuckled ferocity, drums and bass take on the album’s foundational heartbeat pushing an unrelenting drive to cathartic release. Not a single track admits surrender, the instrumentation unfurls with unwavering intensity confronting the pain and anguish of the narrative arc in a defiant call to arms.

It’s not always easy for bands with fearsome live reputations to translate their fevered energy to record. The temptation to pin down the slippery beast that is all-encompassing onstage often leaves more to be desired when chased in the studio. But with an uncompromised musical maturity, Sprints instead push the limits of rhythm to deliver skilled manipulations of conventional song structures. Tracks like ‘Shaking their Hands’, the already-released ‘Adore, Adore, Adore’ and ‘Can’t Get Enough Of It’ flaunt a slick culmination of skilled musicianship that leaves us with an unaffected and exhilarating debut album.

8/10 Natalia Quiros Edmunds

Sprints — Letter To Self (city slang) At long last Sprints, the garage punk four-piece from Dublin known for their explosive live performances and cutting ‘pub chat’ lyricism, are here with their debut album. Confrontational, ferocious and bold, Letter to Self melds their trademark gut-winding guitar riffs with a studio depth and rigour which both delivers and expands upon the potential they’ve displayed for some time.

Writing the album as “an exploration of pain, passion, and perseverance” vocalist and guitarist Karla Chubb here maps the debilitating physical and

Abstract Concrete — Abstract Concrete (state51) “Suspension of disbelief!” barks Charles Hayward at one point during Abstract Concrete’s self-titled debut. Some of that medicine may be needed during early exposures to this wildly ricocheting twisted fairground ride of bristly avantpop and unwieldy prog-funk. The fruition of the veteran drummer/vocalist’s intent to be part of a fresh band creating new material after revising his pioneering work as part of This Heat, Abstract Concrete can initially be almost unsettling with its unexpected contortions.

Which is appropriate, as the tunes

Albums feel deeply steeped in these anxious times, with themes such as Covid-era isolation and the venal idiocy of 21st century politics. “Round and round the garden / Clap, clap, clap as if we care”, goes the 14-minute monolith ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ (which starts of stately and majestic before descending into a thrillingly off the leash noise-rock meltdown), referencing the events of 2020. There’s joy here too: both ‘Almost Touch’ and ‘This Echo’ manage an uncommonly seamless union of robustly physical funkiness and form-stretching experimentation, with Agathe Max’s swirling viola in a starring role.

It’s not without its challenging quirks: Hayward’s hoarse growl isn’t ideally suited to carrying some of the richer melodies, and a few of the slighter tracks – although held aloft by righteous indignation – veer dangerously close to the self-consciously odd avant-garde acrobatics of, say, Frank Zappa. But ultimately Abstract Concrete deserves a hearty round of sincerely-meant applause: at an age when most veteran musicians get a pat on the back for doing what they used to do, only worse, Hayward (now in his early 70s) pushes on into uncharted territory, mainly succeeding. 7/10 Janne Oinonen

Danny Brown — Quaranta (warp) Listening to Danny Brown is like listening to a version of hip hop’s entire history.

Coming of age in the era of wordsmith MCs and boundless producers, the acclaimed Detroit rapper is finishing off experiments that stretch back decades to pioneering 20th century visionaries such as Eric B & Rakim, Wu Tang Clan and Mobb Deep. Brown swaps Kung-Fu samples for video game snippets and substitutes theses on the Nation of Islam

with diatribes on capitalism. In the words of Gang Starr’s Guru, Brown is “updating the formulas” in the dirty light of the 21st century.

Despite a sound that is genrespanning, the emotional core of Brown’s music is more direct. Since his 2010 debut The Hybrid, Brown has charted his battle with depression, addiction and selfdoubt. The lyrical lows mixed with his penchant for unpredictable production choices concocts a sonic speedball, with the side effect that every Danny Brown album feels like it could well be his last.

This feeling was stymied with his last solo album, 2019’s uknowwhatimsaying. A vague consensus emerged that this was his ‘sober’ album – a dawn after the fever of his critically acclaimed, but volatile record, 2016’s The Atrocity Exhibition. This dawn proved false. In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Brown detailed how his alcoholism and drug use continued to spiral.

Brown recalled that on the pandemic’s eve, he moved to steadilygentrifying downtown Detroit. It would become his lockdown hold-up where he would watch his finances evaporate after a European tour was cancelled due to the lockdown. He sat in his penthouse doing coke and getting drunk by himself every night.

Brown would enter rehab on the 29th March 2023 – a day after an episode of Brown’s podcast The Danny Brown Show courted controversy. Brown, supposedly drunk, hit out at his label Warp and manager for allegedly shelving his sixth solo album, the long-rumoured Quaranta, which Brown suggested had been submitted two years ago, after lockdown. This would make sense of the album title. Quaranta is Italian for 40 (Brown is now 42). It is also the root word for ‘quarantine’.

Whether due to, in spite of, or completely independent of his outburst, Quaranta is now free and the album’s opening bar “This rap shit done saved my life / And fucked it up at the same time” sets the tone. More so than any Brown record up to now, everything exists here all at once.

Quaranta is blindingly reflective.

Across the 35-minute runtime, Brown translates his bird’s eye view from his Detroit penthouse like Drake on the CN Tower, deciphering the change that has festered around him and inside him.

Brown stacks up the drug abuse, the affairs and the insecurities and crosssections them with the Detroit that has quite literally imprisoned him, paralleling the city’s gentrified rise from bankruptcy with his fall from grace, recognizing they both ended up at the same state of emptiness.

The album’s merging of introspection, gentrification, addiction and isolation gives it a filthy warm glow, with shifts in tempo abrupt time-slips that blur the record’s temporal boundaries.

The psychedelic soul of late-Motown, slow jam, and dusty East Coast boom-bap exist together so fluently that it convinces you time isn’t a stream, but rather a pool. Brown’s typically dynamic layering makes the cut of his tragicomic pen all the more satisfying, with frantic lead single ‘Tantor’ containing a surgical slice: “It’s that Black Lives Matter / Still sniff cocaine / Paid for a therapist / But I still ain’t changed”.

Quaranta’s emotional heart is the uproarious ‘Jenn’s Terrific Vacation’ which has the vampiric profiteering of Detroit landlords in its crosshairs.

Ballasted by a blaring dub blast that uproots the track like a giant crane flattening a neighbourhood, Brown realises how both he and Detroit are locked in a rigged game leeched upon by middlemen – be it landlords or music industry execs.

He poses the question “What you gonna do when the money low but the rent rise up?”, answering it emphatically later in the track – “You move on out”.

Billed as a spiritual successor to Brown’s breakout record, 2012’s XXX, a record asphyxiated by time, there’s more to be said for the idea that Quaranta is a sequel to Brown’s debut The Hybrid, a record asphyxiated by place. There’s a greater case still that it’s both. And while Quaranta may feel unfairly dated by Brown’s more extreme release earlier this year (his collaborative album with JPEG-

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Albums MAFIA SCARING THE HOES), this is by far his most relatable and focused album yet. More than a version of hip-hop’s history, this is a version of Danny Brown’s life. 8/10 Robert Davidson

Kabeaushé — HOLD ON TO DEER LIFE, THERE’S A BLCAK BOY BEHIND YOU! (monkeytown) HOTDLTABBBY, Kabeaushé’s second album and first for Monkeytown Records (their debut came through Ugandan tastemaker label Nyege Nyege), sees them stretching out in all directions: adding a scuzzy edge while leaning even further into pop instincts.

Their maximalist use of vocal samples whips up an infectious storm, cribbing from everywhere but ultimately sounding like nothing but Kabeaushé.

Tracks often flit between two halves, relinquishing structure to hyperactivity in gleeful rebellion. ‘If It’s Flying, Fly!’ finds a choir of Kabeaushé in girlgroup harmonies over an M.I.A.-like instrumental, until a needle-sharp guitar solo interrupts and brings things towards a glitchy cataclysm. Meanwhile, ‘Go With Gut’ starts out with a Pharrell-style fourbeat intro and lets the occasionally grating falsetto go head-to-head with deeper (and easier to stomach) rap verses.

That same rhythmic drive is reflected in lyrics of survival – the title of ‘These Dishes Ain’t Gonna Do Themselves’ trivialises heartfelt words of resilience – but such delicate sentiments are often lost in the chaos. Not that that’s an issue: ‘High Spede’ is stuffed with hooks that twist up its strange lyrical narrative into something dangerously catchy.

The album leans into Kabeaushé’s technicolour idiosyncrasies in a way that never feels forced – think early Outkast beats at their most surreal. By track ten, you can feel the energy starting to wane for

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both listener and creator, but the musician wisely knows when to call time. A quick dip into the madcap world of Kabeaushé is always a treat, and HOTDLTABBBY is no different. 7/10 Jake Crossland

Mock Media — Mock Media II (meat machine) Supergroups are having a bit of a moment right now. This year alone we’ve had the heart-tugging expertise of Boygenius, the madcap rap of JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown’s SCARING THE HOES and the superb leftfield hip hop of Billy Woods and Kenny Segal raising the collab game to new heights. On paper, Mock Media appear destined to join this illustrious bunch. The group, a combination of members from Crack Cloud, Pottery and N0V3L, enter the arena with bonafide supergroup credentials.

Unfortunately though, Mock Media II, their debut full-length, fails to reach the heady heights of 2023’s best collaborative efforts. The album runs on a tried and tested mix of standard garage rock ditties (‘Louis Won’t Break’ and ‘Madness) and angular, post-punk bops (‘Modern Visions’ & ‘Father Of That Crime’) which, while pleasant enough, flatter to deceive more often than not.

While there is a strong feeling of familiarity throughout the album, that’s not to say that it’s without its fun moments. When Mock Media loosen up they show that the potential is there. The surreal ’70s TV jingle of ‘Rambo’ and the wonderfully spooky synth filled ‘ILL’ are real highlights, suggesting there could be more to come from this lot, if only they learn to lean further into the weirdness.

In the past, by simply being a perfectly acceptable – if slightly unmemorable – album, Mock Media II would be seen as something of a supergroup triumph, but in an increasingly impres-

sive field, the group have delivered a collection of songs that falls short of the mark. 6/10 Jack Doherty

Akiko Yano — To Ki Me Ki (wewantsounds) That Akiko Yano is a legend of Japanese pop culture doesn’t need reaffirming here – from her early work with Yellow Magic Orchestra to her collaborations with Studio Ghibli, her influence on the music and art of her home country is enormous. Yet internationally, though well-known, she doesn’t receive anything like the same level of respect, despite her having lived and worked in the US for over three decades. Fingers crossed, then, that this reissue of her 1978 record To Ki Me Ki, never previously available outside Japan, might go some way towards changing that.

Just one entry into a discography that matches up to any Western ’70s or ’80s art-pop auteur one could mention (Kate Bush, to whom Yano is often compared, Peter Gabriel, Bryan Ferry – she’s as talented and adventurous as any of them), To Ki Me Ki is a startling listen, each song bristling with invention and verve, and sounding incredibly modern for a 45-year-old record. The Kate Bush comparisons are understandable, but on a more affective than sonic level; a track like ‘Katarun Kararan’ bears little resemblance to any of Bush’s sensual melodramas, but it’s possessed of a similar spirit of romantic abandon. The arrangements are remarkably complex and unpredictable, often progressing like Laughing Stock-era Talk Talk playing at double speed – see the pedal tone piano build of ‘Okina Ishi’ or the rising scurry of ‘Komodo Tachi’ – topped with the vocals of a young Japanese woman with an ear for a hook rather than a recovering New Romantic from Tottenham.

Albums This is a rich, esoteric record, whose density rewards sustained engagement, yet that’s not to say it’s entirely lacking in immediacy – the melodies are more than strong enough to keep you reeling in until the entire thing clicks.

With any luck, this reissue will mean that it reaches the international audience it so obviously deserves. 8/10 Luke Cartledge

Delilah Holliday — Invaluable (one little independent) “Behind steel bars / I’m still charmed,” floats through the spectral opening track of Delilah Holliday’s entrancing mixtape, Invaluable. It’s a vivid image conjured by the North Londoner, and one that reverberates thematically throughout the release in how Holliday presents worlds that can feel claustrophobic or chaotic whilst holding onto positive outlooks by melding reality with escapism: “I just want to live in this fantasy,” she intones on the atmospheric spoken word piece, ‘Looking Over My Shoulder’.

Sounds, scenes and sentiments of the 1990s course through the 13 tracks as Holliday draws influence from trip hop, trance and angular electronic structures to build immensely dynamic and eerie soundscapes. You can’t help but think of The KLF on as she sings, “Burn money to stay warm,” (‘Burn Money’) while the frosty synths scaling the vast breadth of ‘1000 Transformations’ feels like an extension of Olive’s 1997 hit ‘You’re Not Alone’. While those influences infiltrate Invaluable’s DNA, Holliday’s personality abounds, imparting an irresistible charm and character to the work.

Holliday is an endlessly engaging protagonist. At times, her resigned cadence evokes Tirzah as her vocals ground songs developed around floatier textures (‘Heaven’s Waiting Room’)

and morph into unsettling, otherworldly beings on ‘Travelled’, a multi-faceted composition which heralds Björk’s rich synthesised symphonies. It’s a particularly enveloping moment on the mixtape, one that continuously impresses with each return. Elsewhere, ‘Liquid Pearl’ is another instance of Holliday effortlessly capturing the audience’s attention as it gradually gestates from a darker, more compact arrangement before dissolving into an ethereal art-pop movement until enjoying an energetic outro contrasted with the affecting refrain: “Your mother’s gone / She wouldn’t want to see you like this”. Tonally and lyrically, it demonstrates just how adept Holliday is at making an impression with strong (yet simple) foundations. While she has described the song as being inspired by her readings on global warming, she leaves room for the song to relate to a matriarchal figure, too. In this way, Holliday doesn’t impose herself in the lyrics, instead she leaves the door ajar for you to forge individual interpretations of her words.

In spite of the mixtape label which Invaluable wears, Holliday and co-producer Raphael Ninot have crafted a masterful body of work that flows seamlessly from start to finish. 8/10 Zara Hedderman

Marika Hackman — Big Sigh (chrysalis) When you let go of past experiences and traumas, there’s no physical reward that comes with untangling from that iteration of yourself. Instead, the release can be quantified with an immeasurable sense of relief from within, manifesting in a deep exhale as you move on.

