With no concept of lighting, good audio, or much else, I stammered my way through some thoughts about essential jazz albums – five of them, to be exact.

Fast forward an entire decade, and the channel has amassed millions of views and a community of brilliant people and likeminded music obsessives. deep cuts has been the greatest creative achievement of my life to date, and I’m still in awe of the fact more than 200,000 people took the time to watch, read, and engage with my thoughts and opinions.

The pleasure is well and truly all mine.

So, how to mark such a milestone? As I have alluded to, the very concept of this feature has driven me perilously close to madness. There are simply too many records that have defined my tastes and opened my eyes and ears to the power of music.

As a result, I’ve landed on a top 50 that all follow the same rule: they made me feel something deeply. And to be clear, I’m not trying to create an ‘objective’ best records list. I haven’t paid attention to cultural importance, or tried to carefully balance genres.

It’s the best 50 records of all time based entirely on my subjective opinion, that is it.

I hope you enjoy, and if you’d rather watch me ramble over on the YouTube channel instead then tap this link.

50. Joe Hisaishi – Hana-Bi

If Joe Hisaishi’s name isn’t familiar to you, he’s best known for his scores to Studio Ghibli classics like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle. But to my mind, Hana-Bi is the composer’s best work. His exquisite melodies swoon with melodrama, making no secret of their aspiration to tug at your heartstrings. The main theme is one of those compositions that never fails to make my chest flutter.

49. Brian Eno & David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

A depiction of two artists at the absolute peak of their powers, David Byrne and Eno created something striking and fresh with this 1981 gem. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts somehow manages to do many things at once – dense collages of sound and samples which weave together into a thick, pulsating scape of life itself. At times it sounds like scanning through medium-wave radio, landing on voices and noises you can’t place.

48. Don Caballero – American Don

What blows me away about this landmark math rock record is the duelling spirits of the music. You have Damon Che thrashing his way through impossibly knotty bars that stretch far beyond the concept of something as simple as ‘keeping time’. On top of that, Ian Williams and Eric Emm keep their guitar and bass tones clean, delivering an unexpected warmth absent in the bite of their earlier records. American Don is a masterclass in turning complexity into something deeply musical.

47. Mr Bungle – California

What happens when you combine lounge jazz, surf rock, doo-wop, and experimental rock into some swirling, chaotic fever dream? California is the answer. Mike Patton and co.’s finest hour, they shifted from the outwardly avant-garde stylings of previous record Disco Volante and instead opted for crafting the catchiest, most memorable tracks they could muster. Another incredible outlet for Patton’s outsized vocal personality, there’s nothing else like it.

46. Skee Mask – Pool

“Comfort” isn’t a word usually associated with skittering breakbeats and elastic pads. But since its 2021 release, Bryan Müller’s third LP as Skee Mask has repeatedly provided me with that exact feeling. Across an hour and three quarters, his sophisticated soundscapes envelop like determined vines reaching for the treetops. It’s impossible to separate the music from the lush verdant flora of the cover art, which perfectly complements the sense of the natural world.

45. Slowdive – Souvlaki

Before I really understood what shoegaze or dream pop was, I discovered Souvlaki. In an experience which will be familiar to many of you, I was all of a sudden introduced to a wash of distorted guitars and reverb-drenched vocals, a rush of overwrought emotion. Even after 15 years of listening to it, Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead’s dual vocal performances feel painfully intimate; a document of fluxing romantic relationships and fleeting feelings.

44. These New Puritans – Field of Reeds

Armed with the legendary Graham Sutton on production duties, Field of Reeds is a tour de force in dynamics and space, a shapeshifting surprise from one track to the next. Fragments of a half-remembered rendition of Burt Bacharach’s ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’ open the record, giving way to a soaring trumpet and grandiose orchestration. The inclusion of orchestral instruments never feels forced into the songwriting, instead becoming its essential centrepiece.

43. Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile

The Downward Spiral might have been Trent Reznor’s journey into the void, but The Fragile is the moment he hit the bottom. A double album of unrelenting bleakness – though not entirely without levity – it marks the point the Nine Inch Nails project began to properly experiment with ambience and space. The result is perhaps the most satisfying NIN record, stacked with monolithic moments. Songs like ‘The Great Below’ have a deep, turbulent power that represents Reznor at his absolute best.

42. Portishead – Dummy

If I could go back and experience any period of music in real time, it might be Bristol in the 90s. The trip hop scene is one of the most potent of late-stage 20th century Britain, and produced some of the greatest records of the century. To my mind, no one did it better than Portishead, and their debut Dummy remains one of the most hypnotic pieces of work I’ve ever heard. Beth Gibbons’ voice mesmerises, the focal point of a dubby, moody instrumental palette.

41. Opeth – Watershed

I can remember first learning ‘Coil’ and ‘Heir Apparent’ and feeling like the most versatile guitarist in the world, jumping from the lilting folk of the former to the palm-muted dissonance of the latter. Mikael Åkerfeldt and the gang produced one of the most delightful modern prog metal albums in Watershed – by leaning so heavily into the throwback pastoral prog stylings, they made the death metal sections slam even harder. It might not be their heaviest record, but it’ll always be my favourite.

40. Tom Waits – Blue Valentine

From a purely artistic standpoint, I would concede that Tom Waits’ 90s output remains his most creatively impressive. But time and time again, I find myself gravitating to his 1978 record; from its West Side Story cover, to the love ballads and troubadour bar blues, it has a warmth that he never replicated in the same way again. Impossible not to romanticise knocking back a bourbon in a smokey backwater bar while you’re listening to it.

39. Faith No More – Angel Dust

Easily one of the greatest rock records of the 90s, Angel Dust moved the San Francisco band away from rap rock and into more cerebral territory (ignoring the blowjob anthem ‘Be Aggressive’, of course). I first discovered it via an old battered CD copy at a record fair in Canterbury when I was about 15 – those kinds of discoveries tend to shape your tastes, and this record absolutely did that.

38. David Bowie – Low

Young Oliver was baffled upon first hearing Bowie’s greatest record. Was the second half a production mistake? Where were the vocals? Of course, eventually the latter part of Low became my gateway to instrumental music and ambient more generally, introducing me to the genius of Brian Eno. Its 11 tracks remain fresh nearly 50 years later, a masterly representation of Bowie’s Berlin period.

37. Glenn Branca – The Ascension

Avant-garde experimentalist Glenn Branca synthesised a pure shot of adrenaline with his 1981 record. If you’ve never heard an orchestra of guitars propelled forward with persistent, motorik drumming, then you need to listen to ‘The Spectacular Commodity’. In a moment of pure elation, Branca takes the queasy moods of New York no wave nihilism and builds to a surprisingly optimistic conclusion.

36. Talk Talk – Laughing Stock

When Mark Hollis croons it sounds like an outpouring of his soul, the rest of the music swaddling his wispy voice like bubble wrap around a priceless artefact. The many musicians invited into the recording studio to perform their parts for Laughing Stock were greeted by a windowless space, the only light source streaming from an oil projector and sound-triggered stage lights. In this environment, and still reeling from the death of his brother Ed, Mark pored over the performances for weeks, gradually constructing this final, singular work of art.

35. Slint – Spiderland

Released to limited praise and fanfare, Spiderland is now rightfully hailed as one of the most important rock records of the 90s, and the primordial ooze of the post-rock sound. Even now it sounds jagged and dangerous, Brian McMahan’s modest vocals haunting its six perfectly-formed tracks. I’m still not sure I can identify a closing track more bone-shaking than ‘Good Morning, Captain’. Even after 100+ listens, McMahan’s anguished cries of “I miss you” still raise the hackles on my neck.

34. Miles Davis – Miles Smiles

Miles Smiles is the Davis record that opened my eyes to the incredible palette of 60s post-bop jazz. Boasting a who’s who line-up of the greatest US players – Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Tony Williams – these flowing pieces are freed from the constraints of the hard bop sound which defined the previous decade. The unpredictability of tracks like ‘Orbits’ and ‘Footprints’ make for a thrilling experience, finding moments of intimacy in the spaces between the rhythms and figures of the formidable quintet.

33. The Mars Volta – Frances the Mute

The Mars Volta peaked with their sophomore record, a blistering follow-up to groundbreaking debut De-Loused in the Comatorium. Leaning more expressly on Omar Rodríguez-López’s Puerto Rican heritage and Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s Mexican ancestry, their white-hot prog punk is given a new life with Latin influences and Spanish language peppering the near-feature-length record. Is there a better rock drum performance than Jon Theodore on ‘Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus?’ Possibly not.

32. Talking Heads – Speaking In Tongues

Like many my age, Remain In Light was a formative record in my appreciation and love for music. If I were going by my head, that record would be on this list – but as I’m going by heart, it has to be 1983’s Speaking in Tongues. A record that provides space for the band to riff on a single essential idea, Byrne and co. deploy some of their most satisfying grooves and melodies. And let’s not forget finale ‘This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)’, possibly the tenderest closing track of all time.

31. Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

My first listen to Ravedeath, 1972 instilled some kind of near-religious fervour, a disbelief of the sublime beauty and the deep, boneshaking pipe organs anchoring the soundscapes. Hecker recorded the majority of the record in an Icelandic church, and it remains top of my list for sonic pilgrimages. One day I’ll visit and soak up the space that was immortalised on this gorgeous piece of work.

30. Sun Kil Moon – Benji

Like many, I’ve come to despise Mark Kozelek: a bitter, miserable individual with a slate of sexual misconduct allegations spanning two decades, he’s clearly an odious individual. But like Red House Painters before it, Benji remains one of the most open-hearted and reflective records I’ve ever listened to. In my head this record and my feelings towards it belong to me as the listener, not its creator.

29. Danny Brown – Atrocity Exhibition

The collaboration between Danny Brown and Paul White gifted us one of the best hip hop records of the 21st Century; bold and experimental, Brown’s dexterous bars collide with dissonant horns and paranoid melodies on tracks like ‘Pneumonia’, ‘When It Rain’ and ‘Ain’t It Funny’. Frankly, it’s a genius pairing. The dual spirits of J.G. Ballard and Joy Division are evoked in the title, leaving me to wonder what they’d make of it.

28. Bowery Electric – Beat

A post-rock, trip-hop-adjacent classic, once Beat gets under your skin you’re unlikely to ever drop it, especially if it becomes the soundtrack to a particular moment in your life. Following an accident which ended my dream of becoming a professional musician, this record was my solace. I’m not sure whether it was the churning shoegaze soundscapes, the languid beats, or the way Martha Schwendener’s voice drifts through the tracks, but there was something deeply consoling about the record. Years later it remains a source of comfort, but also a reminder of how one small instance can fundamentally change everything.

27. Fishmans – Long Season

Throughout the existence of this channel and community, I think we’ve done more listening parties for Long Season than any other record. The Japanese trio’s sixth LP is a single 35-minute composition with a central melody that – once you’ve heard it – will never leave you. Both my wife and I can frequently be found wandering around our house humming the guitar melody. It’s just perfect.

26. Prince – Purple Rain

What do you say about a record as essential and ingratiated into popular culture as Purple Rain? I’m honestly not sure. All I can say is that it’s a record that’s seeped into my very bones, I know every track like the back of my hand, and it makes me feel joy and pleasure in a way few other albums manage. Undoubtedly Prince at his finest.

25. Underworld – Beaucoup Fish

A record that’s basically part of my DNA at this point, a scorching summer climate cannot be complete without the thumping theatrics of the greatest electronic group of the 90s. (Before you say ‘what about Autechre?’ I wouldn’t consider them a pure 90s group. Their work continued to break new ground way into the 2010s). Karl Hyde and Rick Smith were never this good again, but their live sets continue to harness the infectious brilliance at the heart of this record.

24. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free

Two decades later, Mike Skinner’s second full-length stands tall as one of the most satisfying and unpretentious narrative concept records, complete with tracks that are now woven into the culture of Britain. Those my age will remember the ubiquity of ‘Dry Your Eyes’ and ‘Fit But You Know It’ back in 2004, but there’s so much more on offer here. With a closing track that recontextualises the entire story, Skinner delivers a hopeful finale that properly sticks the landing.

23. John Coltrane – Ascension

For the Ascension sessions, Coltrane invited incendiary players like Archie Shepp, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones to perform what is essentially a breakneck round of solo improvisations, broken up by unison ensemble moments that twist and heave. The legend goes that Jones threw his snare at the wall and walked out when Coltrane suggested a third take, having taken the group to its absolute limits during the first two recordings. Free jazz of the finest pedigree.

22. Daft Punk – Discovery

While Discovery has the throb of 70s disco and neon-hued sounds of 80s synth pop, Thomas Bangalter said in interviews at the time that the pair didn’t set out to pastiche a decade. Instead they were emulating the feeling of innocence and the wonder of musical discovery they felt growing up through those years. That element of carefree fun and nostalgia is what has me returning to Discovery time and time again, without its charm ever wearing thin.

21. Carole King – Tapestry

A bona fide masterpiece, Tapestry is one of those records where every song is perfection, every bar a masterclass in songwriting. King’s superb voice is the linchpin of these songs, a warm presence that brings the cosy cover art photograph to life. It seems almost unfathomable that she was only 29 years old when this record landed, after already spending a decade in the industry writing songs with Gerry Goffin for the likes of Aretha Franklin, The Monkees, the Animals, and James Taylor.

