CHAI – Loud And Quiet 160

Loraine James, Jessy Lanza, Be Your Own Pet, Slowdive, Moin, Sweeping Promises, Iceboy Violet, Emergence Collective, Baxter Dury, Yussef Dayes, Mary In The Junkyard, Nihiloxica, PC Music

issue 160

Positivity knocks

CHAI

CHRISTINE AND THE QUEENS

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19E7NaEufsFvWjhm74wqgiIECYhSEU7ah

DJANGO DJANGO OFF PLANET (OUT NOW)

SHYGIRL NYMPH_O (OUT NOW)

PARANOÏA, ANGELS, TRUE LOVE (OUT NOW)

1/1

ALUNA

MYCELiUM (OUT NOW)

LSDXOXO

DELUSIONS OF GRADEUR (D.O.G) EP (OUT SEPT 22)

BECAUSE MUSIC

ED BANGER

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL RECORD LABEL (BEST OF ED BANGER RECORDS) (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, 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 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

Issue 160 It speaks to the pleasure that we take in being cynical that my favourite ever Loud And Quiet coverline is “Things can’t only get better”, which appeared on issue 144 at the end of the first year of the pandemic, to signpost our cover feature with Sleaford Mods. It was prescient, but also wilfully negative after a year that so desperately craved a comforting word at its end. This month’s cover is the inverse of that one, as we bask in the uncensored optimism of CHAI, who are bold enough to say how good they think things can be, through a message of pride and respect.

Stuart Stubbs

Moin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Mary In The Junkyard . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Nihiloxica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Sweeping Promises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Iceboy Violet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Emergence Collective . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Baxter Dury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Yussef Dayes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 CHAI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The Legacy of PC Music . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Be Your Own Pet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 The Rates: Loraine James . . . . . . . . . 70 In Conversation: Slowdive . . . . . . . . . 74 My Place: Jessy Lanza . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 03

The Beginning: Previously

Since the last edition of Loud And Quiet

Stormzy × AFC Croydon Athletic One of the UK’s most important contemporary cultural figures – as a rapper, songwriter, book publisher and the rest – Stormzy branched out yet again in June, this time into football. Alongside Crystal Palace star Wilfried Zaha and Palace head of player care Danny Young, he has bought a non-league football club, AFC Croydon Athletic. The club, which plays in the ninth tier of English men’s football, is of personal significance to the trio: Stormzy was born and raised in Croydon, while Zaha also grew up there and came through the Crystal Palace academy nearby.

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Their home stadium, the 3000-capacity Mayfield in Thornton Heath, also happens to be the ground where Zaha scored his first-ever professional goal.

According to a statement from the club, the consortium will “own, operate and develop their childhood hometown football club. Whilst completion is subject to legislative and governance procedures, the three consortium members are excited about developing a community asset in the borough that gave them their own opportunities. They hope to take the entire community on this exciting journey with them.”

The Beginning: Previously Throwing shit

The Quietus

Audience members keep throwing things at artists, and it’s getting weird and occasionally dangerous. Weird stuff first: at a recent show in Hyde Park a fan threw their dead mother’s ashes up on stage while pop-rock artist P!nk was performing. “I don’t know how I feel about this,” she said in response. A few days later, she was handed a wheel of brie mid-set, which elicited a more positive “I love you” from P!nk. As for the more dangerous stuff: Bebe Rexha was forced to go to hospital for stitches and other treatment after a phone hit her in the face during a set in New York, in the most serious incident yet of what’s apparently become a growing trend of fans throwing their phones on stage for videos from the artists (although apparently this guy actually just threw his at Rexha because he “thought it would be funny” – dickhead). Probably give it a rest.

Our fellow leftfield music publication The Quietus celebrates its 15th birthday later this year, which would be impressive for an independent website at any time, but is even more admirable in the precarious context of the last few years of DIY media.

To mark the occasion, they’ve teamed up with Rough Trade Records for a benefit gig, raising money to help them secure their future as an independent voice in cultural criticism. It’s happening on 5 September at Electric Brixton in south London, with the lineup to be announced soon. Tickets are available via Parallel Lines. parallellinespromotions.com / thequietus.com

PC Music After ten years of releasing some of the most innovative pop music around, A. G. Cook’s label PC Music are calling it quits on new releases. Their decade-long run has seen them bring artists like SOPHIE, Hannah Diamond and Danny L Harle into the mainstream, and their influence has had a lasting impact on 21st-century pop like few others labels or organisations, with everyone from Charli XCX to Caroline Polachek and Carly Rae Jepsen having been affiliated with or inspired by their output.

Once this year’s releases are out, PC Music will focus on archival projects and special reissues. Head to page 62 of this magazine for a deep dive into the label’s history and legacy by Daniel Dylan Wray. 10.pcmusic.info

Musicians on the picket line The Writers Guild of America, a trade union representing 11,500 screenwriters in the US entertainment industry, is (at the time of publication) engaged in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions in major Hollywood studios. Various musicians, including Weezer and Imagine Dragons, have been expressing their solidarity with their fellow creative workers by turning up to perform on the picket line. We’ll leave it up to your judgement as to whether appearances from those artists would do much for your morale as a striking worker, but it’s positive to see them engage with such issues nonetheless.

Eric Cantona Football legend, occasional actor and countercultural icon Eric Cantona announced the start of his music career on 2 June. So far he’s released ‘The Friends We Lost’ and ‘Tu me diras’, two tracks which probably sound more or less like you imagine, but slightly more pensive. He tours three UK cities – London, Manchester and Dublin – from 26 October.

illustration by kate prior

Metallica x Lord Mayor Classic Californian thrash metal and UK municipal politics: a perfect pairing. As we imagine is the tradition, the new Lord Mayor of Portsmouth, Tom Coles, entered the ceremony in which he was to be sworn into office to the sound of Metallica’s ‘Eye of the Beholder’, from their 1988 album ...And Justice For All (which is a pretty deep cut in this context – no ‘Enter Sandman’ here). Coles, who is a Labour councillor, also quoted the Klingons from Star Trek as he spoke to the assembled crowd while wearing his ceremonial robes on 16 May. Which isn’t exactly cool, but then local politics rarely is.

Black Midi Prog rock pranksters and annoying little guys on the internet Black Midi have announced a one-off set of Beatles covers to be performed at this year’s Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht.

The Netherlands festival, which regularly features guest curation from specially-selected artists, this year includes performances chosen by Slauson Malone 1, aka LA multidisciplinary artist Jasper Marsalis, who apparently put Black Midi up to this. They’ve got form on silly covers – Taylor Swift, King Crimson, Captain Beefheart, various Christmas songs and more having been mangled up and spat out by the experimental London band in the past – and with their unique combination of technical virtuosity and snarky humour, they’re pretty good at committing to an elaborate bit (this one-off show comes with a poster of the band recreating the cover of Let It Be). If nothing else, it should be a laugh – props to Le Guess Who? (an internationally-respected, fairly highbrow festival) for hosting it. leguesswho.com

RZA x Russell Crowe Did you know that Russell Crowe has a band? Neither did we, but it turns out the Australian actor is in a vaguely bluesy rock group called The Gentlemen Barbers. They’re obviously pants, but somehow he managed to get genuine music royalty involved recently, when Wu-Tang Clan legend RZA joined him onstage at a show in Sydney to perform an extra verse on Crowe’s song ‘Let Your Light Shine’ (you know the one).

Apparently Crowe and RZA have been friends for some years now, having first acted together in 2007 film American Gangster, and more recently in 2022’s Poker Face.

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The Beginning: Losing My Edge

We asked Georgia what her favourite song is, really LC: G:

LC: G:

LC: G:

Hi Georgia. You’re a fan of ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ by Meatloaf. I’d like to hear more about that please.

Meatloaf wasn’t someone we played a lot in my household.

We admired him and some of the songs are amazing, but I’ve got very clear memories of associating this song with my friend who knows every single word. Every. Single.

Word. And wherever we are, since we were 18, she puts it on, whether we’re at a house party, in the club, whatever.

She requested it in Ibiza. Something takes over her and she wants Meatloaf all of a sudden. So I associate this song with good times – people throwing the rulebook out and just fucking singing it, top of their lungs. When you make music, you can get very consumed with the process – “How did they do this? How did they do that?” – I get very analytical.

With ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, I just go, “Fuck it, this is a classic.”

You don’t want to understand it, you just want to sing it.

Are you a karaoke person?

Yeah, whenever we do karaoke, that song comes on.

There’s something very empowering about singing ‘Bat Out of Hell’; especially when I watch my best friend do it, all of her troubles and woes go to one side – and it’s for like four or five minutes, it’s quite a long song. She’s just in a complete state of euphoria. There are certain songs that just do that to people. And although she sounds good, it doesn’t really matter if she sounds good or bad.

What are your other go-to karaoke songs?

Well I used to do [Prince’s] ‘Purple Rain’ but it’s really long, and people lost interest halfway through. The ending goes

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on for four or five minutes, and in different karaoke bands they cut the ending, but in the last one we did, in Soho, I did that whole ending and by the end people were just chatting while I was going “Ooo-ooh!” Anyway, I do like doing Fleetwood Mac, AC/DC, just things that aren’t too serious.

LC: You want something to really belt out, right?

G: Yeah, or you do Celine Dion and really try to fucking sing.

But I don’t have the balls for that.

LC: This all sounds very theatrical though. How many times have you, for example, taken to the stage on a motorbike?

G: There is a side of me that’s yearning to get on stage on a motorbike or be like Spinal Tap, that knows that live music can be taken into such silly areas. We’re all very concerned with being cool, but in the ’80s bands did some silly, silly things.

I’ve always been quite theatrical – I did it at school, I like drama, I like artists that aren’t afraid to add a bit of drama into their performance. That’s what I like about Billie Eilish actually, or Beyoncé. I experienced it first-hand when I went on tour with the Flaming Lips – the whole thing is inclusively silly, there are these big bubbles and Wayne [Coyne, Flaming Lips frontman] isn’t afraid to take the audience on this really theatrical journey. He’s had such an effect on the live music industry – Coldplay releasing the balls and all that, it’s a nod to Wayne. He’s a DIY master.

Anything you can think of, he wants to try and do.

Live music comes from theatre, from vaudeville, from unusual groups of people. When Little Richard performed it was like going to a sermon. In London it’s very cool and a bit too sterile.

LC: I was gonna ask if your mates know you’re into all this silly stuff, but it sounds like you’re pretty keen to share it.

G: Oh yeah. I’ll often just sing ‘Where Is Love?’ from Oliver when I’m with my friends. I was obsessed with that musical when I was a kid, that’s all I watched; obsessed with the Artful Dodger, named our dog after him, ended up playing him in a school play. It’s London-based, it’s Dickens… sometimes I walk the streets of central and east London and I’ll start doing ‘Who Will Buy?’. So I definitely share it with my mates, yeah. When I was on tour for my first record we played a show in Paris and got absolutely obliterated afterwards, and we had to get an early Eurostar. We were all still completely pissed and we were in this elevator going down and I just broke out into ‘Where Is Love?’.

Everyone laughed and joined in.

LC: That’s a great way to fight through a hangover.

G: Yeah, just break out into song. I think it helped some of the crew.

words by luke cartledge

31 august to 3 september 2023

larmer tree gardens blandford FORUM dorset, UNITED KINGDOM THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

Future Islands

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

WOODS

Wilco

Deerhoof The Last Dinner Party

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

???

Kokoroko Oracle Sisters CVC Personal Trainer

Greentea Peng KOKOKO! King Tuff Say She She Royel Otis

Fatoumata Diawara Lee Fields Charley Crockett TEKE::TEKE Divorce

GARDEN

Angel Olsen

Arooj Aftab

Cass McCombs The Mary Wallopers Daniel Norgren Horse Lords Charlotte Cornfield Friendship

Crack Cloud Samia caroline Avalanche Kaito John Francis Flynn Mabe Fratti

Ezra Furman

Allah–Las Caitlin Rose Alogte Oho and his sounds of joy Joan Shelley Sweet Baboo Floodlights

BIG TOP Marie Davidson (DJ)

Elkka (DJ)

Panda Bear & Sonic Boom

Overmono

Charlotte Adigery & Bolis Popul The Anchoress PVA Moin Big|Brave They Hate Change Saint Jude

Yeule FLOHIO Ela Minus Okay Kaya Adwaith Fat Dog Deliluh

The Murder Capital

Biig Piig Bar Italia The Murlocs Divide and Dissolve Geese MADMADMAD Enys Men with live score by The Cornish Sound Unit

The Folly

HMLTD

Heartworms Louis Culture Beige Banquet Meadow Meadow

YunÈ Pinku

High Vis

Part Chimp Wunderhorse Ulrika Spacek The Prize Katy Kirby Sylvie Laura Jean Blue Bendy Ursa Major Moving Group

Lime Garden Runnner Marina Allen Mary In The Junkyard Tapir!

MF Tomlinson October Baby Scott Lavene

Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals Yot Club Gretel HÄnlyn Panic Shack Laundromat Master Peace Indigo Sparke Gena Rose Bruce Jessica’s Brother

THE BOAT Tom Ravenscroft (DJ)

Bodega

Macie Stewart Oren Ambarchi Joyfultalk Jon Mckiel Sculpture

Dungen

MC Yallah & Debmaster

H . Hawkline Simon Joyner Cinder Well

Héloïse Werner Sam Burton Kara Jackson

75 dollar bill The Courettes 7ebra Donna Thompson Three Spoons

System Exclusive University Julia Reidy Whitney K

TALKING HEADS Nina Nastasia Sessa Angeline Morrison

TICKETS: endoftheroadfestival .com

The Beginning: Bad Advice

‘Elton John’ on gardening

Dear Elton, what’s your favourite song, and is it ‘Rocket Man’? – Brian Eltching, Nottingham [Turns red instantly] Listen! I was told these would all be about gardening, and not fucking music! Is it so fucking hard to understand that I don’t do music anymore!? Have I not fucking earned that!!?? I’ll walk, y’know. I’ll fucking walk! ... But yes, it’s ‘Rocket Man’.

Dear Elton, the pride of my garden is a beautiful rose bush, but recently we’ve been experiencing a problem with a devilish magpie who’s been eating the buds before they bloom. How do you suggest I protect my favourite plants from such pest? – Claire Manning, Surrey This is more like it, Claire. What you need is a spade, love.

Get a big fat spade and bonk them on the head. It was “magpies” that did it for me. Absolute bastards. Bonk ’em! Next!

Dear Elton, what herbaceous perennials would you suggest for a new border that has very free-draining soil? – Evan Pixby, via email Ah... This is a real shame, actually, Evan – to ask what would have been a really good question if you’d told me where your garden is. I can’t really advise you on a herbious premises without knowing if it’s for your home in London, Venice, Windsor, Nice, Atlanta or Beverly Hills, can I? I can tell you from experience (I have large properties in all of the above) that they all call for very different approaches from your gardening staff. Evan!

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Hello Elton, I know they can be a bit spooky looking, but do you think scarecrows are ever a good idea in a domestic garden? – Paul Rempton, Essex Hi Paul. I can categorically say that they are not. If nothing else, they can be confusing, especially as you get older. It’s only

by NOT having a scarecrow that I 100% know when Rod Stewart is or isn’t in my garden. If Rod is not a dear friend of yours, you might be alright, but why risk it, Paul?

Dear Elton: leeks! I love leeks and grow a sizeable crop in my own vegetable patch. Do you grow any of your own food in your beautiful garden? – Lizzy Smith, via email Well it wouldn’t be leeks, I can tell you that. Gross. We did grow a few potatoes last year, but what a waste of time that was – they took ages to grow and when they finally did pop up they were covered in mud. Not like how they are in Waitrose at all. And have you seen what a potato looks like as it grows? With all those tentacles coming out of! Fucking hell. We ended up paving over that bit of the garden and putting a nice chair there.

Hi Elton, do you think you’ll take up other hobbies in retirement, beyond your passion for gardening? – Sally Toynbee, Brighton I presume you mean something awful like walking! Not for me, Sally. I just LOVE my gardening. Not in the winter, of course.

Or when it rains. Or when it’s hot. Or there are leaves. But I love it. I love it so much I’m thinking of writing one last album about it.

illustration by kate prior

FMD NEW RELEASES

BLUE LAKE ‘Sun Arcs‘

Tonal Union LP/ LP Col “Layering his custom-built 48-string zither with slide guitar, clarinet, and pump organ, the Texas native makes music that draws as much from drone and ambient as from jazz and Americana.” 8.3 Best New Music Pitchfork

GUIDED BY VOICES ‘Welshpool Frillies’

GBV Inc LP/CD Welshpool Frillies finds the gang back together, in a Brooklyn basement. The catchy ear worms in these new songs are undeniable, as the kinetic energy of the band is captured in its most raw and pure form

BEN CHASNY & RICK TOMLINSON ‘Waves‘

THE SOUNDCARRIERS ‘Celeste’

Voix LP “A Transatlantic avant-guitar summit in the Pennines” - **** Mojo

Phosphonic 2LP/CD Long out of print and sought after 2nd album. Remastered with newly designed artwork. Bonus instrumental and alternate mixes. Inner sleeves contain unseen photos and new liner notes by Jim Gavin (Lodge 49 creator)

MAMMATUS ‘Expanding Majesty’

MIRANDA & THE BEAT ‘Miranda & The Beat ’

Silver Current LP/CD Santa Cruz-based tectonic riffers return with eight-years-in-the-making magnum opus.

For fans of Popul Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Melvins, and Sleep

Khannibalism LP Debut LP from NYC Garage Rockers “I never thought I would see someone be able to play guitar with the ferocity of Link Wray, and sing like Lydia Lunch had a nuclear meltdown and morphed into Etta James and Yma Sumac.”

– King Khan

info@fortedistribution.co.uk

Moin 10

I know this means something, but I don’t know what,

by Ian Roebuck. Photography by Henri Kisielewski

“There is no modus operandi that is fixed,” states Valentina Magaletti from her Hackney kitchen, flanked by Moin bandmates Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead. It is a mantra that repeats throughout our conversation; much like their music, Moin are a hard bunch to pin down in person.

“That is the magic of the project, how unsettling it is,” she continues. “To put a Moin record on, a listener thinks, ‘Oh I know what this is going to be, it sounds like post-rock or posthardcore and something I may have listened to in the ’90s’, but then after a while it enters new territory and you think ‘Hang on a minute’ – it takes you somewhere else.”

The post-whatever grooves of Moin began as a spin-off from Joe and Tom’s project Raime, all the way back in 2012 when they were joined by prolific percussionist and composer Valentina – whose CV includes Vanishing Twin and Holy Tongue as well as collaborations with Floating Points and Zongamin to name but a few.

“We all used to end up at the same parties and sometimes those parties would finish with live music in the middle of the room, so that’s how they knew I was playing the drums and I got summoned,” says Valentina. Joe’s still laughing at the word ‘summoned’ when he tells me: “The fact that people interpret Moin the way they want to is the entire point of art, and that’s how and why people are drawn to it. If you start to try and shut it down then it becomes meaningless.”

The trio combine their particular brand of industrial rock with samples and electronic manipulation, meaning they are often described as a musical collage. “I’m down with that term,” says Joe. “The production process is informed by collage, because collage is all about juxtaposition and trying to find something new out of putting two different things together. The dynamism that comes out of that process is actually where we get our energy from, because we are all super fans of loads of different types of music. Putting together different entities is part of the interest, so I think collage is something to be welcomed.”

Like their last full-length (the remarkable 2022 album Paste), Moin’s new EP Clocked Off captures the band’s assembly of ideas to startling effect, the experimental electronic palette of past projects like Raime evolving into something altogether new.

“Moin is [about] trying to get the vitality and immediacy,” says Tom, “just get it down and if it feels right emotionally and the sentiment resonates in the right way then that’s good, move on to the next one. Where we use sampling, these shards of sounds that we don’t even know the source of anymore, they seem like they are meant to be there. It might seem incongruous having this electronic odd sound but it feels natural in the melange.”

Even without a traditional singer, the band slowly unfurl a distinctive, often darkly humorous identity the more you listen to their work. A lot of the time this is communicated through spoken word samples. “The spoken word stuff is sourced and

we’re very careful about that,” explains Joe. “Ultimately it has to have a very clear quality whilst being ambiguous; we want to instil that notion of having a position of a singer within a band in the traditional sense but not commit to it, either in terms of a personality or what it’s delivering. That ambiguity is something that we really love playing with, as it gives it a magic – it gives it a feeling of, ‘I know this means something but I am not sure what it is.’”

“T

HE STARTING POINT is always the drums,” says Tom,

nodding respectfully to Valentina. “Valentina’s part is hugely fundamental.” The drummer laughs before explaining why Moin is such an escape for her.

“Well, I would say that it’s the most gravity-blast, testosterone way of playing, which is very humorous from my point of view,” she says. “To play rock music is a completely different approach for me, but I keep it very experimental. The main difference between this and my other work is I don’t have that powerful way of playing elsewhere. We have a BPM and we go for it, we have a grid and we try to defeat the grid.” I wonder if Valentina brings any of her solo composition processes to the studio. “I do yes, I also listen to tribal percussion stuff; I love free jazz too, of course, and I love experimenting with materials – I use rubber, wood and metal and whatnot. We try to do all sorts in Moin too, we were in the studio recently with brushes, whatever it takes for the sonic palette to work.”

It is that fluid approach that the three-piece keep returning to. “The relationship between the live recording and the manipulation in the computer is interesting,” Joe says. “We’re now at the stage where you’re essentially trying to blur the lines; you’re not trying to uphold the original integrity of the electronic and the acoustic in a singular way, you don’t always want the drum kit to be a drum kit and you don’t always want the guitar to be a guitar. Whilst in theory that creates something that maybe you wouldn’t want, actually you can get to a place that is still emotionally resonant.”

Tom is keen to stress that although they relish the computer re-edit, they try to rely on speed and instinct. “A track can be burrowed into your head so much you end up hating it and then you never put it out, you go back six months later and think actually this is alright, so you don’t give it time to breathe as you have been immersed in it too much, we want to work differently.”

A

FTER TEN YEARS of collaborating together, Moin’s processes and even the band members themselves have changed significantly. “I think the main difference for us is the speed and labour, like Tom said,” picks up Joe. “We are much more about trying to value what happens in a short period of time – we used to take forever.”

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“We were slaves – they had like 300 versions of the same thing!” says Valentina. “The pandemic happened and they decided to choose life instead.” Joe couldn’t agree more. “Technology gives you the option to keep going back, right? As long as your hard drive is working and your software licence is up to date you can always go back to it. So we’ve been trying to impose limitations and bring life to the music – as Val says, always choose life.”

The warm familiarity of sounds on a Moin record could be understood as taking the listener on a nostalgia trip, but Joe comes at it from a different angle. “I think the nostalgia thing is really fascinating,” he says, “because if you were to look at house music, which we’re big fans of, it has a specific set of instruments that are used in the main. Obviously there are masses of variants, but a classic house sound is not necessarily determined as nostalgic, even though its feelings and textures are often repeated. With the lineage of rock music, to me the repetition of those traits that make it feel nostalgic don’t feel nostalgic to me – they just feel like these are the tropes from the genres that exist because they are powerful and work well. I’m not rallying against nostalgia – just how we interpret the elements.”

“You make a record in 2023, so you are informed by all the records from 10, 20, 30 years ago,” concludes Valentina. “This is natural, it’s nostalgia plus – plus, plus.”

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L&Q at End Of The Road We’re very excited to be returning to End Of The Road this year. The event in Larmer Tree Gardens on the DorsetWiltshire border has been the UK’s most forward-thinking and expertly-curated medium-sized festival for a very long time now, and this summer’s edition will be no exception. We’re particularly excited to be hosting our very own stage at End Of The Road 2023, taking over the Big Top on Saturday 2 September.

Joining us will be London leftfield pop singer and producer Saint Jude; Tampa, Florida’s foremost UK bass obsessives and experimental rap duo They Hate Change; Montreal group Big Brave, who combine metal, folk, drone and more; post-rock collagists Moin, who you now know all about; PVA, bringing industrialstrength techno and punk straight from the clubs of South London; Catherine Anne Davies, aka beloved Welsh songwriter The Anchoress; sophisticated Belgian pop duo Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul; Overmono, one of the UK’s most exciting breakthrough dance acts of recent years (performing live); and eclectic, inclusive house producer Elkka (playing a DJ set).