Big Sigh, the fourth studio album of original material from Marika Hackman, is an anthology of, as the songwriter notes, “sadness, stress and lust” and became

“the hardest” record she’s made over her decade-long career. In delving into this past life, Hackman candidly colours the work with the blues of feeling overwhelmingly isolated in relationship on ‘Hanging’: “Hanging on your every word / And anytime you talk the rope is burning,” but counters that with the metallic glow of expansive synths on the mesmeric ‘Vitamins’.

Furthermore, Hackman sets her storied songwriting to a broad palette of grunge-inflected bursts of impassioned guitar and vocal performances (‘No Caffeine’, an instant highlight, and ‘Big Sigh’) and sparse instrumentation where Hackman is accompanied by weighted and emotive piano motifs. Sometimes, too, the piano alone effectively conveys the mood on the beautiful instrumental ‘The Lonely House’. The contrasting sonic sensibilities capture the process of feeling stuck in a hopeless space right to the point where she unexpectedly (but determinedly) bursts through its barriers. Big Sigh is a testament to Hackman’s evolving artistry. 8/10 Zara Hedderman

Martha Da’ro — Philophobia (aniratak) Brussels-based multidisciplinary Belgian-Angolan artist Martha Da’ro’s creative career to date has spanned music, TV and film, alongside a spot in the multilingual hip hop collective Soul’Art. Considering these creative pursuits, Da’ro’s debut solo LP, Philophobia (meaning a fear of love), is an aptly and intensely cinematic effort in all aspects, its atmosphere as evocative of a sonic art installation as a straightforward musical album.

For Philophobia, Da’ro collaborated with classically-trained pianists, composers and orchestrators, with each song’s conception formulating first on

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Albums the piano. In capturing her ideas this way, Da’ro was able to meticulously craft each song like a threatrical scene, even imagining its characters, places and weather.

Her aim was to compose an album where each track could function as a soundtrack and story, and on that front she passes with flying colours.

Da’ro’s voice is soft yet commanding throughout the ten-track album. On the claustrophobic ‘FLESH’, electronics pulsate between her whispers, growing darker with commanding drums at the chorus. The juxtaposition of soft vocals and harsher instrumentals is one that she relies on throughout Philophobia in various incarnations, and it works a treat; keeping pensive feelings and trepidation visceral. ‘FOR SO LONG’ feels like the most solid song on the record with Da’ro’s compelling vocals leading the way. Her autobiographical lyricism shines through, understated but vulnerable, swimming above subtle gurgling grooves and foreboding percussion.

Philophobia is a strong effort from Martha Da’ro, who formulates an eclectic and ambient soundtrack to her intimate feelings and keeps you wanting more. It’s too considered to be called experimental as such, but it is interesting enough to warrant that label. 7/10 Jasleen Dhindsa

Raze Regal & White Denim Inc — Raze Regal & White Denim Inc (bella union) From what started as a serendipitous conversation between Raze Regal and James Petralli (founding member of White Denim), Raze Regal & White Denim Inc is the fruit of a wholesome tale of friendship between two highly creative individuals both negotiating their ways through equal hardship. Based out of Austin, Texas, these two conceived a sort of companionship throughout the

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pandemic which subsequently transformed into this powerful, and somewhat unlikely musical duo.

The record is filled with unique sonic motifs which nod to Blue Note jazz ( Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter most notably), Sly Stone and even George Duke from Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention.

Quite a departure from the classic indierock sound of White Denim… well, not really. Underpinning this entire record is an undeniable sense of authorship which perfectly amalgamates two musicians who have approached the project from alternative contexts. If Jacob Collier spun some of his music theory magic on a White Denim tune, this might indeed be the final product. This is perhaps the most suitable analogy I can give you.

‘Ashley Goudeau’ centres on a local news anchor from Austin, representative of, for Raze, these odd relationships you form with individuals you often interact with digitally, but never meet. It’s a standout track on the record, alongside ‘Complaining In Heaven’, which hints at the supernatural. What these two songs, and the record more broadly, set their scope on is the importance of partnership and relatability to other people – vital themes during the pandemic, but still totally relevant to life moving forward.

Throw all of this into a deeply strange and unique mix-match of rock, jazz and fusion, and out on the other side comes this wonderfully weird collaboration.

7/10 Leo Lawton

Aïsha Devi — Death Is Home (houndstooth) Aïsha Devi is a Swiss multidisciplinary artist whose online bios list her as a producer, DJ, classically-trained singer, raver, musician, rebel spiritualist and radical alchemist. Suffice to say, Devi’s creative vision cannot be limited to

narrow terms. Death Is Home, the newest album produced under Devi’s own name, follows in the footsteps of 2018’s DNA Feelings in its journey to transform the relationship between spirit and body.

Crossing assumed boundaries between the physical and spiritual worlds is where Devi’s interests lie, and this is the crux of each track on the album. Sonically, the music creates an energy that you can feel in your body, grounding the work in its rave roots. Songs like the lead single ‘Imortelle’ and ‘The Infinite Chemistry of the Betwixt (Tool)’ are the best examples of this journey to the border between the physical and immaterial, causing goosebumps to erupt and the blood inside you to sizzle beneath the skin. Witnessing an ability to connect to the ethereal like Devi has can be intimidating, especially to newcomers to this kind of music. Yet with this album Devi projects an openarmed welcome, inviting connection through music in a way that’s accessible and inspiring to any who dare to explore it. 8/10 Isabel Crabtree

Various Artists — Future Bubblers 7.0 (brownswood) Now in its seventh year, Brownswood Recordings’ Future Bubblers development program has more than proven itself as a breeding ground for new talent (previous cohorts have counted Yazmin Lacey and Skinny Pelembe amongst their numbers). 7.0 introduces another bright-eyed gang who, with the backing of Brownswood and its founder Gilles Peterson, could be soon conquering a niche of their own.

Romy Nova’s ‘The Way’ is a casual and commanding opener, combining gorgeous vocals and dreamy synths to create the comp’s poppiest moment and eventually gesturing towards something psychedelic. Sheffield’s Jackie Moon-

Albums bather spreads sultry vocals over a woozy beat, while Ney Liqa channels Robyn and acoustic alt-rock into an exciting union.

Landel’s guitar, smoky horns and spacey synths herald his arrival under refreshing Brummie-accented rap. Restrained jazz chords back up Pertrelli Purple’s sharp flow, smartly holding back to highlight his wit – his ‘Brisk’ is a highlight.

The second half turns towards instrumentals: Marysia Osu’s standout ‘Stryder’ manages to both hypnotise and invigorate across its woozy and stringled six minutes, while Michael Diamond smuggles skittering dance beats under magnetic brass solos. COEX brings the collection to a close with an ominous, shapeshifting track that balances talented performances with vulnerable vocals.

As a compilation of new musicians, it’s hard to judge the album as a single body of work or knock anyone this early in their career, but it’s easy to get excited by the buzzy potential on show. Give them a few years and we’ll see a few rising to the top. 7/10 Jake Crossland

Jaakko Eino Kalevi — Chaos Magic (weird world) Over a decade on from its Tame Impala-led resurgence and half a century away from its earliest acid-fried antecedents, it’s not easy to carve out a distinctive niche for oneself within the conventional boundaries of psychedelic pop in 2023. It’d be reasonable to expect that the likes of John Lennon, Syd Barrett and latterly Wayne Coyne and Kevin Parker might have exhausted this traditional palette of spacy textures, warbling synths, loping grooves and swooping vocal melodies. Yet Jaakko Eino Kalevi has made a career of taking those familiar aesthetics and producing something that’s unmistakably his own – and Chaos Magic is no exception.

The Finnish artist’s elegant songwriting is foregrounded throughout this record; though the sultry title track which opens the album is instrumental, the sashaying bassline and inquisitive woodwind more than fulfil the lead melodic role in the absence of a vocal; the likes of ‘Drifting Away’, ‘Dino’s Deo’ and ‘Night Walk’ add Kalevi’s voice to stylish effect, his knack for a minimalistic yet efficient hook giving these careening arrangements a welcome focal point.

This is admirably intentional, clear-eyed stuff, aware of what it’s trying to do and more than capable of realising the artist’s vision. There are no great surprises here aesthetically, but it’s impressive that despite that relative familiarity, Jaakko Eino Kalevi makes compulsively accessible psych-pop that never quite sounds like it could have been made by anybody else. 7/10 Luke Cartledge

Otik — Cosmosis (3024) London-based, Bristol-born producer Otik has vision.

Whether arched above this stretching record like a polestar or washed into the sublime and unknowing transitions at track level, Cosmosis moves with divine purpose.

Counter to the breakbeat dominated strain of techno that Otik has made his name with on earlier EPs such as Soulo, his full-length debut is far more contemplative, built on depth rather than agility. The gentle rotation of soft motifs, be it kick drums, hi-hats, or swirling key strokes is pastoral and radiantly pastel throughout, the production a fine mist that obfuscates grand structures hiding in the song’s distance that fade just out of reach into the promise of the next track when near.

Middle track ‘Rebirth’ best encapsulates the sultry sense of metempsy-

chosis that pervades the record, with its wobbly bass unraveling in the background like bandages undressed from an exhumed mummy, awakening frozen questions. The track evolves into a stomping beat-driven trance, with a sense of transience and remembrance ballasting the shining and sidereal minor keys that illuminate the song’s soft exit.

By the closing, and oddly amphibious, rancour of sombre finale ‘Noontides’, a track that revels in the kind of longing and warmth of Burial’s familiar dusk, the song’s coda doesn’t strike you as a mirage nor an unfulfilled promise anymore, but instead an uncloaked unity linking the disparate stations of this album’s transit to its own reincarnation. A tremendously rewarding listen that catenates the flow of sound with the mystery of faith and transcendence. 7/10 Robert Davidson

Samantha Lindo — Ancestry (selfreleased) As a child, Samantha Lindo watched tears roll down her grandfather’s face when he returned to his old family home in Jamaica only to discover it in ruins. The experience got her wondering what ‘home’ really means – particularly in the context of her own relatives, so many of whom had packed up their lives and left the countries they were born in to start over.

Lindo’s new album Ancestry tells some of those stories, from her greatgreat-grandparents, a Black Methodist minister from Barbados and white Scottish teacher who married in 1891, to the great-uncle who emigrated to Canada in the 1970s, who would phone London long-distance and ask her to sing down the line.

Now based in Bristol, Lindo is still channelling the innocence of her childhood self. Bringing together elements

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Albums of soul, jazz and disco, she treats difficult subject matter with optimism and warmth. She switches between a honeysweet, rippling vocal evoking the likes of Minnie Riperton and Etta James, and crisp, assertive spoken word segments which lay out who she is, the lessons she has taken from her ancestors, and where she is headed next. “I fought so hard to break the shame,” she declares in ‘Bloodline’, “so I can shelter others to do the same.” Likewise ‘Shades of Yellow’ documents the burden of inherited trauma, and the “ache to be seen” by her father.

Despite focusing on the past, Lindo refuses to let herself sink into nostalgia, choosing instead to set the individual journeys of her family into wider contexts of migration and climate change, while thinking of ways to shape a better future.

The soaring gospel harmonies of ‘Legacy’ end the album on a hopeful note, tracing the threads of family history right through to her newborn daughter. 7/10 Orla Foster

Ciel — Homesick (parallel minds) There is often a feeling that electronic music should fit neatly into one of three boxes: You’ve got your balls-to-the-wall club bangers, your ambient background beats and finally, you have your less common, but no less relevant, works of avant-garde synth destruction.

In the past artists have concocted cocktails of the different genres to great success, but on Homesick, Ciel takes a different path. Uninterested by mash ups, Ciel instead seems intent on making all three versions of electronica live together in perfect harmony, like some sort of twisted bpm marriage counsellor.

Opener ‘Bamboo’ has a womblike quality, luscious synth waves wrap

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around echo warped vocals, coming across as the sort of track Björk would play at home while completing a cryptic crossword. Meanwhile, ‘Gourd’ dips into dance music’s more erratic moments.

Driving drum loops and plopping toyshop sub-bass build and build towards a glittering, almost ethereal moment of clarity, reminiscent of Four Tet’s more boisterous mid-career output.

In lesser hands this scattergun approach would make for an entirely disjointed listen, but through a unique use of Chinese analogue instrumentation Ciel manages to expertly tie together a plethora of sounds from dance music’s disparate past. The PlayStation loading screen techno of ‘String’ and the erratic sunrise anthem ‘Metal’ are entirely different in style, but through the use of clever sampling Ciel allows seemingly unsuitable sounds to coexist and thrive.

While in isolation nothing on Homesick is individually breath-taking, as a whole the album succeeds, showing us that all it takes is a bit of good oldfashioned ingenuity for electronic music to thrive outside (and inside) of the box.

7/10 Jack Doherty

DJ Muggs & Dean Hurley — Divinity (Original Motion Picture Score) (sacred bones) If Stephen Soderbergh’s name is attached, it’s a safe bet there’s going to be more than meets the eye. An off-kilter, experimental auteur who has regularly made the most of Cliff Martinez’s ability to provide a glassy, ghostly soundtrack to whatever twisting, richly thematic project he was deep-diving into (Sex, Lies and Videotape, Solaris, Traffic), it says a lot that Divinity still springs a surprise in that respect.

Probably best known as the producer behind OG hip hop group Cypress Hill, DJ

Muggs switches out the stoner psychedelia for something more sinister after joining forces with Dean Hurley, an artist whose name may be less well-known, but with whom followers of David Lynch will likely be familiar, through his work on the third season of Twin Peaks and the Lynch x Flying Lotus short film Fire is Coming.

It’s a curious combination, even for a Soderbergh production. But even taking the score in isolation, Divinity paints an unsettling, creeping picture that hits on the deep, intense dystopia of the film’s storyline.

Blending stark sound design with pulsing rhythms, it’s a score that pushes heavy mood more than overt song structures. Paced steadily throughout, ‘Intro Descent’, ‘Capture’ and ‘RIP Fights’ hit with a plummeting, stomach-dropping progression, ‘Drone Interrogation’ is similarly foreboding and low frequency, while ‘Capture’ and ‘Heavy Weight’ growl and and suffocate with psychological menace.

That isn’t to say there aren’t some bursts of musicality as ‘Main Titles’ finds a rhythmic, industrial, air-lock clank and ‘Infinity Techno’ stomps in a Blanck-Massdoes-Blade kind of way, but given the whole thing is set against the concept of an immortality-enabling serum that’s been exploited by greed and is slowly destroying society, the austerity and darkness of its soundtrack feels purposeful, defined – even if I still don’t know where DJ Muggs fits in all of it. 6/10 Reef Younis

HEALTH — Rat Wars (loma vista) Rat Wars, the sixth album from LA noise rock band HEALTH, often reaches a level of drone that treads the line between meditation and inertia, lulling listeners into a trance that may cause lingering anxiety. The track titles don’t diverge from this atmosphere, with names like

Albums ‘Sicko’, ‘Unloved’, and ‘DSM-V’. Naming a song after the American Psychiatric Association’s manual of mental disorders certainly sets a certain tone for an album.