20. Frank Zappa – Apostrophe(‘)

Zappa’s first proper commercial success, Apostrophe (‘) succeeds in being musically impressive without drowning the irreverence, the silliness and lightness of tone that made him such a captivating figure. Those snare-tight instrumental performances scratch the itch usually serviced by technically impressive 70s prog, with none of the pomp that often comes with that particular territory. A cool cat, and an incredibly fulfilling record front to back.

19. Dirty Three – Horse Stories

Long after we’re all dead and gone, Warren Ellis will likely be remembered foremost as a Nick Cave collaborator and long-time Bad Seed. But for some of us, his most enduring work will forever be a string of instrumental post-rock, folk-tinged records, under the guise of Dirty Three. The Aussie trio have released some of the most poignant albums you’re likely to encounter, their power stemming from the graceful interplay of Ellis’ violin and viola, Mick Turner’s guitar and the drums of Jim White – and Horse Stories is the best of the lot.

18. Cardiacs – Sing To God

Tim Smith was a fucking genius, let’s just get that straight. Experiencing Cardiacs’ maximalist opus Sing to God for the first time dragged me through various emotional states in rapid succession: initial bafflement, giving way to mild confusion, eventually landing at wide-eyed wonder. There is nothing quite like Cardiacs out there, and this feature-length punk prog pop explosion is the record I’m never far from returning to.

17. Nina Simone – Pastel Blues

I’m ashamed to say my first conscious experience of Nina Simone’s mighty voice was the sample on Kanye West’s ‘Blood on the Leaves’. When I finally got around to listening to the original, my jaw was slack for the entire running time. The sheer power of Simone’s presence must be experienced, forlorn and beautiful. Though it’s a clear highlight of Pastel Blues, every track is a sophisticated expression of the blues, including that ragged ten-minute rendition of ‘Sinnerman’.

16. Pink Floyd – Animals

My love for Animals and Wish You Were Here is almost exactly equal – there’s perhaps a single sheet of paper between them. The former just about clinches it because of the way that first half-time section on ‘Dogs’ makes me feel. David Gilmour’s unmistakeable buttery guitar lead cuts deep into my soul and then warms me from the inside out.

15. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport

Euphoria by way of a thumping four to the floor kick and hissing soundscapes building to thrilling, mountainous peaks, Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung created a masterwork in Tarot Sport. I remember first hearing the melody of ‘The Lisbon Maru’ and realising it was a rework of the bone-shaking opening track from their debut, thrown into an entirely fresh light. A peerless electronic canvas.

14. Fela Kuti – Gentleman

My obsession with Fela comes around about once a year. If you walk past me on the street during that two-three-week period, you might see a pale man strutting along with his eyes closed, taking in every addictive saxophone melody and funk rhythm thrown at him. Gentleman is one of Fela Kuti’s many fantastic records, but it’s the one I always come back to at the first instance.

13. Global Communication – 76:14

The scapes Mark Pritchard and Tom Middleton create on 76:14 are some of my absolute favourites to come out of the 90s. One of the spaciest tracks of the lot, ‘9:39’ samples classical choral pieces and runs them through stacks of chorus and reverb to assemble blissful chords. This is often the record I return to for a walk through my local woodland, or when I’m curling up with a good book.

12. Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique

The density of samples keeps Paul’s Boutique flying along, delighting at every turn: Sly Stone and James Brown on ‘Shadrach’, The Beatles on ‘The Sound of Science’, and even the duelling banjos from the Deliverance soundtrack on ‘5-Piece Chicken Dinner’. The record ends with the sample suite ‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse’, a breathless statement of intent from the group. Fun, sparky and creative, I’m so glad this is how they decided to follow up Licensed to Ill.

11. Fennesz – Venice

It was Venice’s enticing cover art which first drew me into Christian Fennesz’s collage of spliced guitars and decaying static. I feel a strange kind of nostalgia towards the record, one less about my own memories, and more like slipping into someone else’s. Listening feels like being transported into Fennesz’s recollections: wandering through Italy, watching the water of the Mediterranean lapping against the edges of towns and beaches. Who knew ambient glitch could be this graceful?

10. Björk – Homogenic

Our Icelandic queen has left an indelible print on the tundras of electronic music since the 90s, each new project offering up a distinct personality. But the record I return to time and time again is Homogenic, her most acclaimed and, quite possibly, best work. In the past she has described the sound of her third record as a response to wanting to make “volcanic beats”, in flux with the “over-romantic violins, playing almost Icelandic national anthems”. The focus on elemental power is the theme that knots these tracks together as a singular vision – the beats crack upward from the fissures in the landscape, as the strings swoon between her elegantly-constructed motifs.

9. The Tuss – Rushup Edge

Rushup Edge is right up there with the absolute best Richard D James work: squelchy, mangled acid techno with some of the crispest drum breaks you’ll ever have the pleasure of experiencing. I remember checking this out for the first time around Syro’s release in 2014, and in many ways the pair are a perfect double act. The space Richard creates around his complex synthesis, and the craft put into every sharp drum hit, is what makes Syro such a compelling listen. And it was right here first on Rushup Edge.

8. Fugazi – The Argument

The best swansong ever? To borrow a tired cliché, DC’s eminent post-hardcore quartet made the deliberate decision to burn out rather than fade away in 2001, releasing The Argument before going on an indefinite hiatus which still stands to this day. What makes their sixth record such a joy is the maturity of the songwriting. The precise interplay between all four of them is as strong as ever, but with a nuance and attention to detail that only comes from working together for decades. Essential, essential, essential.

7. Radiohead – In Rainbows

It had to be here, the Radiohead record which took my mild interest in the Oxford band and blasted it into the stratosphere. I don’t think I’d ever heard a record that sounds so musically inviting, as if beckoning me to abandon the metaphysical plain I was standing on and reach out into a warm, intimate space. I know many will say OK Computer or Kid A are the most culturally-significant records they ever produced, but their “best” has to be In Rainbows. I will die on this hill.

6. The Blue Nile – Hats

I only properly discovered the Glaswegian synth pop trio a few years ago and since then have become completely obsessed with this LP, in a relatively short space of time becoming one of my favourite records. It’s soundtracked my commutes into London, with its forlorn synths and Paul Buchanan’s vocals pairing beautifully with the patter of rain against the train window. A record that never begs for attention, instead lingering and settling in over time.

5. Autechre – Confield

Ever experienced two ball bearings ricocheting inside your skull? Fire up the first track of the Manchester duo’s 2001 triumph and that’s exactly what you’ll get. ‘VI Scose Poise’ leaves listeners under no illusions in the opening moments of what is likely my favourite of their records – a thrillingly unpredictable experience, all cut surfaces and wind-whipped exteriors. What keeps me coming back to Confield is the itch that’s scratched by the glitchy percussion: the hard snares and fizzing noise are like almost nothing I’ve ever heard, the abrasiveness possessing a glassy kind of fragility. There are also moments of emotional catharsis buried in the fricative textures – on ‘Pen Expers’, Sean Booth and Rob Brown cage a gorgeous melodic line inside an unpredictable percussive exterior.

4. Alice Coltrane – Journey in Satchidananda

Often when the fusion of music is brought up, it’s in strict binary couplings; jazz fused with rock, or drone fused with metal. In truth, you haven’t experienced true ‘fusion’ until you listen to Coltrane’s masterpiece of a record, Journey in Satchidananda. Following the death of her husband John, Alice became a devout follower of Indian guru Swami Satchidananda Saraswati, a decision which had a profound effect on her artistry. What you get from this record is spiritual jazz constructed from Indian blues, drone, modal jazz saxophone from collaborator Pharaoh Sanders, Coltrane’s cascading harp performances, and Middle Eastern spiritual influences. A true masterpiece, no doubt about it.

3. Bruce Springsteen – Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My parents would sing ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Dancing in the Dark’ to one another when I was just a wee boy, and I quickly took to records like Born In the USA and latter-day release Dust and Devils. But it was Darkness on the Edge of Town which bowled me sideways. A young Bruce grappling with adulthood and the tribulations of everyday folk, it had a depth and grittiness which set it apart from predecessor Born To Run and the other massive radio hits of his career. But with ballads like ‘Racing in the Street’ and the one-two smack of ‘Streets of Fire’ and ‘Prove it All Night’, this record is his gold plated, untouchable achievement.

2. Stars of the Lid – and Their Refinement of the Decline

And Their Refinement of the Decline is one of the finest records I’ve ever listened to, its compositions of strings and brass welcoming me back in time and time again. Without wishing to veer dangerously into another cliché (oops), it’s a record that plays out like an artist working across a canvas – painting with stretched trumpet tones, or a suite of violins, the pieces have always sounded to me like they’re being brought to life as you listen. That effect has somehow never diminished, even after more than a hundred listens. There are so many excellent records that Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride created both alone and together, but this is the pinnacle of their creativity.

1. Bark Psychosis – Hex

A deep, drifting piece of work which glides with grace from track to track, it often feels like being sucked into the depth of a dubby subterranean scape, the percussion a beacon back to the surface. Hex will forever be a landmark statement in experimenting with the traditional instruments of a rock band, deconstructing them alongside samples and electronics, and using the resulting parts to build a beautiful monument of sound. It’s often described as “jazzy”, though I’ve never fully agreed with that label. Perhaps the comparison comes from the genre’s freeform spirit – its way of keeping every possibility open, so the listener can never be entirely sure where the sound will go next. I’ve never connected with a record in the same way I have with Hex: it has defined my love for music, it’s been a slice of solace, it’s something I share with my wife as an absolutely perfect piece of artistic expression. My favourite record of all time – and there was never any doubt in my mind.

And that is it. It’s been a genuine pleasure, and I hope you’ve enjoyed what I think I can call my definitive 50 favourite records of all time. Will I feel the same a decade from now? I have no idea, but I’m excited to find out.

I’ll be cropping back up sometime soon with something fresh – might be an artist interview, a genre deep dive, or an essentials review. I don’t really know yet, to be honest. But that’s half the fun.

Take care x

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Writing this feature over the past few weeks has been some of the most rewarding fun I’ve had as a writer in some time.

Revisiting the tangled emotions of adolescence that defined so much of the genre for me in the 2000s has been equally gratifying, as has charting indie rock’s evolution to the present day. What might have happened if Weyes Blood had released Titanic Rising in the mid-2000s? Or if WORRY. had arrived a decade earlier?

It’s my clumsy way of saying that indie rock remains in remarkably good health in the 2020s – still capable of surprising, comforting, and giving us plenty to love.

If you missed part one, you can peruse my picks by clicking below.

And – as usual – if you want to listen along whilst you read, I’ve curated playlists on Spotify and Apple Music. Enjoy!

TV On The Radio – Dear Science (2008)

Seeing the Brooklyn indie band performing this record at Brixton Academy in 2009 was one of the defining moments of my music life. Dear Science is an inventive and colourful LP, drawing from psychedelia, electronic, funk, and rock – it’s not afraid of a few bars of rapping, staccato string melodies, or stuttering electronic drum samples, either. The sleeve notes contain an image of lead singer Tunde Adebimpe and the rest of the band standing in a laboratory, surrounded by scientific ephemera, and it‘s almost as if they perfected the formula for indie creativity, standing head and shoulders above typical guitar bands of the year to produce a record with limitless depth. The vivid production presents these tracks in the best light, too, thanks to production from the band’s bassist Dave Sitek – a man whose name was synonymous with late 2000s indie records.

On the playlist: ‘Dancing Choose’ & ‘DLZ’

The Hotelier – Goodness (2016)

In the intro to part one of this feature, I wrote that some records classed as ‘indie’ could easily slip into emo territory. Well, here we are. The brittle vocals of frontman Christian Holden are what holds the Massachusetts band in the fourth wave emo revival pen, in a performance that mines an intimate and confessional seam comparable to American Football’s Mike Kinsella. Finicky genre labelling aside, this is a gripping guitar record, a standout of its year – no feat, considering the remarkable level of quality that 2016 gave us. The guitars of Goodness are warm and inviting, lightly distorted but with a comfiness that keeps the record feeling like a companion on a hazy summer’s day. A decade on and the band haven’t been able to follow it up, instead returning to the stage to celebrate the tenth anniversary of second record Home, Like Noplace Is There. I hope they give it another go soon.

On the playlist: ‘Piano Player’ & ‘Sun’

Weyes Blood – Titanic Rising (2019)

(Adapted from the deep cuts essential feature)

Despite its imagery of rising seas and collapsing rooms, Titanic Rising doesn’t actually sound like the apocalypse. Those who know the record will recall its warmth: a lush, golden glow that evokes the 1970s, an era long before push notifications reminded us of impending doom every few minutes. I’m convinced that if you played this record to an unsuspecting listener, they would struggle to pinpoint its decade of origin. The fullness of the composition – its rich backline and swooning strings – gives it the sounds of a lost 70s relic, uninterested in the crisp digital clarity of most music produced in our era. Her music makes life sound beautiful, even as her lyrics pull us back to existential dread. By evoking the Andromeda galaxy, or the steady march towards the brink, she seems to be offering comfort to those of us grasping for meaning in an indifferent universe.