Also, make sure you get there early for the yearly Loud And Quiet Silent Disco Welcome Party – 11pm, 31 August, at The Folly (formerly the Tipi Tent).

Elsewhere at End Of The Road this year, the lineup is as excellent as always.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Future Islands, Wilco, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Angel Olsen top the bill, with L&Q favourites like Caroline, Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals, Divide And Dissolve, Mabe Fratti, Flohio, Donna Thompson and many more also playing.

For tickets and information, head over to endoftheroadfestival.com.

Mary In The Junkyard Happy accidents, weepy chaos and a giant paper mache head, by Jumi Akinfenwa.

Photography by Sam Walton Clari Freeman Taylor is tired. It’s at least 25 degrees in London, we’re in the tourist hotspot that is Cutty Sark during peak school trip time and she’s running on very little sleep – but for good reason. “I was trying to finish this dress,” she says, gesturing downwards to show off her teal crochet garment. “And finish a song.” The lead vocalist and guitarist of burgeoning London trio Mary In The Junkyard, her tiredness can also be attributed to a fairly busy, but exhilarating, festival season – their first ever.

“It’s been really good,” she says. “It really surprised me, I didn’t think we’d be playing festivals this year.”

The self-described “angry weepy chaos rok trio”, which also includes drummer David Addison and bassist Saya Barbaglia, formed just over a year ago, finding themselves drawn together almost by accident. “Saya and I met through playing string quartets together and David and I were in a band together,” she says of their formation. “Then I started writing songs when I was a bit older just to kind of make sense of things.

I guess I was really inspired by songwriters and ‘crazy’ women.”

Finding herself drawn to soloists rather than bands, Clari points to her desire to take up space as a catalyst for pushing ahead with Mary. “I always wanted to fill up space with the sound I made. It’s hard to do that on your own.”

While they’re yet to release music, their DIY punk riffs, accented by Joni Mitchell-inspired poeticism and Björk’s whimsy, see them regularly draw in crowds at much-loved South London venue The Windmill – a second home to them. “I like that other people see us and associate us with it because it’s such a wonderful place,” she says. “It’s very authentic. Tim [Perry – head booker and promoter] doesn’t care about profit, he just cares about putting really great music on and he’s been really nurturing. We owe him a lot.” A fertile community that has fostered a new generation of guitar bands, the DIY label is one that Mary as a group wear proudly. “I think we’re quite unprofessional,” says Clari. “I don’t really feel like a guitarist, I play with my hand rather than a pick.” Preferring to give way to happy accidents rather than a deeply methodical approach, there is a beautiful rawness not only to their sound but also the writing. “We don’t try to be anything. We just do what feels good.”

And what feels good to them is just about everything.

That’s the beauty of Mary. “Everything we do feels very chaotic.

I think we all have a lot of energy to give to it,” Clari chuckles.

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“It’s pretty sporadic, but it kind of works. Sometimes it feels just like everything is falling into place.”

Clari and Saya both have classical backgrounds, and while symphonic parallels aren’t what first come to mind when you think of angsty rock bands, the expansiveness of the classical genre is apparent in their creative approach, with Saya sometimes adding viola parts to their performances. “It’s a really cool layer,” Clari says. “We’re a trio but we’re trying to figure out how much we can do with that. It’s probably good for us creatively to have to figure out how to do things just with us.”

They are sometimes accompanied by Brian, too – a large paper mache head, who is also lurking around during our interview today. He’s yet to earn his stripes as an officially christened fourth member of a band, but his presence is indicative of the playfulness that underpins Mary as a collective. “I just think he’s funny,” Clari laughs. “We want to have a bare bones kind of vibe, like paper mache. But the main reason he’s here today is because he was in Saya’s room for a while. She wants me to take him home!”

It’s unclear if Brian will remain a constant, but one thing Clari is sure of is that Mary In The Junkyard are set to release music soon; yet part of her is reluctant. “It’s nice to not have music out, it makes us kind of mysterious and cool,” she laughs. “I’ll be sad to lose that.” Pointing to the loyal fanbase that has already been built, the mild trepidation is understandable. “Because people can’t listen to our music really easily, they have to work a bit harder. They’ve got to seek us out.”

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Nihiloxica Turning anger at the Home Office into some of the most thrillingly fucked-off music you’ll hear this year,

by Sam Walton. Photography by Tallulah Maskell-Key Henry Isabirye is currently in Kampala, Uganda. For the past two months, however, his Ugandan passport has been in Pretoria, South Africa, waiting there for a UK visa stamp to be punched into it by a shadowy private French-Chinese company called TLS that has been outsourced to do the British Home Office’s admin for most of sub-Saharan Africa. There is no telling when the passport will return to Kampala, and enquiring phone calls are met with labyrinthine “press ‘5’ to continue”-style robo callcentres that seem engineered to frustrate. Meanwhile, Isabirye is due on stage in Birmingham in four weeks.

The drummer, known to all as Isa, is entangled in this convoluted and largely unaccountable multinational process because it’s the only way that he can legally perform in the UK with Nihiloxica, the band he formed alongside fellow countrymen Henry Kasoma (aka Prince) and Jamiru Mwanje ( Jally) and UK nationals Pete Jones and Jake Maskell-Key in 2017, after the two Brits turned a one-month collaborative writing project in Kampala into a two-year stay.

Everyone’s hoping that Isa’s passport shows up (he’s the last Ugandan in the group awaiting visa clearance), but if it doesn’t, there’s precedent for how Nihiloxica react: when the same endlessly delaying visa application process thwarted the band’s attempts to tour the UK this time last year, they instead convened in Kampala for a month and smashed out their second album, Source of Denial, in response, channelling their grievance at British government policy into an hour of music that bridges the worlds of Ugandan drum circles and UK industrial techno, with splashes of metal and gabba. The record is one of the most fucked-off you’ll hear all year, its sense of protest emanating not from any explicit lyrical content – the only words are computer-generated imitations of the TLS phone system and background checks – but instead from the ferocity and persistence of its drum hits and the dystopian sourness of the synth work.

Like the best non-verbal protest records (Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s ’Allelujah! Don’t Bend!

Ascend! springs to mind, or large chunks of Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain), its very soundworld forms the dissent, turning raw audio into intense, exhilarating feeling.

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Although part of that exhilaration stems from railing against Suella Braverman et al, just as much comes from Source of Denial capturing the moment two disparate musical cultures collide, explains Prince: “There’s only one techno song in Uganda that everyone knows,” he says, of his level of familiarity with drum machines and the like. “Apart from that, we didn’t know anything about electronic music. [Making Source of Denial] changed the way we play: you can’t go as wild. There’s more discipline needed.”

“But that also adds the crazy side of it,” interrupts Jally.

“There’s this combination of people coming together from different backgrounds and genres of music, simultaneously. It feels to me like it reflects the craziness and randomness of the whole world.”

That feeling of an inherent frenzy straining at the leash, of coiled-spring energy ready to escape the confines of a record, translates into something impressively iron-willed at album length, too, like some irrepressible caged creature – which also chimes with the record’s inspiration: “You can’t ever give up,” insists Maskell-Key when asked how he finds the energy to persevere with the Home Office’s bad-faith bureaucracy. “Giving up means giving in to the powers that be, and then they’d win. Every time there’s a curveball in the applications, it keeps me on my toes, keeps me fighting, and that energy comes through in the music, too.”

Jones agrees. “The goal of this album was to be less tame than our last one, make things more aggressive, sonically, and reflect how we were feeling about the tour getting cancelled – which is why it’s got this loose, chaotic, angry feel to it.”

“It’s not angry enough though!” Isa butts in. “I wanted it to be even angrier! All this bullshit with my passport can’t be contained in just a recording: the anger will come from my drum, and when you see us live, you will feel that…”

Maskell-Key smiles knowingly from an adjacent Zoom window as he listens to his bandmate’s righteous rant, clearly eager to get back on stage with him at long last. “Well, as long as Isa gets his passport back, we should all be okay…”

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SWEEPING PROMISES GOOD LIVING IS COMING FOR YOU

The year’s best DIY punk made in a bathroom,

by Nadia Younes. Photography by Shawn Brackbill

Sweeping Promises

If you’ve not got a 24-hour concierge, rooftop terrace, residents’ only gym and an on-site co-working space in your sparkly new-build flat or renovated warehouse building, are you even a 21st-century hybrid-working yo-pro?

This idea of the ‘luxurification’ of the housing market and the relationship between architecture and capitalism were key themes on the minds of formerly Boston-, now Kansas-based duo Sweeping Promises – made up of Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug – when it came to writing their new album, Good Living Is Coming For You. On the album, Mondal and Schnug unfurl the web of capitalism to show that the bright future it once sold – best viewed through cash-tinted glasses – is essentially a lie.

Even the album title itself directly hints at this, reading as more of a threat than a notion of prosperity: good living isn’t coming to you – you’re getting it, whether you like it or not.

“To me, luxury spaces have been a trick that’s been played on our generation,” says Schnug. “In 2015, there was this idea in Boston that all of the luxury condominiums that have plastered over the everyday city… that one day, 20–30 years from now, everyone’s going to live in these luxury spaces because it’s this thing we’re building for everyone. And, in my mind, that’s where the Good Living Is Coming For You thing comes from – it’s like no, they’re not.”

For Mondal and Schnug, this focus on their surroundings seeps into their songwriting process as Sweeping Promises, too.

Rather than splashing out on expensive, purpose-built recording studios, they seek out unique, often disused spaces where

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they can explore different sonic palettes and possibilities for each record. “I’ve always had a strong conviction that the kind of current, digital regimes of recording decontextualise space, and the idea of site-specificity is really lessened in our era of recorded music; it’s really important to us,” says Schnug. “[With Sweeping Promises] the space comes before the songs.”

Their debut album, Hunger For A Way Out, was recorded in a disused laboratory in Boston, which Schnug acquired through a hard-fought, five-year-long campaign. And the path to finding a space to record their latest album was almost as lengthy, taking them across three states and various venues – from a bathroom in Schnug’s parents’ house in Austin to a disused church in Ohio to their new home studio in Kansas.

“Our new space is unwieldy and super reverberant, like our laboratory, and definitely impacts how we write,” says Schnug. And Mondal agrees: “The fact that we’re able to come and go at will and we don’t have to set anything up or tear anything down is huge. I feel like that also facilitates quicker, more intuitive songwriting.”

This idea of playing fast and hard runs right through Good Living Is Coming For You, and the record is oozing with a strong sense of groove. On the album’s central trio of tracks (‘Walk in Place’, ‘You Shatter’ and ‘Petit Four’) Mondal’s vocals are almost galloping over boisterous drum patterns and guitar riffs, channeling the energy of late-’70s punk and ’90s riot grrrl with a modern edge. “In the midst of all the tumult of our personal lives, music was the thing that was keeping the whole thing afloat,” says Mondal. “We were just writing all this music and it felt really automatic and intuitive, so I feel like that comes through.”

There’s an unstoppable nature to the duo’s playing that carries over into their personal lives, where they’re constantly juggling multiple music projects along with their day jobs.

Even Sweeping Promises came about during a time when they had three other projects on the go. “We’ll never stop,” laughs Schnug.

“As we grow older, and as our practice grows, we uncover new ways of engaging with one another musically that is pretty thrilling,” says Mondal. “Witnessing some genius tactic that Caufield does – whether it’s a production trick or a new way of writing a guitar part that just sounds breathtaking and beautiful – or figuring out that I can do something I haven’t done before, vocally or otherwise, that’s just exciting for us. We want to keep doing this as much as possible for as long as possible,” says Mondal. Schnug adds with a smile: “It’s a glorious collaboration.”

the debut album

PRAYERS & PARANOIA 27.10.2023 stream the lead single SOBER now On tour in November - dates & tickets at sipho.me

Iceboy Violet Experimental rap fantasies from Manchester’s leftfield fringe,

by Alastair Shuttleworth. Photography by Lou Webb

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In their new collection of songs, Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion, Manchester rapper and producer Iceboy Violet finds compelling ways of exploring the relationship between fantasy and reality. Following their bold, vigorous debut EP Vanity – featuring a cadre of fellow Manchester-based experimentalists including Blackhaine, AYA and Space Afrika – their first entirely self-produced project is a more elastic, unpredictable affair: skirting between woozy ambient, brash hip hop and global club. Rather than utterly distinct from the ‘real world’, fantasy is here shown to both draw from reality and help press it into shape.

This project is most interested in fantasy’s bearing upon our sense of self. “At certain times in my life, I’ve been really caught up about certain things in terms of race, gender and whether I’m a ‘real musician,’” they explain. “This is partially an attempt to discard all that because I think it’s all useless.” Lyrics about illusions or unreality dominate the record: “My life feels like a movie” they rap in ‘Wounded Coogi’, amidst references to “beautiful lies” and “smoke and mirrors.” “It’s also a way to talk about things I wouldn’t have easily talked about otherwise, because they’re very intimate or private.”

This interplay between fantasy and reality is also expressed through the production. Iceboy Violet’s emotive performances anchor the listener through a dream-like landscape of rolling synth textures, ethereal vocal samples and reverb-drenched percussion. Without displacing us from this setting, the tracks present constant shifts in texture and mood: from the brooding, inquisitive ‘Black Gold’ to the agitated ‘Refracted’. “It was about trying to get at it from all these different angles,” they say when asked about this fragmented, disjointed structure. This is emphasised by the brevity of these eight tracks, only two of which break the three-minute mark, and the manner in which some are split internally: ‘Street Dogs Have Wings’ moves from bombastic hip-hop into an entirely instrumental second half, employing erratic percussion and haunting synths reminiscent of Speaker Music’s Soul-Making Theodicy.

This fragmented approach underscores Iceboy Violet’s frequent references to things breaking throughout Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion. They imagine themselves smashing “into a thousand pieces” on ‘Refracted’, and being pulled apart “’til I rip, ‘til I splinter” in ‘Wounded Coogi’. “Something I talk about in my live sets is knowing that breaking is part of life, and being willing to break so I can put things back together again,” they explain.

A different kind of fragmentation occurs in ‘Paris, Bradford’, where the word ‘Paris’ is splintered into a list of popcultural artefacts: “I’m Paris Hilton, I’m Paris syndrome, I’m ‘Paris, Texas’, I’m Plaster of Paris.”

“Paris is an incredible city because of all the things that are projected onto it – it’s one of those places where fantasy meets reality,” they say. “There’s the way Americans see it as this very high-class dream destination, then you’ve got the drill rappers in Paris that have a completely different experience of it.”

A similar blurring takes place in ‘Pablo’s Cathedral’, the title of which evokes both St. Paul’s Cathedral and ‘La Catedral’: a prison built by Pablo Escobar for his own 1991 incarceration,

luxuriously appointed with a bar, football pitch and jacuzzi. “He built his own prison, and it was also a sort of heaven,” Iceboy Violet suggests.

“Limitation, fear and confinement are also involved in fantasy – the fantasy of ‘the good life’ can be limiting in a way.”

The title also highlights this track’s use of Biblical imagery, with the line “Soft ground for a home” playing upon the parable of the man building a house on sand. “It’s like I’m putting all my energy into this mercurial fantasy, and it’ll wash away, but that’s fine.”

Other sources for this closing track include Ana Kavan’s 1967 novel Ice. “The lines between reality and fantasy really blur in that book, and if you read it without trying to find the seams you won’t.” This blurriness is supported by the track’s use of vocal processing: the line “nothing lies quite like life” mingles with a rising wave of burbling, inscrutable vocal samples.

The beat of ‘Pablo’s Cathedral’ also reflects Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion’s embrace of various shades of dance music, drawing from Iceboy Violet’s experiences of UK and global club sounds around Manchester. “It feels more honest and British than me trying to do trap or boom bap stuff,” they explain, claiming it also prompted a greater variety in vocal styles. “With ‘Ekklipse’ I made a dancehall beat with these sparse vocals: it’s a club track, and gave me the space to say little impactful things without filling in too many of the gaps. With ‘Pablo’s Cathedral’ I could repeat the same thing over and over like a mantra. It’s from the lineage of grime and garage I guess – just rapping over what’s around.”

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CEBOY VIOLET’S EXPERIENCES in Manchester have had a much broader influence on their work to date. Last year’s The Vanity Project featured a raft of peers from the city’s currently vital experimental scene including Blackhaine, whose

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“I’m very inspired by the people around me.

The flipside is that I’m also very competitive with them” EP Armour II also features an appearance from Iceboy Violet.

Going back further, readers may be familiar with Iceboy Violet’s membership to local experimental collective Boygirl, contributing to their 2019 Focus mixtape compiling remixes of Charli XCX’s ‘Focus’.

“I started that shit off, and my remix is probably the weakest on there,” they laugh. “I made my remix for fun, then sent it to AYA. She went ‘I’m going to do one’, then everyone else did too, and they all did it way better.”

The city remains an important influence on Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion. “When I wrote ‘Street Dogs Have Wings’, it was with very particular images of Manchester in mind,” they note. “I think where you are almost always influences the music you make. It’s where I first started clubbing, it’s where these DJs that inspired me are from, and it’s where I met AYA, Blackhaine and Rainy Miller” – the last of whom helped mix this new project. “I’m very inspired by the people around

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me. The flipside is that I’m also very competitive with them. I want to make the best stuff I can, because these people are not stopping.”

This project also appears to have influenced Iceboy Violet’s broader relationship with their music. “I think I loosened my grip on the ‘truth’, and was able to let it go in service of making music that feels ‘right’,” they explain. “There’s a lot of truth and real experience in it, but I became more able to say: ‘This is who I am’, and: ‘This is what this is’ without it necessarily being currently true: just in the hope these things can become real through the act of saying them.

“I’m very aware of the role fantasy plays in my life. I have a lot of crushes and I fantasise a lot, then there’s being a rapper, where the line between truth and fantasy blurs,” they explain.

“In the same way a visual artist might explore the same area or basic concept throughout their career, this feels like something I’ll come back to throughout the rest of the music I make.”

MOTH Club Σtella 17—08 Cory Hanson 19—08 Julie 23—08 Peggy Seegar (In Conversation) 05—09 Avalanche Kaito 06—09 L’Eclair & TEKE::TEKE 08—09 Daisy the Great 12—09

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Emergence Collective Creating a DIY improv scene in Sheffield that’s the opposite of gatekeeping, by Daniel Dylan Wray.

Photography by Owen Richards

“Improvisation is a term that really puts people off and can be intimidating,” says Rob Bentall, who plays the nyckelharpa, a Swedish key harp, in Emergence Collective. “We strive to be the opposite of that. We want to be an accessible forum where people can come, improvise and know they won’t be judged on what they do.”

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With a pool of around 30 musicians from Sheffield and the surrounding areas, Emergence Collective are an experimental post-minimalist outfit who make music that is improvised, yet alluringly accessible. Once a month they get together in the upstairs room of the Gardeners Rest, a community pub next to the River Don. Structured much like an old-school folk club,

people turn up with their instruments, and over foamy cask ale they jam together with whoever is there – be it six, eight, twelve or more people. However, rather than blast out old standards, familiars and favourites, they always create entirely new and improvisational works.

“The background of everybody is very diverse,” says guitarist Tim Knowles. “We have classically trained musicians, folk musicians, composers, jazz musicians, pop musicians. It’s one of those situations where if you were to write it down on paper it probably wouldn’t come together in the way it has.

We’ve been consistently surprised.”

The collective has been performing a variety of improvised gigs too. The result of one such performance makes up the contents of their latest album, Fly Tower (released via new Sheffield label Redundant Span), a live recording captured inside the fly tower of Abbeydale Picture House, a former cinema dating back to 1920. It was recorded in a four-storey-high room behind the main theatre, which was historically used to hoist scenery for the productions inside.

“When we choose venues to play in, we want to hear that venue,” says Knowles. “There’s a reason that we’ve named this album after the venue because we feel the venue was a defining feature of that sound and of the way that we chose to perform in that space.”

Over three tracks, the album unfurls in beautiful patterns, filled with a degree of subtlety, tenderness, restraint and a cohesion that belies its improvisational foundations. In this instance, ten members of the collective performed on the recording, all sat in a circle facing one another – a set-up intended to be the antithesis of a traditional band structure.

“When we play live, it’s a really non-hierarchical process,” says Zebedee Budworth, who plays the hammer dulcimer.

“There are no leaders, the only thing that’s predetermined is the key that we play in and that’s due to the limitations of my instrument. We just pick a key and then off we go.”

Flutes intermingle with gently plucked strings, toots of baritone sax float above ripples of percussion, while dreamy vocals coalesce with the distinct and engulfing tones of the hammer dulcimer and the nyckelharpa. It’s remarkably measured and considered music given it is being birthed in real time.

“Whatever the group decides, whatever narrative we decide to spin together, and patterns we play, that’s what happens,” says Budworth. “It’s really lovely. If you had a group of musicians where ten people were all wailing and totally shredding all the time, it would probably be the worst thing in the world – or maybe the best – but we occupy quite a nice space within more experimental approaches to music, in the fact that it’s quite listenable.”

“It adds a spontaneity to a performance which you wouldn’t get if it was planned,” says Juliana Day, who contributes recorders, whistles and vocals. “It creates a really special energy to it – people have cried at our gigs.”

Some of the members almost have too. “When I’m playing I feel as if I’m a member of the audience,” says Budworth. “This project is a really important way to break down the barrier between the musicians and the audience.

Because I’m watching people play these things for the first time it can really catch you off-guard. One gig, a few months ago, there was a moment where Gemma, one of the singers, did this vocal and it totally caught me off-guard. I was nearly moved to tears by the music that I was playing that I’d never heard before, and that I was watching and hearing for the first time. That is absolutely amazing.”

“There’s a lot of magic in an ensemble that’s fundamentally quiet and having the listener coming to the music”

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HE COLLECTIVE HAS also become “like a music community,” says Bentall. “Like a micro-scene in its own right.”

Day echoes this. “It’s really building a scene in Sheffield for this kind of music,” she says. “And bringing lots of different people together. We did a workshop recently for people to play and get involved in and one of the bits of feedback was that what we were doing was the opposite of gatekeeping – that was really nice.”

So, are there no rules whatsoever to this group? Is it a total free-for-all? “I like things quiet,” says Budworth. “That’s kind of the only thing that I’d say [is a rule]. I don’t like playing with PAs because we’ve got these amazing instruments that are pieces of work that have been handcrafted. To hear the natural sound of them is really, really important.” Bentall adds: “There’s a lot of magic in an ensemble that’s fundamentally quiet and having the listener coming to the music, rather than the music being pushed to you.”

Budworth makes comparisons to Low. “They just used to turn down if anyone was talking in the audience,” he says. “That’s what we’re doing; we’re basically saying that you need to come to us, you need to listen with us. You need to experience this as part of the people in the room.” Knowles suggests that this approach is “quite novel in an overly technologised musical world.”

While it has successfully managed to operate as a creative and community hub for the people of Sheffield, there are plans to widen the collective even further. “One of the things that we’re quite excited about this project is the possibility of touring it,” says Knowles. “And including different musicians when we go to different locations.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna franchise it and make loads of money,” Budworth adds with a laugh.

Joking aside, there is a genuine sense of shared enthusiasm about just how far Emergence Collective, and its underpinning egalitarian ethos, can go. “It welcomes more experimental and out-there thinking in terms of approaches,” says Budworth.

“It’s really like a play box that once it’s opened can have so many different possibilities.”

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Don’t mistake the drummer and composer’s music simply as jazz, by Katie Beswick. Photography by Sophie Barloc

Yussef Dayes

The drummer and south London jazz savant Yussef Dayes is sat in the green garden of his father’s Forest Hill home, gesturing at the unlikely bucolic surroundings. “It’s like a little wilderness,” he says, turning his face up to the sun, framed by lush trees in full summer splendour. “Even though we’re right in the mix of things, we’ve got space. It’s kind of been a pivotal part of my music – even the fact I could just play drums in my house, and I’ve got neighbors and they weren’t super bugging out and stuff like that.” He smiles, reminiscing on what sounds like an idyllic upbringing at the epicenter of a musical family and wider musical culture. After years of banging on pots and pans, playing on trombone during family jams, and, eventually, “sewing the seeds of a new culture” by hosting jazz nights at Passing Clouds in Hackney with his brothers, he has released a new album, Black Classical Music – an instrumental mediation on the cultural histories of jazz and classical music. It’s a genuinely affecting, intricate record that compels you to return to it over and over again.