The record seems to be a meditation on the internal, without relying on words to express the things going on inside the musicians’ – and the listeners’ – minds; HEALTH have created a soundscape that serves as a foundation onto which fans can project their own emotional journey.

This might also be due in part to the similarities between many of the songs – one tends to roll into the next with very little sonic difference, creating the disorientating result of not knowing when you’ve listened to the whole album and started over again. However, one thing that might help is paying extra attention to the final song, ‘Don’t Try’. Echoing strings bounce off the inside of your mind, pulling you towards the bare, soft vocals.

Instead of hopelessness, you feel myself walking a path towards hypnotic happiness, through the catharsis that comes from listening to a great song and feeling it inspire the same emotions in you that its creator felt once. Or, at the very least, convincing you that you’ve felt it before.

6/10 Isabel Crabtree

sounding record – at least, not directly.

It’s more an examination of musical feelings through different lenses: the same melody on ‘Vestigios’ is first sung delicately and then echoed as a muscular synth line to accentuate difference; a heart-on-sleeve vocal delivery is paired with icily abstracted synth burbles (‘Me Suelto Al Riesgo’) that amplify a sense of dissociation. The effect is impressively original and intriguing, reminiscent of Björk’s more recent digital folk songs in their welding of traditionalism to glitched and decayed electronica, and, maybe not coincidentally, just as emotionally opaque, which ends up being to both the album’s advantage and detriment.

Indeed, when Montañera allows herself to truly wail, on album centrepiece and standout ‘Como Una Ram’, something gutural and genuinely affecting emerges that demands repeat plays but also reveals a lack elsewhere on the record.

Then again, the closing pair of fractured lullabies work so well precisely because of their digitally crisp palettes and Montañera’s restraint. Their combination adds up to a record of breadth and depth, presence and absence, and strangely intangible longevity. 7/10 Sam Walton

Montañera — A Flor de Piel (western vinyl) A spirit of dislocation runs through the third album by Montañera – real name María Mónica Gutiérrez – where disparate musical cultures and styles rub up against one another, and where the interest lies in how they tessellate. Perhaps that’s appropriate: after all, A Flor De Piel is reportedly a response to the Bogotá -bred singer’s relocation to London, and all the homesickness, culture shock, and difficulty in starting again in a new city that that entails.

Not that this is a particular sad-

Sleater-Kinney — Little Rope (loma vista) “High stakes are something you can’t fake,” said Carrie Brownstein to this reviewer in an early interview for this 11th album from Sleater-Kinney.

“And when the stakes are high, music and art take on a different form entirely.” Emotionally speaking, there couldn’t have been much more riding on these ten songs for Brownstein and long-time collaborator Corin Tucker by the time they came to record them; after the shock of losing her mother and stepfather in a fatal car crash in Italy

in late 2022, the guitarist and singer sought refuge in the studio, making an album that was largely written in the months leading up to her suffering such a profound loss.

Said grief informs nearly every aspect of how Little Rope feels. It blends the pop sensibilities that the group have embraced since 2019’s The Center Won’t Hold with the kind of exposed-nerve punk restlessness that defined The Hot Rock in 1999 and the experiments with groove and melody of their 2015 comeback record, No Cities to Love. This means we get the Tucker of old on lead single ‘Hell’, with towering vocals worthy of 2005’s The Woods, and then a side of her we’ve never heard before on the gorgeous pseudo-ballad ‘Say It Like You Mean It’.

Brownstein, meanwhile, largely lets her guitar do the talking, with some of the most palpably emotive playing of her life informing the likes of the taut, nervy ‘Hunt You Down’, the untamed glam swagger of ‘Crusader’ and, crucially, the sweeping drama of epic closer ‘Untidy Creature’.

Much has been made of what Sleater-Kinney now lack without drummer Janet Weiss, who departed the group in 2019; in Weiss’ version of events, she was informed that she was no longer “a creative equal in the band”, which she felt was unworkable when, to her, the group “represents equality”.

Brownstein’s statement at the time (prior to Weiss’ interview about it all) didn’t specifically mention the issue of equality, but did insist that Weiss was asked to stay, and paid tribute to her contributions to The Center Won’t Hold.

It would be easy for this fissure to overshadow the band even a few years down the line; yet this is now their second full album without Weiss, and perhaps more decisively than 2021’s Path of Wellness, Little Rope should bring the focus back to what they still have: genuine magic, in the form of the shared musical language that Tucker and Brownstein have spent 30 years developing. The latter has harnessed it here, to turn personal tragedy into deeply cathartic artistic triumph. 8/10 Joe Goggins

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Albums Live drawing the loudest applause. The highlight of the festival, though, comes later from The Orielles, who bounce between genres as guitarist Henry Carlyle Wade pogos around the stage. It’s a fitting end to an excellently curated festival, where experimentalism excels in a city defined by its daring design.

Bonzo Trans-Pecos, New York City 6 October 2023

Left Of The Dial Rotterdam, The Netherlands 19–21 October 2023

Architecturally, Rotterdam is unlike most places. Largely rebuilt after the Second World War it favoured a pickn’-mix approach to new civic buildings and, as such, modernist towers geyser upwards beside hovering cubist blocks and playful curves. To have a skyline so outwardly experimental makes it a fitting city for a festival like Left Of The Dial, which focuses on the emerging scenes in today’s indie landscape.

The opening party is a real hoot.

As festival organisers lead a walk from the city centre to the harbour, we’re greeted by one-man disco machine Pink Eye Club – flanked by flag wavers – who serenades the crowd on the deck of a ship that pulls in to dock.

Kicking off the festival proper are French duo Nze Nze; there’s some of Backxwash’s barbed abrasion to their set as the duo crash through cuts from their debut album Adzi Akal. A stone’s throw away from the venue is Salsability, a first floor club and, unsurprisingly, a venue for Salsa classes. Although it’s not salsa, the crowd do move with fervour as The Tubs play fired up jangle

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pop that really sucks diesel.

Over to Poing, where Vanity Fairy glides through a late evening slot. Her homespun disco pop has charm in spades, and star-power abounds as she deserts the stage to interact with as much of the venue as is possible. Out the door and a sharp left down some precariously steep stairs leads to Sahara, a basement club that attempts to contain the precision engineered MadMadMad. Friday’s proceedings begin aboard the good ship Boot III where free drinks and complimentary sea legs are given out. Over an hour tour of the River Rotte, Speedy Wunderground signee Tummyache does a fine job of being on-board entertainment. Back on terra firma and the rain consistently drips as if from a faulty faucet. Thankfully the indoors beckon, and up the stairs in the lovely Worm venue London guitar and drums duo Scrounge take to the stage and embark upon 40 minutes of blistering post-punk. Previous single ‘Badoom’ is especially belting, leading the front-rowers into a frenzy.

Wesley Gonzalez’s peacock and pizzazz around the stage is a real delight, and ‘Change’, the oldest track of his set, is impossibly good live. London trio Mary in the Junkyard play to an extremely packed crowd; their sickly, knotty indie rock sounds excellent, with ‘Tuesday’

On the Bushwick and Ridgewood border of Queens, New York, the community venue Trans-Pecos is hidden on the approach by a Vietnamese restaurant advertising breakfast and iced coffee.

Its modest entrance sits opposite an old scrapyard where piles of automobiles are marked “X” for destruction. Across the road, passportless non-Americans are branded the same way, sidelined to an evening of soft drinks.

Hand-printed “Danger Boss” vest tops are decorated at the door with a variety of emblems, above a handscrawled note with Gigi from the band Horsegirl’s Venmo details: “We’re Danger Boss from New York,” mumble Horsegirl from Chicago. Secret’s out.

Testament to the trio’s pretensionfree virtuosity, they play like a hometown show, and their surprise appearance isn’t a surprise to anyone. Extended jam sessions merge with grungy nostalgia rock free from cheap retrospections, while the claustral fug of a warm New York night – and the fuzzy resilience – makes juvenile singalongs oddly prescient. “Emma was my brand-new friend,” echoes through a smoking area twice the size of the venue itself.

It’s the first instalment of psychfolk artist Anastasia Coope’s Bonzo event series; Coope herself plays an opening set to launch her ‘Tough Sun’ / ‘Seemeely’ 7” vinyl. The two songs are the evening’s highlight. Richly composed and skeletally fumbled through, Coope’s bari-

photography by guus van der aa

Albums Live tone resounds a haunting that feels both immensely close and far away, her songs like detailed sketches in white ink. Her own shirts are as equally bootlegged as Danger Boss’s, simply reading: “Advertisement for Anastasia Coope [Music]”.

Let this be one, too.

Experimental visionary Carl Stone’s headline set is as understated as everything before, sporting your drunk uncle’s fedora and wielding a sample pad like an air guitar. The only thing he says is “I love it when you dance.” Playing from his newly released compilation Electronic Music from 1972-2022, the mantra of music for music’s sake could have been written here. These are the brilliantly disjointed nights that DIY spaces are needed for. Tristan Gatward

Armand Hammer EartH, London 4 November 2023

It’s 22:30 at EartH and Armand Hammer take to a darkened stage. “Turn the lights as low as your licence will permit,” instructs Billy Woods.

Here promoting their sixth record, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, the duo of

photography by sam walton

Woods and ELUCID tear through a set that reaches deep into their back catalogue whilst also indulging in new cuts and a smattering of solo offerings. The opening salvo takes from WBDTS and runs sequentially, with the first two tracks revelling in the heavy claustrophobia of JPEGMAFIA’s production. As the backing tracks glitch and bubble with high treble glee, Woods and ELUCID prowl as dim lit silhouettes. They sound thunderous, with the lines cutting through the density of the backing track.

“I ain’t seen the bottom yet,” ELUCID assures us on ‘Woke Up and Asked Siri How I’m Gonna Die’, which is a bold claim as the duo spend the rest of the set plumbing the depths of arch nihilism.

Early on the duo canvas audience opinion on levels, and after overwhelming demand for louder vocals they comply. It’s a pleasure to hear the words tumble out and richly detail the trevails of everyday life. Beside throwaway observations that snag in the brain and ferment (“Fake trees in the Apple store”) there’s also a rich poetry taken from Woods’ vantage point as a flâneur: “Sittin’ atop the corral smokin’ / Watching unbroken wild ponies / Run wild at sundown.”

ELUCID has a guttural projection which complements his partner’s deeper conversational tones. His verses are often harder to follow, with more of an

emphasis on a flow abetted by rhyme and masterful wordplay.

Ending on the gorgeous and reflective ‘Stonefruit’ – a song sweeter than any in either’s acclaimed, endless back catalogues – the thought persists that the sum is as great as the parts with this duo.

Theo Gorst

Mandy, Indiana The White Hotel, Salford 27 October 2023

If you were only familiar with one of Mandy, Indiana or The White Hotel, it would still be possible to explain the other’s vibe to you by saying that this show involved the most perfect confluence of band and venue that I can remember. Where better for this Manchester band to play a hometown show than in a converted garage opposite Strangeways prison? This proud home of the avant garde outsider, which feels more Kreuzberg than Salford, is thick with the kind of ominous atmosphere that defines the band’s terrifically murky debut, May’s i’ve seen a way.

The group rattle through most of that record tonight, shrouded from view for much of the set by thick smoke, befitting their enigmatic sound. The spiralling synths of the instrumental ‘Love Theme (4K VHS)’ get us underway, before we twist and turn through i’ve seen a way’s thrilling stylistic slaloms. Underpinning everything are two key things. The first is Valentine Caulfield’s icy stage presence; commanding and vaguely threatening, she seems to grow in stature as the set progresses. Second is the gorgeous bass tone, an organic throb that rattles the room and feels like a living thing unto itself, the heartbeat around which the glitchy likes of ‘Injury Detail’ and foreboding synth odyssey ‘2 Stripe’ orbit.

Caulfield’s vocals, largely spoken and in her native French, provide a final layer of unknowable gloss to the singular sound, which translates to the live arena in genuinely exhilarating fashion. Joe Goggins

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FilmAlbums and Books

Welcome to The Darkness (dir. simon emmett) In the wake of the 20th anniversary edition of their smash hit, daft-asa-brush cock rock debut Permission to Land, a lot of positive articles have been written about The Darkness, reappraising their craft and wantonly overblown gift to a music community that perpetually takes itself too seriously. It’s the latest development in the story of a band who only ever wanted to be Queen, and who have trod the exact same path from critical punchline to legends of teckers stadium rock, five years after the band went so far as recruiting Roger Taylor’s son, Rufus, as their forth drummer.

The other comparison thrown the band’s way since they first started treating rooms above pubs like Wembley Stadium (a comparison they’ve also welcomed with an air of, “and what’s so wrong about that?”) is to Spinal Tap, which is what makes Welcome to The Darkness such a knowing (and joyous) documentary. At one point, the band’s naturally hilarious catsuit tailor, Ray Brown, even says, “we’re in Spinal Tap right now”; bassist Frankie Poullain IS Derek Smalls; the drummer that starts the movie is not the same one that ends it; and practically every scene ends on an expertly delivered deadpan one-liner, some that the band are clearly reaching for, others more “these go up to 11”, like when Justin Hawkins critiques their first gig with drummer Emily Davies by saying: “People like what I call ‘a man/ woman mixed band.’”

I could go on… and I will. Filmed from 2015 onwards, we first find the band on a comeback trail that they freely admit is not going as they had hoped – far from being back in the arenas that they briefly dominated in the mid 2000s, the band are playing pubs in Ireland. Small pubs. Their equivalent to Spinal Tap’s airbase. It’s here

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where we realise just how seriously the band take not taking themselves too seriously. As a group that lived the cliché they once pretended to be (superstardom, millions of record sales, drug abuse on a level that Justin Hawkins calls “method”, fallouts and an inevitable, sudden split), the Darkness of 2015 vitally avoided allowing their egos to sabotage their enjoyment of playing some pretty ridiculous music together again, even if it is to so few people. “It’s so preposterous you have to live it,” says Hawkins when addressing the age old question of if The Darkness are for real or taking the piss. Of course, it doesn’t matter, and what Welcome to The Darkness does just as well as This Is Spinal Tap, is balance the cucumbers in the pants with a story of love and heart, particularly around the rebuilding of the relationship between brothers Dan and Justin Hawkins as, characteristically, the band stubbornly bounce back. Stuart Stubbs

A Shining — Jon Fosse (fitzcarraldo editions) Nobel Prize-winning author Jon Fosse’s new novella, A Shining, starts with a simple, if illogical, problem. The protagonist feels lost, so he makes himself physically lost as well, first by taking random turns down a dirt road, then by abandoning his car in a snowstorm and trekking into a dark forest. Once sufficiently lost, his thoughts may become more direct, but his physical movements languish into untraceable wanderings.