On the playlist: ‘Andromeda’ & ‘Movies’

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (2005)

You thought it was going to be Funeral, didn’t you? I wouldn’t blame you for the assumption: Quebecois group Arcade Fire were a monolith of the music world in the 2000s, with a debut record that became a pointed definition of what indie rock was. Self-assured and bursting with musicians (seven band members and a host of collaborators), it remains one of the greatest expressions of energy and vitality you’re likely to hear. It’s also one of the reasons their 2005 follow-up Neon Bible has always worked so well for me. Almost a foil for the record that came before, it’s a more reserved, brooding project than Funeral. Yes it includes jangly acoustic-lead numbers like ‘Keep The Car Running’, but it’s the swells of organ on ‘Intervention’ and ‘My Body Is A Cage’ which can still move me, and the passion wrought from the bellows of the accordion which leads the crescendo of ‘No Cars Go’. Arcade Fire’s stock has plummeted considerably since, following accusations of sexual misconduct against Win Butler. If you’re able to disconnect the appalling allegations against him from the early music, that first three-album run remains one of the strongest in the genre.

On the playlist: ‘Intervention’ & ‘No Cars Go’

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever To Tell (2003)

Of all the figures of 2000s music, Karen O stands tall above most. A bona fide icon, her New York band took the well-trodden sounds of 90s garage rock and updated them with a new-millennium twist, constructing a serrated art punk aesthetic that was equal parts infectious and brazen. Listening to this record again in 2026, it’s lost none of its urgency and – most important, I think – fun. Fever To Tell is a record that shakes, rattles and rolls like almost no other record in the 2000s, with Brian Chase and Nick Zinner’s instrumentals providing a backline for Karen O to yell, screech, and spit iconic lines like “I got a man who makes me want to kill, we're all gonna burn in hell.” It also gave us ‘Maps’, undoubtedly one of the best tracks of 2000s rock. An undeniable gem.

On the playlist: ‘Man’ & ‘Maps’

Jeff Rosenstock – WORRY. (2016)

In my review of Japandroids’ Celebration Rock in part 1, I said it had “a breathless quality only equalled by Jeff Rosenstock’s WORRY. in the years since”. Where King and Prowse cemented their legacy with just eight tracks across 35 minutes, Long Island’s eminent rocker did it four years later with 17 tracks and just 120 additional seconds. Tapping into the anxieties of our modern age, Rosenstock and his band burst through firework explosions of songs that feel as if they end before they begin, stopping along the way for singalong moments that percolate for days after you hear them. The real pleasure of WORRY. is its seamless transitions from song to song, blowing the likes of Green Day’s poor attempts at a rock opera and actually succeeding, without the pomp and nonsense. Seeing Rosenstock tour WORRY. at Camden’s Underworld in 2017 was one of the sweatiest, most life-affirming performances I’ve experienced.

On the playlist: ‘Wave Goodnight to Me’ & ‘Blast Damage Days’

The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream (2014)

In 2014, Adam Granduciel perfected his Springsteen-esque vision of heartland rock with the third War on Drugs record, Lost in the Dream. Sounding like a modern-day Dylan with more air and a bit less gravel, Granduciel crafted a capital-A American-sounding record; cinematic anthems that leave space for atmosphere to leak out of the speakers. Speaking to Loud and Quiet back when the record came out, he spoke of his writing intention: “It’s all about the mood in these songs; that’s what I tend to chase. That’s not to say I want to keep them small and lo-fi or anything, I just want to capture the feeling I was in at that moment. And it’s those sounds that excite me – something mysterious, dark and a little bit melancholy but can also be crafted into a larger work.” More than a decade later, Granduciel’s vision still stands proud.

On the playlist: ‘Red Eyes’ & ‘Eyes to the Wind’

Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest (2009)

Veckatimest hit record shelves in the early summer of 2009, as the days stretched longer and the green spaces of my childhood slowly became more occupied. The Brooklyn band’s third record was my soundtrack to afternoons sat in a circle of friends in the local park, warm cans of cider and a crappy speaker in tow. Even now, Grizzly Bear’s folk-indie-psychedelia has a warmth that transports me directly back to my adolescence. At the time folk was going mainstream, and school friends were busy bumping the likes of Mumford and Sons, Noah and the Whale and Laura Marling. Grizzly Bear showed me that having a folk styling didn’t need to adhere to the twee cookie-cutter style – in fact, there’s a world of sound out there and this lot managed to stuff it into one record.

On the playlist: ‘Two Weeks’ & ‘Fine For Now’

William Doyle – Your Wilderness Revisited (2019)

One of the greatest records of the 2010s, William Doyle’s love letter to the suburban Hampshire of his childhood is one of limitless depth and complexity, and deserves to be showered in accolades. Doyle first came to prominence under East India Youth, earning himself a nomination for the 2014 Mercury Music Prize. Following his indefinite hiatus of the name, Doyle released a few ambient records before finally releasing Your Wilderness Revisited in 2019, his masterpiece to date. If the cover art wasn’t a giveaway, he was inspired by the suburban maze of housing estates he grew up in, nestled within the greenery of (I’m not biased) the leafiest Home County of the UK. Doyle’s voice soars, his melodies imbued with beauty and wonder. On ‘Zionshill’ he sings “damp Hampshire greens cling onto me”, while this wondrous soundscape explodes around him. Life affirming might sound hackneyed, but it’s the closest I can get to capturing it.

On the playlist: ‘Zionshill’ & ‘An Orchestral Depth’

Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007)

Favourite Worst Nightmare remains the best thing that Sheffield’s Arctic Monkeys ever did. Of course, their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not was one of the defining records of the 2000s, catapulting the scrappy upstarts into the position of household name practically overnight. But as a then-15-year-old, their sophomore seemed to me a far more adventurous take on their propulsive indie singalongs, not least because of a refusal to simply capitalise on the success of their debut and trot out the same record ad nauseam. The surf-rock stylings give the opening few tracks on the record a delightful flavour, but it’s the run of tracks from ‘Do Me A Favour’ (the best song they’ve ever recorded) to finale ‘505’ that cements this as an all-timer.

On the playlist: ‘Do Me A Favour’ & ‘Old Yellow Bricks’

Pinegrove – Cardinal (2016)

Cardinal’s sketched, lived-in sound immediately became a source of deep comfort to me on its release in 2016. It soundtracked the gentle dissolution of frost-covered mornings, it welcomed in the bluebells and daffodils of the idyllic English spring, and even the first sweltering heatwave of the year. Winter coats and ice-cream vans – there was no seasonal state that placed Pinegrove’s second record out of its depth. Has any line stuck with me as much as “I should call my parents when I think of them, should tell my friends when I love them” on ‘Old Friends’? Its simplicity is its absolute power, saying the quiet part out loud and making you re-evaluate the petty gripes and grievances we all find ourselves needlessly wrapped up in. It’s about love, friendship, and connection. A record that can remind you of that reflects perhaps the ultimate power of music as an artform.

On the playlist: ‘Old Friends’ & ‘Aphasia’

Wild Beasts – Smother (2011)

Hands up who remembers Wild Beasts? The Cumbrian band were best known for 2009 record Two Dancers, which saw them riding the coattails of the flickering 2000s indie-rock scene. I never cared for that record, however, its follow-up hit me like a tonne of bricks with its melancholy and vulnerability. The spotlight of Smother remains firmly on vocalist Hayden Thorpe, whose timbre wavers across sparse instrumental lines, backed by elegant harmonies. For me this record was a definitive goodbye to the indie scene of the 2000s, ushering in something more complex and intricate. While the landfill continued to pile up (looking at you Two Door Cinema Club, Bombay Bicycle Club, and Catfish & The Bottlemen), Wild Beasts forged their own path.

On the playlist: ‘Lion’s Share’ & ‘Albatross’

The National – Sleep Well Beast (2017)

Until Sleep Well Beast came along, I’d never much connected with The National. I had an appreciation for their position as the middle-aged statesmen of indie rock, but other than the obvious peaks like ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ and ‘Mr. November’, their records as a whole always seemed like a bit of a slog. But there was something so riveting about the whispered fragility of the tracks on Sleep Well Beast, exploring the trials of married life and middle age. Eschewing some of the more opaque lyricism found in earlier records, frontman Matt Berninger speaks about marriage like a confessional, exploring the dissolution of his partnership with Carin Besser and actually writing some of the lyrics with her. “It was a way for us to tiptoe into dark territory without actually having to talk about those things,” he told an interviewer at the time. Although it’s peppered with big singalong moments like ‘The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness’, its quality lies in the quietude of ‘Walk it Back’ and ‘Born to Beg’.

On the playlist: ‘Born to Beg’ & ‘Carin at the Liquor Store’

Wolf Alice – Visions of a Life (2017)

Sometimes you need a person close to you to unlock the brilliance of a band. For me it was my now wife Courteney, who when we first met in 2016 was a huge Wolf Alice fan. For whatever reason, their 2015 debut My Love Is Cool had completely passed me by. By the time they unleashed sophomore effort Visions of a Life in September 2017, I had extricated myself from an unhealthy relationship and Court and I were falling in love. Amongst a few others, Ellie Rowsell and co.’s sophisticated collection of tracks became the soundtrack to that beautiful time – road trips to the beach in the greyness of autumn, fireworks night, exchanging presents at Christmas for the first time. Visions of a Life displays such a craft for songwriting, every track possessing considered instrumentation that you might expect from a quartet far further into their tenure. Dream pop, alt rock, shoegaze, and a hint of Radiohead. Never beholden to any of these influences, they tie it all together and achieve something stellar.

On the playlist: ‘Planet Hunter’ & ‘Visions of a Life’

Los Campesinos – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed (2008)

For the generation of music fans who came of age in the late 2000s, Los Campesinos held an almost religious position. The Cardiff septet’s ragged indie pop sound became a staple of sixth form parties and pre-drinks I was attending, and a mainstay of the independent festival scene between 2008 and 2012. So when I stumbled upon We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed in my local record store – a limited DVD case containing the record and badges (yes, badges!) – I couldn’t help but dive right in. Whereas debut Hold On, Youngster was always a little on the twee side for my liking, this rapid follow-up had a vein of anxiety coursing through it, offsetting the brash instrumentals and Gareth Paisley’s often hilarious lines. Take ‘Miserabilia’ for example: “I have broken down into the naked breasts of a newly ex. No dignity, I can only guess that she thinks about it when she touches herself.” Or the oft-quoted line from the title track: “Charlotte says, it's more constructive than the one in Canada, when you got drunk, ate loads of crisps and threw up by a football pitch."

On the playlist: ‘We are Beautiful, We Are Doomed’ & ‘The End of the Asterisk’

glass beach – plastic death (2024)

Ending this feature with the most recent record on the list, the second and final record from now-dead LA band glass beach grows in my estimations with every listen. Pushing the meaning of ‘indie rock’ to perhaps its furthest edges, plastic death is more modern progressive rock or art rock than anything else. Long songs with multiple sections and shifting time signatures, the quartet takes over an hour to present their vision to listeners, and the result is a breathtaking piece of work. It’s a record made by a band that didn’t give a shit about fitting into any convention or attempting to sell their music to the highest bidder. During interviews before their breakup, the quartet talked about how their close friendships were the bond that stuck them together through painstaking recording and editing of their sophomore masterpiece. I only wish they’d stuck around and made some more.

On the playlist: ‘rare animal’ & ‘puppy’

Thanks for reading, and let me know in the comments which records you would pick for your indie rock list.

Over the past decade, deep cuts has been an outlet of music criticism, opinions and conversation. Often I’ve followed ideas and research that require a great deal of time and effort, and it only works if there’s enough space for me to be a little excessive (and more than a little obsessive).

Maintaining that standard has meant early morning writing sessions before work, evenings spent at the laptop, and too many weekends writing instead of being with family and friends.

Next month I’m starting a new job, and the reality is that I won’t be able to keep making those trade-offs indefinitely. That leaves me with a choice about what deep cuts can realistically be going forward.

I’m infinitely grateful for the hundreds of you who became paying subscribers over the past year. The community we’ve built together has been incredible and I’ve loved our discussions, chats and Listening Sessions. But if I can’t publish at the level I promised, I don’t think it’s right to keep charging for it.

That’s why, from today, I’ve paused paid subscriptions.

I'll still be publishing my planned anniversary content throughout June, but once that's complete I'll formally wind down the paid subscription programme – you will all received prorated refunds for the time left on your subscription.

But I want to be crystal clear about this: deep cuts isn’t going anywhere. I’ll continue publishing articles and videos, but at a far slower pace – and only when I have the time and space to do it justice.

After ten years, I still love making this stuff too much to stop entirely. This Substack and the YouTube channel will remain home to the occasional essay, review, feature, and video whenever inspiration strikes and life allows.

This isn’t remotely the last time you’ll be hearing from me this month, either. Coming up in June as part of the 10 year anniversary celebration of deep cuts, I’ll be publishing:

• Part II of my indie rock feature

• My 50 Favourite Records of All Time (video and article)

I’m enormously grateful for the support you’ve shown deep cuts over the past year on Substack, and the past decade more broadly. Thank you for reading, supporting, commenting, arguing, listening, and helping build this community – it’s meant more to me than I can possibly express.

If you have any other questions, please do drop me a DM. In the meantime, I’ll be back on Tuesday with indie rock part II.