“I’m reading a lot of Miles Davis and another guy called Rahsaan Roland Kirk,” Dayes tells me, “and in some of their writings they were just not sure about the word jazz. At the time it was given to them, it was kind of thrown in, you know, that was the name of that genre of music. And you just kind of got stuck in that. And Miles mentioned that, you know, classical music is allowed to be timeless. It obviously comes from a certain point in time, but it’s always seen as relevant. And actually, jazz is maybe being stuck in this time frame of like the 1960s, ’50s, ’40s, and it’s like it’s not allowed to break past that.”

What does it mean then, I ask, to call an album Black Classical Music? To eschew jazz entirely? I’m expecting, in honesty, some culture-wars type discussion here, as the focus on Blackness in the title seems to set up a gentle confrontation between a white Anglo-European cultural supremacy and a marginalised Black cultural contribution. Instead, we start a conversation about the qualities listening to different types of music

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inspire, the ways classical music, as Dayes puts it, “focusses on the instruments”; how classical genres emerging from a European lineage are studied in ways that require close repeat listening, enriching the experience for the listener and prompting a deeper engagement with the possibilities of musical expression that matures over time.

“The lineage of people that I’ve been listening to and have studied and learned from, there’s a lot of details in their music, and sometimes it just means you can listen once, and you hear something,” he says. “The next time you’re going to hear another thing, another sound or another element. And that gives the music a longer time span for me. It might not necessarily be in the moment that everybody gets it, but over a period of five or ten years and even longer than that – which is kind of what Miles was saying. A lot of classical music, sometimes it’s 400 or 500 years old, but we’re still playing that music in concerts and stuff.

And ultimately, it’s the same with Miles’s music or John Coltrane or Nina Simone. Their music is still relevant now. If anything, for me, as I’ve got older, it’s giving me solutions and ideas. It’s kind of, I don’t know, it’s like a fine wine. It’s got better with time.”

To draw attention to the classical in the context of Black musical culture is also, Dayes points out, to highlight the historical lineages of Caribbean and African sound cultures, and their

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place in European music. The album makes use of classical instruments beyond those favoured by the European culture, and draws on Dayes’ interest in instrument histories and their cultural genealogies.

“I’ve been to Senegal and stuff, and seen a lot of instruments there and how they relate to a lot of the classical instruments. It made me feel like it could be the term to call this album because I’ve been inspired by a lot of these people through the music I grew up on, and it kind of made me feel like… because if you listen to my music, you might hear jazz elements, you might hear classical elements in this album; there’s jazz, reggae elements, there’s blues elements. As genres they’re always kind of stuck in their own box. And I’ve always been someone that’s trying to be free from this box that you’re put in in the industry, or how they promote your music. You know, my dad played a lot of amazing music, man. Like I said, reggae, jazz, Nina Simone – the list is endless. I want to tap into it and I want to be part of that lineage. And I just felt that classical music was a term that spoke to the people that I’ve been inspired by, but also brings it out of that present of just being a jazz record. And, you know, I feel like even classical music, researching where the harp comes from and where the piano and all these things… I spend my time going to places like Senegal and Cameroon and stuff, and seeing

“If you listen to my music, you might hear jazz elements, you might hear classical elements; there’s jazz, reggae elements, there’s blues”

a lot of instruments that felt similar. And when you go to major places like that, you can trace back some of the instruments that are there. [The album title] is just kind of playing on those ideas.”

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ELEASING AN INSTRUMENTAL jazz-classical record in order to play with your ideas seems like the dream, and I wonder how Dayes balances any pressure he might feel to be a thing the notoriously fickle music industry might want to promote, versus doing what his passions drive him towards. He thinks for a little while and reminisces again, reminding me that his sense of music emerges from a deeper, more personal and complex space of family and community.

“I’ve got three older brothers, and my dad was a musician. My mum could sing and she was a primary school teacher.

She was also very into music and has got huge vinyl collection. So, growing up it was always loads of music in the house.

So [my brothers and I] was in a band together – do the street parties, I’ll do my primary school’s talent show – and my dad would bring in the drum kit for me and I would perform. Back then it wasn’t like I was thinking about a career. So you do it because you just love it. And my dad would push us and, you know, I’d learn the piano and all these things. But ultimately the aim was just to make music. Just a family, and like, those performances are shared with the street or shared with our little community.

“And just having some discipline and working with my brothers was important for me because I suppose as a teenager I had loads of other distractions, but I know I was like, ‘No, I’ve got to go to rehearsal.’ And because I dropped out of school as well, man. After GCSEs I kind of kept it moving and decided to go crazy with the music and work at it. I remember sometimes we’d perform in front of five people, ten people and like, you’re kind of questioning why this is not working. And then it’s perseverance. It’s been a lot of perseverance and just being on myself back to my youth because back then you do things because you enjoy it, because you love it. It’s your passion. And sometimes when it comes to business stuff, it can become difficult because of the politics that are involved. But I try to keep reminding myself, I’d be playing drums anyway.”

He leans forward and is quiet for a moment, taking a breath before he speaks again, like this is the most important thing he has to say.

“If I’m in a mad mood or something, and I put a certain record on, it can release that anxiety or tension or whatever,” he tells me. “And I’ve always felt with my music that I hope it can also give people a feeling that would maybe just take them out of a certain space, bring them into a different space. You go to Senegal and they’re playing drums. It’s got traditions; there’s things that they’re doing it for. It’s like healing and ceremonies. Or you go to Salvador and like, they’re trying to heal people and it has purpose. And I feel like I’ve always tried to just tap into that side of things. Obviously, you know, I’m a Londoner, so you have to intertwine it with the other elements.

But I’ve always been on a search to study rhythm and just learn more about it, and you know, just like, even it being based on the heartbeat, because the music I make is not metronomic.

“There’s a guy called Milford Graves and he’s an amazing drummer and human,” Dayes continues enthusiastically. “And he said your heartbeat doesn’t beat perfectly – it’s not some robot. I want my music to flow. It doesn’t always have to be this metronomic square thing that we’re kind of tied to. And I think it’s important, man, because it’s a lot of machines now. It’s man versus machine, or human versus machine – and just trying to just keep some of sense of the realness is important to me.”

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Baxter Dury The need to talk about something else, by Ollie Rankine.

Photography by Gem Harris

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Things are tense. Depending on your point of view, the shiny leather-clad interior of a plush Hammersmith arts centre might either be the last place you’d expect to find the son of a famous punk poet or exactly where you’d expect to find one – but whichever way, the stony-faced glare of Baxter Dury offers a sobering reality check. Barely off the back of a gruelling run of Euro-

pean tour dates, lasting nine days and hopping between nearly as many countries, he’s knackered. If he hasn’t wanted to talk about his father Ian Dury before, he certainly doesn’t want to talk about him now.

“I’ve spoken about this so much. In a way, it’s pretty dull,” he says, wasting little time to cut me short. “Well, it’s too dull for me to talk about just after getting off a plane from Athens, without sounding like a total cunt.” To be fair, he doesn’t. All the interrogation and fetishising over his father’s legacy has left Baxter feeling somewhat removed, exhausted of all intrigue and lazy claim to comparison. Call him a “budget nepo baby” all you like – as he has himself – but Baxter Dury is a normal citizen.

Sitting together, Baxter disgruntled and funnelling down a bag of salted Nobby’s Nuts, you may have been forgiven for asking about his formative years living with his father in the nearby West London flat just minutes from us along the riverside promenade. But this was some time ago, and though recounted extensively in his 2021 memoir Chaise Lounge, Baxter is finished exorcising memories of a chaotic past. “After doing a book I wrote these songs because I’d run out of subject matter. I’m not necessarily on a mad sort of mission to be crazy all the time. I’ve lessened some of the drama in my life.” These deeper cuts from a consequenceless upbringing have found their way into his latest album I Thought I Was Better Than You, his book’s unofficial sequel reminiscing over nihilistic posh kids, Kensington High Street robberies and mornings being driven to school by a 6ft 7in drug dealer.

Though vivid, descriptions are often brief, with anecdotal snippets liberally applied to form the album’s patchwork narrative. “Songwriting isn’t about being accurate. It’s a sort of energy you nick from things and turn into something that everyone can interpret for their own benefit. You don’t want it to be a documentary-led piece of information. Music that gets burdened by detail eventually becomes shit.” Baxter doesn’t tend to mince his words. His meandering storytelling forms cockney hieroglyphics, a line like “lick my forehead you whitebread-eating cockroach” being one of the album’s most ‘colourful’. “They’re just artefacts in the back of your mind. I don’t censor them. In a way, it’s quite lazy because I allow them to be printed. But if you think about it too much you prevent a sentence from happening. It’s quite a pretentious Beat poetry flow. You have to open it up, in a sort of buddhist way, to let them go.”

Ambiguity seems to suit Baxter, who prefers to remain tight-lipped on the gory details of his days as a troublemaker.

Rather than indulge in anything too incriminating, his attention is focused on the revolving door of characters who are introduced and reappear across the tracklist.

“He was quite an unpleasant, dominating kid. But I’d come from the countryside so I was probably a bit vulnerable,” he says, scrunching his nose and discussing a foiled heist carried out by him and his toxic schoolmate ‘Leon’ to steal a pair of sunglasses. “We got into a lot of mischief together but he always held the power. He was a bit Rasputin-esque. It took me ages to realise that I didn’t have to take these people too seriously. Although I made efforts to stop him from taking advantage of me, it’s better sometimes to stick with the dictator you know.” The story, which wound up with

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“Songwriting isn’t about being accurate. Music that gets burdened by detail eventually becomes shit” Baxter taking the heat and getting busted by the police, didn’t get a mention in the book. Maybe for good reason. “Usually when I talk about these people I have to tediously disguise their identities by changing everyone’s names. But legally speaking, songwriting is different because it’s not viewed as a very accurate account of something. It must be slightly litigious, especially when I’m telling you now that he was a total cunt.” Sorry Leon.

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HEN HE’S NOT being reacquainted with names and faces

of his past, Baxter Dury isn’t just reliving his childhood, he’s reckoning with it. Behind the tough sunken-eyed exterior lives a sensitive artist who has borne the weight of his father’s life’s work – a burden he hopes to finally lay to rest on I Thought I Was Better Than You. You’d be wrong to assume there is an​​ insurmountable expectation of punk royalty for Baxter to live up to; so much of what he does feels like an exception to the rules he may or may not have inherited. Rather than Doc Martens and pub-punk, Baxter grew up a hip hop head and is currently more interested in an artist like Frank Ocean, who he namechecks on the record, than the direct legacies of his father’s generation.

“I think it’s very refreshing, inventive music,” he says, pondering the evolving elements that moves hip-hop from one generation to the next. “In a way, it’s gone back and forth.

English appropriation of American soul music was originally what made us [British musicians] interesting. And then it sprung back the other way in the ’60s and ’70s. You can hear an English influence in artists like Frank [Ocean] and Tyler [The Creator] that goes right back to The Beatles.”

This intergenerational crossroads feels like a well-trodden path for Baxter. His new music uses looser hip hop inflections to transform his own weathered Southern English drawl, a combination which helps I Thought I Was Better Than You assume its unique identity. Rather than conform to an idea of

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what people might expect or want him to be, it’s a body of work that feels closer to Baxter than ever before. “It all becomes a real cultural mosaic of everything. That’s really interesting, but it’s not exactly hip hop anymore.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise that he resonates with the modern West Coast superstars that refuse to wear a label, with Baxter’s own experience entirely stuck on the peripheries of what others accept to be normal. “They’re just leaders in something more inventive,” he continues. “It’s kind of punk and fucked up as well as being dangerous in subject matter. I guess if you’re a Black American, you’re sociologically sponsored by a much bigger picture than provincial islanders. There’s something very deep and really incomparable. It’s got a lot of what we like about everything, but it’s actually new. I don’t really see that happening anywhere else.”

He might have a way with words, but Baxter knows his limits. “I certainly can’t rap,” he confesses with a wry snigger.

I’m pleased to get a laugh out of him. Leaning back in his chair, whilst I try to conceal my small victory in a badly masked grimace, he explains: “The whole idea is based on a melodic way to express the American accent which sounds lyrical even without music. If you try to affect that, you’re heading into knob territory. Expression is informed by experience. If you don’t have those experiences, you’re way out of your depth straightaway.”

Whereas most performers get a chance to hone their craft through a bedding-in period, Baxter was flung into scrutiny barely before his lips had touched a microphone. “I found an old press clipping recently of when The Guardian reviewed my first ever gig. It was pretty awful.” It’s not that anyone particularly slated it – it’s more that a broadsheet newspaper took the trouble of writing about it in the first place. “It was some tiny gig and I had a wall of fucking journalists in the front row,” he says, taking me back 20 years to London’s long shutdown Metro Club venue. The article describes Baxter as “a rabbit caught in headlights”, and suggests that leaning into his own idiosyncrasies to distance himself from his father to be his best hope for success.

There’s baggage that comes with unwarranted attention, particularly for an artist who’s hellbent on carving out his own image.

Though some may have wanted to see Ian Dury that evening, Baxter was never going to give it to them. Unlike the hoards of failed pop offspring before him, he’s managed to win over the naysayers and outlive any suggestion of a copycat career. “I think it’s more about symmetrical sons and daughters that get contracts with Chanel for no reason. Maybe you can question it in those situations,” he says, as the conversation turns to the new trend of the internet exposing so-called ‘nepo babies’. “But the majority of prodigal pop stars with accelerated attention applied to them just end up conceding to the reality that they’re shit. Mostly because they end up being some pale imitation of their parents. It generally only lasts as long as someone can finance it for.”

Baxter’s not keen to stick around. The airmiles have finally caught up with him. Frantic and apologising for his reluctance to give up more than I’d hoped, his parting quip feels like a good place to leave things. “An unorthodox upbringing probably makes you slightly different. I feel like I’ve always been on the fringes, but I can’t say it’s not a nice place to be.”

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Praise for Fester:

“One of the most underrated acts to grace the British musical landscape” So Young Magazine

“Mordant, unsparing and droll - brilliant band” The Sunday Times

“Utterly unhinged” The Quietus “Stabbing, urgent musicality setting the group apart from their peers” Clash

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Reviews Albums

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Albums

Róisín Murphy — Hit Parade (NINJA TUNE) One of things you hear on Róisín Murphy’s sixth album is a spoken aside.

“Come on, I’m ready now, ready like Rock Steady Freddy,” she chides. It’s unclear if she’s trying to motivate herself or someone in the studio. What is clear is that it’s a decidedly low-key opening to the follow-up to 2020’s Róisín Machine, which was her highest-charting release as a solo artist.

Then again, anyone expecting her to double down on the commercial potential of her last house-disco release obviously hasn’t been following her 30-year career. This is a woman who’s managed to repeatedly sidestep professional advancements, which must have frustrated multiple record execs. It’s a point she seems to reference on the house whomp of ‘You Knew’, on which she imperiously demands, “What do you expect me to toe the line for? / You knew exactly what you were buying.”

The accusation, for which she channels her inner Grace Jones, is perhaps pointed given that Hit Parade is released via new label Ninja Tune (she signed a one-album deal with Skint and BMG for Róisín Machine, telling the Official Charts company she “wanted to keep [her] options open”). Yet if she had toed the line, she’d have doubtless chased the huge success she experienced with ‘Sing it Back’ and ‘The Time is Now’. Released by Moloko, the band she formed in Sheffield with then-partner Mark Brydon, both tracks were inescapable in Ibiza clubs and local radio in the early ’00s. Balancing club-head approval with commercial success, they threatened to become millstones around her neck.

When the band dissolved and she launched her solo career in 2005 with Ruby Blue, she was widely regarded as a two-hit wonder who’d taken a leftfield

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swerve by teaming up with maverick electronic musician Matthew Herbert. Since then she’s confounded the doubters with a career that’s been as joyously theatrical as it is experimental.

Part of her success lies in her savvy choice of collaborator. She recently told The Guardian that working with different people means she can, “make a different record every time. If you’re in a band with four guys for 30 years, you’d be hard-pressed to continually generate new ideas.” It’s an ethos that’s served her well, with a catalogue that includes collaborations with US house producer Maurice Fulton and Sheffield-based dance producer Crooked Man. For her latest album she’s teamed up with German producer DJ Koze, with whom she previously worked on his 2018 album Knock Knock. It was put together almost entirely virtually using Ableton Live software, with ideas being sent back and forth over six years. During this period she also worked on Róisín Machine, but the tone of each release is very different. If her last long player was primary colours, bold choruses and big nights out then Hit Parade is psychedelic hues, chilled evenings, and euphoria.

It would be easy to think that Koze had the upper hand on the album given the presence of his trademark mix of soul, house and hip hop. Many of the 13 tracks are meticulously collaged out of wafting electronics, fragments of classic soul and warm drifts of cosmic funk. ‘Fader’, which includes a sample of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings’ ‘Window Shopping’, is an intricate patchwork that dominates the vocals.

There are other tracks, including ‘Can’t Replicate’, where Murphy doesn’t even enter until after the one-minute mark.

Such a view would nonetheless underestimate her indomitable will.

When she sings, “Tell me what not to do,” on the late-night vibe of ‘What Not to Do’, it feels like a mantra for how she lives her life: find out what not to do, and then do exactly that. Record execs would probably tell her not to have Beyoncélevel costume changes during her gigs, including four changes of preposterous headgear in one song alone.

The execs would most certainly have tried to dissuade her from using the truly atrocious sleeve design. It seemingly portrays her wearing an inflatable, multi-coloured bodysuit with ludicrously plumped up lips and crossed eyes. In reality, she’s waded into a hot-potato debate with a design that superimposes her face onto an AI-generated image. As someone who envisaged a career in visual art before being sidetracked by music, it confounds all sense of taste.

Horrendous as it is, the image does demonstrate that she doesn’t take herself too seriously. Its lightly psychedelic colour palette reflects the laid-back nature of much of the album and captures the playfulness she applies to her vocals.

Always someone to try on different characters – now stentorian diva; now jazz cabaret – there are times it’s manipulated almost beyond recognition.

The hip hop influenced ‘Two Ways’ sees it put through a vocoder, and then being filtered again. This willingness to experiment with her most identifiable feature is reminiscent of the way in which Tracey Thorn embraced Auto-Tune on Everything but the Girl’s latest album, Fuse, to challenge listener expectation.

Her playfulness is the perfect foil for the perfectionist detail of Koze.

Rather than try and compete with it, she muddies it with asides that most people would have edited out of the final mix.

“For fuck’s sake,” she mutters in response to an interviewer’s sexist question on the taut funk of ‘The House’. “I’ve lost it,” she announces, context-free, on the cosmic easy-listening of ‘CooCool’.

There are also playful interludes that loop back to the oddities of Moloko’s 1995 debut, Do You Like My Tight Sweater?. ‘Spacetime’ features a child’s voice chanting “time, time, time and space” until someone – presumably Murphy – joins in. ‘Crazy Ants Reprise’ revisits the outrageous, ultra-processed American accent she adopts on ‘The Universe’, complaining about sunsets and dishwashers.

These oddities make it hard to square the fact that Murphy has described the record as being, “My private place

Albums to go – I told this record my secrets.” If there is anything to be ascertained from the album, it’s that she’s in a happy place right now. Lead single ‘CooCool’ is a euphoric drift of samples and gentle synth that swaps a traditional chorus for a wash of cooing, while follow-up ‘The Universe’ has a sun-kissed psychedelia that urges the listener to, “Embrace your inner child / Go buck wild.”

If these tracks are the sound of late-night summer, chilling with a cocktail in the dying embers of the day, then she’s also spoken about the importance of keeping connected to the dancefloor. This can be heard on two of the album’s highlights, ‘Can’t Replicate’ and ‘You Knew’, which form the centre of its musical arc.

Both tracks come in at the seven-minute mark, eschewing the ironclad choruses of her last album for endless hypnotic build.

‘Can’t Replicate’, which has already been released as a limitededition white label 12”, takes its cue from Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’, mixing it with a deep house groove.

It was recently used by Chanel during Paris Fashion Week, with a typically idiosyncratic video of Murphy vibing to it in the back of a car. Despite its fashionista seal of approval, its slow build and industrial electronics – which sound like a pulsing machine – mean it’s probably too wilful for crossover success. As if to prove a point, it ends with a random vocal line, like she’s forgotten to press the ‘off ’ button.

There are other club-friendly tracks. The breezy ‘Free Will’ goes full on ’70s disco glitterball, opening with a sample of a man asking, “What does it mean to have a free will?” before she counters the idea that it exists. ‘Hurtz so Bad’ has a darker, bluesier vocal that’s offset by wonky synths.

Yet for other tracks, particularly closing number ‘Eureka’, the dancefloor is a distant pull. Reflecting on a medical issue – “I can’t even say what the surgeon will take away / And I don’t really care anyway,” she confesses – it has a soulful, chilled-out vibe. Twenty seconds before it ends a beat enters, with the promise of escape in dancing. It never arrives.

It’s a muted end to the album but it somehow manages to sum-up the emotional spectrum of its appeal: soulful, joyful, and playful. There may be no obvious hit single, despite tapping into this year’s massive house revival, with many of the tracks being slow burners.

Yet while the title is clearly ironic, it could accidentally become self-fulfilling as Hit Parade is one of her most cohesive and strong bodies of work yet. 9/10 Susan Darlington

Iceboy Violet — Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion (fixed abode) For a few years now, Salford’s White Hotel and the growing constellation of artists associated with it – Rainy Miller, Space Afrika, Blackhaine – has been the hub of one of the UK’s most exciting, unpredictable underground music scenes. UK bass, ambient music, post-punk, noise, drill; the artists from this scene dip into all of these genres and more, producing results that all sound completely individual, yet clearly share a certain genealogy. And Iceboy Violet is at the centre of almost all of it.

Their new record, Not A Dream But A Controlled Explosion, is one of the most rewarding pieces of work to emerge from the White Hotel yet. It’s just eight tracks long, including a brief, smoky intro piece, but it’s dense and disorientating, weightless synths spiralling over lumbering drum machines and dizzy vocals, adding up to a project of real substance. Iceboy Violet’s flow is the common denominator amid the fluid atmospheric shifts, at once drawled and seething, laconic and urgent. This is music that feels like it’s being whispered in your ear by a scared friend on a down-spiralling night out. It’d be oppressive if it weren’t so thrillingly assembled; kuduro-like drum scatters colliding with grime-y bass and traces of

oily, disembodied dancehall. Perhaps best of all, it feels distinctly regional, northern, in touch with the best of the North’s modernist past and gesturing towards an enticingly indeterminate future. It’s intoxicating. 8/10 Luke Cartledge

Lauren Auder — The Infinite Spine (true panther) The rise and rise of Lauren Auder has become one of the most slowly rapturous to watch in the last five years, within any discernible underground scene. Dipping her toes into non-algorithmic chamber psych and PC Music, her woozily self-guessing baroqueness cites the rich fragility of Scott Walker, fixated on Christian allegory and pagan symbolism. Across three near-faultless EPs, the deep focus has always surrounded millennial discontent. But where postmodernist Donald Barthelme once described writing as “a process of dealing with notknowing,” Lauren Auder’s debut album The Infinite Spine curls into that presupposed anxiety, scratching at its scabs and making it the subject.

A string of piano-heavy ballads leads the album, from the dizzying drawls of ‘All Needed Here’ – cogitating on her feelings of isolation – to the strangely euphoric ‘Atoms’, where her dysmorphia transforms into a dancer: “We can’t wait to see what shapes they take.” The same dysmorphia doesn’t resonate so generously on the stirring, aching highlight ‘datta920’, where she laments “the man in your life [who] told you your essence was wrong.”

Since publicly identifying as a trans woman, Auder’s output has felt freed, but never so strikingly as the Mura Masaproduced ‘The Ripple’, which blisters an urgent soul-mining, wrapped in a sensory and vicious defiance, all crunching drums and rasping snares, before the lead single

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Albums ‘we2assume2many2roles’ is breezy altrock in its shadow. The Infinite Spine is such, under constant internal and external siege that Lauren Auder’s navigations are remarkable. A hugely anticipated debut album has come good on every promise. 8/10 Tristan Gatward

thing decidedly warm and comforting to the record’s bleeding borders; to quote T.S. Eliot, it possesses “not youth nor age” but is “dreaming of both”. A genuine and confident record that could well find a significant place in Blur’s discography.

7/10 Robert Davidson

Blur — The Ballad of Darren (parlophone) With the multitude of music that Blur frontman Damon Albarn is plugged into, it’s no surprise that there are dashes of David Bowie that seep into the band’s first album in eight years.