Known for meditations on the interior at the expense of setting and external description, Fosse makes a black and white world come alive with abyss-like depth.

The almost total lack of color in A Shining makes the vibrancy of the white void and glowing visions of the protagonist’s

parents startling, both entrancing and unsettling.

Fosse converted to Catholicism in 2012, and his writing explores the relationship to God that traces the interiority of human life. There are no absolutes in A Shining, no specific religions, no concrete assertions or ideas, only the intangible that makes up a struggle between physicality and faith. In an appreciation of Fosse recently published in The New York Times, novelist Randy Boyagoda described A Shining as a retelling of the Divine Comedy, encapsulated in only 48 pages yet traversing every layer of the poem, including Dante’s salvation. This is an interesting but one-note reading of the novella; Fosse’s work is simultaneously mysterious, concise, and propulsive and cannot be confined to comparisons. Comparisons abound, however, to Beckett and a handful of philosophising autofiction writers.

Despite this, Fosse’s work seems to exist on a plane of existence outside the influence of others. An obsession with interiority drives his writing, pondering existential questions of spirituality that initially feel hard to grapple with when viewed from outside the world of religion. As the novella progresses, though, and the protagonist spirals deeper into himself and the membrane between the physical and spiritual disintegrates, I find myself a fish on a hook; wriggling, resistant, but unable to free myself from the nagging feeling that there is something out there tethering me to myself, to other people, to a layer of feeling beyond the physical world.

No matter your relationship to spirituality, A Shining is an interesting and unique example of creative writing. It drags readers along, the stream-of-consciousness style enrapturing while causing increasing anxiety and panic. The protagonist’s actions that read as passivity while really being a use of free will bring the surreal to the forefront. By the time a shining white being approaches, readers will be distrustful, anxious and ready for disaster. The relief of a non-physical confrontation tricks us into being thankful for the ethereal, existential questioning that ensues. By the end, you may find yourself wishing for salvation, whatever that may mean. Isabel Crabtree

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REJECTING DEATH

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AND ACCEPTING LIFE How Future Islands – a band whose very name points towards their low expectations for longevity – have made it to their 18th year together, and an album that’s going to change how they operate, by Jemima Skala.

Photography by Frank Hamilton In February 2024 Future Islands will turn 18. That’s one hell of a birthday for a band that was never meant to stick around.

“We’re almost becoming a legacy act,” singer Samuel T. Herring jokes. Settling into contemplation about what he’s just said, he continues, “I’m proud of that, but it’s not an easy thing.”

It’s surreal having one of the most long-running and wellrespected bands in modern indie in front of you, but Future Islands are immediately affable and at ease – Herring chainsmokes throughout, alternating between a vape and a cigarette, lending our interview a laidback feel. This is their first conversation about their upcoming seventh album People Who Aren’t There Anymore, and they are more than willing to work through the album’s story and context; bassist William Cashion even thanks me for helping him to do that, as for him it’s often through press interviews, talking it through with his bandmates, that their albums become clearer for him.

The tale of Future Islands is almost apocryphal now, having been in the ether for so long, but it bears solidifying in the context of their upcoming album. After their first band Art Lord & the Self-Portraits broke up, founding members Herring, Cashion and keyboard player Gerrit Welmers were distraught. It was in the days of show trades – a band would put on a short headline tour in their part of the US so that a band from a different part of the country could support them.

Then a few months later, they would swap so that each band could get some exposure in various areas of the States. Art Lord & the Self-Portraits had supported another band, The Texas Governor, before their breakup, and Cashion received an email from the other band asking how they were getting on with booking their leg of the show trade. Instead of admitting they didn’t have a band anymore, they cobbled together and formed Future Islands.

They never had any expectations of longevity. Herring explains, “Future Islands was a serendipitous name, but it made sense to me. It was perfect, like: we’re not going to be a band, we’re friends now, here in this one place, but soon we’re going to be spread out, doing our own things. It was an understanding.”

But that understanding, thankfully, never solidified, and Future Islands kept on going.

Their focus as a band has morphed and matured over the years. Where at the beginning it was simply making sure that people heard them, now it’s more like making sure they’re still making stuff that’s worthy of being heard. Welmers says, “I was thinking recently about how, at some point, bands start putting out these records that are just like, not that good. [I’m] trying to crack the code of what happens when you’re turning 40 and you’re still in a band. Are you capable of still making interesting music?”

People Who Aren’t There Anymore answers this question with a definite, resounding yes. Coated in the iconic Future Islands soundscape (glimmering synth chords, twanging prominent basslines and Herring’s versatile yet distinctive vocal timbre, scratchy and tender all at once), it paints a protracted snapshot of a longer period in the band’s lives. Some songs were written as early as July 2020, with the most recent ones being written up until mid-2022; as a result, the album is neatly “broken in half ”, as Herring puts it. “A little bit more than half of the record was written when I was still in a relationship, and then the second half was quickly spewed out on the other side of that relationship.” If their previous album As Long As You Are was about finding peace in maturity, People Who Aren’t There Anymore is about the bitter reality of people falling out of your life as you get older.

The band agrees that the process of writing this new album was a continuation of the one that they had begun for As Long As You Are: writing more consistently, taking the time to write and record as and when they wanted. An altogether more comfortable process than the one for their album The Far Field which followed hot on the heels of their breakout fourth album Singles. They played over 300 shows in one year touring that album, then felt that they had to record another one just to keep the train on the tracks. Herring reiterates at several points throughout our interview that they have shifted to seeing the process of album cycles as less distinct than previously; each album is a continuation of the other, in conversation with each other, to draw a picture of a band evolving over time. Think less about eras, more about a growing timeline.

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“I’m trying to crack the code of what happens when you’re turning 40 and you’re still in a band”

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SHARING SECRETS When discussing memorable recording moments from this album, each band member has their favourite. They let themselves get diverted into each other’s memories: drummer Mike Lowry, who joined the band for the recording process of The Far Field and has since become a permanent fourth member, fondly remembers ‘King of Sweden’ coming together in ten minutes in the studio while Herring was plugged in over Zoom from Sweden, singing eerily in-time without any lag. Cashion, who went through a divorce in the years that this album came together, loved recording the feedback at the end of ‘The Sickness’, a downtempo number that dissolves into discordant feedback as Herring repeats “Won’t you lie to me?” Though just a couple of seconds long, it ties up the track’s melancholy with a question. “[Co-producer and engineer] Steve Wright was like, dude the smile on your face was amazing, I’ve never seen you so stoked. Recording that was really cathartic for me. There’s a lot of emotion in that part.”

‘The Garden Wheel’ is another one that sticks out. It’s a Future Islands song at its best: major melodies alternately disguise and emphasise Herring’s despairing groan of “How am I supposed to feel?”; the twanging bassline acts as a twist of the knife, an extra layer of disappointment, Cashion supporting Herring’s vocals through the second verse as friends prop each other up through hard times. The final song on the album, Herring considers it the epilogue not only to People Who Aren’t There Anymore, but also its predecessor. The melody started life as a demo that Welmers had recorded quickly to his phone, and played Herring while they were touring Canada, unsure whether it would be anything useful. Herring was immediately drawn to it: “I was like, I need the song! Certain chords of Garrit’s, they have an intestinal pull. I feel it.” From the rich textural background, Herring spun lyrics that speak to the sheer uncertainty of losing someone that you loved so deeply. “There are so many hidden things in that song that only two people will ever know what they mean, and that’s something that’s important to me: being able to share secrets in a way that they’re still secrets.

They’re still mine, but they’re yours.” Herring wrote and recorded a demo himself alone in a Toronto hotel room; the original vocals from that demo are the ones that made it to the final version of the song, as Herring was adamant that he couldn’t reach the same emotional place again in the studio necessary for those lyrics.

I CAN’T SHIMMY LIKE I USED TO Another part of maturing as a band is recognising when you can’t tour like you used to. The draft press release for this album promises that Future Islands are turning their attention to a brand-new stage show inspired by the work of Sparks and David Byrne, drawing on the theatrical heights of their music and performance. When I ask the band about this, whether they have any ideas of what they want the show to look like, there is a pause before Herring admits laughingly, “We have no idea!”

They are still very much in the process of meeting with

various stage designers to hash out the details, but essentially the desire to rework the live show comes from a need to make the way they tour more sustainable for them. Lowry jokes that he joined the band at the wrong time, just as they’re preparing to slow down; he would probably play 200 shows a year if he could. However, it’s simply not feasible to expect to tour 200 shows a year, every single year, for the rest of your lives; with Welmers recently becoming a father, and with Herring dealing with acute arthritis in his right knee from years of performing on a torn ACL, there is a need to modify how they tour so they can continue doing so for years to come. It’s a difficult adjustment, however; change sometimes feels like doing less, so that feels guilt-inducing when you’re used to leaving everything onstage.

Herring says, “I want to be sure personally that when I’m performing that I back myself 100 per cent, and I don’t feel like I’m taking anything off the top or giving anything less, because it means a lot.” But, he explains, “We’ve missed so much life doing this thing that we love, so at this point it’s gotta be sustainable so we can live full lives and be there for the people in our lives.

But also, be there for the people who have actually given us a life, which are the audiences that have supported us so long and continued to be there.”

Contrary to everything he’s just said, Herring says that despite his bum knee, the physical pain of performing every night for months, and the emotional toll of being separated from loved ones, “We’re the best we’ve ever been onstage. The shows we did this year, we were the most galvanised as a unit, and I felt the strongest I’ve ever felt as a performer. That’s as a person who’s lost range on my voice, who can’t shimmy like I used to!

But what comes with that is the wisdom of age and what we’ve learned from our 10,000 hours.”

If nothing else, Future Islands are an encouraging example of how graft, curiosity and learning as you go can earn you a place as one of music’s most well-respected bands so many years on. Their signature sound is instantly recognisable: heavily bedded synths, floating so lightly over lyrics whose vulnerability is layered in metaphors of night and day, sun and moon that you might miss them. The aim, as Herring puts it, is for big emotions to be distilled down into imagery and moments that everyone can understand and find themselves in – everyone knows the breaking of dawn and the feelings that come along with it, the mingled regret or sweetness, the aching red eyes whether from crying or smoking or dancing too hard. He says, “What our music is striving for is allowing a place for people to feel safe, to be emotional, to commune with themselves and with the ghosts.

To reject death and accept life, and to be in the garden.”

Whether that’s ever fully possible is presumably something that the band will continue to explore in their future projects. With an outlook that sees each new album as an evolving moment rather than a distinct statement, it’s a treat to ponder how each album will speak to the others; does the turmoil of People That Aren’t There Anymore falsify the sincerity of As Long As You Are, or rather preserve it in aspic, a sentiment to be frozen and marvelled at? At the very least, with their latest album Future Islands solidify their spot as one of the hardest working, most considerate bands working in music today.

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2023on

INDEPENDENT MUSIC HOUSE

Record Label • Atelier Products Factory Sessions • Collective Distribution

STATE51.COM

Continuous Miracles, Vol. 2

Shit and Shine

2222 and AIRPORT

UKAEA Birds Catching Fire in the Sky

Electronic Music from India 1969-1972

Blue Bendy Mr. Bubblegum

Abstract Concrete Abstract Concrete

MEMORIALS Music For Film

Wacław Zimpel Train Spotter

Bingo Fury

MXLX

Better Corners

Legss Fester

Lou Terry

Warmly, Alexandria

Santaka

Ramybė / Autoportretas

Grove

The Sound of the Underground / Maria

Bats Feet for a Widow

Hotel Lux

Hands Across the Creek

The NID Tapes

Saint

Scrounge

Corner Cutting Boredom

Albums Of The Year

The Loud And Quiet top 40 albums of the year, as voted for by our contributors

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 40

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Nourished by Time Erotic Probiotic 2 (Scenic Route)

L’Rain I Killed Your Dog (Mexican Summer)

Beqa Ungiadze ს​ა​დგ ​ ​უ​რ​ი [Station] (Spirituals)

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Maple Glider I Get Into Trouble (Partisan)

Sleaford Mods UK Grim (Rough Trade)

Charlotte Cornfield Could Have Done Anything (Polyvinyl)

Mitski. The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We (Dead Oceans)

Hotel Lux

The state51 Factory Sweeping Sessions Promises Good Living Is Coming For You (Sub Pop)

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Albums Of The Year

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Mega Bog End Of Everything (Mexican Summer)

ANOHNI & The Johnsons My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross...1

Zulu A New Tomorrow (Flatspot)

Craven Faults Standers (Leaf)

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Bar Italia Tracey Denim (Matador)

Deathcrash Less (Untitled (Recs))

Steve Gunn and David Moore. Reflections Vol. 1: Let the Moon Be a...2

Hannah Diamond Perfect Picture (PC Music)

it? What sets it apart from previous Divide and Dissolve albums, in your eyes?

Takiaya Reed: Thank you! This album is a continuation of the previous works. I feel excited about this album and excited for the next one. The work is consistently evolving when I listen back to it I find new moments in it.

24 Divide and Dissolve Systemic (Invada) In his L&Q review of Divide and Dissolve’s 2021 album Gas Lit, Dafydd Jenkins described Takiaya Reed’s radical doom project as “the coolest thing to happen to metal since Deafheaven”. Daf was right then, and he still is now, particularly in the wake of Systemic, the heaviest yet most elegant and nuanced D&D record yet. These tracks are still enormous slabs of noise, but their contours are more ornate and refined than before, the gale-like guitars and squalls of woodwind crashing hard against broiling percussion. Throughout it all, the political commitment that drives everything that this band do is front-and-centre, a cocktail of postcolonial struggle, abolitionism and radical anti-racism giving their tectonic sound a human focus. It’s a remarkable record, a thrilling evolution of their previous work, and has deservedly exposed the Australian duo to a wider audience than ever.

Congratulations on the release of Systemic – from an outsider’s perspective, it feels like a real breakthrough, your richest work yet and a real step up in terms of audience size too. Is that how you feel about

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Although he’s worked on your albums before, Ruban Neilson’s (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) production sounds particularly clear and direct on Systemic. How has it been working with him, and has that relationship changed much over time?