Much love x

[This post ran a little long – if you’re reading in your email app, click ‘read in app’ or ‘view in browser’ to get the whole thing]

The second I embarked on writing this particular list, I realised I had a few problems.

The first was the elusive nature of the ‘indie rock’ label. Long disconnected from the economic concept of bands releasing their music independently, many cornerstones of indie rock were released on major labels and bolstered with substantial marketing budgets. So, what do we have left? Music that has guitars in it? Catchy riffs? Can’t be too dark, or it becomes post-punk. Too complex? Might be math rock. Too melancholic and Midwestern? Oops, you’ve stumbled into emo territory.

The second problem was the sheer number of records I could have included in this list. I realised that I needed some guard rails to make things a little easier, so – perhaps controversially – I’m only picking records from the 21st century.

Here’s my thinking: the proliferation of ‘indie rock’ really accelerated in the 2000s, becoming a catch-all for guitar bands with one foot in the mainstream and the other in indie cred circles.

Of course, prior to the turn of the century indie rock music was aplenty: Mercury Rev, Neutral Milk Hotel, Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth to name but a few.

But somewhere in the early 2000s, the discovery of this music became intrinsically linked to the growing communities of the internet. Blogs like Gorilla vs. Bear and Drowned in Sound spoke of records from bands like TV on the Radio and Bloc Party as the second comings of rock music.

From the 2000s and beyond, indie rock became a genuine monoculture. That’s why, to me, indie rock will always be broadly a 21st century thing. Agree or disagree? Do let me know.

One other bit of housekeeping. As always, this is a highly personal list. As such, there are a few omissions that some readers will balk at. I’ll reel them off here to get it out the way: No Is This It (never liked The Strokes), no LCD Soundsystem (always left me cold), and no Wilco (no, not even Yankee Hotel Foxtrot).

Phew, that was like ripping off a very sticky plaster.

If you want to listen along whilst you read, I’ve curated the usual playlists on Spotify and Apple Music. I hope you find something new to enjoy!

PJ Harvey – Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea (2000)

Cementing her position as an icon of 90s rock with Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love, Polly Jane Harvey has never been one for resting on her laurels. Instead of churning out carbon copies of her earlier records, she shifted focus and delivered a perfect indie rock record at the turn of the millennium. Written both in New York and the English county of Dorset (not far from where I’m writing this feature), Harvey made a conscious decision to move away from the dark, nauseating sound of her 90s output to find something brighter and breezier. As a result, Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea traded menace for melody without sacrificing any of Harvey’s intensity. Where earlier records clawed the listener, this record opens its arms. In one release, she proved that reinvention could be just as powerful as confrontation.

On the playlist: ‘Big Exit’ & ‘This Mess We’re In’

Les Savy Fav – Inches (2004)

I first became aware of these pugnacious indie punks through an NME live review of their performance at the legendary Scala. The writer fawned over the baffling stage antics of frontman Tim Harrington, who by all accounts sounded like one of the most unhinged frontmen to ever pick up a mic: “Everyone ends up onstage, under the thrall of a rotund bearded ringmaster who is, by this point, dressed in nothing but a pink nightie.” I’ve never been lucky enough to catch Les Savy Fav live, but have spent the past two decades playing Inches to death. Collecting nine seven-inch singles released between 1995 and 2004, this was no cheap cash grab in the tradition of most ‘greatest hits’ releases. In fact, for my money this remains the greatest project the New York group ever released, not to mention one of the most underrated indie rock records of the 2000s.

On the playlist: ‘The Sweat Descends’ & ‘Our Coastal Hymn’

Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact (2011)

Back in 2011 when I grabbed this CD from my local music shop, I had no idea what was in store for me. The only certainty was that this was the most incredible album cover I had ever laid eyes on. I mean, look at it! Taken by Polish photographer Mirosław Świątek, it captures an insect sleeping in the early hours of daylight, dappled with microscopic droplets of morning dew. It’s pure psychedelic iridescence, a mirroring of the music that makes up Eye Contact. Throughout their career the New York band have artfully combined Middle-Eastern influences, ambient, and even psychedelic rock, effortlessly threaded together by the entrancing vocal presence of Lizzi Bougatsos. The 11-minute scene-setter ‘Glass Jar’ couldn’t be a stronger way to kick-start this kaleidoscopic odyssey. Never bettered, this was their finest moment.

On the playlist: ‘Glass Jar’ & ‘MindKilla’

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm (2005)

For a mere moment, Silent Alarm lost out on this list to the Oxford band’s sophomore follow-up A Weekend In The City. Sacrilege to some, the dual forces of Bloc Party’s first two records were monolithic in my late childhood, so much so that I can barely choose between them. In the end, I think the 2005 debut just edges it (even if AWITC has ‘Uniform’, one of the best songs they ever wrote). Two decades later, the immediacy of Silent Alarm remains: Matt Tong’s incisive percussive patterns, Kele Okereke’s palpable angst, the melodic bass lines of Gordon Moakes, and the creativity of Russell Lissack’s guitar work (even if it’s hugely indebted to fellow Oxford-hailers Radiohead). Like Arctic Monkeys’ debut, it’s difficult to overstate the influence Silent Alarm had on 90s kids navigating teenage hormones and cutting their teeth on guitar bands. And it still hits.

On the playlist: ‘Positive Tension’ & ‘This Modern Love’

Alex Cameron – Forced Witness (2017)

Taking the list into soft-rock, 80s pop territory is Alex Cameron’s biting satire of sleazeballs. The Australian musician embodies masculine identity at its most toxic on Forced Witness, performing grubby little stories with varying degrees of offence that make you think, “who is this terrible person?” In an interview with BK Mag back in 2017, Cameron offered a window into the record while talking about penultimate track ‘Marlon Brando’: “I wanted to tear this person to shreds, this bigoted, ignorant bully…my goal was to paint this realistic portrait that if a person ever came across it, they’d be compelled to have a look at themselves.” The real card trick is somehow making these sardonic takedowns incredibly catchy and likeable. It’s a record stuffed with earworms – Cameron made a greatest-hits-level LP, complete with an Angel Olsen duet that evokes grainy CRT broadcasts and soft-focus camerawork.

On the playlist: ‘Stranger’s Kiss (duet with Angel Olsen)’ & ‘Marlon Brando’

Late of the Pier – Fantasy Black Channel (2008)

Whatever happened to Late of the Pier? The question has rung out since the disappearance which followed their synth-heavy, show-stopping debut. Riding on the tidal wave of psych-indie groups of the mid-2000s, Late of the Pier sounded a little like MGMT and Klaxons but burned far brighter. Maximalist as fuck and way up in your personal space, Sam Eastgate and the rest of the Leicestershire band threw the kitchen sink – and the rest of the house – at listeners with Fantasy Black Channel. It has a weather-beaten skronk that no other group replicated in the 2000s indie rock scene, where synths and guitars fizz and pop as they’re crammed into an approximation of a dance-punk indie format. Then, that was it. The band members went to work on other projects, and drummer Ross Dawson tragically died in an accident in 2015. We’ll probably never hear a Late of the Pier record again, but their only LP remains one of the cult gems of the 2000s.

On the playlist: ‘Heartbeat’ & ‘Focker’

Mitski – Puberty 2 (2016)

Picking a single Mitski record was a much easier assignment than I had expected. Whilst my own absolute favourite is probably 2018’s Be the Cowboy, the American singer-songwriter lit up the indie world with 2016’s Puberty 2, collecting praise and acclaim during a year already stuffed to the gills with excellent records. Before she moved onto her more ornate, burnished songwriting of the past half-decade, Puberty 2 had a tatty crunch to it. Recorded in just two weeks, it sounds like thoughts and emotions erratically scribbled across a page before being struck out: ink smudged, paper torn, she’s putting her heart there for all to see, presentation be damned. It’s also the record responsible for ‘Your Best American Girl’, a generational song that set Brixton Academy alight last time I saw her perform.

On the playlist: ‘Happy’ & ‘Your Best American Girl’

Japandroids – Celebration Rock (2012)

On visiting LA’s legendary Amoeba Music in 2017, I perused the racks of records with my dad for at least an hour. He looked puzzled when I left with just one purchase: a cassette of Celebration Rock. “Do you have a tape player?” he asked. A fair question. I did not. But if I ever found myself travelling the breadth of North America in a beat-up 80s Mustang with only a tape deck, I’d have the perfect company. Brian King and David Prowse put out a flawless rock record in 2012, with a breathless quality only equalled by Jeff Rosenstock’s WORRY in the years since. The British Columbia duo found a formula for huge songs with stadium-like singalongs, wrapped in the economic one-two punch of power chords and pummelling drums. Every track has a soul that reminds me of the most earnest Springsteen moments, albeit a hell of a lot louder. And, unlike Boss-worshippers The Gaslight Anthem, Prowse and King make this well-worn sound entirely their own. One day, I’ll have a reason to play that tape.

On the playlist: ‘Fire’s Highway’ & ‘The House That Heaven Built’

King Krule – THE OOZ (2017)

As the October nights were drawing in, it was a particularly foggy evening when I donned my headphones to take a first listen to Archie Marshall’s third King Krule record, wandering through the liminal spaces of dimly-lit alleyways connecting housing estates. It doesn’t matter where I am now when I listen to THE OOZ, because that situation became so directly connected to my first experience of it that it will forever be the sound of dark corners – the smell of bark from the nearby children’s playground, the crunch of glass underfoot. Even if you don’t choose this very suburban scene to listen to this record, you’d be hard-pressed to deny the lethargic, night-time aura of the tracks here. Marshall’s an artist who has always absorbed influences like a sponge, allowing them to seep out of his own songwriting. Hidden inside THE OOZ are elements of surf rock, if the surf was crashing against the concrete tide walls of a decrepit English seaside town. Or smoky jazz drifting from the window above a boarded-up shopfront.

On the playlist: ‘Dum Surfer’ & ‘Czech One’

The Antlers – Hospice (2008)

In a list mostly absent of crushing sadness, the third release from US band The Antlers has got us covered in that department. Wringing tears from listeners back in 2009, Hospice tells the story of an abusive relationship, through the metaphor of a hospice worker who falls in love with a cancer patient. It’s devastating stuff. Speaking to NME back in 2019 for the 10th anniversary of the record, Peter Silberman reflected on the impression this record had on listeners across the world: “I think what’s valuable about it is that there’s something cathartic and redemptive about it. The protagonist comes out the other side having realised something important about how to be in the world. How to regard yourself, and regard other people.” It’s astonishing to look back and see how the work of a single person had such a profound effect on so many. Silberman produced something deeply personal which spoke to millions.

On the playlist: ‘Kettering’ & ‘Two’

Angel Olsen – All Mirrors (2019)

Angel Olsen really stepped up her game with All Mirrors, bringing a swooning string section to songs about the fleeting nature of love and reflections on past lives. Olsen has always been a formidable presence on the mic, but never with as much elegance and panache as the 11 tracks of this record. Dramatic flourishes seem as effortless as a flick of the wrist, with string sweeps reinforcing a vocal performance magnified by swirling delay and reverb. Olsen’s string melodies remind me of the kind employed by Radiohead across A Moon Shaped Pool, taking centre stage both in the upper and lower registers. Unafraid to wade into the waters of sentimentality, final track ‘Chance’ is one of the most gorgeous ballads of the 2010s.

On the playlist: ‘Lark’ & ‘Chance’

Titus Andronicus – The Monitor (2010)

If “tramps like us, baby we were born to run” was the cry of freedom for the disillusioned youth of the mid-70s, the unsubtle inversion that blasts The Monitor into orbit is one primed for resigned Millennials: “tramps like us, baby we were born to die”. Titus Andronicus are an absolute gem of a group. Hailing from New Jersey, their 2010 masterpiece is held together with duct tape and tangled XLR cables, evoking the great garage bands from decades past. Patrick Stickles draws from the concept of the American Civil War to frame The Monitor, weaving the struggle against oppression with the very modern anxieties of navigating a world without meaning or purpose in the 2010s. It’s alcohol-soaked bar singalongs at their finest, with lyrical complexity and dexterity if you take the time to really listen.

On the playlist: ‘A More Perfect Union’ & ‘Theme from “Cheers”’

Sufjan Stevens – Illinois (2005)

This record took on a new significance in my life just a few months ago, when my wife and I – newly married – walked out of our ceremony to ‘Chicago’, amidst the clapping and cheering of our families and friends. Those with keen ears will have also heard a few other tracks quietly humming in the distance during our wedding breakfast. Illinois is now one of those landmark records in our relationship that I’ll never be able to listen to objectively. But who the hell would want to listen to music ‘objectively’ anyway? Illinois is Stevens’ best record, his most gratifying and immediate. For a record which spans 22 tracks across 73 minutes, the life-affirming quality of the songs never falters over that time. The record was part of a project where Stevens jokingly planned to write records for all 50 states of the US. Though he might have moved onto other modes of songwriting, including the excellent Carrie & Lowell, this remains one of the greatest indie rock records ever made.