Specifically, it’s Bowie’s triumphant art-pop synthesis as perfected on Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) that reverberates in tracks such as ‘St Charles Square’ (which is unapologetically in debt to the vocal melody of ‘Up The Hill Backwards’).

However, beyond these flashes of Bowie, the ten tracks on The Ballad of Darren mostly sound like a merging of alternate dimensions found in the extended Albarn multiverse. In the way that Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) was a full-stop to Bowie’s infamous decade of wide-ranging and unhinged musical experimentation, The Ballad of Darren feels like a dreamlike recollection of the vast sonic space that Albarn has traversed since Blur’s 2015 album The Magic Whip.

Stirring operatic opener ‘The Ballad’ is cooling to the ears, dripping with the frost of Albarn’s adopted Iceland found in his solo material, ‘Russian Strings’ has glimpses of the downtempo electronic plastic-soul banger that Gorillaz have made their own, and luscious closer ‘The Heights’ is the kind of soaring heartfelt sendoff at which Blur excel.

Despite its looseness and one or two tracks that simply pass by, there’s some-

Beverly Glenn-Copeland — The Ones Ahead (transgressive) Beverly GlennCopeland is something of a living legend: a synth pioneer whose seminal 1986 album Keyboard Fantasies has become a touchstone for contemporary alternative musicians (last year’s Keyboard Fantasies Revisited saw Arca, Blood Orange, Kelsey Lu, Bon Iver, Julia Holter and more interpret tracks from the record) despite the fact it was largely forgotten for decades after its initial release, with the 200 cassettes that formed its initial run having become a collector’s holy grail. Thanks to a reissue by Transgressive, and a 2019 documentary, Copeland has finally gained the recognition and fanbase he always deserved.

On The Ones Ahead, his first album in almost two decades and the first since the revival of Keyboard Fantasies, Copeland is as innovative as ever. Sonically more similar to his 2004 record Primal Prayer, it is his voice that is the lead instrument here, as he contemplates love, race and climate change. It’s an immensely powerful instrument too, one which he seems to have complete mastery over, and yet which conveys a profound depth of emotion throughout, particularly on the commanding ‘People of the Loon’ and the mournful ‘Lakeland Angel’. At times, the absolute sincerity of his vocals verges upon musical theatre territory; there’s something Sondheim-esque about the performances on ‘Harbour (Song for Elizabeth)’, dedicated to his wife, and the call and response refrains of ‘Stand Anthem’, an

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appeal for collective environmental action, but Copeland’s earnestness feels genuine rather than trite.

As with Keyboard Fantasies, The Ones Ahead creates a richly textured sonic world which envelopes the listener from beginning to end. Part of the album was recorded live from the floor and you can feel the energy of Copeland and his touring band Indigo Rising playing together in real time. On opening track ‘Africa Calling’, a rapturously joyful ode to his West African heritage and potentially his most upbeat song yet, he lets percussion take centre stage amid the many layers of vocal and synths. Elsewhere on ‘Prince Caspian’s Dream’, the instrumentation is stripped back as Copeland sings, in a melancholic, almost operatic vocal: “Love is the heart of life, this I know.” It’s a line which sums up the mood of The Ones Ahead, which for all its theatricality and intensity is ultimately rooted firmly in reality, and in tenderness.

7/10 Jessica Wrigglesworth

Rutger Hauser — Good Sleep (scatter archive) Good Sleep by Rutger Hauser is a folk record from a totally other place. It is far easier to believe that it’s a lost album of the 1970s, the magnum opus of an underground CAN-Cluster-Tangerine Dreamadjacent krautrock group mangling with synthesisers for the first time, than the pensive new record by a band operating in south London today.

Good Sleep is a patient and spacious work, wherein improvised textures and otherworldly sounds glacially wrap themselves around John Harries’ drumming or Lisa Busby’s disembodied vocals. It’s a cryptic album; one that simultaneously evokes lonely cityscapes and dense countryside landscapes with its wilting and swirling soundscapes, and one that rewards repeat listens.

Albums Sonically, the influences on this record are all over the shop. The steady motorik drumming of ‘A Goodbye (In Sunlight)’ is pure NEU!, the hauntological pop of the title track recalls Broadcast, and the discordant soundscape of cello, synths and electronic thudding on ‘Signs in My Hand’ recall the worlds of Twin Peaks: The Return or Mulholland Drive more than anything else.

Meanwhile, Busby’s vocals, especially on the icy ‘Sue’ and the singular ‘Martins Hunting…’, channel folk songs from all over the world, from Ireland to Bulgaria and beyond.

Good Sleep is an excellent LP that crash lands in the uncanny valley; a dark ambient album with a full band, or perhaps a post-punk record that’s been lost in the woods for so goddamn long it’s forgotten its own name. The album is a real mystery – one that’s definitely worth unravelling. 7/10 Cal Cashin

Osees — Intercepted Message (in the red) How many lives are allowed for a band? How many reincarnations may it have? Osees have had six different names before this latest one over the course of their 26-year lifetime. They moved up and down California’s Highway 1, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, playing everything from freak folk to psychedelic music, garage rock to punk hardcore. Prolific, to put it mildly, John Dwyer has consistently carried his music across decades and lineup changes, discovering new nuances to his diversified sound and keeping busy during the pandemic with countless new on-the-spot projects.

Intercepted Message, the new Osees album, isn’t a Covid record though – that was last year’s A Foul Form. It is, in Dwyer’s own words, “a pop record for tired times.” The poem written by the song-

writer to introduce the album is no doubt the best part of the whole shebang: “Early grade garage pop meets proto-synth punk suicide-repellant,” it explains. “From the get-go to the finale … A distant crackling transmission of ’80s synth last-dance-ofthe-night tune for your lost loves… Suffering from Politic [sic] amnesia? Bored of AI-generated pop slop? Then this one is for you, our friends”. And it’s a pity that these bombastic promises were not kept in the music. However tight and uptempo they may be, in fact, the 12 tracks sound tired and knackered almost from the beginning. Tired times indeed. 5/10 Guia Cortassa

Paris Texas — MID AIR (paris texas llc) Paris Texas are a whirlwind. Live instruments and beat loops are whipped into infectious storms of mischief, and core members Louis Pastel and Felix somehow hold it suspended in perfect alignment.

Sure, there’s an ominous threat of collapse lurking on the periphery, and ever more ominous sounds deep in the mix, but they manage to keep MID AIR’s elements in a gleeful, shifting balance.

The duo say they aim for the ephemeral, trying to document how out of place and time they felt in terms of taste amongst peers. The resulting music rolls and writhes like the feverish moshpits it’s bound to soundtrack. It’s loaded with whip-smart wordplay and tight hooks shouted over buzzsaw basslines, fuzzy power chords and menacing synths, like Brockhampton backed by Nine Inch Nails.

Which is not to say it’s all evil and disorderly. ‘Closed Caption’ is fleetingly beautiful before descending into a hornbacked, blown-out groove and ‘Ain’t No High’ is more indebted to ’90s emo than anything mentioned so far. The unbridled creativity that Pastel and Felix employ

across MID AIR is intoxicating, with occasional detours into psych, funk or even R&B with Teezo’s silky feature on ‘Full English’. When ‘NüWhip’ leads slickly into single ‘PANIC!!!’, it betrays the ambition, talent and intelligence hidden under the carefree fun they’re carefully curating.

It’s an assured debut full-length, committing to weird impulses and catchy choruses in equal measure, and even at 16 tracks it never feels unwieldy. Paris Texas make chaos look inviting – they’re the eye of one very exciting storm. 8/10 Jake Crossland

Deeper — Careful! (sub pop) By this stage in post-punk’s history – one, lest we forget, whose origin is now closer to the outbreak of the Second World War than the present day – there’s a feeling that such a well-codified genre has few surprises left to spring. Chicago quartet Deeper’s third album and Sub Pop debut goes a long way to confirming those suspicions: so expertly steeped is Careful! in the standard-issue post-punk playbook of wiry (and Wire-y) guitar timbres, claustrophobic synths, yelped/nasal/muttered vocals and taut skeletal rhythm sections that the idiom feels like its leading the band, not the other way round. That’s not to say, though, that Careful! isn’t also a terrifically moreish, ultra-listenable rendition of the form; indeed, despite the attendant and unavoidable dourness, there’s a strange comfort to be derived from hearing those tried-andtested tropes executed with such stylistically loyal precision, like watching a perfectly directed heist movie in which knowledge of the twist is no impediment to enjoyment of the journey. From that perspective, Careful! reveals Deeper as master craftsmen, and their creations as exquisite feats of construction. In many

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Albums genres, that wouldn’t be enough; in one as stringently charted as this, though, it makes Careful! a worthy addition to a long canon. 7/10 Sam Walton

Nihiloxica — Source of Denial (crammed discs) Nihiloxica are one of the most formidable, dynamite groups operating in the world today, and with Source of Denial they perhaps have a record that matches up to their intoxicating and gnostic live shows. A collaborative project between British producers Spooky-J and PQ and Ugandan drumming ensemble Nilotika, they’re now seven years into fleshing out their ravenous take on dance music.

Their sound is characterised by the obnoxious use of synthesisers, a dash of textural luminosity from native Ugandan instruments like the Ngalabi, and the constant propulsion of an array of drums – a real novel fusion, that, especially on Source of Denial, works an absolute treat.

The group’s first post-pandemic record is shaped by the ever-worsening world unto which it was born, and is coloured particularly by the group’s toils in procuring a UK visa in 2022. Samples of hold music, automated voicemails and telephones left unanswered serve as an alienating soundscape, another texture for the band’s brilliant brew.

The high point comes around the middle of the record. The skit ‘Interrogation/Welcome’ is made up of a distorted automated phone message, which transitions boldly into the excellent title track ‘Source of Denial’, a battle-ready headbanger that lands somewhere between the reckless abandon of classic dubstep and a hard-shredding metalocalypse.

Opener ‘Kudistro’ is a real treat, too, as a malfunctioning ’80s house synth battles for prominence with a

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range of percussion and vocal samples, and ‘Banganga’ is a frenetic number that demonstrates the awesome power of the African drums/Western dance music fusion. Source of Denial sees the band refine what made debut Kaloli stand out; throughout, Nihiloxica are simply a force of nature. 9/10 Cal Cashin

Fat Tony & Taydex — I Will Make A Baby In This Damn Economy (carpark) There’s a real sense of restlessness on this new record from Houston rapper Fat Tony and producer Taydex. As the title implies, Tony is on defiant form here, his lyrics portraying him as a man determined to make something good for himself and his family regardless of the difficulty of contemporary American life.

His delivery is perky and energetic, his words characterised by both bravado and tenderness, peppered with satisfyingly kitschy one-liners (“You might think that I’m Keanu how I can’t slow down” [‘Kickin’ In’]; “Feeling sexier than ever / I was Poe like Allen Edgar til I had to step it up another level” [‘Best Believe’]) as Taydex’s arrangements fidget and flutter around him.

Yet for all the exuberance and resolve Fat Tony and Taydex displays throughout, the best moments of I Will Make A Baby In This Damn Economy are its subtlest; the points at which they both allow one another a little more room to breathe. ‘Don’t Tap In / Contusion’, a collaboration with noise artist B L A C K I E, drops the pace a little, allowing shadowy atmospherics and stalking beats to seep through the cracks; ‘Jasper, TX’, an appropriately measured, mordaunt elegy for the victims of racial violence set to a sensitive, painterly instrumental.

Although this is never less than a compelling, explorative and genuinely fun

record, it can sometimes feel so buoyant with ideas and ebullience that it won’t stay still long enough for the listener to properly grab hold of it; when it does intermittently pause for breath, there are glimmers of something really special here. 6/10 Luke Cartledge

Genesis Owusu — STRUGGLER (ourness) Weirdo hip hop is having a bit of a moment right now. Over the past few years the rap scene appears to have well and truly chucked the rulebook in the bin. We’ve got Lil Yachty making psychedelic albums, JPEGMAFIA corrupting sound collages and Bob Vylan masterfully suffocating grime with straight up hardcore punk.

Perhaps more than any of these acts though, the true flag bearer for the (entirely imagined) movement is Genesis Owusu. 2021’s Smiling With No Teeth brought oddness in the form of live synthesisers and a skewed pop attitude that exploded with ideas, showing us that sometimes the most bizarre thing in the world is a piece of good old fashioned pop music.

STRUGGLER continues in much the same vein. His second album sees Owusu effortlessly delve into the weird and wonderful sounds of pop, rock and funk, uninhabited by the constraints of what should and shouldn’t be done within the genre.

Opener ‘Leaving the Light’ sets the pace early doors, letting the listener know that the record is going to be a relentless run through. The track itself is an arpeggiated synth-pop bop, the type of music tailor made for speed running through your favourite 16-bit platformer to the acclaim of everyone and no one all at once.

This relentless energy runs through the entirety of the album. While

Albums with lesser artists this pace could feel extremely one-note, Owusu manages to make the whole experience feel thrilling, creating a sort of aural version of running down a hill on a sweltering summer’s day.

Once the momentum builds up, there’s no way of stopping, but when the weather is this good, who cares?

Although there are a few slow jams (the late-hours groove of ‘See Ya There’ in particular), on the whole STRUGGLER refuses to settle down, and is all the better for it. This drive, combined with the almost exclusive use of live instrumentation, means that the album becomes extremely dedicated to the lost art of the chorus. At times Owusu feels almost desperate to ruin the surprise of an unexpected left turn, giddy to the point of mania to get through the verses so that the chorus can reveal itself in all its bombastic glory. This palpable excitement is infectious, carrying the listener through the album’s weaker moments with the minimum of fuss.

While he’s by no means the first hip hop artist to use a ‘real’ band, something about the overall sound of analogue instruments gives the album a distinctly human feel, one more in common with angular ’00s indie than modern day hip hop. ‘Old Man’ has more than a bit of peak Bloc Party running through its blood, while ‘Tied Up’ feels like the distant cousin of early day Metronomy and Parliament: offbeat, funky, but strangely accessible.

The track’s chunky, warped strut and four to the floor drum claps dare the listener to bust a move, in the process proving that all of the best pop music can be improved by a good old fashioned bassline.

Strangely for a record released in the streaming age, STRUGGLER’s best tracks are shoved towards the back end. In many ways this only accentuates the idea that Owusu is playing by his own rules. ‘That’s Life (a swamp)’ and ‘Stay Blessed’ are the real highlights here. Both tracks perfectly demonstrate the duality of his sound. The former’s groove goes on and on deep into the night without a care in the world, while the latter’s post-punk bass jolts us back into the present, showing that when the

time is right, the man knows when to pull the trigger.

By embracing pop structure and early-2000s indie, STRUGGLER cements Genesis Owusu right at the top of the weirdo hip hop pack. A uniquely assertive voice in a scene that regularly crumbles under the weight of its own history. 8/10 Jack Doherty

Susanna — Baudelaire & Orchestra (susannasonata) Brimming with ghostly motifs, Norwegian artist Susanna has written a towering record exploring the French poet Charles Baudelaire’s lush and strange worlds. On the final opus of her Baudelaire-themed trilogy, she conjures a grandiose tapestry of horror entwining the poet’s profound words (“Burial: Above your cursed head you will hear, wolves with their long lamenting howls, night after night, throughout the year”) with the majestic arrangements of KORK orchestra. Unlike its functional title, the album itself is not fully closed for audience interpretation and discovery.

The orchestral massiveness of Baudelaire & Orchestra complements the melancholy in Susanna’s voice and intensifies the spectre of death that looms all over the album. Although occasionally the grandeur of strings occupies a little too much space, this frequently serves to benefit the storytelling. Against all this, Susanna’s penchant for tape loops and left-field abstraction doesn’t go unnoticed. While ‘Heavy Sleep’ and ‘Rewind’ disrupt the symphonic bouquet with tape distortion, voice and bowed strings, standalone interludes ‘The Ghost’, ‘Alchemy of Suffering’ and ‘Elevation’ unfurl smaller fragments of dissonance.

Compared to the rest of the trilogy, Baudelaire & Orchestra is arguably

Susanna’s most complex and challenging collaboration, emphasising her schmaltzy vocals through sung harmonies and portamento-style strings. It feels less intimate than the rest of the trilogy, but the scale of the work remains impressive.

7/10 Shrey Kathuria

Bonnie “Prince” Billy — Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You (domino) Like its title suggests, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s new record Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You doesn’t shy away from nihilism; we encounter a dangerously honest window into the tormented mind.

However, unlike more typically stylised descriptions of neuroticism which allow you to distance yourself from the writer, each lyric on this album is genuinely frightening precisely because it so accurately mimics those scary ideas and thoughts that haunt most of us when we feel vulnerable. This can be heard via the beautifully subtle tone of Billy’s voice on the album’s opener ‘Like It Or Not’, which expresses in a ‘let’s not fuck about’ way that, “everyone dies in the end so there’s nothing to hide.”

However, if you’re like me and you also struggle to listen to too much Townes Van Zandt without thinking you’ve magically turned into a lonesome and desolate cowboy (for reference, I work in Shoreditch and am currently toying with a Pret subscription), don’t be swayed by my former remarks: Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You is also remarkably bright.

Third track ‘Bananas’, also accompanied by a beautiful, Michael Hurley-esque stop motion video, is about smooching the said fruit. There’s also a lovely homage to how splendid oak trees are in ‘Willow, Pine And Oak’, as well as a wonderful message in ‘Crazy Blue Bells’ which attends to the belief that it is precisely struggle itself

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Albums which unites us all: “Someday, when there’s time to sing, a few of us may gather and raise a voice to anything because everything matters.”

This record stands out because of its incredible thematic range. Such a well-rounded piece of work could only have been made by Bonnie “Prince” Billy himself, who has clearly lived life through his own fascinating, emotionally charged subjectivity. 8/10 Leo Lawton

MMYYKK — The Midst of Things (self-released) Written in the shadow of both the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, The Midst of Things translates complex ideas into captivating and welcome takes on occasionally inaccessible genres. Finding solace in soul and self-reflection, MMYYKK uses his burgeoning sound as therapy to benefit both the community and himself.

The title track sets an irresistible groove against a mesmerising falsetto, while concisely picking apart the 2020 racial reckoning of hometown Minneapolis, the response and its lasting effects.

Lyrically, he masterfully bridges the personal and universal without losing its impact in either circle. Elsewhere, late album groove ‘Sheesh’ smuggles challenging rhythms and rich verses under a gauzy disguise of tightly-knit hooks and a killer feature from Ricki Monique.

The album takes a loose lap of space jazz, rap and neo-soul, and while it doesn’t necessarily lean into its creator’s lyrical depths and musical talents as movingly or efficiently across all of its ten tracks, it still pulls out enough textural flourishes and pop nous to keep a casual listener onboard until the translucent hypnotism of brilliant closer ‘Get Free’.

MMYYKK’s talent effortlessly bridges the gap between himself and the

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wider world – he’s laying the foundations for something quite exciting. 7/10 Jake Crossland

Delmer Darion — Tall Vision-of-theVoyage (practise) For London production duo Delmer Darion, the devil is in the detail. This was especially true on their 2020 debut Morning Pageants, whose intricate, mesh-like soundscapes meditated explicitly on the history of Satan himself. Yet it’s not just a clumsy metaphor: the sheer density and minutiae of their music is genuinely arresting, from the subtlest of vinyl crackles coating their kicks like peach fuzz to the Low-esque singes of distortion that frame their towering layers of synth. This attentive richness is what makes Morning Pageants such a striking record; it’s also the further development of that quality that makes their new album, Tall Visionof-the-Voyage, so powerful.

Both more ambitious and more meticulous than its predecessor, Tall Vision-of-the-Voyage features some impressive collaborations. Most notably, Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and The Rings of Power actor Morfydd Clark provide the record’s entire second half with its thematic focal point: a four-part narration of the sinking of the HMY Iolaire in Stornoway harbour in 1919.

Clark’s delivery is expertly pitched, committed enough to lend the piece some theatrical weight without overreaching into thespy excess, and the grand sweep of the story – its reflection on the terrible power of the elements – suits the gravitas that Delmer Darion are able to wring from their music.

Inevitably, it’s the four-part suite featuring the film star which will grab the most headlines, but the shorter tracks of the record’s first half are more than

worthy of close listening too. Bingo Fury lends his deadpan croon to the disarming sway of ‘Sunbeam 1000hp’; Kiran Leonard infuses the loping ‘Keohane’s Rhyme’ with inventive melody and gently unfolding guitars. Anna B Savage and Slaughter Beach, Dog also make welcome appearances, on ‘White Dawn Fog’ and ‘Half Mile Down’ respectively.

Tall Vision-of-the-Voyage is another step forward for Delmer Darion, their sound becoming both richer and more specific than ever before. Where they will take this project next is anyone’s guess. 8/10 Justin Nueve

Fran Lobo — Burning It Feels Like (heavenly) There’s no shortage of commitment on Burning It Feels Like, the Heavenly Records debut for London songwriter and music educator Fran Lobo. The breadth of genres alone is impressive: ‘See Again’ is a big-hearted piano song, its arcing melismas and syrupy hooks evoking an early-’00s R&B ballad; the spare vocal minimalism of Tirzah is a clear influence on ‘Slowly’ (perhaps unsurprising thanks to their mutual collaboration with Coby Sey); the title track shimmies from Wild Beastslike sultriness to cinematic grace with ease, before segueing into the confrontational electro-skronk of ‘Armour’.

As a singer, Lobo is bold and declarative; although it may occasionally stray a little too close to over-theatrical territory for some, those instances are rare, and most of the time her performance is all the more powerful for the force she puts behind it. When all the elements come together – like on album highlight ‘Push And Pull’ – this sounds like the work of an artist utterly at ease with herself, finding genuine release through creative expression. For that

Albums alone – and there are plenty of other qualities to appreciate here too – it’s an uplifting listen. 7/10 Luke Cartledge

Myst Milano — Beyond The Uncanny Valley (halocline trance / phantom limb) Many music scholars and fans alike possess the belief that the dancefloor represents a kind of sacred zone, able to transcend typical dogmatic social restrictions held and preserved by oppressive cultures. Such a belief might also be held

by Toronto-based rapper, DJ and producer Myst Milano, whose second record Beyond The Uncanny Valley uses dance culture as a vehicle to challenge the impurity of Black diaspora on the one hand and to explore their concerns with the cybernetic world on the other. Milano is concerned with the world becoming hyperreal – this idea that our lives are experienced so heavily through the technological world that we no longer feel a tangible relationship with the physical one. In the record’s press materials, they asks: “Who are we when we become perfect imitations of what the world wants instead of who we really are, which is imperfect, flawed and a little uncanny, anyway?”

On Beyond The Uncanny Valley, a sharp political focus fills the crosshairs of a type of music which often sounds like the soundtrack to someone’s particularly heavy weekend clubbing. The lyrical focus of this album points, at times, to smacking “chubby” asses, signing “boobies” and “snake cocks” (no idea what they are…).

At those points, I may struggle to identify where all of the political theory mentioned in the release notes comes into the music itself; but regardless, this album is full to the brim of absolute bangers, from start to finish. As opening track ‘Thirteen’ fittingly declares, “This is some real shit that you can’t ignore.” 8/10 Leo Lawton

Andrew Hung — Deliverance (lex) You’re reading Loud And Quiet, so you probably don’t need anyone to tell you who Andrew Hung is. You know the guy was one half of Fuck Buttons, and you know that he wrote that song for the Olympics. All you want to know is if his new record is good or not.

Cutting to the chase, Deliverance is something of a mixed bag. With its themes of belonging, togetherness and finally fitting in, it’s certainly a lot more confessional than any of Hung’s solo work, showcasing a more optimistic-sounding side of a guy most people still associate with fingernails-down-a-blackboard-style noise. Yet, the strengths also end up being its weaknesses. It’s a distinctly earthbound experience compared to previous records; it’s only really when we get to the closer ‘Love Is’ that we get a little taste of otherworldly Tangerine Dream-style transcendence.