In the studio I’m reminded of our deep and profound love of music. This is the connection and key to why things sound and feel the way they do. Since we have met I have always felt understood by Ruban. This is an irreplaceable connection. If you were in the room with us you might become bored because of how much we talk about pedals and the nuance of sound. I think I’m left with the knowing that I am a nerd.

You’ve spoken before about your belief in non-verbal communication, and the way that you want your music to resonate profoundly with people through its instrumentation, rather than through vocals. Is this something you’ve always wanted to prioritise, even before Divide and Dissolve?

Resonance could be defined as: the property of having a molecular structure which cannot adequately be represented by a single structural formula but is a composite of two or more structures of higher energy. Or: the reinforce-

1

(Rough Trade)

2

Planet (RNVG Intl.)

Albums Of The Year

“In order to achieve resonance in this music verbal communication is not necessary”

understand deeply. Sometimes it’s shocking the amount of understanding that occurs.

Do you feel like people always understand what you’ve intended them to from your music – and relatedly, do you care?

Sometimes I believe they understand and sometimes they don’t. When people are able to understand it feels like they

How has touring a record like this been in 2023? Its political content is what makes it so special, and one reason why we love it so much – but in an international climate that feels increasingly hostile to radical ideas, has that ever led to complications on the road?

The fact that in the van and while on tour we are still Black and Indigenous. Having Black and Indigenous people in a touring party we sometimes experience racism and aggressive checks in the van or in the touring environment.

Recently while on tour the following happened: I am sober, I have never done drugs in my life, and this officer aggressively accused and questioned me about being a drug user.

It made me feel terrible because he was refusing to listen to me and hear my answers. When my humanity or the humanity of the people who we are touring with are called into question, I sometimes feel discouraged, but then when they are tearing the merch boxes apart or destroying my suitcase and have to look at the Destroy White Supremacy T-shirts or Dismantle Colonial Borders shirts I smile and keep on moving. In contrast, touring in 2023 is exciting, challenging and exhilarating. It feels like it’s important to be creative when coming up against challenges and it’s also equally as important to remember why we are touring and to focus on the good. Sustainability is key, because touring is such an immense activity. Resilience is a requirement of touring, especially when incessantly speaking about getting our land back and reparations.

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Comfort What’s Bad Enough?

(Fat Cat)

Boygenius The Record (Polydor)

Mandy Indiana I’ve Seen A Way (Fire Talk)

Paris Texas Mid Air (Paris Texas LLC)

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Squid O Monolith (Warp)

Water From Your Eyes Everyone’s Crushed (Matador)

Julie Byrne The Greater Wings (Ghostly International)

Benefits Nails (Invada)

ment or prolongation of sound by reflection from a surface or by the synchronous vibration of a neighbouring object.

Or: the condition in which an object or system is subjected to an oscillating force having a frequency close to its own natural frequency.

In order to achieve resonance in this music and formation, verbal communication is not necessary. I relate to these definitions and am not feeling their limitations. I would like to feel a closeness with them. I’m not sure if I wanted to prioritise non verbal communication, but rather I have always noticed its importance. There is so much information in this form of communicating. It informs so much around us. There are so many important and different ways to communicate.

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Albums Of The Year

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Yussef Dayes Black Classical Music (Brownswood)

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. Land Of Sleeper (Rocket)

Billy Woods and Kenny Segal. Maps (Backwoodz Studioz)

Feeble Little Horse Girl With Fish (Saddle Creek)

11 Joanna Sternberg I’ve Got Me (Fat Possum) Joanna Sternberg grew up in the part of New York where you think no one would possibly live – Midtown Manhattan: home of Times Square, Broadway, and every visiting tourist. It’s like meeting a Londoner who was raised in Piccadilly Circus. But growing up in the artist-subsidised building their father has lived in since 1977, the streets around Sternberg’s family home have left an indelible mark on their deeply personal music, along with their education at LaGuardia High School, the inspiration behind the movie Fame.

I’ve Got Me is Sternberg’s second album of stripped down, tell-all songs, which often sound like they could close out the first half of a theatre show playing in their neighbourhood – 12 wistful solo numbers sung into a spotlight from the stage’s apron before the curtain drop.

“I woke up and the whole song was in my head, so I recorded it into my phone in the bathroom.

I remember it exactly” 60

Like Cat Stevens and Carol King before them, Sternberg’s songs sound not only timeless but effortlessly composed, which is perhaps how the first song they ever wrote (whilst asleep) has ended up as a highlight of a record where Sternberg pairs the struggles of their life with an unexpected insistence of writing everything in a major key.

Anyone can make a sad song sound sad; Sternberg makes them light and breezy with a skill that is uniquely theirs.

Congratulations on the success of ‘I’ve Got Me’. How has your year been since its release in June?

My year has been kind of intense since June, because I’ve been processing everything and it’s been a lot to process.

It’s all been really positive but it’s still a change that I’m adjusting to – getting more recognition for my music. I’m really proud of myself, but I’m also realising how much I’m needing to improve on self-care tasks and taking care of myself. I’m realising it’s really catching up to me how bad I am at certain aspects of life – maybe I can draw and write songs, but it seems that everything else is difficult for me. So I tried to rest a lot since June, but I’m ready to rock again, I think.

Growing up in Midtown, has the theatre been an influence on your music? I can especially here it on a track like ‘Drifting On A Cloud’.

Yes, it’s been a huge influence in my music. Ever since I was little my parents took me to musicals, and I grew up in Manhattan Plaza, on Broadway, literally. So I always loved musicals and I always will. My aunt was even in musicals, my grandma was in Yiddish theatre, my grandpa was in the opera. And my mum acted. There’s lots of theatre in my blood.

I also hear Randy Newman in your music.

I’m a huge fan of Randy Newman – I love him so much. I actually arranged a big tribute show of Randy Newman songs a couple of years ago. I had as many people as I could sing Randy Newman songs as we could fit in. I was in the house band, and I think I almost played on every one. It was so fun, and I got to do some songs at the end solo. I went to see him live once and cried the whole time.

LAQ006-01 PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS Terror’s Pillow [Live at Blank Studios]

LAQ006-02 ROBBIE & MONA Tina’s Leather

LAQ006-03 PROTOMARTYR How He Lived After He Died [Live at Sugar Hill Supper Club]

THIS MONTH’S DISC

LAQ006-04 SQUID Sevens [Early writing session, 2021]

LAQ006-05 THE DARKER THE SHADOW THE BRIGHTER THE LIGHT [aka THE STREETS] Don’t Judge The Book

LAQ006-06 LANKUM Lullaby

Receive an exclusive flexi disc of a rare track with each edition of Loud And Quiet when you subscribe from £5.50 per month loudandquiet.com/subscribe

Albums Of The Year

You studied jazz and have played in classical ensembles, yet your music is so beautifully pared down. Was that a conscious decision after your studies, to move in an opposite direction?

I guess I tried my best to apply jazz and classical to my music without it sounding like a copy of anything. I will be very influenced by a jazz solo or a jazz arrangement, but it comes out how it comes out, and just because it doesn’t sound like it, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been fully informed by it. So it wasn’t that I consciously said that I wasn’t going to do jazz or classical, it just happens how it happens. And I think it sounds pared down because on the record I play all of the instruments and I always play solo, because I don’t have a band. And I don’t have a band because basically, it started out that I was stressed out having a band, because I have certain difficulties socially. No matter how amazing the musicians are, just something about playing the really sad songs that I write with a band, the element of socialising would stress me out. I tried it many times, but it became much easier to play solo. But I like it that way, because it’s a good test to see if I think the song can stand on its own.

The album includes the first song you ever wrote, over 10 years ago. What do you remember of completing ‘She Dreams’ all those years ago?

I woke up and the whole song was finished. I just remember having a sleepover with my friend who I wrote the song about, and I woke up and the whole song was in my head, so I recorded it into my phone in the bathroom. I remember it exactly.

Did you know you were onto something straight away, as most first ever songs are not in the same league as ‘She Dreams’, which might even be my favourite on the whole album?

Oh, thank you so much. That’s so nice of you. I guess I knew I was onto something because it was a whole song.

If it had been just the beginning I probably wouldn’t have cared so much, but it was a whole song, and that gave me the confidence to explore that, because I’d always wished that I could write songs, but I never had the confidence to try.

I’ve heard you describe your music as “all embarrassing”, presumably because it’s so personal. Can you put your finger on what compels you to record it for others to hear?

Yeah. I started making music because I always dreamed of doing it, but I started doing it for people because I was surprised that people didn’t hate it. I was like, “Oh, I’m not annoying anymore, that’s great news.” The better news became that I was helping people with it, so that adds to it as well. It’s worth embarrassing myself if it’s going to help people.

Do you have any hopes for next year as 2023 winds down?

Yes. For next year I really hope to take better care of my health. I’ve been procrastinating it my whole life really, and it’s caught up with me, so I have to fix that.

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Tirzah Trip9love…???

(Domino)

John Francis Flynn Look Over The Wall, See The Sky...1

Yves Tumor. Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not...2

Protomartyr. Formal Growth In The Desert (Domino)

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Rosie Carr Yew (Toothpaste Worldwide)

Young Fathers Heavy Heavy (Ninja Tune)

Titanic Vidrio (Unhead of Hope)

Anna B Savage in|FLUX (City Slang)

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1

(River Lea Recordings)

2

Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) (Warp)

Albums Of The Year

02 JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown. Scaring The Hoes (AWAL) JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown collaborating on an album – and one called Scaring The Hoes – surprised everyone and no one when it arrived practically unannounced in March.

Two of alternative rap’s biggest stars, they’ve always appeared to have more in common than not, both dominating their own blue collar DIY scenes in Detroit (Brown) and Baltimore (Peggy) through circle pits that feed off of their irreverence, anti-establishment bluntness, and blistering, wayward beats.

Scaring The Hoes sounds exactly as you’d imagine an album from these two artists would: blown out, furious, and completely bonkers. It’s also the most inventive rap album of the year, where samples ricochet all over the place, from message tones to gospels choirs, to handclaps, to saxophone bum notes, to chunks of P Diddy, LL Cool J and Kelis (make what you want of the fact that JPEGMAFIA chose not to answer our question: “How easy was it to clear the sample of ‘Milkshake’ on the track ‘Fentanyl Tester’?”).

Its real skill is knowing when the overload is just about to become too much, and when a horn hook is needed (‘Burfict!’), or a Kanye-like thick slice of sustained melody (‘Orange Juice Jones’). Nobody does that quite like JPEGMAFIA, who not only co-rapped each track but produced the whole of Scaring The Hoes himself using one single piece of kit, the Roland SP-404 sampler, which

looks like a Year 7 Science calculator. It was Peggy who was the driving force of the album, who suggested to Stereogum earlier this year that this could be the start of a series of collaboration albums through which he’d aim to unite underground, experimental rappers. “You look at all the mainstream dudes and they all make songs together,” he said. “Every album’s got a Lil Baby feature, Lil Durk feature, Future feature. All these n****s work together, they get money together and they come up together and they give each other strength. It’s like a spirit bomb.” Today it seems like he’s not in that place anymore. At least not from the answers he gave us about Scaring The Hoes, exchanged over email.

Can you pinpoint the moment you and Danny agreed to make this album together? How did that conversation go?

I talked to Danny in a green room of my show in 2021? I asked him if he wanted to make a collab album then.

When is came to it, was there a particular type of album you wanted to make together?

There was no particular album. I just wanted to make something that wasn’t boring and sterile like the rest of the shit you all listen to.

You produced it all using only a Roland 404. What made you want to take up that creative challenge?

Because I’m better than most the people in the industry, talent wise. So I did it to prove it. I used one machine and charted. These people have 18 people tweaking hi hats and can’t feed their kids. Anybody mad is mad because it’s true.

How was the tour you guys just completed?

It was trash.

Is it right that the album started off as a tribute to Henning Schellerup’s film Sweet Jesus, Preacherman, before it morphed into something else?

Yeah, it initially started at a tribute to blaxploitation films. It evolved but the energy is still there.

“I’m not making a collab album with anybody again.

People dickride me and then mock me. So they can keep their basic shit to themselves”

Am I right in thinking this is only the start of you making collab albums with other underground artists, not just with DB? I’m not making a collab album with anybody again. People dickride me and then mock me. So they can keep their basic shit to themselves. I collab with me.

Who else have you got your eye on to work with?

Nobody.

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Albums Of The Year

THE

BIGGEST

AND MOST CRUSHING SOUNDS 01 Lankum False Lankum (Rough Trade)

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In supercharging the drone qualities of traditional Irish folk music by combining them with elements of hardcore, metal and doom, Lankum have had the breakout year of their career with the success of their incredible album False Lankum. There are, however, 19 more years to their story, which they told to Fergal Kinney on his trip to meet them in their hometown of Dublin. Photography by Sophie Barloc

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hen it all came crashing down, Ian Lynch remembers feeling that he had nothing left to lose in the first place.

“When the financial crash happened,” says Ian, “it didn’t particularly affect me because I’d never had money in my life.” For the Lankum vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, the lean years were business as usual. “My main experience was great, you know,” he continues, “because nobody had any jobs.

Everybody was out playing music all the time.” A rare pause. “I have to say, it was a positive time for me, you know?”

In the early 2010s, during the tight years of austerity which followed the financial crisis in Ireland, the four members of Lankum – brothers Ian and Darragh Lynch, Cormac Mac Diarmada and Radie Peat – sidestepped from the crowded pub back rooms of Dublin’s traditional folk scene into a recording career which has this year seen the four-piece break through with False Lankum, one of 2023’s most rightly acclaimed releases.

More than this, alongside artists like Lisa O’Neill, John Francis Flynn, Ye Vagabonds, ØXN (which also includes Radie Peat) and Eoghan O Ceannabhain, Lankum are part of what is being tagged a new and dark wave of Irish experimental sounds. Just don’t call it a revival.

— WHERE DID WE GO WRONG — A bright autumn afternoon, and in a quiet 19th century pub in the Phibsborough area of north Dublin, Cormagh, Darragh and Radie sit over tap waters and gargantuan crusted beef pies. If there’s a touch of world-weariness to be detected about the three musicians initially, it comes from being at the back end of the busiest year of their lives, cemented by their nomination for the Mercury Music Prize. That prize is an event recalled in tones more fraught and, now, relieved than the valedictory affair it might be in the calendars of some of their contemporaries. “It was obviously a very weird one,” says Radie Peat still with some disbelief, “I had to keep reminding myself that this is meant to be fun, not stressful.