On the playlist: ‘Chicago’ & ‘The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders Part 1’

Glasvegas – Glasvegas (2008)

(Adapted from an October edition of In My Ears)

Since its release back in the late noughties, I’ve not let a single autumn pass without at least a handful of listens to this fine record. I was 16 at time of release: dripping in anxiety, a new school for sixth form and a fresh set of braces to boot. Like many of my peers, I carried the blinkered adolescent notion that my life was somehow ‘bad’. Worries about school, girls, plans for university and the future, I lacked perspective on quite how lucky I was to grow up in the home and town that I did. So when Glasvegas came along, James Allan’s hearty Scottish voice propelled me into a completely alien world: tales of domestic violence, absent fathers, crime-wracked streets. Lest we forget, at that point Glasgow had been dubbed the “knife crime capital of Europe”. Yet here was a band that wore the good and bad of their heritage on their sleeves, nay in the literal name. There was pride and community to be found amongst the tragedy: ‘Flowers & Football Tops’ imagines people coming together to remember the death of a young man, laying wreaths and kits down on wet tarmac. Glasvegas never quite managed to reach the highs of their debut again, releasing good records but nothing that moved me in the way their debut did. For me, it will forever be a reminder of a world outside my own experience, a hefty dose of perspective that led me towards filmmakers like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, covering poverty and the tragic social issues that many in the UK face. Come to think of it, this record probably made me pay more attention to politics, an interest that eventually led me to becoming a community reporter. So, thanks James and co – Glasvegas has a lot to answer for.

On the playlist: ‘Geraldine’ & ‘Polmont on my Mind’

Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think should be on the second half of the list next week!

The one I’ve always dreaded.

My favourite records of all time.

Those of you who have been subscribed to the YouTube channel for a long time might remember a couple of the cop-out videos I did back in the early days: Ten of my favourite records, or ten more of my favourite records.

Never my favourite records. Because after all this time, I’m not sure how I can possibly reduce my love for music into a single list. I’ve never done a chart of my all-time favourites, so at this point I’m genuinely not sure how it will shake out.

As I’ve gotten older, it’s been easy to move myself further away from the idea of “objective greatness.” We’ve all read ‘greatest records of all time’ lists which follow a familiar script: ensure The Velvet Underground and Nico is in there, must include at least one Beatles record, and a sprinkle of Pet Sounds for good measure.

It’s the reason I have no interest in doing my own ‘greatest records of all time’ feature, because I’d be obliged to include all those well-worn cornerstones of cultural importance.

Instead, it’ll be highly personal to my tastes, my experiences, and my history.

Apropos of nothing: if you happen to see a dishevelled figure in a coffee shop hunched over a notepad, furiously scribbling and crossing everything out, approach with caution.

Aldous Harding – Train on the Island (2026)

I will readily admit that eccentricity often grates on me. I wrote about it during my review of the latest Dry Cleaning record, where Florence Shaw’s perplexing lyricism was delivered in what I described as a “listless spoken-word drawl”. The sardonic wit left me cold, shutting me out from the music.

From a glance at the liner notes, the poetry of Aldous Harding’s fifth record was poised to have a similar effect: across the album, it runs the gamut for outlandish imagery. We get naked owls, a meeting with John Cale, and a face covered in béchamel sauce during ‘What Am I Gonna Do?’ What helps it land on the right side of my acceptable eccentricity line is the compelling dreamlike quality it’s presented with.

There’s something indefinable about the New Zealander’s music – genuinely not all that useful when trying to write about it, but that’s what makes it enthralling. I found myself breezing through Train on the Island only to start again from the beginning, tempted to try and unlock something more from Harding’s lyrical obtuseness.

The soft indie-rock palette of these songs goes a long way, too – the unhurried collaboration of gentle overdrive, dry drums and rounded bass encourages you to lie back and let Harding’s imagery seep into your skull.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘Train on the Island’ – When Harding croons ‘reflections steal my mind’, what does she mean?

🟢 ‘Coats’ – In which we finally get to meet the figure adorning the cover, as she sings ‘What do you say when you meet blue women?’

Sam Slater – Lunng (2026)

Read more

This Substack will be a year old next month – a good time for a bit of reflection on where it goes next. I have a few ideas about what I’d like to write, but I care most about what you want to read. So tell me: what kind of articles do you most like receiving from me?

If you want to suggest something I haven’t included in the poll below, let me know in the comments – and if you’re a free subscriber, drop me a DM.

American Football – American Football (LP4) (2026)

Following the release of 2019’s American Football (LP3), I came to the conclusion that the Midwest emo legends would never again rise to the heights of their debut. And I mourned that realisation. For many of us, their 1999 release was a seminal touchpoint in our musical journeys – a distillation of adolescent nostalgia, of lazy summer days where a dash of melancholy could cloud everything in an instant.

That first record had an indefinable magic and honesty which Mike Kinsella and his band have never been able to equal.

But here’s where I was wrong: with their fourth record (also titled American Football) I’ve come to realise how hasty my conclusion was. As young 20-something musicians freed from the shackles of expectation, they released a defining debut record. Of course LPs two and three felt uneven, as the group reformed and groped around for a definable successor to the original American Football sound. They had the weight of life experience, a cult-status record, and an adoring fanbase to contend with – and much of that material was good, if a little unconfident in its execution.

But I’m delighted to say that this latest LP feels like the missing puzzle pieces have dropped into place, with the band discovering a magic akin to their first release. That’s not to say that it sounds like their debut – part of the pleasure of LP4 is the band’s willingness to let go of the past and forge a fresh sound which acknowledges the passage of time.

Kinsella’s voice sits in a lower register, no longer straining from his fragile adolescent delivery of the late 90s. Whereas the previous two records sounded hesitant in their momentum, this record has an elegance to it. In an interview with Spin, guitarist Steve Holmes said: “It’s got some middle-aged stuff happening and I think there’s a sweep and a grandeur to the music.”

None more so than the eight-minute ‘Bad Moons’, a post-rock therapy confessional in which Kinsella references a failed marriage, addiction, and self-harm. It’s a therapy session by way of gorgeous climactic songwriting, and it stings to hear his honesty scratched into the track.

LP4 is American Football hitting maturity. It’s the second best thing they’ve ever done.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘Bad Moons’ – Did anyone else hear Radiohead’s ‘Daydreaming’ in the opening few seconds?

🟢 ‘No Soul to Save’ – Steve Lamos continues to prove he’s one of the most textural drummers in rock on this rich finale.

Death Grips – Bottomless Pit (2016)

And just like that; ten years of possibly the greatest Death Grips record.

Only really challenged by 2013’s No Love Deep Web, Bottomless Pit is a lean, mean refinement of what the experimental hip-hop group always strived for. It endures because Andy Morin, Zach Hill and MC Ride combined their trademark belligerence with some of the sharpest writing of their career to date – the blast-beat mania of opening ‘Giving Bad People Good Ideas’ is combined with a vocal line that became my tic for most of summer 2016, as did Ride’s echoed shouts in ‘BB Poison’.

A smart collaboration with math-rock guitarist and friend Nick Reinhart sharpens the punkier edges of Bottomless Pit, meshing perfectly with the glitchy electronics and textures the group revels in. The angular riffs he routinely pumps out for Tera Melos crop up in various places across the record, keeping the sound raucous and edgy.

Rumours of a new record have been circling for months, but nothing has surfaced as of yet – personally, I felt that 2018’s Year of the Snitch was a career weak point. It’ll be interesting to see if they can recapture the brilliance of this absolute belter.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘Hot Head’ – Ever been inside an engine? It probably sounds like this – Ride and Hill lose their heads amidst blistering synths that ramp up to insane levels.

🟢 ‘Bottomless Pit’ – Perhaps their greatest closing track? Had this been their last song on record, “I fucked you in half” would have been a perfect epitaph.

Little Simz – Sugar Girl (2026)

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Try as I might to correct it in my head, the existence of A Moon Shaped Pool still seems like an impossibility.

Rewind to early 2016, and the five-year span between it and 2011’s The King of Limbs felt like possibly the longest time I’d ever waited for a record to materialise.

At the time I was in a dead-end agency job in a probation office, spending my working hours greeting offenders and booking them in for appointments. Paedophiles, house burglars, petty thieves – not the kind of people you want to spend your days forcing small talk with. I’d plod through the 9-5 with one eye on the clock, shuffling papers and checking the r/radiohead subreddit for hints of the elusive ‘LP9’.

To call it a hyper-fixation would not be an exaggeration.

The wait did strange things to people. I posted last week asking for people’s memories of the time, and one user recalled another saying he would eat a picture of Thom’s face if the record wasn’t released by a certain day. “Or maybe they were just eating a photo of Thom’s face every day until it was released”, u/3erikspersullivan wrote, recollections already fuzzy from the passing years.

Another remembered the panic when the tracklist was revealed, as we all scrabbled to work out if it was real (the fact that it was alphabetical seemed suspect). For a while, users relayed conspiratorial theories about the band’s w.a.s.t.e. site, until one intrepid redditor checked the HTML to prove it was fading to white.

To this day I haven’t experienced a hype cycle like it. The moment lead single ‘Burn the Witch’ dropped was a collective rush, a sense that the sheer force of obsessive fandom had willed this thing into existence. Above all, there was the realisation that we’d finally get to hear studio versions of ‘Present Tense’, ‘Identikit’, and – most coincidentally – ‘True Love Waits’.

There was a palpable sense that A Moon Shaped Pool was a thank you to the fans – a confident collection of ideas new and old, tastefully produced and rich with orchestral elegance.

So why, a decade on, does it feel so cold, opaque, and ultimately unknowable?

***

How many records have the power to drag you back in time to the first moment you heard them?

Perched on a farm gate in the middle of the New Forest, shafts of light slashed through cloud cover as I hit play on A Moon Shaped Pool, immersing myself for the first time in the staccato strings of the opening seconds. By the time the final piano chords of ‘True Love Waits’ faded away, the sun had dropped below the fields to welcome the creeping dusk.

I sat there for a time taking it all in. There was an intangible conflict in my head; on the one hand, a deep pleasure at finally getting to hear a project many of us fans thought might never arrive. On the other, an itch I couldn’t scratch. What was this niggling feeling?

Like a lot of people, my relationship with Radiohead formed early and stuck.

Ever since I borrowed The Bends from my mum’s CD collection and became hooked on ‘Planet Telex’, I was unwittingly binding myself to the group. When In Rainbows dropped in 2007, I downloaded it from the ‘pay what you want’ site and had my mind blown. To this day, it’s one of my most cherished records (I acknowledge this is not an original opinion, but hey, there’s a reason it’s so loved!) Even The King of Limbs – a record widely considered to be B-team Radiohead – I find to be a beautiful springtime listen. The jittery pep of ‘Good Morning Mr. Magpie’, the gentle flow of ‘Codex’; it all still sounds magical to me.

On paper, A Moon Shaped Pool should comfortably slot alongside those albums: long-gestating fan favourites finally realised, lush string arrangements, a band with nothing left to prove.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music back in 2016, Yorke traced the history of ‘Burn the Witch’ to the early 2000s, inspired by a ‘name and shame’ campaign by the tabloids. Papers like the News of the World were outing sex offenders and printing their addresses, resulting in mob violence on the south coast of England.

“Burn the witch
We know where you live”

‘The Numbers’, meanwhile, found him circling a familiar anxiety within a new one: how to write about climate catastrophe without people switching off. “If I sing ‘river running dry, the system is a lie – painful cliché, but it’s also true. What am I supposed to do? It was a weird fight with myself, ‘can I get away with this?’” he laughed. “Or should I write another lovey-dovey song that means nothing? Is that what the world needs?”

Then there’s ‘Daydreaming’ which, despite being only the second song, feels like the emotional centrepiece of the record.

There has been plenty of speculation about this record’s connection to Yorke’s former partner, Rachel Owen, who died of cancer six months after the record was released. He’s always resisted this framing: in an interview with Q Magazine around the time of the album launch, he refused to be drawn on A Moon Shaped Pool being a ‘break-up record’, and when asked shut the conversation down: “I don’t want to talk about it… I feel like the dust hasn’t settled.”

Still, it’s hard not to hear that context echoing through the record. ‘True Love Waits’ was written decades earlier in the mid-90s, becoming a live set fan favourite. Here it’s rendered in its most fragile form, a duet of Yorke’s voice and gentle piano.

“I’ll drown my beliefs
To have your babies”

In 2019, Yorke said on Desert Island Discs: “When the kids’ mum died, it was a very difficult period and we went through a lot. It was very hard. She suffered a great deal and my ambition is to make sure that we have come out of it all right, and I hope that’s what’s happening.”

Those facts lend a gut-wrenching sadness to moments across this record, encapsulated in the shortest (and perhaps best) track, ‘Glass Eyes’. Ever since my first listen, it cemented itself as one of the most exquisite of the band’s entire discography.

Moments like this bestow an abject beauty on A Moon Shaped Pool, but they’re pockmarked across it, stutters of undefined confessionals.

It’s only half the story. Alongside them, you have the driving motorik rhythms of ‘Ful Stop’, bringing modern paranoia to a 70s Krautrock sound. ‘Identikit’ has a minimal funkiness, driven by off-kilter backline contributions from Selway and Greenwood (the Colin variety). The origin of ‘The Present Tense’ can be traced all the way back to 2009, immortalised on this record as a shuffling acoustic bossanova.

A Moon Shaped Pool might be a lot of things: a tribute to a loving mother, frustration with the media, anger at a system sliding the planet towards climate catastrophe. It’s a canvas of ideas shaped and reshaped over the years, carrying the baggage of past lives and past selves. While the orchestral arrangements – largely the work of Johnny Greenwood – give it a sense of cohesion on the surface, nothing really locks together. There’s always a sense of drift.