That’s not to say Deliverance is a bad record. Far from it. There’s enough melody and pulsating sonic textures on here to please anybody. Somehow, it comes across as transitional; not quite embracing glitterball pop elements but not going fall ball experimental weirdness, either. As a result, it ends up feeling a bit non-committal overall. Which is kind of ironic, considering what Hung was going for with the lyrics. 6/10 Dominic Haley

Jessy Lanza — Love Hallucination (hyperdub) Love Hallucination finds Canadian producer Jessy Lanza at the

top of her game, expertly infusing slick dance anthems with her own uniquely introspective lyricism. From endorphinloaded house beats in ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’, UKG on ‘Midnight Ontario’ and razor-sharp ’80s samples sprinkled throughout, the record manages to sound both party-ready and stuck in its own head. There’s ‘Don’t Cry On My Pillow’, a ruthless brush-off to a clingy lover, and ‘I Hate Myself ’, which abandons pop’s usual glittering self-confidence for unvarnished self-loathing, even sampling a cough for emphasis. On ‘Marathon’ Lanza warns prospective suitors she’ll climax in her own time, refusing to march to anyone’s rhythm but her own – perhaps Love Hallucination’s main takeaway. Vocally, Lanza has been likened to Aaliyah, her sugary register hinting at darker emotions lurking beneath – but as a producer she’s equally heir to Timbaland, evidenced by ‘Casino Niagara’, in which ethereal vocals intertwine with offkilter, futuristic beats. But if her voice is spectral, the songs are all flesh and blood, focusing on topics from agoraphobia to sexual fulfilment. Love Hallucination marks a watershed moment for Lanza, proof of the magic that’s possible when you filter out external noise and let your instincts steer the ship. 8/10 Orla Foster

Mahalia — IRL (atlantic) This would be Mahalia’s difficult second album if only she’d ever made anything look difficult before. Her rise to the top tier of UK R&B has been one marked by an almost unnerving confidence, as she’s taken influences she’s too young to remember first time around – Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu – and melded them into her own assured, thoughtful and modern sound, as showcased on 2019’s debut album, Love and Compromise.

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Albums This follow-up comes with everything you’d expect from a newly-minted pop star’s second record; high production values, an all-star supporting cast and promises from the artist herself that this is a rawer and more intimate portrait than she’s painted before. In truth, though, it feels like more of the same, with hugehitting summer singles like ‘Cheat’ and the maddeningly catchy ‘Terms and Conditions’ flanked by less striking material that can feel like much of a muchness.

High-profile guest turns by the likes of Stormzy and Kojey Radical help to break things up, but there are otherwise few surprises on IRL; if you liked Love and Compromise, you’ll find yourself wellcatered for. 6/10 Joe Goggins

Yussef Dayes — Black Classical Music (brownswood / cashmere thoughts / warners) Yussef Dayes has done his time. Be it with criticallyacclaimed yet short-lived duo Yussef Kamaal, or collaborating alongside Tom Misch for (also critically-acclaimed) breakthrough What Kinda Music, it feels somewhat surprising to finally see a Dayes solo album arrive in 2023.

Black Classical Music is a measured, polished collection from the drummer and producer, supported by a cast of carefully-curated features.

The production is predictably impeccable, polished and slick without ever losing a sense of who’s playing. There are times where the space in recordings makes it sound as if it were being performed in a concert hall, which feels only fitting for an album titled Black Classical Music. Cribbing Miles Davis’ genre moniker, Dayes actively rejects the label of jazz and pushes further: throughout its 19 tracks, it variously approaches ’70s funk, reggae and afrobeat, in a canon as

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reflective of Black music more broadly as Dayes’ individual position in it.

And as mentioned, he now has quite the resume: he’s worked with Wizkid, Kali Uchis and Kehlani, to name just a few, and goes on to add Masego, Chronixx and more across the course of the album. Perhaps most important of all collaborators is his three-year-old daughter who features early on album highlight ‘The Light’. Dayes is out to educate, reinterpreting the past and gesturing towards a mesmerising future, for the benefit of both his young family and culture at large.

Black Classical Music: another masterpiece from a man with a discography full of them. 8/10 Jake Crossland

Locate S,1 — Wicked Jaw (captured tracks) Classic pop songwriting never goes out of fashion, but between The Lemon Twigs’ Everything Harmony, Rozi Plain’s Prize and now this handsome third album from Locate S,1, it may be enjoying something of a renaissance in 2023.

Wicked Jaw is a sprawling effort from Athens, Georgia-based Christina Schneider, one that tries on all manner of stylistic hats but is rooted at its core in hooks, melody and a breezy lightness of touch.

Lead single ‘You Were Right About One Thing’ opens the album and sets the tone, its rich melodies and noodling guitar indebted to Christine McVie but also masking some compositional intricacy in the clever interaction between the guitars and bass. Schneider does this often, crafting songs that reveal more and more of themselves on repeat listen; the gorgeous ‘Danielle’ might be the standout, but there’s off-kilter pop magic on the synthy ‘Heart Attack’, too, while the improvisational ‘Daffodil’ is perhaps the most direct evidence that she’s not afraid to wade into experimental territory.

That she does all of this while processing profound trauma – writing the songs as an “expression valve” while she went through therapy for childhood sexual abuse – makes Wicked Jaw all the more remarkable. 8/10 Joe Goggins

Shamir — Homo Anxietatem (kill rock stars) Homo Anxietatem opens with a rug pull and a track that could have been lifted straight from a ’90s drive time radio rotation. It’s a bold move, even given Shamir’s prolific, experimental approach to getting his music out into the world.

The track in question, ‘Oversized Sweater’ is an exercise in time travel with its jangling guitar taking us back to an era where the internet was dial-up and TV was Friends; there’s also a similar trick a little later with ‘The Beginning’ and its big, Deep Blue Something ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ energy.

But skim through Shamir’s back catalogue and you’re also going to hear Prince, Nine Inch Nails, Yeasayer and a whole world of effervescent pop, experimental R&B and lo-fi playfulness. From hip hop to country, industrial to avant garde, he’s blurred edges since his 2015 album, Ratchet, emerged as an earnest but flamboyant pop exercise in selfdiscovery. And in the fast-growing list of releases since, it still feels like the best reference point for his multifaceted, genre-blurring output as he addresses bi-polar disorder, racist violence and the queer Black experience with fluttering reinvention.

Here, the heavier, industrial-leaning sound of 2022’s Heterosexuality has gone and so has (much of) the impulse for sweeping creative overhaul that has characterized the last eight years. Instead of another full reset, Homo Anxietatem feels closer to 2020’s self-titled Shamir in its

Albums approach with poppy slacker rock (‘Appetizer), stripped back folk (‘Calloused’) and sliding blues (‘The Devil Said the Blues is All I Know’) keeping things esoteric enough to satisfy this accidental pop star. 6/10 Reef Younis

Anjimile — The King (4ad) Anjimile’s second record The King takes an unflinching look at the ugly face of America: not the land of self-actualisation or healing, but somewhere that poses constant risk to Black and trans people. It’s a much darker outlook than on his first album Giver Taker which, despite having been written during the gruelling ordeal of rehab, gravitated towards healing and personal growth. It also celebrated his Malawian heritage, both musically and through the Chichewa phrases threaded into the lyrics. This time around, identity is a curse, and suffering inevitable.

“I’m allowed to fall apart,” he contends in ‘Genesis’, whose twinkling harpsichord-like melodies add a bittersweet pathos. In ‘Anybody’ he warns of the futility of trying to outrun pain: “If you don’t find your wound, your wound will find you.” Parenthood and prayer are recurring motifs, neither offering any comfort: “My mother put her words down my throat / My mother took my air”. The representation of parents as an oppressive, authoritarian force echoes the staggering abuses of power being played out in America over and over again.

Anjimile might take cues from early-2000s songwriters like Iron & Wine and Sufjan Stevens, his songs pared down to fingerpicked guitar and tremulous vocals, but the effect is less about generating intimacy than simply making sure his message cuts through. He isn’t here to share cosy fireside stories, but to bear witness to real suffering. Of all the tracks

here, ‘Animal’ is the most devastating: a chilling analysis of police brutality, Black grief and white indifference, as he recounts being sickened to the stomach overhearing a callous remark from a “white liberal piece of shit”.

The King is a record of cold, hard truths, and with so much of the material coming together in the summer of 2020, how could it be otherwise? Final tracks ‘Pray’ and ‘The Right’ take on an increasingly spiritual slant, but this feels more like a cry of desperation than any declaration of faith. Anjimile grew up feeling alienated by his strict Presbyterian upbringing, and the implication is that it won’t save him now. When a heavenlysounding choir appears to close out the album, their song lands less like a hymn, more a harbinger of worse to come. 7/10 Orla Foster

Slowdive — Everything Is Alive (dead oceans) Everything Is Alive may only be Slowdive’s fifth album in 30 years – and their second since reforming in 2014 – but it feels for all the world like a statement of shoegaze lore in the lineage of the many brilliant deviations and dreampop subgenres that have ensued since Creation released Just For A Day in 1991.

It’s another new bible for future bands to deviate from.

Conceived as a departure from Slowdive’s reverb-drenched sound, the minimal electronic undertow of Everything Is Alive propels album opener ‘Shanty’ into club dystopia before Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead’s eddying vocals swing in and out like an orbital lighthouse searchlight. There’s no ringing the nostalgia bell: ‘Alife’ is all magisterial and laserguided melodies contained at the edges by Simon Scott’s urging drums, the ruminations on ‘Andalucia Plays’ feel as outwardly

romantic as anything on their discography, whilst ‘Chained to a Cloud’ finds their perfect allegory in the netherworld between transience and permanence.

Every note Slowdive hits is water from the same lake as Souvlaki and Pygmalion; the reflections on the surface differ as the world around them changes, but the songs ripple with as much steady profoundness – and now, optimism – as anything that’s come before. 8/10 Tristan Gatward

Oxbow — Love’s Holiday (ipecac) As you’d expect for a band who recently celebrated 30 years of existence, a lot has been said about Oxbow. They’ve been described as dark, abrasive, loud, experimental, chaotic and irreverent. Sometimes, they’ve even been called funny.

However, even after eight full-lengths and thousands of hours of recorded music, Love’s Holiday adds a new adjective to their lexicon: ‘romantic’.

It’s not that Oxbow haven’t explored matters of the heart in the past. 1997’s Serenade in Red, was hailed for its intense noise and themes of inverted masculinity, but they still managed to include the weirdly sticky-sounding sex jam ‘Gal’.

On Love’s Holiday, though, Oxbow goes all in on the concept of love, embracing it, in all of its beautiful, heart-wrenching and tragic aspects, complete with a weird nautical theme running throughout.

Stripping back the distortion and mostly playing it straight with the song structure, this record also flips the script by swerving the crushing discordia that usually fills up the band’s records. For that reason. Love’s Holiday isn’t going to please everyone. If you got into Oxbow for the buzzsaw noise and free jazz freakouts, then a record of weird Aerosmith-style ballads isn’t going to be

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Albums your cup of tea, and that’s fine. However, as evidence that it’s possible to be in a creative endeavour and still not reach the horizon, it’s undeniable. It’s hard not to find that at least a little bit inspiring, right? 7/10 Dominic Haley

Palehound — Eye On The Bat (polyvinyl) Either/or decisions constantly shape our stories. Would you go back to see how your life turned out if you made a different choice at that key moment that still keeps you awake?

El Kempner, aka Palehound, says no on ‘Independence Day’, a song which captures the second guessing that can seep into even the most sensible of breakups. “Even if I could, it would kill me to look back / No I don’t wanna see the other path,” they sing, wondering what the story would have looked like if they just went to a neighbour’s party instead of facing the breakup. Or more bleakly, what would have happened if a deer had killed them both in a car crash just before.

Eye on the Bat is full of vivid images and nuanced reflections following the end of this relationship. It acts as a sister record to 2019’s Black Friday, where this new love blossomed. Like that record, there is optimism hidden by doubt. And despite the heaviness, this might be Palehound’s sharpest collection of songs yet. Spritely guitar licks and sparkling production lift even the most downer moments. Take ‘The Clutch’, where a killer guitar solo makes getting angry at your ex sound quite fun.

On the self-produced ‘U Want It U Got It’, garbled backing vocals and a cartoonish drum machine take the sting out of what are painful admissions of feeling used. In contrast, the record’s highlight ‘My Evil’ strips away the silliness for a moment. Kempner admits that

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the stress of falling out of love created a side of them they aren’t proud of. With its stark vulnerability, the record is all the more impactful. 7/10 Skye Butchard

Normal Nada The Krakmaxter — Tribal Progressive Heavy Metal (nyege nyege tapes) Even in the eccentric and forward-thinking Portuguese electronic underground, Normal Nada stands out. His freaky mutations of West African kuduro and batida throw rules out the DJ booth, and they’re more exciting for it. Despite the fact that he’s been creating havoc for nearly a decade, now is the first time we’ve been treated to a full album. Released on Ugandan label Nyege Nyege Tapes, who specialise in freeform outsider music, Tribal Progressive Heavy Metal is one of the wildest releases you’ll hear all year.

Jarring inversions of kuduro and tarraxinha are made even more chaotic with electronic drones and relentless polyrhythms. Take the club-ready ‘Batida Hard Trance 2’ – a dizzying track that spends its final minute with a blearing synth raging through the speakers like we’ve set off the fire alarm with body heat.

The fusion of ambient and intense synth stabs on ‘Batida 2 Dance’ gives the most unhinged Argentinian baile funk competition with its profane approach to mixing.

It’s an uncompromising sound, and Normal Nada knows it. That’s part of the joy. ‘Alive’ is as cacophonous and euphoric as the record gets, with its relentlessly looped samples and machine gun snare rolls, all which sound like the machinery is being pushed past breaking point. Oddly, the track fizzles out without much fanfare.

Here and throughout, the record’s sketchbook approach is a double-edged sword. Without it, you wouldn’t have such a gloriously mad sound. But when the ear

fatigue sets in, you wish for more structure. Still, Normal Nada proves he can do introspective. On the closer, he delivers a stunning off-world tarraxinha cut that slows the tempo to a quiet meditation. It’s a cooling balm after 30 minutes of heat.

6/10 Skye Butchard

Len — Legholand (be83) The news of the UK rap scene’s death is, as always, greatly exaggerated – while it’s true there’s a big commercial gap between powerhouses like Little Simz, Stormzy and Dave and the rest of the scene, there’s a notably steady flow of innovative sounds that are injecting fresh life into the genre. The sultry jazz-tinged meander of Knucks’ 2022 album ALPHA PLACE sounded like UK rap suffocated by too many insufferable London summer nights; Wesley Joseph’s avant-garde R&B is a moonlit sound that floats into serenely surreal dimensions, and the full musical debut of UK producer Lil Silva feels like a fresh-polyphonic outlook on UK rap’s sonic identity full of soul, spiritual balance, and ascension.

Somewhere in the mix of these exciting sounds is Len. The South London rapper has been making waves since the lockdown with a sweeping arsenal of sounds that sees him taking in rave, UK garage, drill and US trap to produce a potent mix that is equal parts Skepta’s ringtonia, Future’s downtempo debauchery and Watch The Throne’s champagnecocaine extravagances.

On his latest release, LEGHOLAND, you feel this incongruent mix is really starting to click. The record’s high points (of which there are several) always boil down to the same recognition: the oddity and fluidity of Len’s singular sound.

Whether lodged in the infectious spindly soundscape of ‘FUKIT’, the almost

Albums dream-pop outro of ‘Flawless Life’, or the down-toned bop ‘NIKO BELLIC’ that builds to a brilliantly suspended lo-fi extended break that evokes the chesslike precision of Vince Staples’ Summertime 06, this record bleeds potential.

However, for all the high points, the overall project still feels piecemeal, with energy and creativity carrying the record rather than solidity or vision. The magic when it hits is undeniable, but it’s all too fleeting for now. However, you sense big things on the horizon. 6/10 Robert Davidson

Girl Ray — Prestige (moshi moshi) Stick or twist? A question that has tortured many a gambler over the years.

With music, hitting the recording studio poses a similarly ominous question.

Both choices carry an element of risk. A sudden, unexpected change of sound can alienate your fanbase, but keep everything exactly how it is and things can turn incredibly stale, incredibly quickly.

If Prestige is anything to go by, Girl Ray aren’t fazed by this decision at all. After making one hell of a statement with 2019’s pop-infused Girl, you’d be a fool to bet that they’d stay standing still for long. However, that’s exactly what they’ve done. Each and every track on their third album drips with the same type of disco nonsense as their previous effort. ‘True Love’ dishes out enough grooves to fill up Studio 54 ten times over, while the late-afternoon glow of ‘Begging You Now’ takes bedroom pop out of the house and into the garden for some well-earned Vitamin D. For many artists this lack of exploration would be seen as a negative, but in a lot of ways Girl Ray’s solidification of their newfound pop attitude is perhaps the most interesting move they could

have made. Instead of venturing off into the sonic wilderness, or reverting to their old indie-adjacent sound, the group have decided to do things their own way, proving that sometimes the most radical thing to do, is to do nothing at all. 7/10 Jack Doherty

GAIKA — Drift (big dada) As ‘the sound of the future’ has continually oscillated between the extreme avantgarde and deep retromania, it has rarely taken on a coherent form. Yet on Drift, the third album by GAIKA and the first on Big Dada since moving on from Warp, the multifaceted London musician reaches his ideal dimension in shaping an aesthetic for a new era.

GAIKA’s dancehall background and interest in sampling means that as a producer and MC he can draw inspiration from many sources. He mentions Prince, Wu-Tang Clan, Massive Attack, John Coltrane, Pink Siifu and A$AP Rocky as his biggest influences, but on Drift’s 14 tracks so much more is gestured towards: calypso, grime, the Notting Hill Carnival, ICA installations, real life and dreams, individual narratives and communal art.

The record harkens back to the artist’s Caribbean roots (his parents are from Grenada and Jamaica) and the time before music ‘mattered’ to him, before becoming commodified, individualised and his name capitalised. Although on Drift GAIKA is the primary writer and composer, he has also collaborated closely with Kidä on production, along with a group of musicians who have received classical training, and welcomes contributions by Azekel, Charlie Stacey, Brbko, and The Narrator. Over a lengthy period of time they recorded music until the wee hours of the morning, night after night; the result is a team effort, and a piece of

work whose impact will last far into the future. 8/10 Guia Cortassa

Sweeping Promises — Good Living Is Coming For You (sub pop) At this point all references to new wave have to be seen as a misnomer; the wave has crested, and is certainly no longer new.

On Sweeping Promises’ new LP Good Living Is Coming For You we get a revival of a revival. Here’s an album that would slot comfortably into the mid-’00s postpunk resurgence. After the recent Meet Me In The Bathroom documentary the cyclical swing of genres has placed this sound en vogue, which is convenient for the Kansas-based duo.

Fittingly for an album recorded in a “nude painting studio”, there’s a stripped quality to many of the tracks.

This is born out of a DIY simplicity that sees reverb-laced guitar, bass and drums respond to each other. On ‘Eraser’ there are spiky stabs to the fretboard as drums clatter from right to left. With Lira Mondal’s searing vocals tearing through the mix the combination makes for some pleasingly primal dance-punk. ‘Petit Four’ plays shimmering tropical guitars against dusty rolls of bass, and with the scorched vocal outro Mondal sets a spark to ignite sticky summer evenings. Most fun is ‘Walk In Place’, a track that begins by strutting with a Beth Ditto-esque verse before warping between grooves.

Sweeping Promises winningly embrace the ramshackle sound Palberta specialise in, and do so with aplomb. Over the course of the record 50 demos were completed and it sounds like at least four of them ended up here.

Wasn’t it said that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago? And the second-best time to release your second new wave record is now. 7/10 Theo Gorst

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Albums Live mittently behind the man himself. All the while, Kendrick was imperious, utterly self-assured, secure in his brilliance; between songs, he just stood there, completely still, totally alone, meeting the gaze of a hundred thousand people hanging on his every movement. In a way, those moments are as powerful as the chorus of ‘Money Trees’ or the thundering loop of ‘HUMBLE’.

SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE

Primavera Sound Parc del Fòrum, Barcelona 1–4 June 2023

At this point, Primavera really know what they’re doing. Granted, a few logistical things went wrong last year (overcrowding, not good enough access to water – the sorts of things which really do matter at an event of this scale) but they got resolved quickly enough without any major disasters, and this year they’ve clearly learned from those experiences.

The 2023 Barcelona edition is as expertly organised and tightly choreographed as most people have come to expect from a festival that’s become one of the most reliably well-curated and innovative in Europe. The bill is rich with diversity and invention, from beloved veterans (New Order, Pet Shop Boys) to emerging voices (PinkPantheress, Bar Italia, Blackhaine) via cult heroes (Unwound, Shellac) and contemporary pop royalty (Halsey, Caroline Polachek). It’s also populated by an equal number of male and female artists, something that sounds pretty straightforward, but that shamefully few festivals still manage to achieve. It’s 2023: equal representation alone is obviously insufficient, but it should at least be the absolute bare minimum. Primavera should

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be recognised for taking a stand on their gender balance – but (in this specific respect) it feels more like the festivals who still haven’t caught up with this are more deserving of condemnation than Primavera is of applause. This is basic stuff.

It’s always a real privilege to head to Barcelona for Primavera Sound, but this year felt particularly special. The UK feels particularly bleak and dysfunctional at the moment, so we’re incredibly lucky to have been able to get away for a few days spent watching some of the most talented artists on the planet in the beautiful Catalan capital. Here are the things which particularly stood out to us.

KENDRICK LAMAR IS UNIQUE

Kendrick Lamar: really, really good.

That’s the kind of hot take you pick up an independent music magazine for, isn’t it?

Honestly though, his set on Friday night was astonishing. So many enormous tunes, perfectly delivered, the Compton rapper’s character-hopping flow trilling and barking in that unmistakable way as the taut instrumentals crashed over us like spring tides. The stage set was simple yet perfect, one vivid painted backdrop gradually giving way to the next as a handful of dancers prowl around inter-

We’re glad to report that last year’s wellpublicised issues with bar staff and crowd capacity were thoroughly resolved for 2023, with a general rejig of the festival site ushering in several welcome changes that would have improved the event regardless. For a start, the site is now more compact: the beachside Bits area (which was lovely, but only accessible via a long, winding route far from the rest of the festival) has been dispensed with, the club-orientated curation of its stages now more evenly spread through the Parc del Fòrum. This makes the site feel both more intimate and more cohesive; where fast-rising dance acts like Nia Archives and Two Shell may previously have been sent off a kilometre away along the Catalan seafront, this year they took to stages in the heart of the Primavera site, surrounded by artists of countless other genres. Late-night staggers between sets are therefore far more manageable than in 2022, which is probably for the best considering how much easier it also is to get very drunk very quickly thanks to this year’s slick bar service. Cheers.

THERE WAS MORE ROOM FOR EXPERIMENTATION THAN EVER

Although Primavera has never been short of leftfield artists, this year it felt like the weirder stuff was given more space to breathe and integrated more thoroughly into the rest of the lineup.

From Laurie Anderson’s Saturday-

photography by sam walton

Albums Live night voyage into vocoder oratory and exploratory drones to Christine and the Queens’ dramatic, indeterminate thrash around the Amazon Music stage as anguished performance artist Redcar (a set that had more in common with Nine Inch Nails at their weirdest or Tiltera Scott Walker than the sleek pop on which he built his reputation), experimental work was present throughout this year’s event. Again, what’s perhaps most impressive about this is how cohesive it feels: at less carefully-curated festivals, a bill that includes Calvin Harris and Swans could seem clumsy, trying to appeal to everyone and no-one; here, it somehow adds up.

PUNK EXPLODED IN NEW DIRECTIONS

Three of the most vital sets of Primavera 2023 came from artists who you could loosely describe as representing successive generations of punk: Le Tigre, Death Grips and Soul Glo. The former’s exhilarating feminist electro-rock sounds as fresh and (in some ways grimly) relevant as it did at the turn of the millennium; Death Grips’ raw power and concussive rage is utterly peerless as a physical live

experience; and the latter communicate the violence of contemporary America with ruthless force, their freight-train hardcore almost scorching the concrete in front of the Plenitude stage on Friday.

Whatever punk actually is in 2023, all three of these acts have so much to contribute, each delivering a necessary dose of harsh reality to audiences drunk on festival escapism (and Estrella) in uncompromising style.

COSTUMES!

The Moldy Peaches turned up dressed as Toad from Mario Kart, a zebra, a harlequin, a sailor and Wee Willie Winkie. St Vincent’s Marilyn Monroe-at-Studio 54 Daddy’s Home look works perfectly on a massive festival stage. Yves Tumor’s band of glam cyborgs would have looked incredibly naff if they didn’t somehow look really cool. Even Depeche Mode, 40 years into their career, pull off their leathery New Romantic estate agent thing pretty convincingly. Primavera 2023 saw a lot of pleasingly out-there stage attire, which is a change from the half-arsed Y2K slacker unchic that pervades so many UK festivals at the moment. It’s just good to see people making an effort.