That you have to enjoy this.” More on which later.

Ian, meanwhile, speaks to me via Zoom from the US. Staying at the generosity of the legendary Pogues tin-whistle player Spider Stacey (a noted Lankum devotee who branded them “the best band in the world” to the New York Times this year), the elder Lynch is on sabbatical in New Orleans, where he rises at 6AM and works on music and his traditional song podcast Fire Draw Near before taking in music across the city in the evening.

Growing up in the Ireland of the 1980s and 90s, the four members of Lankum all came to music at remarkably young ages, though almost none had expected a life in traditional music. “I had no idea of what traditional music was until my later teenage years,” explains Ian, who focused his teenage attentions almost exclusively on metal and punk. “I started listening to the Dubliners and Planxty and things like that.” Leaving school aged 19, Ian spent a year living in London squats, playing approximations of Planxty melodies on the tin whistle and busking for cash

on the streets. It was on returning to Ireland that he learnt his younger brother Darragh had begun learning the guitar.

“We started writing these really puerile half-joke, antiauthoritarian punk songs,” remembers Darragh, “and one that was in the style of David Bowie, about destroying the government in a cosmic way.” This collection became 2004’s Where Did We Go Wrong?, released under the name Lynched by the very independent Psalm O’The Vine imprint. Unexpectedly, it became the kind of low-key international success that guaranteed enough bookings to call a tour.

“We did a few gigs around Europe,” remembers Darragh, with no small amount of lingering bewilderment, “crusty punk festivals, and then a tour of Mexico and America for three months.” A pause. “I was 23, and it was fucking mad.” Ian, though, began going deeper into traditional music. “That meant,” explains Darragh, “we got on the sessions.”

Dublin’s infrastructure of traditional music sessions would become, Ian affirms, “one of the most inspiring and influential things for Lankum, there would be no Lankum if it was not for the sessions.”

“There’s a lot of different places, usually pubs, and various sessions on different days of the week,” explains Radie. “Pubs will pay you to keep a session going in the corner. You ended up knowing what night has sessions, and if you wanted you could play every night of the week.”

These informal gatherings can be anything from three to ten musicians. Some songs, yes, but mostly jigs and reels. “Not everyone will be there every week,” says Radie, who had sung ‘Go Dig My Grave’ which opens False Lankum for years at the sessions. “You get to meet people. I remember seeing Cormac there, and that’s how I met the Lynches.”

For Cormac, who had been playing sessions since he was 19, the improv schooling had a hallucinatory effect, melting time as well as social boundaries. “Your brain gets wrapped into this trance and this lovely swirl of things,” says Cormac, “time goes really slowly, or three hours will have gone like that. It’s nuance and style. There’s a push and a pull and it locks a lot.”

Though now a huge attraction for tourists in Dublin, the sessions’ genesis reflects the often complex cultural exchange between Ireland and post-war Irish immigrants in the UK. “They actually started out in London of all places, amongst Irish musicians,” explains Ian. “In Ireland, you would hire solo musicians, or these things would happen in people’s homes. The concept of a group of people playing tunes together in a pub only goes back to the ’50s.” Not only was singing songs frowned upon in Dublin pubs, it could get you chucked out. This changed when pubs like O’Donoghue’s – celebrated now as a breeding ground for artists like Joe Heaney and members of The Dubliners – became amongst the first places amenable to people playing music and singing songs. “Pubs since then realised there’s a lot of money to be made, as that’s what tourists wanted.” For Lankum, the Cobblestone in Smithfield became the crucial pub.

This informal network became more important to musicians and pubs alike following the financial crash in 2008.

Ireland had spent the 1980s in a state of almost perpetual recession. In the 1990s and early 2000s, low-tax policies aimed at

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attracting financial institutions and global investment fuelled what was dubbed the Celtic Tiger boom. It didn’t last. When the crash came, unemployment soared.

“In 2008 and 2009 people were losing their jobs,” explains Cormac, “loads of our friends were going to Canada, Spain and Germany. There was not a huge amount of hope in Dublin. But also at the same time, we were all going out most nights a week and getting shitfaced and playing tunes.” At this point, it was still relatively possible to live in Dublin on unemployment benefits.

“During the Celtic Tiger years the dole would go up in every budget,” remembers Ian, who had been unemployed for a decade before the financial crisis arrived. “I remember think-

particular moment in Irish history, its visionary lyric imagining the Dublin city as a giant drone and the Button Factory (the main Dublin dole office) dishing out ashes to those who have fallen between the city’s cracks.

“I remember when Cian Lawless, who is our manager now, he was writing that song,” says Ian. “At once stage Lynched was me, Cian and Daragh. We had a lot of different formations. Cian came up with the nucleus of that song. We wrote another verse and tidied it up for the album. To me, when I hear that song, it instantly brings me back to that moment in time.” Local filmmaker Luke McManus’s stately requiem of a video underscores much of the song’s power.

“THAT’S THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT

BROUGHT ABOUT US IN THE BAND... GRIM, BUT HAVING QUITE A GOOD TIME”

ing I can’t believe we get to live like this. It was very easy to live on. You got rent allowance. After the crash, that carried on for a good few years.” In 2023, the standard rate Jobseeker’s Allowance is €220 per week; in 2008, when the crash happened, it was €197.80 (weekly payments were reduced from 2010 onwards during the austerity years).

“That’s the circumstances that brought about us in the band,” explains Radie, “a lot of time, not enough money, on the dole. Trying to find something to do with your time and playing a lot of music. Grim, but not that grim. Grim, but having quite a good time.” Certainly, they remember it being preferable to having to get up and go to a job.

— DRONE LOGIC — It was at the sessions that the four musicians, encountering one another regularly, began to realise they shared a sensibility. Mainly, all four had a keen interest in harmony singing.

“At this stage,” says Ian, “what we were doing was largely based around traditional songs and doing arrangements of traditional songs.” Traditional songs like ‘The Tri-Coloured House’, ‘Salonika’ and ‘Daffodil Mulligan’ were beginning to form the basis of a planned album project.

Ian and Darragh asked Cormac and Radie to play on a couple of tracks. “I just remember it clicking so well that we were like, shall we just ask them to play on the whole album?” remembers Ian. “Before we knew it we were a four-piece band.

It came together so well and so quickly.”

The resulting album, Lynched’s Cold Old Fire, was released in 2014. Its title track became a signature song for the band – still part of their set – and endures as a snapshot of a

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Though embryonic, the album is a distillation of all the mean ideas that would become Lankum. “All the elements that people are talking about on False Lankum were there in a very vestigial stage on Cold Old Fire, tracks like ‘The Tri-Coloured House’ particularly. We had those ambient drone-y sections, we didn’t understand how we could take over other parts of the frequency spectrum with our question.”

Being in a band such as Lankum with their commitment to unusual instrumentation (uilleann pipes, concertina, tin whistle, fiddle, banjo, bayan, harmonium) posed instant challenges for performance.

“It was such a nightmare trying to do sound,” says Ian. “We were playing venues where people were used to a straightforward band, people who were used to that trying to mix our sound and it was really, really bad. People wouldn’t even have seen the instruments before, looking at pipes like where does the sound come out of this thing?”

A chance meeting would change all of that. “The first time we met John ‘Spud’ Murphy was 2016,” says Cormac. “There were friends of ours who put together this online TV show called Parlour TV.” The Parlour, which was a 12-part online TV series from 2016 covering independent musicians and artists from Ireland and beyond, broadcast from upstairs at Whelan’s sitting-room style live music venue in Dublin’s Portobello district. As well as documenting early performances by Lankum and the Limerick rap trio Rusangano Family, Parlour TV also recorded a session with Sleaford Mods, which Lankum today remember as hugely impressive. “It’s being disenfranchised,” says Radie of the similarity between that band and hers. (The next time the two acts would be on the same show, it would be their debut on Later… with Jools Holland).

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“ALL THE ELEMENTS THAT PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT ON FALSE LANKUM WERE THERE IN A

VERY VESTIGIAL STAGE ON COLD OLD FIRE”

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“Spud remixed it and the sound he was able to get out of our instruments in particular,” says Ian, “just a really heavy bass and it blew us away. Oh shit, we need to work with this.”

“What’s weird for him is that he has absolutely no interest whatsoever in folk music or Irish music, at all,” says Radie.

“He has a lot more time for it now, having hung out with us for so long, but his tastes have rubbed off on us a lot, like Swans or King Gizzard.”

Ian remembers the producer – who Cormac credits as a lone pioneer in applying methods from hardcore and heavy music to folk – sitting the band down early and plotting that they would need to put their collective heads together and figure out how to achieve a bigger, fuller sound from instruments that tended to crowd out the middle frequency of the spectrum.

“Maybe without talking about it we’ve all been on a similar train where we just really want to get the biggest and most crushing sounds out of traditional instruments,” says Ian, “taking them as far as they can in that way.”

Making the biggest and most crushing sounds out of traditional instruments has sometimes led to the category error that the Lankum project is somehow a fusing of two disparate ideas: Irish traditional folk song and drone music with its origins in experimental music. “Rather than it being a fusion project,” affirms Radie, “it’s about drawing out elements that already exist.” This is something Radie refers to as “the droniness of folk.”

“Go back a good few hundred years and I think the drone has always been there,” says Ian. “You can see the replication of the drone and the pipes being used in fiddle playing, where people use double stops so it drones on one string whilst playing melody on the other. You can hear it on concertina playing, people replicate the sound of the drone. It’s a really big part of traditional music. It’s definitely there and I think it’s taking that element and expanding upon it, making it bigger and developing it in a way. It’s something that’s a genre of music – minimalist stuff, ambient music and drone – that’s really fascinating.

I find it hard to listen to any genre of music that doesn’t have that in some way. It’s really everywhere; that book Monolithic Undertow by Harry Sword is really great but it doesn’t mention Irish music.”

“All the stuff that gets listed as influences,” says Radie, “they all sit in your subconscious and in your palette of what you like the sound of.” For Lankum, that could be Swans, Richard Dawson, Brian Eno, Scott Walker, Sarah Davachi, Sunn O))), Gavin Bryars 0r Portishead. “You just want it to sound good, and that’s your toolbox of what good means.” hortly after meeting John ‘Spud’ Murphy, the band definitively broke with their former Lynched name. Where the name had a pun on the brothers’ surname and a reference to a very specific bit of Irish slang, Radie remembers realising that those connotations could only be understood “in a really specific radical left-wing punk audience who knew exactly what side of the fence you’re on.” As the band began to tour internationally and appear on Later…, it became obvious something had to give. “It’s such a powerful word,” reflects Cormac

today, “we’ve taken so much from the American tradition, songwise, it wouldn’t have been right. And you just wouldn’t want the wrong people arguing your case.”

Across 2017’s Between The Earth and The Sky, their first album produced by Murphy, and 2019’s The Livelong Day, Lankum pioneered a sound that was praised for its darkly psychedelic rendering of traditional song. The latter album in particular was characterised by unrelenting – even outright punishing – drone oblivion, and remains the Lankum record which most closely locates the sonic horror from within the traditional. “We were really proud of it,” says Radie, “but it actually sounded, to me, too bleak.” For the band, that album – which won the RTÉ Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year – contained no small amount of uncanny premonition. “We were maybe hinting at some bleak rumblings,” suggests Radie, “and everything became so actually bleak after that. I couldn’t listen to it.”

In March 2020, when the scale of the global pandemic became apparent, the band were stuck on a now suddenly cancelled US tour. Frantic phone calls and searches revealed that they were facing the lockdown spring marooned in the States. At the last minute, the funding from that RTÉ Prize victory finally landed in their bank accounts, providing just enough capital to return home. Ireland had some of the longest and most stringent Covid restrictions in Europe.

“It changed absolutely everything,” says Radie. “By the time we went to our next gig, three years later, we had recorded and almost released False Lankum. Loads of our life circumstances had changed. 20 seconds before we went on stage I was like, how did we ever do this?” The band formed a working bubble – cutting off contact with their families and friends – to rehearse and record what would become False Lankum. “We talked about making a more positive record,” says Cormac. “We spoke to Spud and said we are trying to go even darker than The Livelong Day but at the same time have a lot of contrast, go harder in both directions.”

Speaking to the band today, they are recovering from an intense year that saw False Lankum provide a breakthrough from relatively cult outsider folk success to releasing one of the landmark albums of 2023. This was minted by the album’s unexpected – to Lankum’s members, at least – nomination for the Mercury Music Prize.

“It was a glimpse into a world where we’re not part of that world,” says Darragh.

“And we’re kind of happy about it,” Radie agrees. “We felt very out of place there and maybe that’s a good thing,” she laughs. “If you feel like you’re in the right place at the Mercury then I don’t know. It’s very… showbiz.”

Still with some disbelief, Darragh recalls looking over a large paper display of table placings at the lavish ceremony. “It was who was at each table: Sony, UMG, Universal, Live Nation,” he grins.

“Fucking hell, that’s a list of people who are all going to Hell.”

Given the prize’s historic track record of representing genres like folk or jazz at almost homoeopathic levels of enthusiasm compared to the prize’s default setting of big budget guitar indie, Lankum’s turn as the ‘token folk album’ put the group in an unusual position. “It’s maybe the most commercial success

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we’re ever going to have,” says Radie, “and that’s fine.” Instead, it was shows at the Barbican, London, or their performance at the conclusion of the Midlands experimental institution Supersonic which they hold closer. At the latter, the band remember a weekend of running around trying to catch the sets of an almost comical number of acts.

— FALSE IRELAND — Lankum’s commercial breakthrough has taken place at a moment of resurgent interest from audiences in folk music and culture across the UK and Ireland – a disparate, and often unhelpfully conflated, revival evident across music, visual art and cinema as well as zines, social media, podcasts and in publishing.

“The folk revival is a phrase or world that rankles people,” says Ian, whose Fire Draw Near podcast now exists as a generous and accessible archive of Irish traditional song history. “It’s not a revival because it’s been going on the whole time, it’s been a continuous thing. In Ireland, there was no break in that; I can trace back the person who taught me to play the pipes and I can trace it back to his pipe teacher and his pipe teacher and go back to the 1800s. You know? With the Irish traditional instruments there was no break in the continuity. There was no part where the last singer died and twenty years later people got back into singing. It’s been a constant thing.” Nonetheless, Ian does concede that audience demand has shifted in the last decade.

“At the same time,” he argues, “there has been a resurgence of interest in traditional song and music particularly by young people in urban settings. It’s not just a rural thing. Young people in their teens and twenties living in Dublin or Belfast or Cork.