I’ve always felt that Radiohead records announce themselves with clarity: the warmth of In Rainbows, the paranoia of Kid A, the political urgency of Hail to the Thief. They feel like cohesive eras in the band’s history, existing with their own unique centre of gravity.

Ironically, A Moon Shaped Pool never quite manages it. Its accumulation of songs from different moments in time leaves it feeling fragmented, like overlapping statements pulling in different directions.

The closer I think I am to connecting with it, the more it seems to withdraw like the lunar tide. But I think that’s why I still frequently return to it all these years later, transporting me back to that New Forest field as the light shrinks.

Not because I understand it any better, but because I still don’t.

Just a few months have passed since I interviewed the brilliant Yazz Ahmed – for those of you new to deep cuts, her 2025 record A Paradise In The Hold was my album of the year by a significant margin. An immersive jazz record, Yazz transported listeners to a land of pearl divers and mermaid myths – and it is truly one of a kind.

Now, the British trumpeter and flugelhornist is preparing for another return with Shirin-Yoku. A four-track EP, she has described it as “music celebrating the healing power of the natural world.”

“The world is hurting,
Forever wars.
Feelings of hopelessness.
Abandoned,
I weep for humanity.”

Lead single ‘Dawn Patrol’ echoes the mournful yearning of those words with a throbbing electronic bassline and restless drums, carving space for Yazz to entrance listeners with her horn performance. The track morphs into a beatless ambient interlude at the halfway point, with textures that hark back to the watery depths of A Paradise In The Hold.

In case it wasn’t clear, a fantastic track that has me very excited for this EP. Take a listen and let me know what you think in the comments.

Nine Inch Nails x Boys Noize – Nine Inch Noize (2026)

Nine Inch Noize has proven to me, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is still a lot of life in the old dog yet.

Despite not releasing a full-length Nine Inch Nails record since 2013’s Hesitation Marks, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have spent the resulting 13 years experimenting with the format of the NIN brand: a rather elegant continuation of the Ghosts ambient project, a collection of EPs which represent some of the most sonically creative moments in the entire discography, and even the recent Tron: Ares soundtrack (we’ll ignore the trash Jared Leto vehicle itself).

The Nine Inch Noize collaboration with the German-Iraqi musician Alexander Ridha – known as Boys Noize – was teased during the band’s 2025 Peel It Back world tour, and had gig-goers fawning over the EDM-enhanced remixes performed on a second stage in the middle of the setlist.

The collab was given its largest public outing a few weeks ago at Coachella, where it was transformed into a fully fledged theatrical spectacle. Complete with gyrating dancers and vocals from Trent’s partner Mariqueen Maandig, the sheer force of the set made it the single essential moment of this year’s California festival.

It’s this remarkable energy which drives Nine Inch Noize, which for all intents and purposes feels like a way of immortalising the Coachella set for those who couldn’t make it to the desert. Crowd noises frame the studio versions of tracks which take great pleasure in updating classic NIN songs with the vigour of Ridha’s house and techno stylings: tracks like the brilliant ‘Vessel’ and ‘Closer’ get subtle updates, whereas Twin Peaks: The Return song ‘She’s Gone Away’ is almost unrecognisable until that lumbering chorus.

All in all, a shot in the arm for Trent’s enduring project – and reportedly, he’s already heading back into the studio to work on new NIN music.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘She’s Gone Away’ – Despite sounding a world away from the version performed in The Roadhouse, the electronic pulse still takes me back to the moment just before Bob’s nuclear birth (iykyk).

🟢 ‘Came Back Haunted’ – Featuring one of the crispest drum breaks of the record, it’s not difficult to see how this would get thousands of people in the desert moving their bodies.

The Melvins with Napalm Death – Savage Imperial Death March (2026)

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During last month’s Autechre listening session, I suggested next time around we take on one of my absolute favourite records – a two-hour orchestral-ambient magnum opus from Brian McBride and Adam Wiltzie.

Those who attended seemed to endorse the idea, so we’ll be commencing this latest mammoth Listening Club session on Thursday (30th) at 21:00 BST.

Included in my ambient obsession piece from last year, I wrote:

“And Their Refinement of the Decline is one of the finest records I’ve ever listened to, its compositions of strings and brass enticing me time and time again. Without wishing to veer dangerously into cliché (oh we’re here now so whatever), it’s a record that plays out like an artist working across a canvas – painting with stretched trumpet tones, or a suite of violins, the pieces have always sounded to me like they’re being brought to life as you listen. That effect has somehow never diminished, even after more than a hundred listens.”

If you’re not signed up to the Discord yet, tap the button further down the page and I’ll approve your application ASAP.

And for those of you living outside of the UK, important PSA: we’re now on daylight savings (BST), so check he handy timezone list below to make sure you don’t turn up late/early!

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Enjoy!

The music world drew a sharp collective breath at this week’s surprise collaboration between Massive Attack and the one and only Tom Waits.

‘Boots on the Ground’ is a fervent four minutes, the Bristol trip-hop legends and American troubadour taking aim at the United States on a one-way trip through the abyss.

Waits sounds more fired up than he has in decades, words tumbling from his clenched jaw: “We trim your hedges, we fight your wars. Wait in the trenches and we fuck 'til we're sore”.

He rallies against the “federal pricks hiding in the Senate like a bloated ass tick” and “fuckstick loafers sittin’ in a room full of army posters”, pulled along by a slowed sample of the clattering percussion from Waits’ own 1992 song ‘Earth Died Screaming’.

A palpable sense of injustice seeps from his delivery – it speak to the sustained throb of pain felt by ordinary people, triggered by the stupidity of warmongers desperate for dominance over one another.

In the final moments, Waits delivers his deathblow; accompanied by those clanging drums and subtle piano chords, he imagines a soldier killing a man and watching their soul leave their body:

“I kill a brown man I never ass knew
Choked on spit and then he turned blue
He spattered black blood, he rolled Fin out
He died right there, I got the pearl from his snout
A puff of grey smoke, the tongue of a cloud
He rotted in the sand and all that they found was his boots on the ground”

The accompanying music video features images captured by US photographer thefinaleye, bridging Waits’ poetry directly with Trump’s administration and the ICE raids that have devastated communities across the country. (All proceeds from the song will be going to the American Civil Liberties Union and the US Immigrant Defense Project.)

Although his words have a burning relevance, Waits actually admitted to writing them years ago. In a press release about ‘Boots on the Ground’, he explained that the band approached him “many years ago” to collaborate, but that he didn’t mind the long delay in its release.

In typically poetic fashion, the icon added: “Today, as in all of mankind’s yesterdays, guarantees this song will never go out of style. Man’s fiasco folly is a feast for the flies.”

And that’s the ultimate point, right?

As we all watch in horror at world events unfolding, we’re reminded they are slightly adjusted versions of a time-honoured tradition: ruthless men wage wars from their palatial buildings, while everyday people are ordered to shoot each other dead. It’s the quintessential story of hierarchy and power, and this bold song is unflinching in its conviction of that depressing fact.

My New Band Believe – My New Band Believe (2026)

Proof if needed that Black Midi’s idiosyncrasies were never the sole domain of Geordie Greep, Cameron Picton’s first solo record is a sublime palette of theatrical progressive folk: ditching his trusty electric guitar, each of the eight tracks on My New Band Believe are built around lilting acoustic guitar and his willowy voice, double tracked for a bit of extra heft. He packs in a wealth of performances from more than 20 contributing musicians – surrounded by exhaling woodwinds, strings that swoon and percussion more interested in adding texture than providing a strong backline, it’s not much of a surprise to learn the record was originally intended as a collaboration with the London post-rockers caroline (seven of its members do still appear across the record). The moment the project first clicked into place for me was ‘Love Story’: accompanied by tranquil piano, Picton paints a picture of lovers making a meal together. The supposedly pedestrian details – “I’m soaking beans on the side, chopping tomatoes while you wash the rice, you sing along to your favourite songs but you don’t know the words” – make for one of the most straight-up romantic songs I’ve heard in a long time. For anyone who has lived with a partner, it’s those ordinary domestic scenes that become the most cherished, and he captures that beautifully. In a recent interview with Crack magazine, Picton said My New Band Believe is a response to the well-trodden landscape of singer-songwriters: “I think there’s just quite a stale and predictable production style, and I wanted to try and do something different because I thought that there’s a lot of scope for what could be done within singer-songwriter music.” He’s certainly done that, and more. My New Band Believe consistently throws delightful curveballs, and manages to never fumble the charm.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘Love Story’ – Hanging onto Picton’s every word, the picture he paints of lovers making dinner together is a gorgeous moment of relatability.

🟢 ‘Actress’ – The penultimate track (and second longest) feels like a triumphant conclusion before the muted finale provides a definitive full-stop.

Squarepusher – Kammerkonzert (2026)

As one of the figureheads of Warp’s 90s roster, Tom Jenkinson could have easily settled down and produced IDM records of a similar flavour for the rest of his career. He wouldn’t have been begrudged for it, either: his 1997 record Hard Normal Daddy remains one of the best electronic records of the 90s, alongside classics like Beaucoup Fish and Music Has the Right to Children. Instead, Jenkinson proved himself a tireless experimenter: since his debut, he’s released jazz fusion under Shobaleader One, put out a solo bass guitar live album, and even collaborated with organist James McVinnie on a selection of contemporary classical pieces. Even so, Kammerkonzert is pretty fucking out there: a frenetic combination of orchestral compositions, jazz flourishes and snaking IDM bass lines, it’s an evocative and – at times – perplexing combination. On my first listen, the maximalism only clicked into place at the halfway point with ‘K7 Museum’, a flighty composition featuring a mischievous marimba and harpsichord duet, backed with a restless drum kit performance. By the time the piece reaches its explosive conclusion, Jenkinson finally provides the listener with some respite, courtesy of ‘K8 Park’; a beautiful guitar-led track, there’s a grace to the way the piece is slowly unfurled. Taken as a whole, it’s an impressive piece of work front to back. What on earth will he try his hand at next?

Taste test:

🟢 ‘K7 Museum’ – Can a harpsichord be cheeky? Yes; and here’s your proof.

🟢 ‘K13 Vigilant’ – The complexity of melodic runs in this stomping number put a grin on my face.

Betty Davis – They Say I’m Different (1974)

Anytime I require a shot of energy straight to my veins, I crack out this absolute banger of an LP. Betty Davis was a pioneer, her powerhouse voice and sexually-liberated lyrics marking her out as a true original of the 70s funk scene. Moving to New York in the 60s, she met musicians like Sly Stone and Hendrix, eventually marrying Miles Davis before it all ended in divorce a year later (Miles stated that she was too “young and wild” for him). Moving to London, Betty recorded a handful of records including They Say I’m Different, her sexualised lyrics proving no problem for liberated Europeans in the mid-70s. Despite this, a prudish American sensibility stopped her from getting major radio play, and she was even banned from performing on television. A woman talking about sex? Think of the children! Performing with a host of talented players – including Herbie Hancock collaborator Mike Clark on drums and member of Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys, Buddy Miles – They Say I’m Different doesn’t take a breath even for a second. It’s sensual, strutting funk at its finest.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘He Was A Big Freak’ – The first time I heard Davis’ throaty scream, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What a voice!

🟢 ‘They Say I’m Different’ – Davis’ tribute to the great Blues musicians, she name checks the likes of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley without dropping that strident swagger.

Angine de Poitrine – Vol. II (2026)

It’s not every day that a Canadian microtonal rock duo breaks so decisively into the mainstream, to the point my mate’s elderly Dad is sharing their KEXP performance in group chats and Google overlays a black dot animation to the band’s search results. Talk about breaking through. Angine de Poitrine have captured the imagination of millions, which in part is absolutely thanks to the polkadot get ups and funny rubber masks they perform in. It’s difficult to deny the outward fun of their KEXP set, which has now been viewed over 10 million times: watching Klek de Poitrine smash the toms while the long nose of his Count-Binface-esque mask flops around has a strangely hypnotic effect, spurred on by Khn de Poitrine’s knotty microtonal melodies. It’s a slice of fun, sure. But I can’t help but feel the novelty wears incredibly thin when it comes to their recorded output. Three of the KEXP songs are taken from this latest release, Vol. II, but without the visual stimulus the unyielding sound has the opposite effect, losing steam after just a few tracks. I’m perfectly happy to admit that the microtonal thing leaves me cold: the irony that for a style of music that likes to cram in as many different tones as feasibly possible, it ends up all sounding a bit one-note.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘Fabienk’ – Pleasingly-skronky guitar tones courtesy of Khn de Poitrine are buoyed along by unrelenting drum rhythms.

🟢 ‘Yor Zarad’ – One of the most chaotic tracks on the record, the microtonal bends sound like a swarm of angry wasps hunting for their next victim. A family having a picnic, perhaps.

Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique (1989)

Following their first record Licensed to Ill, New York pranksters Beastie Boys had something of a commercial flop on their hands. Hoping to capitalise on the hype of the debut, Capitol Records signed the trio expecting a blueprint sequel to the wildly successful album of rap-rock, complete with radio-ready hits like ‘Fight For Your Right’ and ‘No Sleep till Brooklyn’. Instead, MCA, Ad-Rock and Mike D delivered a sample-dense piece of work that moved away from the rock-heavy stylings of Licensed to Ill. Not entirely, of course – using Mountain’s ‘Mississippi Queen’ as the basis of ‘Looking Down The Barrel of a Gun’ is inspired – but the decision to team up with Dust Brothers likely played a large part in steadying Beastie Boys’ trajectory towards legacy American act rather than descending down the ‘novelty group’ path. The density of samples keeps Paul’s Boutique flying along, delighting at every turn: Sly Stone and James Brown on ‘Shadrach’, The Beatles on ‘The Sound of Science’, and even the duelling banjos from the Deliverance soundtrack on ‘5-Piece Chicken Dinner’. The record ends with the sample suite ‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse’, a breathless statement of intent from the group. Fun, sparky and creative, it remains one of my absolute favourite records.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘Egg Man’ – Any track that encourages you to shout “Humpty Dumpty was a big fat egg” must be granted royalty status.

🟢 ‘B-Boy Bouillabaisse’ – Impossible to pick a single moment, you need to listen to this thing front to back to appreciate its brilliance.

Here are the In My Ears 2026 playlists on Spotify and Apple Music.

Have a great weekend x

Its roots, of course, can be traced back to the ambient work of pioneers like Eno, as well as Kosmische Musik acts such as Cluster and Tangerine Dream, who emerged from Germany’s Krautrock scene.

But the music that would come to be known as dark ambient turned away from the warmth of traditional ambient, instead exploring its inverse; haunted atmospheres and a fizzing undercurrent of tension.

As artists began to explore darker, more menacing styles of music in the 80s, the stage was well and truly set for a different type of musical expression, one unafraid to mine the murk and gloom for fresh perspectives. By the 90s, dark ambient had fully taken shape: a landscape of destabilised thrums and howls, deep drones pushing through razor-wire thickets and heavy fog.

Embrace the darkness. You might like it!

As I state in the intro, I don’t see myself as either an incredible writer or an authority when it comes to music criticism. I have, however, probably committed every single cardinal sin of bad writing in the past decade. So you may as well learn from my copious mistakes!

And if you fancy giving it a go yourself, I hope these tips help you get started.

Free subscribers can check out the first five minutes of the video – if you want the whole thing you can join the deep cuts community for just £4.50 a month (and that includes access to lots more, including our Listening Club).

Get all the tips

Hope you enjoy, I’ll be back on Tuesday with the next YouTube video – 5 Albums To Get You Into Dark Ambient.

Enjoy your weekends x

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Kanye West’s newly announced return to London dragged me back to a very soggy evening in 2014.

That muggy summer was the last time West headlined Finsbury Park for Wireless Festival. You weren’t there, man, you weren’t there – unless you were. If so, I’m sorry for what we endured.

I don’t like to be dramatic, but that show is perhaps the worst I have ever had the displeasure of attending. Aside from the torrential rain and awful crowd – including one gent who decided the back of my leg was a prime place to piss – the once-brilliant rapper put on a plodding display of self-indulgence, a hint of the chaos to come.

This was meant to be a triumphant victory lap following the release of Yeezus, a record that cemented his ability to reinvent in bold new ways. I still think it’s a high point of his discography, standing tall alongside The College Dropout and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

But on that rainy summer evening in 2014, the cracks were already becoming fissures. One of my clearest memories is a lengthy tirade about how he couldn’t get the shoe deal he wanted, shouting at the crowd through the bejewelled gimp mask he wore for the majority of the show. Soaked to the bone and surrounded by drunk dickheads, I couldn’t quite reach my tiny violin.

In the months and years following the Wireless shows, West’s various controversies and headline-grabbing provocations drowned out the music, which hasn’t been remotely up to snuff since the uneven The Life of Pablo.

Earlier this year West issued a long-awaited apology, conveniently coinciding with the run-up to his latest record, Bully. Yes, I am a cynic.

He took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal apologising for his antisemitic remarks and use of swastikas, explaining that his bipolar disorder was to blame for his ‘poor judgment and reckless behaviour’.

His actions aren’t easy to forgive: glorifying Hitler, threatening Jewish people, selling White Lives Matter T-shirts and merch adorned with swastikas, cavorting with the likes of Nick Fuentes and Trump.

But I have a sneaking feeling that none of that will put punters off. Astonishingly, Bully has reportedly broken Spotify records, despite being yet another serving of tepid slop – the same he’s been serving up since Jesus is King in 2019.

The booking has already drawn controversy from London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has said the actions and words of West don’t reflect London’s values. Finsbury Park also happens to be close to areas with large Jewish communities, including Stamford Hill.

Wireless Festival is billing West’s return as a “three night journey through his most iconic records”, which feels like an admission that the most recent decade of music is less likely to sway tens of thousands of people to fork out £100+ for general admission. But for renditions of ‘Touch the Sky’, ‘POWER’, or ‘Heartless’?

Maybe audiences can overlook anything if the nostalgia is strong enough.

SUNN O))) – SUNN O))) (2026)

Grab your hooded cloak for the return of the drone shamans with their first album in six years, and their first full LP with iconic Seattle label Sub Pop. Having recently interviewed Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley for an upcoming magazine feature, I’ve had the pleasure of sitting with this record for a little while. The crushing distortion and sustained tones are all present and correct, but what makes this self-titled LP stand out is how the pair have stripped things back to basics. Previous SUNN albums such as Life Metal and the fantastic Monoliths & Dimensions mined brilliance from collaboration: Oren Ambarchi, Hungarian vocalist Attila Csihar, Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. However, this latest release follows a conscious decision to return to the origins of the band; just Stephen and Greg in a room, painting overtones with stacks of speaker cabinets. With history on their mind, they returned to the Pacific Northwest of their childhoods to record the album, holing up at Bear Creek Studios in the heart of the forest. Here, they flung the studio doors wide open and incorporated sounds of the environment into the project. They recorded the trickling of the creek beneath the treehouse studio, the wind whipping through the boughs of the Western Red Cedars, even the faraway industrial chug of a landscaper at work. The environment, as their new collaborator, brings a fresh perspective to the SUNN O))) sound, one that really delivers across all six tracks. It might just be my favourite of their records.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘Mindrolling’ – The industrial groaning at the end of this track is courtesy of a landscaper called Mr. Stump Grinder who was working nearby. I hope he one day finds out he’s on a SUNN O))) record!

🟢 ‘Glory Black’ – A triumphant finale, the duo make use of tentative piano and creek trickles as respite from the swells of distortion.

Flea – Honora (2026)

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A piano chord dissolves. Hi-hats sizzle under the pluck of a double bass. The music shifts almost imperceptibly, settling into a circular, shimmering rhythm. A full ten minutes later, the piano joins the swell, fingers dancing across the keys as the texture thickens into something layered and expansive.

It ends in a slow exhale, the trio loosening the mo…

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Even after 25 years without new material, Fugazi’s spirit lingers.

The legacy of the post-hardcore quartet has remained pleasingly uncompromised since 2001 swansong The Argument – with no reunion tours or anniversary record releases, at no point have they made a single concession to their anti-corporate ethos. You’ll have to keep heading to Etsy for your bootleg tees.

There has always been a transparency and trust in the band’s relationship with their fans; they would refuse to profit from merchandise, performed benefit concerts for good social causes, and strived to ensure no audience member was ever priced out of a gig.

Instead of capitalising on their legacy, Ian, Joe, Guy and Brendan have instead become interested in a process of documentation; head to the Dischord site and you’ll find an incredible treasure trove of live recordings, a pleasure for those lucky souls who were in attendance to relive, as much as for those of us who tragically missed out.

(Yeah, I’m still salty).

Earlier this month, that documentation continued with the release of a ‘lost’ recording: an early session of 1993’s In on the Kill Taker, produced by the late Steve Albini. In typically brilliant Fugazi fashion, the proceeds from all sales are going to the Letters Charity, which provides financial assistance to struggling families.

For those unaware, Albini is something a 90s music hero: aside from his own musical projects such as Big Black and Shellac, he produced classics from Pixies, The Jesus Lizard, PJ Harvey, and Nirvana.

As to be expected from Albini’s involvement, the tracks are brash and in-your-face, feeling closer to a live session than to any of the six released studio LPs. It’s a pleasure to hear the snappier version of ‘23 Beats Off’ – where the final studio version on Kill Taker drifts into an unfixed, meandering space, this retains a more confrontational, coarse edge. Elsewhere, the Albini version of ‘Instrument’ feels more dynamically straightforward, leaning less into the quiet-loud switches that make its official counterpart so explosive.

What I’m trying to get at is that there’s nothing revelatory about Albini Sessions. And that’s OK.

As with their exhaustive live catalogue, the engrossing part of all of this is the transparent act of documenting the past. For fans, this is a fascinating alternate history of a record many of us know like the back of our hand. What if they hadn’t met in a car park on the drive back from Chicago to express their concern with the sessions? What if Albini hadn’t also agreed that it should be scrapped? Maybe he would have been the man behind the mixing desk for records like Red Medicine and End Hits, which could have sounded entirely different.

Ted Niceley ended up producing the final version of Kill Taker – and as Joe himself told me in my interview with him last year, it marked the final step towards producing records themselves.

He said to me: “We actually recorded and mixed two songs [Instrument and Rend It]. Looking back it sounds fucking phenomenal, but we were like ‘I don’t know, did we do that OK?’ We thought we needed to get a producer for it.

“I can write, I can record, but the mixing? I’m not good at it. I knew that the three of them could, but they were hesitating again and I couldn’t believe it. So I used the one card I could play – ‘If we have to have another producer I’m not doing it.’”

The real value of Albini Sessions is the reminder that even the most lauded artistic legacies take a weaving path of experiments, detours, and roads not taken. The ‘what if’ is the joy.

Neurosis – An Undying Love for a Burning World (2026)

I can’t remember the last time we had a surprise-drop that felt this genuinely surprising – particularly one as resurrective as this. A decade since their previous record Fires Within Fires, things are very different in the Neurosis camp: following the revelation in 2019 that vocalist Scott Kelly had abused his wife and child, he was summarily fired from the band. None of this was public knowledge until years later, out of the band’s respect for his family’s privacy. Now comes post-metal laureate Aaron Turner, who you will have come across if you’ve ever listened to the brilliant Sumac or the equally brilliant Isis. Taking on the role of vocalist and guitarist, he fronts this new era of Neurosis and brings with him some of the post-metal experimentation found on records like The Film and The Healer. There are moments of genuine pathos on this record – a collection of tracks that, at least vocally, seem acutely aware of the entropic freefall the human race appears hellbent on taking. On ‘First Red Rays’, Steve Von Till sings: “On frozen peaks, first red rays earth from heavens sever, all born, empty and silent.” Similarly, a melodic section towards the end of 18-minute closer ‘Last Light’ tugs at the heartstrings, a moment of respite from the sludgy distortion. Taken as a whole though, I found the project to be a bit of a drudge. Turner appears to be in step with the rest of the band despite his recent arrival, and on paper this seems like a great revival of a legacy band. But honestly? I can’t remember the last time an hour+ record felt quite this protracted and laboured.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘First Red Rays’ – From the synth-y opening to arrival of that hefty half-time riff, this track feels like the clearest realisation of the record’s sound.

🟢 ‘Last Light’ – This track does not do enough to warrant its 17-minute running time, but I did enjoy it reinventing itself from programmed digital kicks to its grand finale.

Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra – Promises (2021)

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Since I’ve spent every waking moment listening to post-rock recently, I realised an edition of In My Ears this week would be a bit redundant. Instead, I wanted to take the opportunity to announce the latest artist in our Listening Club sessions: the one and only Autechre.

Rob Brown and Sean Booth have been breaking new ground in electronic music for more than three decades. Their approach is like nothing else out there: frequently described as ‘cold’, ‘mechanical’ or ‘austere’, the playful creativity of their music is often overlooked, not to mention the humanity that seeps through the digital facade.

Paid subscribers have been requesting a Listening Session so we can experience Autechre’s music together – and who am I to stand in the way of such a great idea?

I’ll be running this latest session on Thursday 26 March at 21:00 GMT.

The question is: which record do you want to listen to? I’ve laid out all of the options below, and paid subscribers can vote in the poll at the bottom. And of course, if you’re not yet a paid subscriber, upgrade today and join us.

Join us next week

LP5

A record that marks their shift toward more abstract structures, the pair blend fragmented melodies with intricate, glitchy rhythms that straddle the line between mechanical and strangely organic. Often seen as a bridging work, it connects the more accessible releases of the mid-90s with the far more experimental territory they would explore in the 2000s.

Confield

Possibly my favourite Autechre record, Confield is a landmark in algorithmic composition, where tracks evolve unpredictably through complex, generative processes. The album is dense, plunging the listener into disorienting textures that challenge traditional notions of rhythm and structure.

Anti/Garbage

Two of the best EPs the duo ever put out, this pairing lands with punchier beats and clearer grooves – not to mention some of the most beautiful ambient passages they ever produced. Anti is especially notable for its political stance against UK anti-rave legislation (for more on it check out this September edition of In My Ears).

Quaristice

Quaristice is a record which embraces brevity and spontaneity, featuring shorter tracks that present like snapshots of larger sonic experiments. Its loose, sketch-like quality shows a playful side of Rob and Sean’s process, while still diving deep into digital abstraction and rhythmic fragmentation.