WE FOUND SOLACE WITH SALAMANDA IN THE HIDDEN STAGE

Under one of the slopes that make up the multi-levelled Primavera site is what might be the cleanest car park in the world, with fresh-looking numbered bays and exit arrows on the floor. For the weekend it becomes the festival’s “hidden stage” where this year we found South Korean ambient duo Salamanda for a peaceful moment of contemplation as we sheltered from the nearby hysteria of PinkPantheress outside. Turning the makeshift venue into a concrete womb, the two members of Salamanda pieced together their undulating minimal loops from a mass of analogue gear and computers atop an understated table.

What else could most of the crowd do but take a moment to sit down and soak in tracks from third album their excellent 2022 album Ashbulkum? The ambient electronic equivalent to a gong bath over, it was then time to head back out into the real world.

THE WHOLE OF CATALONIA SHOWED UP FOR ROSALÍA

It’s always nice when there’s a proper pop night at Primavera. Everyone seems to be dressed better, look healthier, seem more relaxed; it’s almost as if the Shellac fans who dominate much of the rest of the festival could look slightly cooler or even just lighten up a bit. This year, the presence of Rosalía – haute couture-clad pop icon, one of the most successful Spanishlanguage singers of all time, and Catalan native – as the closing night headliner makes the contrast sharper than ever.

It felt like every cool person in Catalonia had crammed into the Parc Del Fòrum for the night, and they were rewarded with a genuine masterclass. Fluent choreography, immaculate styling, huge melodies, and the particular kind of heartfelt artist-audience connection that only a hometown show can provide – a perfect send-off for Primavera Barcelona 2023.

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FilmAlbums and Books

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) (dir. anton corbijn) You might have seen that we have our own album artwork expert here at Loud And Quiet, although it’s safe to say that Clive La Bouche has never cast judgement over any record sleeve as iconic as those created by Hipgnosis in the 1970s. Throughout that decade (and a couple of years either side), the duo of Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell changed the way that musicians – and in turn fans – thought about album sleeves forever. The cover of Dark Side of The Moon is one of theirs, and all of Pink Floyd’s artwork: flying pigs and burning men and acid-inspired kaleidoscopes that proved that an album sleeve could be its own piece of conceptual art without a direct link to the artist or their music. Everyone does that now, but Hipgnosis invented it in the decade of rock excess, where big ideas were encouraged by even bigger budgets, which is how they ended up photographing the cover of Wings Greatest (a potentially cheap hits compilation that featured a photo of a statue in the snow) on Mount Everest.

The list of Hipgnosis’ work goes on, through Led Zepplin and Yes and Peter Gabriel and 10cc – all the bands of the era who had money to burn, and people, in the case of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, on which a man who’s not on fire shakes hands with a man who is; a dangerous, over the top, iconic metaphor for artist/ label relations within the music industry.

Or, to put it another way, the next time you’re in a vintage store that also sells old vinyl, any of the sleeves that look ridiculous in 2023 but like they would have cost a bomb to create in their day, Storm Thorgerson and Po Powell were most likely the pair that came up with them.

Photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn was the perfect person to make

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this film about the rise and fall of their difficult partnership – a man responsible for the iconic himself, through his videos for Depeche Mode’s ‘Personal Jesus’ and Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’, to scratch only the surface of his visual contribution to music. In Squaring the Circle, he somewhat elevates the conventional male-music-legends-getting-misty-eyed-for-the-70s documentary style with the same classy black and white treatment and spacious framing he brought not just to Control in 2007, but all of his photography work before it.

We’re still talking about a talking heads BBC Four style music documentary here, which does of course mean that Noel Gallagher keeps turning up with increasingly boring exaggerations about how his children don’t even know what record sleeves are (an insult to both their intelligence and ours at this point), but with Po on camera to tell the story himself, along with all of Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, this format can’t get much better than this. Stuart Stubbs

Deeping It — Adèle Oliver (404 ink) In Deeping It, Adèle Oliver manages to cover a hell of a lot of ground in a very short amount of time. Through a concise but careful articulation of the history, aesthetics and sociality of UK drill, Oliver locates the genre – arguably the most significant new British art movement of the last decade – within a broader lineage of Black art, and Black British music in particular. In contrast with the moral panic that still plagues UK drill, years on from its first rumblings towards the latter end of the 2010s grime revival, Oliver offers “a more nuanced counter-perspective” on the genre and the scene that surrounds it.

Some of the most striking provocations in the book arrive early, with Oliver’s smart etymological exploration of many terms she goes on to use frequently, which are used just as often in (both hysterical and sympathetic) discussions about UK drill. We’re reminded that ‘crime’ is never separable from the structure of the nation-state, who is allowed to participate in the social life of that state, and how particularly in post-imperial societies the institutions of state power often enforce and reinforce specific understandings of crime and transgression with grotesquely unjust outcomes. As deep as that sounds – and that is, as she writes, exactly the intention of the book, to ‘deep’ (verb: to contextualise, complexify) – only by fully describing that specific context can we then go on to understand both a phenomenon like drill and its reception.

That context established, Deeping It then gets into the contemporary reality of drill with the precision of the academic and the passion of the genuine fan. More familiar observations about the way in which violence is discussed in UK drill (i.e. as a reflection of lived experience or as part of the kinds of exaggerated storytelling for which white artists are frequently extended far more poetic license, rather than as some betrayal of genuine evil or otherness on the part of drill artists) are bolstered by fresh insights, such as one passage on the ways in which even praise of drill can overspill into the fetishisation and caricaturing of Black culture. Oliver is also clear that drill is far from perfect, pointing to the patriarchal, heteronormative elements of the scene and noting that, in aesthetic terms as much as anything, drill is often “at its best when the most concretised of social norms are subverted” and space is claimed by women and queer people to express themselves through this art form.

Although UK drill is finally starting to receive the critical and academic engagement it deserves, it’s still massively under-studied and misunderstood in mainstream discourse; Deeping It is not only an essential primer on the issues which inform and shape drill, but an incisive work of cultural analysis in its own right.

Luke Cartledge

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

LAQ006-02 ROBBIE & MONA Tina’s Leather

THIS MONTH’S DISC

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

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

Receive an exclusive flexi disc of a rare track with each edition of Loud And Quiet when you subscribe from £4.50 per month

CHAI’s new album sees the band returning to their Japanese roots and reviving Tokyo’s lost soft rock genre, city pop, with characteristic joy and abandon. And yet whatever sound they choose to explore, the heart of the group appears to remain resolutely punk. Dominic Haley met the band to talk about their continual rejection of societal norms and expectations, and their desire for us all to love ourselves a bit more. Photography by Kotaro Kawai 52

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istening to their songs, you can tell that CHAI are super into their food. They talk about everything from doughnuts to matcha to chocolate chips – it’s all there! Even their name is a nod to Russian tea served with jam. Yet, halfway through our interview, when I ask the band to talk me through how the idea of food forms a significant part of their creative process, the band’s initial response is a chorus of riotous giggling.

Yuna, the band’s drummer, is the first to speak since she’s the first to stop laughing. “We love food, and we think it’s the most important: it’s a necessity for a healthy body, for a healthy heart, and for a healthy life. So it just comes naturally to us that we’d make music about food – why wouldn’t you?”

“Touring all over the world means that we’ve been able to experience food from all sorts of different cultures and traditions,” adds the band’s guitarist Kana, “and we’ve been able not just to eat it and take it in, but also experience it with our whole minds and bodies. It’s only right that all of that has inspired our music.”

“Also, Japanese food is obviously very popular abroad right now, and it’s another very important part of Japanese identity,” nods Mana, the band’s lead guitarist. Throughout our conversation, she stands out as CHAI’s intellectual core and is already poised to provide the last word on any philosophical or thematic talking point that comes up. It takes her a minute to articulate how the concept of food fits into the band’s art.

“On the upcoming album, we have a song called ‘Matcha’, which is Japanese Tea, and we’ve also written songs about gyoza in the past, which, while not necessarily Japanese, is a big part of our lives,” she says thoughtfully as if juggling the variables in her mind. “I think it’s part of us reflecting on our Japanese identity. Food is a big part of that. In fact, it’s probably a necessity in our creative process. So I wouldn’t say that we write about food consciously; it’s a lot more automatic than that.”

This combination of goofiness and razor-sharp cultural insight lies at the heart of CHAI’s mystique. First gaining attention with their debut album PINK in 2017, the band’s rise to become one of the most talked-about groups in Japan and then on the global indie scene hasn’t just been down to a knack for crafting infectious melodies and irresistible rhythms. The band’s ability to world-build, shaping almost every aspect of their artistry and image to create their message, means that they’ve created an entire subculture that’s all their own. On the face of it, a lot of the band’s influences are about as bubblegum as bubblegum can be – a mix of teeny-bopper pop punk, ‘90s summertime hip hop and smoothed-out soft rock. Mixed with the band’s signature fashion sense, all bright pops of pastel colour and chintzy patterns, it’s easy to peg them as a band making cutesy pop about boys, kissing and dancing. But while undeniably filled with hooks and bop-along choruses, their songs speak almost

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exclusively about self-love, empowerment and acceptance. Similarly, their mix-and-match style is designed to upend gender roles and kick back against the image of womanhood defined by men. In the middle lies CHAI’s complete rejection of the concept of ‘kawaii’, or cuteness. A cultural phenomenon in Japan that can be found in the most creative of art forms, from music videos all the way to advertising, it ostensibly idolises sweetness, vulnerability and innocence, yet is all too readily deployed by the patriarchy to put women in their place and trap them into traditional, ‘seen not heard’ role in society. Instead, the band promote an alternative vision that they’ve named ‘neo-kawaii’, a movement that keeps the creativity and eye-catching expressiveness of the original concept but aims to promote authenticity and inclusion in the place of enforced timidity and innocence.

“Neo-kawaii philosophy means no one gets to define the standards of beauty, you don’t have to allow others to define your beauty, and it’s OK to compliment yourself more!” explains bassist Yukki. “Neo-kawaii is about accepting everything and everyone. It does not leave anyone behind – not you nor anyone else! Music is an inevitable element when conveying this message. We want to spread the positive through the songs in a fun way, overcoming all sorts of boundaries.”

“The reason we thought of this concept is because we grew up feeling very kind of secluded from the Japanese nuance of the word kawaii,” adds Mana. “In Japan, it’s always been one of the biggest compliments a woman or girl can receive, but collectively we’ve never felt included in all of that. One of the reasons we bonded as a band was our experiences of having a lack of selfesteem growing up. With our music we want to ensure that we’re giving everybody that feeling of self-esteem, and that’s what the word neo-kawaii is meant to represent. It doesn’t matter about your gender; it doesn’t matter if you’re a human being. We’re all animals, and we all deserve to be taken seriously. That’s what neo-kawaii means; it’s an all-inclusive word.”

ALWAYS ON VACATION CHAI’s origins lie in the port city of Nagoya in the early 2010s.

In high school, identical twins Mana and Kana began making music together and, looking to add some percussion to the mix, asked their friend Yuna to join and eventually added bassist Yukki soon after. They kept things low-key while they finished school, but as soon as the diplomas landed in their hands, the four-piece headed to Tokyo and took the band much more seriously. Moving into a house together, they toiled almost exclusively on the band for the next few years, making demos, playing shows, and eventually getting enough of their shit together to

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“I want peop le to come and se e this new version of CHAI 2.0 and com e away feeling inspir ed”

drop two EPs, 2015’s Hottaraka Series and 2016’s Homegrown Series. At the same time, the band honed their image, solidifying an instantly recognisable look through a series of selfproduced music videos famed for lashings of Barbie pink and goofball dance moves. By the tail end of 2016, CHAI were the whole package, and things moved quickly from there. Sony Music Japan, apparently attracted by the visual style alone, signed the band in 2017, and CHAI headed over to Austin, Texas for SXSW and a handful of exclusive US shows. The UK cottoned on shortly after their debut album PINK was snapped up by Heavenly Records and promoted with a co-headline show with indie-pop collective Superorganism. Their next record PUNK followed soon after, further consolidating the band’s blend of post-punk and hip hop-inspired sounds and netting high-profile touring slots.

Then, the world stopped. Grounded by the pandemic, CHAI’s third studio album WINK was recorded while the band were stuck, like the rest of Planet Earth, in the COVID lockdown. As we speak, they keenly stress that while it was not a music-making experience the band cherished, they certainly learned a lot. “Until then, every album we’d released was very different and unique in terms of our sound and the taste of it,” explains Mana. “WINK was recorded all over the internet.

Until then, our experience was all going into one studio and doing everything as a live session. It was the closest way to how we started making our songs.”

Yuna nods in agreement and picks up the story. “Obviously, the pandemic forced us to do everything online and, for the first time, led us to collaborate more with outside producers and songwriters, which totally changed our way of songwriting and recording. I think that’s why it ended up sounding so different.”

As alien as the recording experience was for the band, the results spoke for themselves; no one can deny that WINK has been a step change for CHAI. Unable to replicate the general in-your-face energy that comes from live recordings, the band instead decided to double down on the pop sounds that have always lurked in the margins. Working with Tokyo-based electronic producers Mndsgn and YMCK, WINK instead mined sleek modern pop for its inspiration; it still contained all the flawless pop songwriting that CHAI has made their name on but revealed

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a side to the band that was entirely at home with downtempo R&B, booty-shaking electro-pop and all manner of squelchy, laidback disco and lounge textures. Released in May 2021, just as the world looked to open up again, WINK’s more focused pop sounds were exactly what people were looking for after a year of being locked inside. As soon as it was safe to fly, the band quickly found themselves back on the road and playing to packed houses, headlining their own US, South American and European tours and opening for the likes of Mitski and Whitney.

“Every audience enjoys our music in their own unique way, which is very interesting and exciting,” explains Yukki, describing the band’s last two years on the road. “Being able to play to international audiences means I’ve discovered new ways to enjoy music myself. It’s definitely helped me break out of my shell.”

“Being overseas for the last two years and playing to all these audiences abroad has really made us re-realise what it means to be Japanese,” adds Mana. “Being viewed as both a Japanese person and an Asian woman while on tour has made me wake up and re-recognise my own identity. I think it’s these experiences that we reflect on the new record.”

HAI’s popularity has grown tremendously on the back of WINK’s success. However, with fame brings its challenges. Western commentators struggle to fully understand and appreciate Asian culture at the best of times, which sometimes means the band’s messages are lost, through a combination of lazy stereotyping and the Western media’s tendency to distort Asian and African stories into narratives that fit into their worldview. CHAI has definitely been on the receiving end of this kind of coverage in the past, with a lot of focus on the band’s fashion sense and party-friendly sound, and little-to-none really delving into the band’s background, reference points and underlying philosophy. When I ask the band how they feel about being viewed through the lens of Western culture, their answer is polite, but seasoned with a hint of frustration. “We grew up exposed to and loving Western pop; it still inspires a lot of what we do,” explains Yuna, speaking on behalf of the group. “However, every time we make an album, we are trying to challenge ourselves and say, ‘OK, this is who we are right now’.”

CHAI are way too diplomatic to say that their new selftitled record is a response to how they’ve been portrayed in the West, but it’s undeniable that the band have attempted to root their creativity in the musical culture of their home. The initial writing sessions involved the band listing words immediately associated with Japan, resulting in song titles like ‘MATCHA’ and ‘KARAOKE’, which carry cultural references and symbolic weight. Some terms are more obscure but no less authentic to the country’s cultural heritage. For example, the single ‘LIKE, I NEED’ mentions the “selfie”, a now-universal practice popularised by Japanese photographer Hiromix in the 1990s and the

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hugely popular photo booths found in communal places across the country. On ‘PARA PARA’, CHAI memorialise the bafflingly popular two-step dance trend that swept across Japan that same decade.

“I think we were trying to get a sense of what Japan has that is unique compared to the rest of the world,” Mana tells me when I ask what made the band decide to mine such a vast and stylistically diverse range of influences. “We wanted to capture that appeal on the sound of the record and explore music that only we can create, and we can express: based on everything we’ve experienced up to this point.”

And it’s not just lyrically that CHAI’s new record calls home to their roots. Sonically, the band have also doubled down on influences of their homeland, not only drawing inspiration from J-pop and its older cousin Kayōkyoku, but aesthetically reaching back to city pop, an oft-forgotten Japanese strand of lounge and soft funk that was popular in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Undergoing something of a resurgence in recent years, thanks to the music-sharing community on the internet, the crunchy basslines and chiming synth lines have been something of a staple of Soundcloud rap songs for a while now. But thanks to producer Ryu Takashi, CHAI are putting these elements of laid-back pop back into the genre where, arguably, they’ve always belonged.

“As a Japanese person, I’m thrilled that a wider audience is discovering city pop,” says Mana when I ask her why CHAI decided to make the genre such a large part of the new record.

“There are a lot of city pop fans all around the world right now, and I think that’s because, as music, it just sounds so fresh, no matter what generation you are. It’s music that has both sound and melody; it’s very comfortable to listen to.

“I don’t think we necessarily set out to incorporate city pop into our sound,” she adds. “It wasn’t a conscious decision.

It was more about trying to recapture the kind of music that we grew up listening to, and city pop was one of them. Referencing this or that genre wasn’t our intention; expressing the sound that came naturally to us was more important.”

The demands of touring and the more collaborative processes trialled in making WINK meant that CHAI was recorded as the band bounced between different venues and studios. And despite the band saying that the new record was conceived as a love letter to Japan and Japanese culture, the sound of the road has nevertheless seeped into it. Speaking to Kana, Yuuki, Mana and Yuna, you quickly get the impression that touring means a lot to them, while new song ‘Driving22’ sums up their pure joy of being able to get out into the world, directly channeling the buzz of constantly meeting new and exciting people and navigating foreign cities with a blissed out, almost Balaeric-inspired, funk-infused rhythm section. “The people we met through touring the world, and the kindness they have shown us, have been such a help in CHAI’S journey as well as my own,” says Yukki, who penned the lyrics after reflecting on her time on the road. “That feeling of gratitude inspires our creativity, so it’s all an amazing cycle.”

“That song is kind of an homage and a thank you letter to our friends overseas. It’s about seeing fans overseas and meeting

the people who’ve supported us over the years who we haven’t seen for a long time,” adds Mana. “It’s also about coming home after a long time on the road, so it kind of shows how travelling has inspired the whole spectrum of the album.”

CHAI POP But CHAI’s fourth album isn’t just a record of well-crafted nostalgia and callbacks to long-lost nuggets of Japanese youth culture. Throughout it, their lyrics challenge the idea of labelling people and pressuring them to conform. Instead, CHAI’s message is one of hope – an invitation to be true to yourself, persevere against adversity, have a voice, and use it. One song on the album that sums up the band’s inspiring message to the world is ‘GAME’. Intentionally blending elements of new wave, house synth lines and minimalistic production, it evokes Eurobeat influences reminiscent of Robyn’s Honey. It’s a track that perfectly articulates the band’s message to the world, grabbing listeners’ attention and calling on them to keep moving forward in life, embracing joy and finding their passion.

“It’s a song that’s very heavily influenced by ESG and Talking Heads and very much represents the new wave that we’re inspired by right now,” says Mana. “In terms of the lyrics, it’s about how playing games isn’t about winning or losing, but how you strategise to win the next game. Life is the same; just because you lose doesn’t mean it’s the end of everything; it’s more about what you take from that loss and use for the next challenge. It’s a song about always moving forward.”

This desire to constantly push both sonic and societal boundaries is, to me at least, the reason why CHAI are a punk band in the rawest sense of the term. Musically, they might not be as brash and furious as Fugazi, Bikini Kill or The Clash, but philosophically, they’re tracking the same trajectory. From the concept of neo-kawaii to the lyrical content of each song, CHAI’s music is in service of a mission to push back against societal norms and expectations, and although they’re cautious of describing their work as feminist, their keen to ensure that there’s a female-centric perspective to their approach. While tackling topics such as body image, beauty standards and the importance of individuality, the band’s politics are undeniably politicised, challenging the notion of conformity and encouraging women to find solidarity in self-acceptance. If this sounds radical, the band certainly doesn’t see it that way. When I ask the band if they see themselves as a political band, Mana shrugs.

“Basically, we’re just being ourselves,” she answers like it’s not a big deal. “I guess we’re confident in living as females.

We just want to get the message out, via song, that it doesn’t matter who you are, in terms of gender or how you identify; our message is that it’s just about being confident.”

“We’re all multifaceted people, and we think everyone is the same,” agrees Una. “By showing that women can be confident and overcome borders by shouting it out through song, we are saying to everyone else that it’s OK to be who they are, regardless of age or diversity.”

The reason CHAI’s radicalism feels different to Western

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eyes though, is because it’s not confrontational, in-your-face, or even that openly political. Instead, the four-piece’s want to change the world and people’s thinking hangs on the sheer power of positivity. If a trend has emerged from their last four albums, it’s the band’s self-declared mission to shape their music, image and community to create a safe space where their message can be heard, received and acted on.

Earlier in this piece I mentioned that the secret to CHAI’s power lies in their ability to create their worlds, but it’s only now, with the release of their self-titled album, that the size and scale of what the band are building is starting to reveal itself.

Like a team of terraformers creating lakes, rivers and forests out of barren rock, CHAI are carving out and defining a whole new

ing in z a m a is e n o “Every , I want y a w n w o ir e th uder o r p e b o t e n everyo s” of themselve

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ecosystem in indie rock where it’s okay to be whoever you want to be. It’s a space not just reserved for themselves, either, but also for their fans. From energetic live performances designed to create an atmosphere of joy and liberation to lyrics that empower their audience to express themselves freely, almost every facet of CHAI’s music points outward.

In their words, the future world that their is building is something called “Chai Pop”. “We want to make our own genre and update it and evolve it in the future,” Mana tells me, almost triumphantly, describing her vision for the band’s next stage like an architect describing their next skyscraper. “I have no idea how it will sound, but it’s what we aspire to do in the future.”

“My hope is that it will keep inspiring people,” agrees Yuna. “Hopefully, people will continue to see a group of Japanese-Asian women being energetic on stage and performing with everything we can, and from that more and more people will say, ‘Okay, we can be confident in who we are and do whatever we want to do in life.’ This year, I want people to come and see this new version of CHAI 2.0 out on tour and come away feeling inspired.”

The final word falls to Yukki, returning the focus to the fans in typical CHAI fashion. “Every single conversation I have with the people I wouldn’t have met if I weren’t in this band, fans, as well as the people around us who support us, are so precious, and those experiences motivate me to want to share our message to more people. Every person I meet has something I don’t have, and because I am experiencing first-hand that everyone is amazing in their own way, I want everyone to be prouder of themselves. I hope that CHAI’s songs can let everyone realise that.”

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P O W E R I N G 62

Record labels are inherently messy and complicated organisations. On paper they may appear to simply be tastemaker operations, hand-selecting artists they love and, through releasing their music, forming an identity and developing a following along the way. In reality, even if they can sufficiently get off the ground, they become multi-headed beasts that need to act like an accountancy firm or HR department as much as they do a creative outlet.

In an industry where success is often defined as simply surviving, for record a label to start, breakthrough, thrive and have a genuine paradigm-shifting impact is incredibly rare, especially in an era where Spotify playlists are often more influential than the labels who sign and release the music featured on them. The age of the record label as a buzzy, zeitgeist-shifting epicentre is practically over. Which is what makes PC Music, a label set up by producer A. G. Cook in 2013, such a unique entity.

As it announces that after ten years of operating it will cease to release any new music, it leaves behind a legacy that is almost unparalleled in contemporary music. A record label born from seemingly nothing – a few tracks uploaded to Soundcloud – to something that in many ways defined the sound, style, aesthetic and culture of an entire decade.

Cook was brought up in London – the only child of two architects – and was a relative latecomer to music, deciding, on something of a whim, to join the school funk band on guitar in sixth form. At Goldsmiths University he undertook a course literally called Music Computing, and here he reconnected with old school friend Danny L Harle to form Dux Content. Inspired by nostalgic explorations of technology via art in the comedy duo Tim and Eric, a blend of music and technology – both sonically and aesthetically – was baked into Cook’s interests from the off.

The natural conclusion was to create an outlet like PC Music (Personal Computer Music), and he launched the label with the aim of “recording people who don’t normally make music and treating them as if they’re a major label artist.”