That’s been a very well documented thing and I don’t think you can deny that’s going on.”

“What is different now, I suppose,” says Radie, “is that people are making recorded folk and traditional albums. Maybe that’s where the word revival is appropriate because that hasn’t happened since the ’70s in Ireland and England. Maybe that’s why in the mainstream people start to notice it. But it’s not being revived, it has always been there, though there may be a renewed interest from people who don’t play it.” Radie also emphasises that the Irish identity of the band can sometimes crowd out the American or English or Appalachian origins of songs and influences. “Sometimes the origins do get overlooked but the Irishness seems to be the loudest thing. It’s a mash up of different folk traditions and influences, like a big stew of stuff.”

Where Dublin during the austerity years was just about able to nurture musicians and artists, in the inflation 2020s the city’s soaring rental model can now barely sustain middle-class professionals like doctors or teachers. “I’m 42,” says Ian, “and I live in my parents’ attic in Dublin, and for me it’s like oh, life is comfortable. And then I think, hang on. I’m 42 and I live in my parents’ house.”

And despite success, the housing crisis is affecting how Lankum might be able to operate in and around Dublin for the foreseeable future. “Whoever you speak to all over the world, this is happening,” furthers Ian, “Airbnb, tech workers who are willing to pay the big prices, it’s happening everywhere.”

No wonder, then, that so many – not just in Ireland but in big cities across the UK and other parts of Europe – are engaging with traditional music and folk song, finding new resonances and answers in old practices; and are staring into the bleak resonance of Lankum’s ancient drone.

Exclusive to Loud And Quiet subscribers, this month’s limited edition flexi disc is ‘Lullaby’ from the band’s debut album Cold Old Fire “This piece was conceived while attempting to imagine the type of music somebody would be comforted by while going through a very difficult period, the likes of which we all experience at some point or another. Periods pockmarked with startling revelations relating to the nature of our situation, that is, as a hive of fast-multiplying creatures, or the cells of some bizarre slime-mould-like organism, spreading like molasses over the surface of a tiny planet in the depths of unfathomable nothingness. The alarming insights that are gifted upon us in these moments can be terrifying and harrow-

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ing, made all the more dizzying by the fact that they are all but ignored by those around us, as our entire being opens up to the vast ocean of abuse we impose on ourselves and each other every moment of our sleeping lives. From something as simple as police receiving commissions for arresting more poverty-stricken people on the streets, to systemic abuse of children in a supposedly spiritual organisation, to world governments declaring war because they are backed by oil companies and corporations that prosper by designing machines to kill innocent people more efficiently, it can be quite an overbearing and lonely experience. We dedicate this song to Robert O’Donnell, a man who felt these things all too clearly, yet still managed to turn them into the funniest joke you ever heard.”

A unty of Indispensable lights fr Twenty Three...

OSEES ‘Intercepted Message’ In The Red LP/CD

THE SOUNDCARRIERS ‘Celeste’ Phosphonic LP/CD

PAT TODD & THE RANK OUTSIDERS ‘Sons Of the City Ditch

CARLTON MELTON ‘Turn To Earth’ Agitated 2LP / 2LP Ltd / CD

SONIC YOUTH ‘Live In Brooklyn 2011’ Silver Current 2LP/2CD

PENGUIN CAFÉ ‘Rain Before Seven’ Erased Tapes LP/CD

WOODS ‘Perennial’ Woodsist LP / CD

TITANIC ‘Vidrio’ Unheard Of Hope LP (Col)

CATATONIC SUNS ‘Catatonic Suns Agitated LP / CD

and heres s e delight f 2024 too...

info@fortedistribution.co.uk

Dog Meat LP / LP Ltd / CD

Customer Survey 2023

14 important questions to ask yourself about another horrible year, answered here by six willing artists

C U STO M E R S U RV E Y

Jessica Winter (JW)

Joe Casey of Protomartyr (JC)

Gaika (G)

Anna B Savage (ABS)

Debby Friday (DF)

B.C. Camplight (BCC)

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Customer Survey 2023

How would you describe your 2023 in one word?

JW: Sparkling.

JC: Expanding.

G: Brutal.

ABS: Hard.

DF: Fruitful.

BCC: With loads of anxiety and overthinking about trying to find one word to describe a monumental year for me... then worrying about my answer being lame or not entertaining enough.

What New Year’s resolution did you give up on first?

JW: To go to the gym, ofc.

JC: To quit smoking for good.

G: I need a hobby. I might start building boats or restoring furniture or something like this.

ABS: My resolutions this year were: “Get ripped. Get Rich. Get Funny.

Get curly (hair).” I’m still holding out hope, and naturally doing nothing towards any of them.

DF: Spending less time on my phone.

BCC: To quit music. Not kidding. I tried to quit... then my record did well.

I was ready to leave, now I’m unpacking my mental bags again.

How did you spend your birthday this year?

JW: Partied with the gays.

JC: Went to a bad local Mexican restaurant and a good ice cream shop, The Silver Dairy.

G: I was stranded in the airport in Grenada, so I spent it sleeping on a hard bench/getting drunk on a plane with a stranger.

ABS: Surrounded by family, recovering from surgery.

DF: I came home from tour and hung out with my friends.

BCC: I was stuck in Clitheroe due to a train strike. The busses were all sold out as a result. I cried in the bus terminal. Happy bday, Bri.

What was the best TV of 2023?

JW: Married At First Sight.

JC: I watched too much Survivor this year, so that? I do love Survivor.

G: This Korean film about religious fanatics.

ABS: Ooh I like this question. I watched a lot of Ghosts – it’s basically the only new show that I can watch ad infinitum. The last series came out this year and it is perfect. It gives me the same kind of feeling as Derry Girls, though perhaps a little milder. It’s endearing, warm and funny as fuck.

DF: Desperate Housewives and Succession.

BCC: I was going to pretend I didn’t watch Married At First Site UK... but fuck it... I did and I love it.

Who were you backing to come out victorious in Succession?

JW: I only really watch MAFSUK, Love Is Blind and Below Deck, where no one comes out on top.

JC: I really thought the show was gonna end like the 2010 film Remember Me. I was wrong.

G: I’ve never watched it. IRL though, the daughters will win in the end. IYKYK. ABS: Sorry, I didn’t watch it. Made me way too anxious, so I stopped watching half way through season 2.

Protect thyself innit.

DF: Tom, of course.

BCC: I’ve never seen it but I’m still gonna attempt an overly specific answer. I hope Jimmy wins. He’s worked hard at becoming boss of the candy factory. He deserves it after the death of his dog, Crumpet.

What was the year’s biggest disappointment?

JW: Watching Barbie after the colossal hype JC: Male pattern baldness and my waistline.

G: The pervasive fear amongst the

powerful of standing up to injustice.

ABS: That I am not yet ripped, rich, funny or curly (haired).

DF: Not anything significant. This whole year was a high point.

BCC: That Taylor Swift released ALL of her back catalogue the day my record came out, thus costing me a top 20. Musicians who say they don’t care about that shit are either lying or not very good.

On a more positive note, how about something or someone that got you through the year?

JW: All the love at the shows. Very unexpected over the UK and Europe this year, it’s making it all feel worthwhile!

J: My good friend booze.

G: Watching my brother’s film The Kitchen premiere – something I’ve worked in and am proud of.

ABS: In an incredibly clichéd turn of events, I took up running and found that it’s delicious. My brain feels just wonderful after running – especially when I’ve not listened to any podcasts or music. Thank you for including this Q. I really want to put in a lot of emojis here but I shall refrain.

DF: My boyfriend, Kevan.

BCC: I met a person and our brains kinda latched onto each other.

Restored my faith, just a bit, about humans and human connection.

What’s your favourite album of the year?

JW: Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS JC: Formal Growth In The Desert by a mile.

G: Drift, naturally.

ABS: XO Skeleton by La Force.

DF: Fountain Baby by Amaarae and Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard by Lana Del Rey BCC: Mitski, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We.

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Customer Survey 2023

Barbie or Oppenheimer?

JW: I only went to see Barbie and we’ve already mentioned that above, although I did enjoy the songs and would have still probably preferred Barbie.

JC: Oddly enough, Formal Growth in the Desert was also the greatest film of 2023. I don’t make the rules.

G: Definitely Barbie. We need more of that energy, less guns and bombs.

ABS: I watched Barbie and was underwhelmed; didn’t watch Oppenheimer as I thought I’d get too stressed/sad (there’s a theme here isn’t there?). So I can confidently say: I don’t know.

DF: Killers of the Flower Moon.

BCC: Barbie. I didn’t see Oppenheimer but I can confidently assume he didn’t sing a tear-jerking song in a white mink.

What do you think Elon Musk should have rename Twitter rather than X? JW: Y? JC: Don’t care. Really wished he would have died of exploding penis disease this year though.

G: Muskwriter the elonian tragedy.

Or he should just call it playerhaters. com.

ABS: God, he is SUCH a wanker.

As such I think X fits perfectly – it’s just as underwhelming and hyper“masculine” as I would’ve expected.

DF: I don’t think I’ll ever stop calling it Twitter.

BCC: OvercompensatingBecauseI’m NotConfidentAboutMyGenitals.com Anything good happen at one of your gigs this year?

JW: Stage invasions in Spain and Leeds, makes it far less lonely up there!

JC: I haven’t shit my pants on stage once this year!

G: I was moved to tears in Shenzen.

ABS: So, so many good things. One that sticks out is: I’ve been ending my shows with the song ‘The Orange’ and encouraging people to express love for their platonic pals by maybe putting an arm around each other or holding hands. I had one guy message me after a show telling me that him and his male friend had held hands through the song, had never done that before, and then they went away and spoke about it afterwards.

That meant a lot to me.

DF: At a show I played this summer, a mosh pit broke out during ‘What A Man’, which was fun and unexpected.

BCC: A girl stuck her finger in my belly button while I was standing on the crowd barrier. It was so incredibly un-sexy for her and me. I classify this as a good experience because even in an ego-inflated state whilst performing it’s good to be reminded that we are all just... kinda gross.

What makes you feel hopeful for 2024 being better than 2023?

Your greatest achievement this year away from music?

JW: I’ll hopefully have finished my first album which is all I’ve ever wanted to do my entire life!

JC: I will be married to the love of my life for the entirety of 2024.

G: The Black People Pets instagram account. And plane Wi-Fi. ABS: That 2023 was fucking hard, and I got through it, I think with a bit of grace and a whole tonne of learning.

Bring on a new year.

DF: I believe it always gets better.

BCC: Who knows. Gonna try to do some Seinfeld style stand-up in my set. What’s the deal with detuned, oscillating guitars in indie music?

Like are we STILL doing this, people?

We may as well all stomp, put on suspenders, and yell “hey!” again.

It was painfully derivative when Mac DeMarco did it and it’s just douchey now. I mean who ARE these people?

(They’re 23-year-old stoners with their first moustaches). Needs work.

JW: I bought a wardrobe on eBay for

Any other business?

“Really wished Elon Musk would have died from exploding penis disease this year” – Joe Casey 76

100 quid which turned out to be worth 2000!!

JC: I got married to the love of my life.

G: Not letting the art world erode my morals.

ABS: I was asked to be a godmother.

I think it’s the greatest honour of my life, aside from being an auntie.

DF: I’ve read 16 books this year.

BCC: I bought two IKEA dressers and put one of them together.

JW: Have been working on a score for a new TV show DEAD HOT that I co-composed with Wuh Oh to be released in 2024 on Amazon!

JC: Nah. G: Nah. ABS: Buy low, sell high.

DF: I’ve decided to start blogging again.

BCC: No. I’m all riled up now.

The Year In Tracks

The story of 2023 and the songs that soundtracked the best year since 2022, by Stuart Stubbs

T H E L AST R OTAT I O N O F E A RT H Take a moment to spare a thought for 2022. For Will Smith slapping Chris Rock; for Harry Styles not spitting on Chris Pine; for the Queen dying; for Kanye West dying; for England winning the Euros; for Liz Truss versus a lettuce; for the lettuce winning. You’ve probably not thought about it for a year now, and how could you. When one year dies and another is born we need to drag everything into the bin to free up space for another 365 days of glory and horror. ‘Empty Trash’. Discard it ceremoniously with The Big Fat Quiz of The Year.

2023 is no different. And considering we’re just about still in it, it’s impossible to gauge which of the moments I’m about to remind you of before you Select All and Delete might just resurface, not in a year’s time, but in 5, 10 or 20 years. It’s probably going to be the Barbie stuff, but you never know; there have been songs both unmissable and often missed that have hushed the noise of 2023 that deserve to be remembered whenever we feel up to it.

JANUARY As 2022 became 2023 and fireworks filled the skies, Scarborough remained pitch black and silent due to a walrus called Thor who had arrived in the town’s bay a couple of days earlier. He was on his way to the Arctic (he must have said so when he told them his name) and he simply needed a rest.

The town promptly welcomed Thor and cancelled their firework display after he told them how much he hates fireworks.

A Conservative council being so empathic and kind toward a living being that had arrived by sea was the perfect start to the year, and we all looked forward to the party’s new attitude toward those not born in the UK but who are in need of help.

Independent music road this wave of positivity as it jumped straight into 2023 with ‘Crown Shyness’ from Anna B Savage (the sonorous standout from her then-forthcoming album in|FLUX, and her greatest bittersweet chorus yet) and

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The Year In Tracks

more 2-step brilliance from sibling duo Overmono as the instant classic ‘Is U’ swelled around a sample of Tirzah, while Young Father gave us Heavy Heavy, and particularly the glowing choir on ‘Geronimo’.

Prince Harry missed all of this because it clashed with the release of his autobiography, Spare, which featured a shocking account of a fight with his brother Prince William, where William pushed Harry over! And he landed on a dog bowl! William left, then returned “looking regretful, and apologised.” The film rights haven’t been snapped up yet.

FEBRUARY February started with the biggest day of industrial action in over a decade as an estimated 475,000 workers went on strike, from teachers to civil servants, to security guards, to train drivers. Cumbawamba, meanwhile, expressed their own fight for a greater good when they turned down £30,000 for one of their songs (presumably ‘Tubthumping’) to appear on a trailer for a new TV show starring Jeremy Clarkson. “We can’t tell you how much satisfaction that gave us,” they posted on Twitter, as it was known then and largely now.

Just three days into the month, one of the biggest songs of the year was released (‘Boy’s a liar Pt. 2’, by PinkPanthress and Ice Spice) but so was the latest from jungle DJ and producer Nia Archives: ‘Conveniency’ was another old school slice of jungle paired with Archives’ unmistakable R&B vocal that makes her this coming year’s most exciting new artist, once again.