Cook shunned press to begin with. There were no meticulously planned and prolonged release campaigns, just an endless and spontaneous dumping of new acts and songs for people to catch up with. The label dropped several singles and EPs, spanning around 40 tracks, in its first year from the likes of GFOTY, easyFun, Princess Bambi, Hannah Diamond, Danny L Harle and Cook himself. All of it on Soundcloud, all for free. The music was often a brash mix of jittery electronics, euphoric trance, styles of pop that spanned Europe, Japan and Korea, the kind of pitch-shifted vocals normally reserved for pummelling happy

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People couldn’t make up their minds. Was it a piss take?

Pure agitation? The music was often so extreme in its tonalities that it could only ever provoke a binary love or hate response hardcore records; all coated with a production style that felt simultaneously retro and futuristic. It was bubblegum pop that was chewed up, spat out and chewed up again. Much of it would form the basis for a whole new genre: hyperpop.

By eschewing standard label conventions and approaches, it was quickly emerging that PC Music was more of a sprawling and interactive online art collective made up of producers and vocalists all collaborating together, rather than just a simple outlet for releases. Aliases and characters were made, along with conceptual cyber figures and fake pop stars like QT (a project consisting of Hayden Dunham, Cook, the late producer SOPHIE and singer Harriet Pittard). QT, who to this day has only released one track ‘Hey QT’, was a popstar whose only sole purpose to exist was seemingly to promote her own energy drink. It immediately and intentionally blurred the lines between marketing and art, fashion and music, irony and sincerity. Was it a satire of our insatiable appetite to consume or just an extension of its methods?

THAT

PC

MUSIC

LOOK

PC Music created a world to inhabit and explore as much as it purely offered a selection of music to take in. The bonkers sugary pop run through a wood chipper sound of the label was reflected in its aesthetic too. 1990s computer graphics intermingled with big, bold, bright colours. Artwork that could feel both cheap yet slick.

Half arsed but also deeply considered. One standout was the cover for easyFun’s 2015 Deep Trouble EP, which mimicked the EasyJet logo on a plane that had crash landed onto water, with Sims-like characters shooting down the inflatable escape slide to party.

Champagne bottles and a keg float in the water, while the characters are bikini ready. It’s a piece of artwork that feels exactly like how the music sounded: over the top, daft, fun, extreme.

Also inspired by the Japanese concept of kawaii (cuteness), PC Music’s aesthetic was camp and shiny but also had undertones that were harsh and abrasive. Centred around consumerism, cyberculture, advertising and the existence of modern life online (often all chopped up and jammed together, much like the music itself), a slew of titles were thrown at PC Music’s existence: post-modernist, post-ironic, post-internet, postgenre. It was of course brutally divisive. It drew just about every clichéd criticism and accusation you could imagine: “it’s not real music”, “my child could make this”, “hipster bollocks” etc. etc.

In some ways it’s understandable, it is the kind of music that is maddening to many; like all the worst parts of early-2000s pop merged with all the worst types of house music, filtered through an all too knowingly antagonistic yet cutesy production style.

It felt designed and engineered to push buttons, to prod at the

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status quo, to drive home poptimist values to patience-testing extremes. For many, it lacked subtlety and was artless art. But it was also overtly, and celebratorily, feminine in its style and execution. Tracks like ‘Every Night’ by Hannah Diamond were almost naive and teenager-like in their lyrical explorations of love. Merged with the blindingly glossy nature of the music, you had something that felt as girly as a fresh copy of J-17. Exploding at a time when techno bros were reigning supreme in clubs, for many this music offered up a refreshingly playful approach that was anti-macho and anti-purist. A dose of fun that was also undeniably fresh.

Needless to say, it confused the hell out of people. Was it “the future of pop or contemptuous parody?” asked The Guardian. Is PC Music “really the worst thing ever to happen to dance music?” pondered VICE. Sam Wolfson, in that same Guardian article – in which he’s treated like a prop in the PC Music world, hopping from one manufactured interview environment to another – perfectly summarised it as: “music which sounds like Japanese tween pop of the distant future played through the JD Sports in-store radio of 2002; an internet-only cooperative whose fetishisation of manufactured pop and AOL-era internet aesthetics has led it to create what might be thought of as a club-based version of the Disney Channel.”

People couldn’t make up their minds. Was it a piss take? Pure agitation? The music was often so extreme in its tonalities that it could only ever provoke a binary love or hate response. Although there was occasionally a third option, which I’ve personally slipped into from time-to-time, in liking some of the output a great deal more than others but regardless having a deep appreciation of something that could come along in the 2010s and disrupt the world of dance and pop music so spectacularly.

It was a situation that the label embraced. “I’m not surprised it’s become a talking point,” Cook told The Guardian. “It’s presenting itself in a very full-on way, but I wouldn’t wanna dismiss either side. Are we stage-managed or disorganised? Are we oversharing or mysterious? Even the name itself is malleable because it’s so literal, it can be interpreted to mean any genre or style.”

INTO

THE

REAL

WORLD

In 2015 the label started releasing influential compilation albums properly – i.e. that people could buy and download – featuring their ever-growing roster, and the impact of the label’s sound, affiliate artists and distinct tone began to spread.

SOPHIE was writing and producing for Madonna; Charli XCX’s

shift to more experimental pop came via working with PC Music artists on 2016’s Vroom Vroom EP, swiftly followed by her hiring Cook as her creative director. That same year Harle was collaborating with Carly Rae Jepsen.

For a few years the label existed somewhere in the space between fantasy and reality, where it was its own subculture and musical genre. It was in a unique position to make and release music that was reflective of a hyperactive online culture, the very essence of real-time creation, while also blazing something of a trail for how music, style, fashion and language would evolve. In a few years it went from an indefinable, strange, singular curiosity to a template trend-setter.

The likes of 100 Gecs popped up, fully embracing all things PC Music, and soon the layering of everything all at once in this style became omnipresent in culture.

Over the years the label’s role shifted however. Despite hyperpop being a term that had been following the label around since 2014, by 2018 Spotify had deemed that enough activity around it existed for it to be officially declared a genre. It got its own officially curated Spotify playlist. All of a sudden, teenage bedroom producers like Osquinn would blow up overnight, reaching streams in the millions after being included on it. When Cook did a takeover of the playlist, adding tracks by the likes of J Dilla and Kate Bush, he received kickback from the next wave of hyperpop producers such as Osquinn. Times were changing, but what a compliment for the universe Cook has built: the fact that something PC Music was so instrumental in creating and popularising had now evolved into something more fluid and indefinable than ever; it’s perhaps the most fitting testimony to a label that was always rooted in evading easy, lazy categorisation.

While retaining much of its core sound and style over the years, it’s also fair to say that PC Music wasn’t a one-trick hyperpony. Recent albums by the likes of Holly Waxwing and Ö contained many elements that critics once argued were entirely absent from the label’s work: space, subtlety, tenderness.

Today the label’s influence can be felt in both the underground and the mainstream. In 2022, Chal Ravens explored “how pop became the sound of the underground” for DJ Mag, i.e. the phenomenon of huge commercial hooks getting deployed in cutting-edge club contexts, a trend which can be directly traced to the output of PC Music. As for the mainstream, if you were to take the fundamental sonic and aesthetic principles of PC Music and ask AI to make a movie based on it, the result probably wouldn’t be too far from the new Barbie film – all maximalist and glaring and unashamedly pop in its orientation. Not to mention its soundtrack, featuring, amongst others, Charli XCX. On one hand it seems like a strange move for a label to quit when it’s still clearly discovering and releasing interesting new music, but there is also something almost perfect about accepting one’s own limitations and self-destructing with such clinical neatness. There is a beauty in knowing that you created a zeitgeist movement that changed the shape, tone, colour and style of both pop and dance music, while acknowledging that that same world moves at such a pace that one minute you can be leading the charge and chasing it the next. It’s the perfect PC Music exit.

We emailed Cook a few questions about whether he’d always planned to stop PC Music after 10 years, what he feels the label’s legacy is, and the ambitions he had for it in those early days. He wrote back: “PC Music has never had a specific manifesto – when I started it in 2013 it felt like I was trying to nurture something that I couldn’t quite define, just a feeling of untapped energy and potential. Over the years it’s been characterised by a shared attitude of risk taking and an unspoken certainty that pop music can’t be fully owned or explained by the mainstream or the underground.

In a world of streaming and smartphones, the idea of ‘newness’ has slightly blurred into the more drab notion of ‘content’, of a state that is constantly updating but never ending.

I genuinely believe that the work done by PC Music and its affiliated artists transcends the ordinary. While that decade of work speaks for itself, some of my favourite parts of it are still obscure, unknown or completely untapped, and absolutely worthy of exploration.

I’ve always been interested in how we categorise the past, present and future. It’s integral to making music, running a label or defining a genre.

PC Music isn’t doing what a traditional record label would do, it’s evolving into a new form and celebrating the newest music that ever was.”

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ADVENTURERS With their frantic garage rock and riotous live shows, Be Your Own Pet burst straight out of high school to briefly become the hottest band in US indie, before suddenly breaking up in 2008. As they return for a string of reunion shows and a revelatory new album, Dominic Haley speaks to the Nashville group about misogyny, mental wellbeing and their rich new creative seam.

Photography by Jody Evans The sun is just starting to dip below the horizon as the crowd gathers for Be Your Own Pet at Primavera Sound. The brutal Barcelona heat still hangs heavy in the air, but luckily for us Brits in the crowd, a light breeze whips in from over the nearby harbour waves, delivering relief. Looking around, you get the impression that most people here seem genuinely buzzed; there’s electricity in the crowd that’s closer to a marquee headline slot than the opening set on a supporting stage. First time around, I’d blinked and missed BYOP; only managing to cotton on to their fun time garage rock right after they’d split up in 2008, but I seem to be the minority; all around me people sporting fading editions of the band’s t-shirts are inching ever closer towards the front. Then, over on the stage, there’s the hum of a guitar warming up and the lazy smack of a snare drum. Turning back to the location, I catch a glimpse of frontwoman Jemina Pearl as she approaches her microphone. “Barcelona! It’s so fucking good to be back!”

A week later, the band are sitting in a Hackney beer garden on a Tuesday afternoon. West Ham are due to play Fiorentina in the Europa Conference League final later tonight, so even though it’s a work day, the back decking is awash with people in claret and blue sinking pints and enjoying the sunshine. In the middle of it all, the members of Be Your Own Pet seem happy

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enough to go with the flow. Recovering from last night’s riotous show at the Moth Club, and with another one starting a couple of hours later, the four-piece relax and chat happily. Well, all except drummer John Eatherly, who has more pressing matters on his mind.

“Do you know if there’s a second-hand shop near here?” he asks as I plonk myself on the picnic table beside them. “I’ve only brought two pairs of pants [that’s trousers, not Y-fronts, hopefully], and this is my second pair,” he explains, looking almost apologetic for even asking. “In our Airbnb nothing seems to dry, I keep hanging clothes up in my room and everything’s still wet – now I’ve got a room that looks like a clothes rack and nothing to fucking wear.”

Travelling light and squatting in cramped Airbnbs is a rite of passage for most new bands, but Be Your Own Pet aren’t exactly greenhorns. Their resumé boasts an impressive array of achievements. With two well-received albums under their belt, one even reaching the top 10 of the UK indie album charts, they’re still considered to be one of the hottest live acts of the 2000s.

Their electrifying performances landed them coveted slots festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo, Glastonbury and Reading & Leeds, sharing stages with heavyweights such as Arctic Monkeys, Sonic Youth and Kings of Leon. Yet today, Be Your Own Pet are essen-

AGAIN tially starting from scratch. Before the band reunited in December 2020 to prepare for a short stretch of shows in their hometown of Nashville, the last time the four-piece had been in the same room was when they bid farewell to each other at Heathrow Airport following their most successful UK tour to date, in 2008.

“When we did those last few goodbye shows, that was pretty hard for me personally and I needed a little bit of time and space,” recalls guitarist Jonas Stein as we speak about those last days of BYOP. “I think enough time had passed. None of that stuff really mattered and I don’t know, it’s more important for us to all be friends and on good terms. When you get older, you just don’t really care about that shit anymore.”

Looking back now, Be Your Own Pet’s burnout has a sense of grim inevitability about it. To put it mildly, the drug-fueled, bingeloving 2000s indie scene was something of an emotional roller coaster; certainly a lot to deal with for a bunch of kids just out of high school. Formed in 2004 at the Nashville School of the Arts, the band started out playing hometown house shows and all-ages gigs at venues called things like Guido’s Pizza and Bongo Java. It was there that they refined their distinctive blend of hyper-yetpoppy sounds. Although probably more designed to soundtrack their friends’ parties over conquering the world, their down-toearth unpretentious garage rock instantly set the band apart from many of the era’s more self-absorbed indie acts. Things all changed when a copy of ‘Damn Damn Leash’ landed on Zane Lowe’s desk. A tight two minutes of bouncy punk rock, Lowe quickly started spinning the track on his Radio 1 show, and soon afterwards the rest of the UK music press couldn’t get enough of them either. Back then, it was them or Kasabian, right? Their wild gigs became legendary, notorious for crowd surfing uni lads, puking and punching their way through songs about bike rides, pizza and obscure in-jokes. But as the past few years have shown, things always go dark where you have a mob of blokes like those uni lads left unchallenged, and into this cesspit of toxicity and entitlement was thrown a group of high schoolers, unequipped

to deal with it. Unsurprisingly, they found themselves in precarious situations. Expected to party all the time, no questions asked, Pearl and her bandmates had to regularly fend off drunken louts and stage invaders attempting to grab her. Clearly, it wasn’t a situation that was in any way sustainable.

“I think we’d got in this cycle where everyone expected our shows to just pop off,” bassist Nathan Vasquez recalls as we discuss the final days of the band. “When you’re being asked to do that 20 shows in a row, it can be kind of hard to get in that mindset. So you’re like, ‘All right, let’s get drunk. Let’s party before this show.’”

Pearl nods in agreement. “You have to remember, we were kids back then; we didn’t know what was going on. I was 16 the first time we came to London. For that reason, I think we didn’t have a typical late-teen or early-20s experience because we were really working our asses off in a lot of ways. We were having fun, playing shows and excited for the opportunities, but at the same time, I missed my friends.”

— UNFINISHED BUSINESS — Just because Be Your Own Pet ended, it didn’t mean the adventure stopped. The band members have been incredibly busy since their shock split, which is one of the main reasons why they haven’t reunited sooner. Stein led the way with Turbo Fruits, delivering four studio albums and captivating audiences with his disco-filled DJ sets. Vasquez took his own turn at the front with Deluxin’, while Eatherly embarked on various projects, including the notable Public Access TV. Pearl released a solo album featuring Thurston Moore and Iggy Pop before taking a break to start a family. However, despite their individual endeavours, there has always been a lingering sense of unfinished business for the band. Originally planning to reunite for a couple of shows during the pandemic, their fans’ overwhelming reaction and the sheer joy of reconnecting as friends led to a change in plans.

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concealing her rage beneath a veneer of innocence all along.

“Back then, I was trying to be like this exaggerated, teenage version of myself. Like, let’s sing songs about pizza and zombies,” she explains when I ask her about this new emotional honesty.

“If I was to do that now, it would be a little bit sad, I think. I’m trying to write songs about where I’m at now in my life. I used to write songs about zombies and pizza, but now I’m writing songs about my latex fetish. Trust me, it all makes sense.”

— IN CONTROL —

The desire to put the ghost of the past to rest transformed into a newfound enthusiasm for creating music and sharing it with their devoted audience once again.

“It’s crazy to be playing rooms where everyone knows every lyric to every song,” beams Stein, speaking about BYOP’s recent spate of shows. “There’s so much love in the room and it makes us want to do it justice. I mean, I flub the fuck out of almost every song every night, but it’s cool to see so many people into it.”

Things change though, and in the decade that’s passed since the band first called it a day, the members of Be Your Own Pet have undergone significant personal and musical growth. The band’s new album and first post-reunion, Mommy, unveils a newly self-assured and mature side of the four-piece. The lead single ‘Hand Grenade’ epitomises this journey. The track, with its howled chorus of, “I’m not your victim / I’m my own person / I’m not some casualty / I set myself free,” is Pearl’s ferocious indictment of the rampant sexism and abuse pervasive in the music industry, and simultaneously an assertion an unwavering determination to defy those limitations. Displaying righteous anger and a fierce determination seemingly at odds with the band’s fun-time appeal, ‘Hand Grenade’ makes you wonder if Pearl, once known for singing about pizza and bike rides, had been

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Mommy showcases a band on the verge of a new chapter. While the album reflects the band’s outward anger towards the sexists and abusers who marred their early careers, it also serves as a cathartic journey for Pearl as she confronts her own mental health struggles and comes to terms with motherhood and responsibility. Reflecting on the band’s past, she openly admits that much of her erratic behaviour in the early years of BYOP stemmed from a sense of being out of control, with a lack of understanding about her own mental well-being, which only exacerbated the challenges they faced. She’s candid about the intense struggle she experienced during the band’s breakup, saying: “I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly after the band broke up, but I wasn’t in any kind of place where I was ready to accept the diagnosis. It took me a few more years, into my late 20s, to accept it and be like, ‘No, you really need help.’ I would be so depressed that I’d feel suicidal, and then you have a high where you’re just like, ‘Everything’s fucking great. I’m the greatest person in the world.’ I spent my time kind of being out of touch with reality. It was only when my husband was really like, ‘I’m worried about you, I need you to take care of yourself,’ that things were put in perspective. It’s been a long struggle that’s caused me a lot of pain, but now I feel like I’m in control of what’s happening.”

Be Your Own Pet’s story isn’t just one of unfinished business and redemption, it also serves as a testament to the transformative power of music and community. They openly acknowledge their past experiences, yet beneath the surface of laughter and jokes lies an unwavering determination not to be defined by their history. It goes beyond the clichéd ‘four people against the world’ mindset, as the band joyously embraces the reconnecting spirit and enthusiasm of their fans without the burden of previous bullshit. What sets this revival apart is the band’s newfound maturity and emotional resilience, allowing them to relish every moment this time around and seize this second chance with both hands. After all, they were only kids not just when they formed, but when they split up too.

“I think it’s more than just going along for the ride now. It’s about feeling good, having fun and keeping it in that space,” says Eatherly. “I can only speak for myself, but ever since we’ve kicked this back off it feels so fucking good to be back on stage with these guys. I have personally missed it a lot. I love performing, and there’s not really a way to recreate that without being in a band and performing. It’s not like you can find that in a hobby. It’s great to be back; and the fact we’re tapping into a real creative place again? That’s the icing on the cake.”

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Final Third

The Rates: Loraine James

Each month we ask an artist or group to share three musicians they think have gone underappreciated and three new names who they hope will avoid a similar fate. This time, London producer Loraine James discussed her selections with Theo Gorst

In September, having now worked under multiple aliases and collaborated with many of her contemporaries, Londonbased electronic producer and musician Loraine James will release the fourth album under her own name via Hyperdub.

Gentle Confrontation expands further on an electronic sound that encompasses IDM, drill’n’bass and ambient. By her own admission, James “was more deliberate in wanting to put my teenage influences on the album, so it sounds more broad.” The record is an amalgam of forward-thinking electronic music that is coloured by the distant comfort and longing of nostalgia.

During our conversation for this feature, we talk about discovering music as a teen and James’s predilection for post-rock, math-rock and midwest emo.

We speak shortly after she returns to London from a string of dates in Australia. The next month or so is a rare period of respite; a chance for relative calm before touring and album promo work begins to gather pace. James begins our chat by saying: “I haven’t done an interview in ages, so feel a bit rusty.” On the contrary: she’s verbose and candid, and never far from self-deprecation. For example, when

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Final Third talking about her previous job as a teaching assistant, she can’t help but check herself: “I loved it. I always say if this flops I will go back. I’ll slowly walk back in and be like, ‘Hey’, then I’ll sit down quietly.” Yet on the strength of her latest set and her burgeoning reputation as one of the most vital producers and live electronic acta around, the classroom will have to wait: Gentle Confrontation is set to expand her profile and rightly gaining plaudits that will bring her sound to new ears.

stuff.” It kinda reminds of when someone is singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and you thank them but don’t know where to look! In Japan I only knew how to say ‘arigatō’ [Japanese for ‘thank you’]. I was rinsing that word so much, I felt bad I couldn’t say anything else.

Anyway, Aus has a few records out; he hadn’t released anything in years, but he just put something out called ‘Until Then’. His last stuff was like seven, eight or nine years ago, as he’s been focussing on the label. I would start with Lang [2005] – that album is really good.

AUS Loraine James: I’m going to start with Aus, who is this great Japanese producer who I discovered in my last.fm days. He has this really cool song called ‘Fake Five’ which is in a 5/4 time signature and is very cool. I met him briefly when I was in Japan last year which was very nice. In my late teens and early 20s I was listening to a lot of Japanese electronic artists and he was one of them. He also owns a label called Flau, which has Cuushe on – she’s released stuff on there with Iglooghost.

Theo Gorst: When you met, was he familiar with your work?

LJ: Yeah, I did a remix [‘Drip’ from the Cuushe WAKEN Remixes LP] for his label, so we’d chatted then. He said he was coming down to my show and sent me a picture of a pack of tissues with his label sticker on it.

TG: Is that nerve-wracking, hearing someone you admire is coming to your show?

LJ: I get nervous meeting anyone to be honest. I’m quite a shy person, I never really know what to say. I get really awkward when people say, “I like your

J ALBERT TG: J Albert is one of a few artists on your list who you’ve collaborated with. How do these collaborations come about and work?

LJ: J Albert and I would send stuff via Dropbox two or three years ago. We collaborated on [2020 EP] New Year’s Substitution where I’d had this idea of making a record in seven days. So I asked a bunch of people and he was one of them. I started something off and sent it to him and he’d then send bits back… Even now he still sends me stuff – there’s something about his stuff that is unique. He recently put out an album the other day with a guy called Will August Park. I think it’s a bit more experimental and ambient and is kind of in the classical world, which is something I’ve not heard J Albert do before.

TG: How do you find collaborating, is it hard relinquishing control or is the unpredictability exciting?

LJ: Yeah it’s an exciting thing. Around the time [of New Year’s Substitution] I really hadn’t done much collaborating and that

was something I wanted to do. It was weird doing something and sending it off and wondering what they were going to do.

Sometimes it’s just a case of someone sending something to me and I’ll not know what to do because I think it’s good as it is and I can’t find a way in. I still struggle now, there’s been a few times when I’ve said to someone, “I don’t think I can do anything to it.” Maybe I’m just not that good!

Since New Year’s Substitution I’ve collaborated a lot more and there’s more collaborators on records after that, especially the new one coming out. Just to broaden my sound – it’s good not just to be listening to me, myself and I. TG: Making a song every day for seven days seems like a really interesting limitation to place on yourself.

LJ: I make music quite fast anyway. I deleted it years ago but I had this thing on Bandcamp called 5 A Day where I made five songs in a day. I like the idea of bouncing really quickly.

TG: I heard somewhere that some of your songs are written in 20 minutes – what’s the longest a song has taken to complete?

LJ: There’s a song on the new record called ‘Tired of Me’, and the main sound is a synth thing I made in 2015 and had been playing live for ages. For this new record I wanted to make a new version of it but it kept not sounding right. I wanted to get a violinist on it but that kept not happening, so I ended up changing it again. That took a long time, basically – 7 years! I think I’m more or less happy with it now.

EDEN SAMARA LJ: Firstly, I think Eden has one of the best voices. When she sent me the vocals to ‘Running LIke That’ [from James’ 2021

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Final Third album Reflection] I had goosebumps.

On her new record, Rough Night, I really enjoyed the slightly more pop side. I think there’s going to be big things for Eden and I’m not just saying that because she’s my friend! Hence why I asked her to be on my new album. She’s someone I’ll definitely continue working with in any shape or form. There’s a bunch of great producers on her album too, like Call Super, Shanti Celeste and TSVI. TG: She grew up in rural Canada, where the internet became a big thing for her in finding community and opening up musical doors. Although you grew up in London, it seems like the internet had a similar effect on you?

LJ: Yeah, and it’s different now, now it’s all algorithms. Although I’ve found good stuff on [Spotify playlist] Discover Weekly, on last.fm you were actively looking for yourself, whereas now it’s given to you. Which I miss – or maybe I don’t because I can’t be bothered anymore. Bandcamp and NTS are where I discover stuff now, or DJ sets posted on Instagram. Even Shazam, I’ll happily whip out my phone to Shazam stuff. I do that a lot on holiday.