New York duo Water From Your Eyes also gave us ‘Barley’, a thrillingly nonsensical track of dive-bombing electronics, detuned guitars and screwy loops that made for an addictive noise boogie. It wasn’t bettered by ‘The Last Rotation Of Earth’ by B.C. Camplight, but no track of 2023

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could contend with Brian Christinzio’s anthem of nihilism in a battle of opening lines: “You missed a hell of a party / I said to the kitchen floor.” And the same piano loops over and over and over. To think he was on the verge of quitting music altogether until this track – and the album it preceded, of the same name – turned things around from him. Thank god.

MARCH Apart from rising interest rates, an increased reliance on food banks, a housing crisis, a homelessness crisis, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and that forthcoming Jeremy Clarkson show, 2023 was looking pretty good at this point. And then football was ruined.

After likening the language of Home Secretary Suella Braverman to the rhetoric of 1930s Nazi Germany (the MP who has said of refugees fleeing war-torn countries: “The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast”), the BBC shat the bed and suspended Gary Lineker from presenting Match of the Day on 11 March. Not a big deal, they thought, we’ll get Chappers on it, or anyone else but Danny Murphy. The problem was that as soon as Ian Wright publically refused to film the show without Lineker, all the other pundits followed suit. And then the commentators, tunnel interviewers and even some of the managers and players. What it left us with was highlights that felt so much like being at an actual game that fans started to realise how confusing and boring football can be when Guy Mowbray isn’t telling you who’s got the ball and why. Fortunately, the BBC fixed the problem as quickly as they created it, bowing to pressure to reinstate Lineker from artists like Self Esteem, who performed in London on 12 March in a ‘Free Gary’ T-shirt.

Brightening this black moment in British history, Black Country, New Road surprise-released an entire album

The Year In Tracks

of new material recorded live at Bush Hall, Shepherd’s Bush, premiering the performance on YouTube. From the opening ‘Up Song’ it was clear to see and hear how united the band were on their first (and once again completely different sounding) album since the departure of lead vocalist and lyricist Isaac Wood – a tumbling shout-along between band members and fans alike.

APRIL April was a rare month where a song became a story. Some joker calling themself Ghostwriter used AI to create a fake Drake and The Weeknd track called ‘Heart On My Sleeve’, which blew up on TikTok on account of it being no worse than any song by either artist. Initially, it was pretty funny – that Ghostwriter wore a white sheet over their head and that Drake was so furious that a bot had written a line so Drakish (and shit) as, “Talkin’ to a diva, yeah, she on my nerves / She think that I need her, kick her to the curb.” But we’d live to regret those chuckles, as gallons of AI slurry would soon rain down upon us – not just the horrible songs, but the think pieces and news stories about the horrible songs, and AI in general; easily the most boring subject on the planet right now.

This Is The Kit, Toronto producer Bambii and house star Yaeji all released killer singles that they made themselves that month, though – respectively, ‘Inside Outside’ (an earthy indie-folk track that passes in a steady flurry of melodious vocals and squiggly saxophone), ‘One Touch’ (a queer club banger of pitched vocals and dancehall and DnB breakbeats) and ‘Passed Me By’ (the Korean-American artist at her most downbeat and seductive).

The month more less ended with Elon Musk launching a rocket that exploded a few minutes after lift off. Those not intelligent enough to understand were quick to say that a rocket that bursts into flame is not as good as one that doesn’t, but Musk was quick to put the matter to bed

when he insisted that the launch had be a great success.

“Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!” he Tweeted. And he had us there – things catching fire are exciting. You have to give him that.

MAY May was all about The King of course, and the big question of if the British people would care as much about a crown being put on the head of a king as they did about a crown being taken off the coffin of a queen. On the 6th of the month we got our answer: no. And so the country moved its attention to Eurovision the following week, proudly hosted in Liverpool on behalf of the Ukraine, even if people were saying that we’d been tricked into doing it.

Rules stated that we weren’t allowed to enter ‘Space Man’ again, so we went with ‘I Wrote A Song’ by Mae Muller.

We finished 25th out of 26. Maybe we had been tricked.

Away from this bullying, another giant song of the year was release. Perhaps the biggest of all. And while I personally don’t get the fuss about ‘Padam Padam’, Kylie Minogue’s ability to regenerate into a new hit-maker remains in a league of its own. Or a league of Madonna’s.

JUNE It’s difficult to know when the Barbie promo train started rolling, but by June, with release a month away, it was thundering along. Some of it was ingenious (renaming Barbican tube station Barbie Can), some less inspired (Boohoo’s Barbie hoodies), all of it over-the-top and suitably silly.

The ‘This Barbie is…’ social media assault felt particularly naff until Glastonbury weekend, when it provided the flagwaving community a gift that they ran with. Best in show was the flag that featured Gary Lineker’s old adversary Suella Braverman in the iconic Barbie rosette: “This Barbie

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The Year In Tracks

is a cunt.” It waggled in front of the Pyramid Stage as Elton John retired from touring with the help of some famous friends. But not that famous.

Eric Cantona meanwhile launched his music career with a song called ‘The Friends We Lost’. Those of us paying attention to the sombre piano-led piece agreed that it was much better than we thought it was going to be.

It was King Eric, after all. So fair play.

Olivia Rodrigo released ‘Vampire’, proving further to be the new queen of angst pop, and PJ Harvey announced new album I Inside the Old Year Dying with its best track – the witchy funeral march of ‘A Child’s Question, August’.

JULY And then July was finally here, which meant that Barbie was finally here. Which also meant that Oppenheimer was finally here, even if nobody knew there was a film about Oppenheimer until the guys on the Barbie film told us about it.

People were planning double bills and debating which film you should watch first. Is Barbie a pallet cleanser after a film about the most destructive weapon made by man? Or is the best place for you after watching Oppenheimer a black bin bag in the sea rather than a packed Cineworld full of people cackling in hot pink everything? Decisions were made, blog posts were written, and we all decided, after months and millions of dollars of marketing, that both films were ok.

Solid. Not bad at all.

Ryan Gosling’s ‘I’m Just Ken’ was the big musical moment of the month, but Melbourne’s Maple Glider also gave us new single ‘Dinah’, a playful sounding total bop of an indie-folk song with a dark story that’s all too apparent on second listen: a tale of sexual abuse in the in church, experienced by Tori Zietsch. It’s her disarming delivery that’s makes it pack such a punch, while Zietsch gift for a hook currently remains criminally underrated.

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AUGUST This time last year I looked back on 2022 and noted how nothing at all happened in August. 2023 performed a little better, but only just, and most of the news was bad. Olivia the Conqueror released smash hit ‘Bad Idea Right?’ (a clear sign of the influence Wet Leg are now having on other pop writers), and sound artist Claire Rousay gave us a beautiful double A side of ‘Your First Armadillo’ and ‘Sigh in My Ear’, the LA musician in suitable vocoder emo and world-building ambient modes, respectively. But there was little else to distract us from England losing the World Cup final and Billy McFarland announcing the return of Fyre Festival, an idea he came up with while in solitary confinement as he served his prison sentence for fraud in relation to 2017’s festival. It’s almost as if people are just relaxing in August or something.

SEPTEMBER

By September we were so hungry for a story that Taylor Swift attending an NFL game became the most important thing that’s ever happened. We were lucky the cameras picked up on her being there to cheer on her rumoured boyfriend Travis Kelce, as Swift tried her best to blend into the crowd by banging on the glass of the executive box she was in. At all future games, she decided, she would turn up with a gang of A-list Hollywood celebrities to make sure it’s not all about her.

Closer to home, a school boy (we think), cut down an ancient tree on Hadrian’s Wall. God help him if he’s ever found. An ex Prime Minister can be found to have misled parliament (June), throwing parties for his pals while the public saw their loved ones die alone, or to have agreed that Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people” (October), but you can’t lop down a lovely old tree mate.

On top of this, news broke that Lachlan Murdoch was stepping into the roles of News Corp Chairman and CEO of

The Year In Tracks

Fox Corp, but sadly that his father, Rupert Murdoch, was still alive and well. All of this in the month that The Rolling Stones decided to announced their first album of new material in 18 years. The first track from Hackney Diamonds (Keith Richards said at the time that other terrible name ideas for the record were Hit and Run and Smash and Grab) was ‘Angry’, and it really did call into question who the band have replaced Charlie Watts with, and is it someone called Ghostwriter?

OCTOBER Bad jokes aside, October 2023 will unfortunately be remembered forever, for the genocide that began in Palestine following the massacre of an estimated 260 Israeli citizens at Supernova festival, after members of Hamas stormed the festival site on the 7th of the month. It’s a crisis that is too important to be suitably covered in an article as frivolous as this one, and yet should be recognised by every person and organisation for the murderous tragedy is it, which leaders around the world should feel duty bound to stop by calling for a ceasefire sooner than they have at the time of writing.

Hopefully they will have by the time you’re reading this.

To return now to our scheduled broadcasting: October was the month when Irish alt. diva CMAT challenged for

“Is Ringo really wearing his own merch, with his own face on it?”

Adele’s crown with ‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight?’ (featuring John Grant), while professional tit Laurence Fox was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit criminal damage to ULEZ cameras, due to their disgraceful work helping to clean up air polution.

NOVEMBER The Rolling Stones did release Hackney Diamonds, on 20 October. And then two weeks later Keith would have called Mick, or Mick would have called Keith, and one would have said to the other: “You won’t believe this, the fucking Beatles have just released a song!” It did feel rather cruel.

Eighteen years for the first Stones album of originals, with one member playing some of the songs from beyond the grave, and The Beatles pop up, with two dead guys, one of them singing.

‘Now And Then’ is not the greatest Beatles song, but its Peter Jackson-directed video will be studied until the end of time next summer. Is it a comment to the disposable nature of meme culture? A love letter to gifs? A celebration of CGI or a total rejection of it? They’ve superimposed John and George, and younger versions of Paul and Ringo, but what about Ringo as he is now? IS that him? Is he playing live with Paul? Surely Paul and Ringo could get together for this?

And is Ringo really wearing his own merch, with his own face on it? Does Ringo know this is happening? You don’t get these questions with the video for ‘Angry’, where Sydney Sweeny is driven down Sunset Boulevard as the beautiful, wild, gyrating passenger in a convertible Mercedes.

And that’s all I have for 2023, because December hasn’t happened yet and I won’t fall into the same trap I did last year of predicting what will happen between now and 1 January. Because Elon Musk didn’t dissolve Twitter; we’re going to have to delete our accounts ourselves. Drag and drop. ‘Empty Trash’.

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As you know, every year I stop looking at album art for a minute and start looking at Cliff Richard’s new calendar instead. I was on a roll, until the Bachelor Boy, wise to my growing tradition, decided to release a calendar AND a record this Cliffmas. How could I not be more hypnotised by the cover of Cliff with Strings, even if Cliff’s 2024 calendar features 12 intimate photos of Cliff surviving a cruise?

There are two very different covers of CWS available – the standard edition, in the gold and red colourway, and the Amazon exclusive, in blue and silver. They’re the same price, but it’s worth remembering that 98% of Cliff’s music is bought at the tills at Sainsbury’s (often accidentally), so if you’re thinking of the greater resell value on Discogs, I’d go blue. What you get with the gold though, is a greater sense that you’ve been invited to the wake of Cliff Richard.

Although you very much get that with the blue too. It’s tough, isn’t it? But it’s also win/win.

You won’t be able to see this detail until your copy of the album arrives, but while that is very much Cliff Richard’s face and perhaps even his neck, his suit jacket has been rendered by AI (“artificial insemination,” as Cliff quipped in a recent racy interview). The same with those violins – they look real enough to play, don’t they? But they’re simply the graphic that was available in that particular branch of Snappy Snaps.

It’s a simple and effective cover, said to be inspired by Cliff’s love for Catchphrase: Cliff... with strings. I’ve decided to buy both.

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John Lewis are rumoured to already be working on their 2025 Christmas advert, after a flustered customer in their London store took a wrong turn by the lingerie department and stumbled upon a meeting room where executives were presenting new, wild ideas. Before Mr John Quinn of Stockport was noticed and bundled out of the room he heard one man roar, “Can you believe we got away with Tony’s venus fly CRAP!?”, which was met with cheers and the clinking of wine glasses. Although he was only in the boiler room environment for a matter of seconds, Mr Quinn is certain he saw the words “Robert the radiator” scrawled on a whiteboard, along with, “song: ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (slow) lol.”

Polls show the that worst thing about David Cameron being back is that it confirms he is alive

illustration by kate prior

BEST ALBUMS OF 2023

EVERY HOME SHOULD HAVE ONE! DAS KOOLIES

‘DK.01’

(Strangetown / Amplify)

PALE BLUE EYES

SQUIRREL FLOWER

‘THIS HOUSE’

‘TOMORROW’S FIRE’

(Full Time Hobby)

(Full Time Hobby)

ANNA B SAVAGE

MCKINLEY DIXON

‘in|FLUX’

‘BELOVED! PARADISE! JAZZ!?’

(City Slang)

(City Slang)

GHOST WOMAN

TEENAGE FANCLUB

YUSSEF DAYES

MATTHEW HALSALL

HANIA RANI

‘HINDSIGHT IS 50/50’

‘NOTHING LASTS FOREVER’

(Brownswood Recordings)

‘AN EVER CHANGING VIEW’

(Gondwana)

(PeMa)

‘BLACK CLASSICAL MUSIC’

JOHN

FLAMINGODS

V/A - WAVES OF DISTORTION

V/A - LOUNGE PSYCHÉDÉLIQUE

V/A - WIG OUT! FREAK OUT!

‘A LIFE DIAGRAMMATIC’

‘HEAD OF POMEGRANATE’

‘THE BEST OF SHOEGAZE 1990-2022’

‘THE BEST OF LOUNGE & EXOTICA 1954-2022’

‘FREAKBEAT & MOD PSYCHEDELIA FLOORFILLERS 1964-1969’

(Full Time Hobby)

(Brace Yourself Records)

(The Liquid Label / Amplify)

(Two-Piers)

‘GHOSTS’

(Gondwana)

(Two-Piers)

(Two-Piers)

HMLTD

DREAM WIFE

THE MARY WALLOPERS

‘THE WORM ’

‘SOCIAL LUBRICATION ’

‘IRISH ROCK N ROLL’

(Lucky Number)

(Lucky Number )

(BC Records)

COACH PARTY

THE LEMON TWIGS

‘KILLJOY’

‘EVERYTHING HARMONY’

(Chess Club)

(Captured Tracks)

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