SALAMANDA TG: Speaking of NTS, you recently played Korean duo Salamanda on your show.

LJ: Yeah, I hadn’t heard of them until I was in Japan. The person showing me around mentioned them a few times, then we played together at this festival. When I got home I checked their stuff out, there’s a couple of really cool live sets on YouTube.

They’re minimal, pretty and ambient. I really like that style of ambient music; it’s a bit more leftfield. They’ve only released

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one or two albums but I’m definitely hearing people talk about them now.

You’ll hear a lot more about them. Their album Ashbalkum is really good, Human Pictures is a good label as well.

few days prior; now you can scroll through like 40 pages and still be going.

THE MERCURY PROGRAM

XZAVIER STONE LJ: I discovered Xzavier Stone through Bandcamp during the pandemic. His stuff is very R&B, but on the more electronic side. He produces everything himself, I also like the way he uses vocal processing effects on his voice – it’s very smooth.

Through me liking his stuff I asked him to be on Reflection.

He put out an album last year, which I’ve played a few times on NTS. I definitely think he should be way bigger than he is, not many people are doing what he’s doing – I think he’s criminally underrated.

‘SilverTab’ is a good place to start off with, from the XZ EP. I reached out to him on an Instagram message, which I love, as I don’t like talking to people. We only met the first time at the beginning of this year and met again a couple of weeks ago.

TG: Do you have a theory on why certain things are underrated?

LJ: There’s so much music and so many more artists that I think a lot gets lost.

Even browsing through Bandcamp tags is harder as there’s so much stuff. Back in the day I’d browse every few days and I’d reach page six and be back where I was a

TG: This sounds to me like Tortoise – I’m surprised it’s not way bigger.

LJ: Exactly, I think that’s what it is, maybe it’s because other similar stuff was coming out at the same time. Of all the instrumental post-rock bands The Mercury Program are my favourite; I’ve been trying to buy their vinyl for ages but I’m not paying £100 for it. I used to listen to them a lot, like on the bus or on the train. It’s nice ‘study music’; it’s very calm. There’s a lot of space in it. A Data Learn The Language came out in 2002 and it’s one of my favourite albums of all time. I’ve definitely tried to make some Ableton versions of postrock and have failed miserably.

TG: Have you ever released any of the post-rock stuff you’ve written?

LJ: There was a time when I put stuff on Bandcamp that was kind of post-math, and was made on Logic. I deleted that when people started going to my Bandcamp. I thought about putting one out a couple of [fundraiser days] Bandcamp Fridays ago – something I made in 2014 – but then chickened out. But I think I’ll throw something out by the end of the year or maybe next year.

It’s me trying to fuse an electronic thing into a post-rock thing; trying to combine everything I like. But the guitar sound I used to get is just awful. Terrible to listen to. I was trying to do it on this new record, with ‘One Way Ticket to the Midwest’. I got Corey (Mastrangelo) from a post-rock, math-rock band called Vasudeva to do the guitars on that. It’s nice to be in a position to ask people I’m fans of to help me.

VMP ROCK. COMING IN JULY. TURN IT UP.

LOST SOUNDS FOUND

Final Third

In Conversation: Slowdive

Now having been reunited for longer than they existed as a band the first time around, shoegaze legends Slowdive command a larger, more dedicated and more diverse audience than ever. As they prepare to release their explorative new album Everything Is Alive, singer Rachel Goswell speaks to Skye Butchard about the rise, fall and rise again of a unique group

The last time Slowdive talked to Loud And Quiet their reformation was still an experiment. In 2014, Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell were navigating the excitement and nerves of playing to the biggest crowds of their career, 20 years after breaking up. They were adamant they wouldn’t become a heritage industry act, reliving past glories for a paycheque. New music was always the goal, but before those crowds showed up, it wasn’t a guarantee.

Nine years later, Slowdive’s rebirth has existed for longer than their original run, and a new set of young fans have joined in on the pain of eagerly awaiting new songs. With Everything is Alive, Slowdive can claim to be one group among a select few who’ve had to deal with the pressure of the sophomore slump twice. But given all that’s happened in the time since their 2017 self-titled record, sonic evolution was an inevitability. They’re different people once again.

Everything Is Alive retains the huge, emotional atmospheres central to the group’s appeal, but it’s a record that looks inward more than outward, soaking up ideas like loss, memory and quiet hope more than the romantic angst of their earliest material. Preparing for their first set at Glastonbury, Rachel Goswell discusses its creation, their familial closeness, and the many lives you pass through within one lifetime.

SB: RG:

Hi Rachel. You’re rehearsing for Glastonbury at the moment, right?

Yeah, we’re rehearsing for the rest of this week. We’re doing a warm-up show in Exeter on Saturday, which is fairly local to me. I’ve been trying to do an Exeter gig since we came back, really. It’s taken us nine years, but it seemed like the

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SB: RG:

SB: RG:

SB:

RG:

perfect opportunity to do it the day before Glastonbury.

Hopefully it will be alright…

How’s it been preparing for it?

It’s really nice to finally be at the stage where we can be in a room together and play the songs again. We did a handful of festival dates last year. It’s nice to get to this point where everything’s announced, because we’ve been sitting on it for a while. What will be will be.

Which of the new songs are you excited to share?

I really like ‘Shanty’, the opening track on the album, which has the arpeggiator, and ‘Chained to a Cloud’. I have to remember what their actual titles are now. Our working title for that one was ‘Chimey’ for nearly three years. I particularly love those two because they’re a bit different. They’ll be more challenging to work out live because we’ll need extra equipment to do those. At Glastonbury, it’s only an hour-long set, so we might try a couple of the other ones in the warm-up show. The people coming to that show are the diehard Slowdive fans. It’ll feel nice to do something different for them.

Have you gotten to know any of your superfans? I guess they were the people asking you to come back in the first place.

Yeah, I’ve gotten to know some of them over the years, and a handful of them have become friends. It’s generally people close in age for me, but having common ground outside of music. I think as you get older it’s more difficult that you really connect with people a cellular level, at least for me anyway. I’ve always found it difficult to make

photography by ingrid pop

Final Third

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Final Third

friends. As an adult, having always been in bands, it’s hard to make genuine friendships that go beyond the music.

SB: When Loud And Quiet last interviewed you, it was just before the reunion show at Primavera Sound. How do you look back on that moment in time, when there were plans to make new music but it was up in the air what would actually happen?

RG: It’s been a remarkable few years, for all of us. Nine years is a long time in anybody’s life, and so many things can change. Slowdive still existing now [means] we’ve gone past the original few years of the band.

I’ve got brilliant memories of when we first came back, this whole excitement around Slowdive, having never experienced anything like that before – not on the level that it was. The first time around I was fairly drunk and stoned through a lot of it. I just felt grateful for the opportunity. I appreciate it more the second time around, it keeps you young in a way. It’s such a different lifestyle, and certainly a few years ago I wouldn’t have imagined I’d be doing this now.

SB: Your early records were very teenage, and that’s something that’s loved about them, but what were you pulling from on this record, in comparison to when you were younger?

RG: You have a rich tapestry of experiences as you age. I still remember thinking when I was in my early 20s that I knew it all, much more than my parents did, all those cliches that you get from your parents and older people. You look back and think, ‘Yeah, well they were kind of right’. Life is everchanging. It can throw so many different things at you.

I find it interesting to reflect back at Rachel at the age of nineteen, when I had not much of a care in the world.

I didn’t become a mother until I was 39. That was obviously life-changing. In a lot of ways, as my son’s got additional

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needs. It was more of a shift for me than I was expecting, but nothing prepares you for parenthood anyway. I think I have more of an appreciation for life than I did when I was a 20-year-old. I appreciate older people, their experiences and their wisdom.

I spoke to someone yesterday who said “The last time I saw you was in 1992 – that was a lifetime ago.” Actually, it was several lifetimes ago.

SB: The record is dedicated to your parents. Why was that an important thing for you to document?

RG: The record is dedicated to my mother and Simon [Scott]’s father, who died in 2020 during the early months of the pandemic for different reasons. Simon’s father was a heavy influence on him, with music, with nature – all the stuff Simon does with his sound recordings. He talked about his dad a lot. As a kid, his dad used to take him out to the Fens [marshland in eastern England], and taught him how to recognise different bird songs. He had a close relationship with his dad, and when he passed away it was devastating for him.

A couple of months later my mum passed away. She’d been ill for some time with dementia, and some other things going on. She loved Slowdive. She was always my champion. Always used to come to gigs. In fact, my dad is coming on Saturday to Exeter. He’s 80 now – still loves his music.

It just felt right that the record should be dedicated to both of them. They were both really important to us. Everybody knew my mum in the band, from when we were teenagers.

SB: You get a sense that you’ve all had that kind of closeness as a band, and that familial connection.

RG: We’re like a pair of old shoes, really. Or five shoes that fit a weird human. I’ve got a brother, but they’re like my other brothers. We’ve had so many shared experiences over the years. Everyone’s got their own families and children.

Final Third There are about 11 children between us. Some of the band have got teenage children, so they’re going through the teenage angsty phase, which reminds me of me. We laugh at some of the things that have come full circle.

SB: Do the Slowdive children enjoy the band?

RG: I think one or two of them do. Some might be embarrassed.

Nick [Chaplin]’s daughter is twelve. She’s into Dua Lipa.

That Netflix programme Never Have I Ever has got ‘Don’t Know Why’ playing in the final scene. At that point, her friends were very impressed that was her father’s band, so dad became quite cool, which we thought was funny.

SB: To get back to the new record, I know that Neil was working at home, bringing songs to you, and then they morphed in the process. What did those originals sound like?

RG: There were maybe 40 tracks, very electronic a lot of it.

There was some stuff that we ended up not working on.

There’s a democracy flip in the band in that the eight that were chosen were the most agreed on. If the rest of us weren’t in the band and Neil was able to do exactly what he wanted, it would have been a very electronic record.

The first song Neil played for us was ‘Shanty’. We listened to it on a loop for two days. The main bit is a loop anyway, but it was 48 hours of that while playing around with what to add in.

SB: You recorded in The Courtyard in Oxfordshire, where you’d recorded some of your early material, like ‘Morningrise’. I can imagine you’ve got many memories attached to that studio.

RG: Yeah, and it’s changed a lot. It used to be bigger. Upstairs is Radiohead headquarters, because Chris [Hufford] who engineered our original records went on to manage them.

The nice big residential bit is a lot smaller. But it’s still got

“I appreciate it more the second time around, it keeps you young in a way” the same sofa which was there 30 years ago, which is so uncomfortable.

It’s very familiar to us, and there’s a bit of comfort there for us. We also went up to Chapel Studios in Lincoln, which was great. There’s more room there to set everybody up to play, which meant that all of us could be there away from our families. The two weeks we spent there were good fun. We had a night just sitting around playing tunes on Spotify, everyone choosing songs until the early hours of the morning, which was just a laugh. It was nice to be normal.

SB: You’d mentioned recording being a comforting experience. The album has a warm sound to it, and the tone of the record is quite hopeful. What drew you to that?

RG: We’ve always felt that our music is more about escapism

and being able to take you out of the everyday and wrap you up. As you say, there’s a comfort thing there, but there can be sadness, and there can be hope. The album title Everything Is Alive is about hope. We’ve all lived through a terrible few years collectively. Clearly, there are an awful lot of people in the world living through really hard times.

To be able to have a bit of hope is really important.

Maybe as you get older you get more philosophical, but it’s about appreciating the beauty that is around you.

There are a lot of hard and horrible things in the world, and probably most people need to be able to switch off from the internet, and constantly being bombarded 24/7. I try to get out every day and walk for at least an hour, in fields just away from everything. It’s important to have that regulatory time. I like to think that Slowdive brings some balance for people, even if it’s just for 40 minutes.

SB: The overstimulation aspect is interesting. I’ve found myself drawn more to those intentionally longform records recently.

RG: You live in this age when you’ve got Spotify, where the songs are shuffled and not in order. When we order our records we want people to listen in a certain order and take you on a journey. There’s too much urgency, overstimulation and not being present. Everybody is too busy and in a rush, and you’re kind of missing stuff. That’s what frustrates me with where we’re at. Social media is a blessing and a curse, but I really feel for younger people now being born into that. I’m glad that wasn’t there when I was a kid.

SB: I was born in 1995. I’m in that cut-off point where my first phone was a Nokia brick, so I still get shocked when I see my niece with an iPad. RG: My son is completely deaf. He’s got no auditory nerves or hearing, and mentally he’s younger in years than what he is physically. I gave him an iPad from when he was ten months old, because that was his window into the world.

He loves it, and he’s a real whizz on it. He gets upset when there’s no internet. For him, he won’t be able to do a lot of the things that, for want of a better word, ‘normal’ people are able to do physically. That’s not his world. So there is a place for it. But I do get sad when I ask Chris Savill what his kids are into and it’s mostly sitting in their room playing their Xbox with headphones on. Go outside!

SB: A lot of young music fans are very online, and find your music through that.

RG: That’s the blessing of it!

SB: Being able to engage with those people across generations must be quite a valuable thing.

RG: It’s fabulous. I love it. I sound like an old fart, but I’m still learning so much. I love that our audience, particularly and noticeably at gigs, we have people across generations. There are teenagers through to people older than us, and really mixed genders as well. We consciously make our shows all-ages for that reason. I’m very grateful to have that.

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Final Third

My Place: Jessy Lanza

The Canadian singer, producer and songwriter shows us around her L.A. home, where she created new album Love Hallucination, by Stuart Stubbs

Jessy Lanza started making her fourth album when she was living with her in-laws in the Bay Area, but a majority of Love Hallucination came together once she and her husband had moved to Silver Lake in north-east L.A. at the start of 2022. Her house is up the hill, with no other properties sharing any of its walls – typical for L.A. but a novelty for Lanza who’d been used to apartment living in New York since she’d left her hometown of Hamilton, Ontario: a “chip-on-its-shoulder rust belt city,” she called it when she last spoke to Loud And Quiet, in 2020.

“When I think of Pull My Hair Back,” she says of the debut album that first introduced us to her sultry brand of gossamer slow jams a decade ago, “which was made when I was still in Hamilton, my studio was above a bar, so I would take breaks and go there and someone would say something weird to me, and I would take it back upstairs and put it in a song.”

Just three weeks after moving to L.A., Lanza narrowly avoided being hit by a car. She turned that experience into Love Hallucination opener ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’ – a classic Jessy Lanza club track operating from the more skittering techno-pop end of what she does so incredibly well.

Later on the album, ‘Drive’ explores not the terrors of driving but the romance of it, which seems wholly fitting considering how perfect Jessy Lanza’s music has

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always sounded through a car stereo.

‘Drive’ taps into the freedom of cruising around wherever you please, but the lovelorn two-step of ‘Midnight Ontario’ does the job just as well. All of the tracks on Love Hallucination do, which take turns mining elements of techno, soul, funk, footwork and garage, always with an understated, unhurried assurance that’s made Lanza the queen of slow-burn R&B since the release of Pull My Hair Back.

It’s music that turns the air hot; sensual and subtle, even when Lanza lays down a vaguely tropical chillwave beat on ‘I Hate Myself’ and repeats the song’s title as a self-loathing mantra. Her delay pedal vocals add to the allure and sexual charge, still resembling the breathy falsetto of Janet Jackson, Aaliyah and Elizabeth Fraser from Cocteau Twins.

But a key difference here is how Love Hallucination was written. Or half of it, at least. With a handful of tracks still needed to complete the album, Lanza says she “dipped into my rejected pile” – of songs that she’d written for other artists for the first time. Like ‘Marathon’, which features a somewhat out-of-character saxophone solo. She says she would have never included that in a song she knew she was writing for herself (or added the rap, or sung explicitly about orgasms) but writing for others was freeing.

Of course, I asked who ‘Marathon’ was originally intended for, but Lanza will

only go as far as telling me they were an R&B/hip-hop group. Fair enough. And so she shows me around her home where Love Hallucination was made.

01 Home studio This is my home studio, which is pretty new, because we didn’t move that long ago. It’s a studio in progress, and I’m

photography by emily malan

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pretty particular about where things go.

This is where I wrote a lot of tracks for the new album. I’m pretty bad at keeping a constant routine, so my studio hours change all the time. But I record all my vocals in this room – early evening is a good time for me; I’m not really a morning person. And thankfully we don’t share a wall with a neighbour, which I did when I lived in New York. I could hear whenever my neighbour had walked into his room on

the other side of the wall, and that would make me feel really inhibited.

02 EWI I got this EWI [electronic wind instrument] recently, and I got really into practising that, but only on my couch. It’s basically a synthesiser in the shape of a clarinet, with the fingering of an alto saxophone. There’s

a sax solo on the new record, which I really wanted to be able to play live, so I learned the sax solo and bought this for the tour.

03 / 04 MPC 2000 XL / Roland Juno 106 The MPC over here is one of the very first pieces of gear that I bought. That and the Juno 106. These are on all of my records, and the reason I bought the MPC

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was because I’d read an article on [footwork pioneer] DJ Rashad, and I was such a huge fan of his, and I loved his album Double Cup, which inspired me to want to make music. I read that he used one and just went out and bought one, because I wanted to be like him, basically.

And the 106 Juno is just one of those classic synths that you hear everybody talk about how you can’t beat the sound and there’s no plugin to match it.

It’s just a classic synth pop synthesiser, and I saw one on Craigslist really cheap.

It’s pretty incredible how expensive those Roland synths have become. It’s a beautiful instrument to have, and it’s a lot of money to keep the voice chips going, but it’s very special and it makes me feel good to have it and touch it, rather than using my mouse.

I don’t think the music I make is close to the type of music I imagined I’d make when I bought either of these, but I think that’s because my imagination isn’t so great. My music definitely doesn’t sound like footwork music, but with this last record I was listening to a lot of sophisti-pop records, like Prefab Sprout, China Crisis, so on this record, yeah, I think the Juno 106 helped to push

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me to that synth pop place. But with the Juno you don’t have to do much to it to make it sound really good, which is something I thought about a lot on this record – getting really nice sounds from the start.

05 Clock The clock was a gift from our friends in San Francisco. During the pandemic when we couldn’t see anybody other than family and very close friends, we had dinner with them on a weekly basis, and we’d always have dinner at a Sichuan restaurant called Spices. When we left the Bay Area they got us this clock, which is a picture of Spices II, their other Spices location.

06 Curb Your Enthusiasm poster On here we have Rupert Murdoch and Susie Essman. This is a poster from Ghana. We have a really good friend who works for [American cinema chain] Alamo Drafthouse, and they have these posters from Ghana where they paint images on sacks to advertise movies, and make them seem more exciting so people will come to

see them. The company is called Manso Video Mamobi, and this was a gift from our friend. I just like how Bernie Sanders is holding a grenade; Susie Essman’s in there too – I love her. It just makes me smile whenever I see it. I mean, the picture is from nothing at all – it’s just an imagined thing, from someone thinking how can we get people to come and see Curb Your Enthusiasm. It makes no sense.

07 Lifestyles of the Laptop Café

by The Other People Place This is one of my favourite records. A fan actually gave it to me at a show in Philadelphia, and it’s one of the most thoughtful gifts. I think they read in an interview that they were a huge inspiration for me, and this vinyl is hard to get your hands on.

The guy who made it [James Stinson] was one half of [Detroit techno duo] Drexciya, and this record is like Detroit electro but he sings on it as well, so there are hooks on there. It’s softer than Drexciya, and when I was first starting to make dance music, I was trying to get my head around how to incorporate my voice, and I found this record to be a huge inspiration.

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“I read that DJ Rashad used one and just went out and bought one, because I wanted to be like him, basically”

08 Bootleg photo This is my parents’ ’70s rock band, Bootleg. My mum is stood against the tree on the left, and my dad is sat in front of her with a really long moustache and a scarf. This photo might have been ’74; they were a rock band who wanted to be Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but they were bluesy too. They never pressed anything to vinyl, but they have a lot of reel-to-reels, and a lot of cassette tapes.

A project we’re working on right now is archiving my parents’ music. We’re digitalising it all at the moment. But this photo was just for promo, to send to bars and try to get gigs.

09 Hyperdub console In 2019 Hyperdub did a collab with a company called Konsolation. Basically there’s a little flash drive in here where you can play every game that Sega Genesis ever made. But on the cartridge there’s those exclusive tracks you can see [‘Bobby’ by Jessy and Jeremy Greenspan, and tracks by Burial, Ikonika, Kode9 etc.],

and that’s the only way you can listen to them – if you put that cartridge in and hook up an aux cable. People have ripped the songs now, but it’s something I was really proud to be a part of, and to do an exclusive track for this weird little console.

Only 1000 were made.

My family didn’t have Super Nintendo; we were Sega Genesis, and there are games on here that I hadn’t play since I was 10. Like Altered Beast. It was fun to play those again, because they’re exactly the same. And when you said you wanted to see some objects that mean a lot to you, I instantly thought of this.

I also have this finger massager [not pictured] that’s kind of like the plasma ball – it’s very relaxing and I find if I get a stressful email come in that I want to write something really sassy back to, I just get the finger massager and chill out for a bit. The other technique I’ve been using recently when I get those emails is to take it to the Notes app on my phone and write out the email there. Then I have to go through the extra step of copying and pasting it back into the email, and by then I’ve written out the really harsh, rude version of what I want to say, and it’s out of my system.

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11 Iain M Banks books

We just call this the electricity ball, and it’s always super fun to shut off all the lights and hang out with the electricity ball for a bit. I find it useful as an anger management tool, in all honesty. We have quite a few nieces and nephews, and it’s really sweet seeing how they react to it. My husband makes music videos, and he bought it for a music video that I don’t think ever came out. It’s probably one of the sweetest items in our house.

I love science fiction novels, and in particular Iain M Banks. He has a series called the Culture Series, which is about a human civilisation which is symbiotic with machines and AI. Sometimes science fiction, if it goes too hard, it just becomes Star Trek: The Next Generation. Like, ok, you’re just making up a language here.

It’s too ridiculous. But Iain Banks always manages to make it human and incorporate existential issues.

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If you ever go to a birthday or Christmas party with a bunch of kids – or a garden centre, if you’re a Tory – there’ll often be a table somewhere with a load of germy pens on it, blunt scissors that they can’t even be trusted with, shiny paper, not shiny paper, stickers, glitter and jam, which is just a by-product of the clientele buzzing around what is laughably called ‘The Crafts Table’. These people will then compete to “create” the least thought out, most cavalier piece of “art” you’ve ever had to say “I absolutely love it” to. Typically, all the materials will be dumped on top of each other in one place, with none of their owners ever saying “are you sure you want to put that there,” which is why Santa Clause is completely covering Rudolf and a sticker of a dinosaur (which wasn’t even fucking supplied by The Old Barn) is covering that. On the generous grounds that they’re brains are still small, you’re not allowed to tell any of them, “that’s actually not very good, mate,” just try to hang onto some of your own dignity with something that could be vaguely true, like, “oh, I LOVE the colours you’ve chosen.”

Released in 1999, the child that created Prince’s 23rd album cover must be 28 by now. On that particular craft table, with the word ‘RAVE’ already glued into place, this nutcase went to work, cutting out of blue foil Prince’s famous symbol without a care for curved lines, and practising their underdeveloped bubble writing that inevitably runs out of room more than once – random words of course, one with a fucking number in it! Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic – it’s not actually very good, mate.

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Sir Elton John’s Glastonbury performance looked like a huge success to all that saw it, but rumours soon circulated that the ‘Step Into Christmas’ singer (85) was not happy with how the show ended, after the festival’s organisers allegedly scuppered plans for the finale he had in mind. Elton was apparently overheard calling the Eavises “fucking wimps” after they shut down his plan to launch the Pyramid Stage into orbit with 500 megaton of TNT, which he’d hidden under the stage. A source close to the ‘Hakuna Matata’ star said that Elton wanted to be “a rocket man for realsies” and ordered his team to look away from the fireworks that replaced his planned explosion.

Dave Grohl to appear on Masked Singer in mask of his own face, under the character name “Dave Grohl”

illustration by kate prior

THE NEW ALBUM OUT 28TH JULY INCLUDES THE SINGLES ‘IT’S EUPHORIC’ & ‘GIVE IT UP FOR LOVE’