SIGN

One of their most recent ‘studio’ records (whatever that means when it comes to Autechre), SIGN offers a comparatively warm and immersive listening experience, emphasising lush synth harmonies over percussive complexity. It stands out in their catalogue for its emotional resonance, showing a more meditative dimension to their sound.

If you’re not a paid subscriber, you can tap the button below to get access to the poll and session, plus all the deep cuts extras:

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If you’re already a paid subscriber but not signed up to the Discord yet, tap the button below and I’ll approve your application:

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[This post ran a little long – if you’re reading in your email app, click ‘read in app’ or ‘view in browser’ to get the whole thing]

Here we go with the second half of my post-rock exploration – if you somehow missed part I, you can catch up below.

As usual, if you want to listen along whilst you read, I’ve uploaded playlists to Spotify and Apple Music. And if you discover something new you really enjoy, drop a comment and let me know.

Gregor Samsa – 55:12 (2006)

One of the great ‘lost’ bands of the new millennium, Gregor Samsa was founded in Virginia by a group of very talented humans – not giant cockroaches, as one might assume – and went on to produce two EPs and two records before vanishing into the void. I went on a hunt to find out what on earth happened to them: vocalist and pianist Nikki King Bennett is now a vegan chef, while her husband and vocalist/guitarist Champ Bennett runs an AI video editing company. In the blink of an eye, Gregor Samsa produced some achingly beautiful music; deep and heartfelt, the hushed vocals and reverb-laden guitars of 55:12 skirt the borders of slowcore, featuring lush string orchestration and plenty of space for the listener to bask in its melancholy. While the original EPs have been reissued on Iodine Recordings, you’ll have to buy secondhand or stick with an unofficial YouTube upload to listen to this one. But oh boy is it worth it.

[Not] on the playlist: ‘Even Numbers’ & ‘Young & Old’

Long Fin Killie – Houdini (1995)

The mid-90s really was the place to be if post-rock is your thing: I don’t think I could have coped with bands like Seefeel, Bark Psychosis, Tortoise, and Long Fin Killie all releasing utter classics around the same time. As with the previous entry, this Scottish rock group were the definition of “burning out before you fade away”, releasing a trio of records in the 90s before disbanding and moving on to other projects. Houdini was the first of the three, and widely regarded as their best – you’ll get zero pushback from me in that regard. An eclectic palette, it centres around vocalist Luke Sutherland’s melody lines and performance, leading the lean guitars and bursting woodwind performances with his edgy falsetto. Every time I listen to this, I’m surprised it wasn’t released in the 2000s.

On the playlist: ‘Love Smothers Allergy’ & ‘Flower Carrier’

Oceansize – Everyone Into Position (2005)

(Adapted from an August edition of In My Ears)

In my humble opinion, this is the best release Oceansize ever put out. The conflict at the heart of the band is well documented, with Mike telling me last year he hates hearing the conflict in this record. As a long-time listener though, it’s not something I notice. It’s true that the post-rockers jump around genres somewhat: ‘An Homage to Shame’ is hardcore-lite heavy riffage, while ‘Music For A Nurse’ is a much more traditional twinkly post-rock track with its delay guitar lines and cinematic swell. Perhaps each band member wanted to achieve something different, but it’s the variety that has kept me coming back to the record over the past 20 years. It manages to be the most immediately gratifying Oceansize record, with the most direct songwriting ideas. An all-timer for me, I doubt I’ll ever stop listening to it. Bring on a future reunion (if they can stand to be in a room together for more than five minutes).

On the playlist: ‘Heaven Alive’ & ‘No Tomorrow’

Talk Talk – Laughing Stock (1991)

In last month’s double-bill Listening Session, attendee Robin typed: “I'm easily absorbed, this opening feels like more than music. Feels like a place. Or a time. Something familiar.” I couldn’t agree with the sentiment more. Mark Hollis, Tim Friese-Greene and Lee Harris achieved a remarkable closing chapter for a band that started out life as an 80’s synth-pop outfit. First off, Hollis: there are few vocalists that succeed in singing without being 'performative'. When Hollis croons it just sounds like an outpouring of his soul, the rest of the track swaddling his wispy voice like bubble wrap around a priceless artefact. The many musicians invited into the recording studio to perform their parts were greeted by a windowless space, the only light source streaming from an oil projector and sound-triggered stage lights. In this environment, and still shook from the death of his brother Ed, Mark pored over the performances for weeks, slowly constructing this final, essential work of art.

On the playlist: ‘Ascension Day’ & ‘New Grass’

Caspian – Dust and Disquiet (2015)

You want catharsis, my friend? Come and take your fill of this modern classic. The Massachusetts quintet are a band I never took the time to listen to, despite my obvious love for this particular genre. It was only about six years ago that I finally threw Dust and Disquiet on during a mandated solo walk. Yes, the Covid pandemic. What I perceived to be exquisitely painful music was just too much in an already emotionally-fraught period, the magnitude of what was happening around us needing no amplification. A year later, once we had finally said goodbye to lockdowns, I listened to it again on a walk as the sun began to set. In the advancing gloam – and a different headspace – the record became a purging of negative emotions, a cleansing through its precise soundscapes, builds, and releases.

On the playlist: ‘Rioseco’ & ‘Sad Heart of Mine’

Tortoise – Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996)

(Adapted from a January edition of In My Ears)

Right up there with Spiderland and Hex, Tortoise’s second studio album is one of the ultimate illustrations of genre as constraint. John Herndon and the rest of the Chicago group took inspiration from dub basslines, the motorik beat of Krautrock groups, and electronic textures and ambience favoured by the experimental greats of the 70s and 80s. Millions Now Living Will Never Die is emphatically nothing and everything, an expression of musical ideas and reflexes. It’s exactly the kind of approach that made the 90s landscape of rock so pregnant with opportunity and creativity. What other type of record would open with a 20-minute shape-shifting piece like this? ‘Djed’ loosely drapes a guitar and bass motif that morphs into a successor to the great Neu!, with Herndon locking into a groove that allows a whimsical keyboard melody to dance across the soundscape. Meanwhile, finale ‘Along the Banks of the River’ plays out like a dusty noir mood piece, scooped guitar notes bending upwards into the light.

On the playlist: ‘Djed’ & ‘Glass Museum’

Silver Mt. Zion – Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward (2001)

How can a band named ‘The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band’ release anything inessential? The Québécois group – Silver Mt. Zion for short – started life as an offshoot for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a place where members Efrim Menuck, Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau could try out material that didn’t naturally fit into the GY!BE canon. Expanding to a sextet for their 2001 record Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upward, they created a record that took the cinematic grace of Lift Your Skinny Fists… and kept plugging away at the long, patient builds. But this record feels altogether more funereal and mournful than Skinny Fists, incorporating raw vocals that have an almost painful fragility. While I’ve never loved the vocal parts across the record, they are sparing – and do play their part in a perfect closing track.

On the playlist: ‘This Gentle Hearts Like Shot Bird’s Fallen’ & ‘The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes’

Bowery Electric – Beat (1996)

(Adapted from an August edition of In My Ears)

Is this one of the greatest records ever made? Yes, I think it is. A post-rock, trip-hop-adjacent classic, once Beat gets under your skin you’re unlikely to ever drop it, especially if it seeps into your life and becomes a soundtrack to a particular moment in time. Case in point: in 2012 I was preparing to leave my hometown to embark on a music performance degree in the North of England. During a snowy February evening, I slipped on some ice and broke the fall with my wrist. In the weeks after, I discovered that a tiny bone had been displaced, and any potential corrective surgery could risk hitting a nerve and irreparably damaging my arm. With that, I watched my dream of becoming a professional musician sink beneath the snow and out of sight forever. I’m not sure whether it was the churning shoegaze soundscapes, the languid beats or the way Martha Schwendener’s voice drifts through the tracks, but there was something deeply consoling about the record. Years later it remains a source of comfort, but also a reminder of how one small instance can fundamentally change everything.

On the playlist: ‘Beat’ & ‘Postscript’

Seefeel – Quique (1993)

Of all the records featured, this is the one that tied me in a genre Gordian knot for hours. I’ve always seen Brit group Seefeel primarily as an electronic project, with debut Quique in particular sounding like it should have been released on Warp back in 1993 (the band actually signed for them the following year). Then again, this music rejects any straightforward singular identifier: Sarah Peacock’s delicate vocals imply dream pop, while the electronic percussion programmed by Justin Fletcher should have earned it a space on the 1992 Artificial Intelligence compilation. But in the end, it’s Sarah and Mark Clifford’s guitar textures, alongside Daren Seymour’s dubby basslines, that convinced me to add it to my personal ‘post-rock’ canon. Another example of what happens when you refuse to be led by the conventions being employed around you, Quique is a gossamer flutter, a whisper on the wind. It faintly smoulders, becoming essential the more time you spend in its boundless brilliance.

On the playlist: ‘Polyfusion’ & ‘Plainsong’

Unwound – Leaves Turn Inside You (2001)

As mentioned in my recent review of Repetition, Unwound’s 2001 opus Leaves Turn Inside You is the post-hardcore luminaries’ final record – a double album, and about as satisfying an epitaph as you could ever hope for. I once came across a comment online that said it answered the musical question: “what would Loveless sound like if Steve Albini made it?” Not a bad framing at all: Justin Trosper and crew had reached a point where angular riffs and snarling tempers became secondary to creating auditory panoramas, shifting sequences that unravel across nearly 80 minutes. Why else kick off with expanding krautrock-esque drones on ‘We Invent You’, only melting into a guitar motif at the two-minute mark? It’s a statement: do not expect what came before, we have evolved. During an interview with Treble in 2013, Trosper said of the final Unwound album: “We spent a fuck of a lot of time adding layers and screwing around with ideas to make the record sound how it did…there weren’t really any guidelines or rules.” The ingredients of post-rock right there, ladies and gentlemen.

On the playlist: ‘Look a Ghost’ & ‘Below the Salt’

Explosions in the Sky – The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place (2003)

I have to admit that this is not a record I return to all that much these days. In some ways, the success of The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place was partially responsible for the creative cul-de-sac many post-rock bands found themselves in during the 2000s, leaning into a reliance on ceaseless crescendos, occasionally to the detriment of the music’s impact. To be clear, that’s not the fault of the Austin, Texas band that wrote it – it just so happened to be such a stimulating approach to rock songwriting that it encouraged countless others to follow suit. Explosions in the Sky perfected the post-rock crescendo-core blueprint in 2003, with highly emotional, lengthy pieces utilising layered guitars drenched in reverb and a near-marching snare propelling the band forward. They found more mainstream appeal with their soundtrack for the brilliant college football film Friday Night Lights, which included the final track from this record, ‘Your Hand In Mine’. Two decades later, I cannot separate the stirring music from the small-town Texas boys with fading dreams, watching their uncertain futures stretch out ahead of them. Gets me every time.

On the playlist: ‘First Breath After Coma’ & ‘Your Hand In Mine’

Fly Pan Am – C'est ça (2019)

The final record in this series to originate from the buzzing Montreal scene of expansive experimental rock, I bet you can’t guess which band the Fly Pan Am lot formerly shared members with? Unlike the music being released in the 2000s by Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion, Fly Pan Am was a project far more indebted to the sound of the electric guitar in its compositional make-up: the atmosphere of the self-titled debut was one woven by interlocked layers of guitar lines, carving out a reflective space in its repetition for listeners to inhabit. Fast forward to 2019, C’est ça takes a different tack with nine tracks of beguiling experimentalism, shifting from glittering bassline-led grooves (‘Bleeding Decay’) to pensive rhythms collapsing from the weight of glitchy distorted feedback (‘One Hit Wonder’). Records like C’est ça make me want to make music myself, because the experimentation is joyful to experience as a listener: you can feel the looseness and fluidity of the creative process flow across the project.

On the playlist: ‘Bleeding Decay’ & ‘One Hit Wonder’

Swans – The Seer (2012)

I said to myself when writing this piece that I would resist including the New York legends more than once. I got Soundtracks For The Blind into part 1, that’s enough, right? Wrong. The revival of Swans was a wholesale reinvention – having called time on the project in 1996 with Soundtracks, Michael Gira returned to the studio in 2010 with My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky, mixing past members with various former collaborators. It was a solid, if tentative return to the Swans project. But The Seer kicked off a three-record run that rammed the band in front of a whole new generation of music fans. I include myself in this group – in August 2012 I was weeks away from moving out of my friend’s house and heading to university in London. The Seer received fawning praise from Pitchfork and various other outlets, and my first listen of this gnarled, twisted root of a record had my jaw on the floor. Its power of brutal repetition, stirring dissonance and sheer length made it one of the most transformative things I heard that year, and still stands as my favourite of the trilogy.

On the playlist: ‘Mother of the World’ & ‘Avatar’

Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis (1998)

(Adapted from an October edition of In My Ears)

Following the masterful pair of Talk Talk records – Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock – Hollis produced one of the most sparse, aching collections of music released in the 90s. Fans of his band’s final two records will not be surprised to hear that, given the focus was all texture and mood, shifting from the earlier synth-pop / new wave records like The Party’s Over and It’s My Life. But this self-titled record is closer to a subtle exhale that lingers just long enough to hold your attention. Everything on this record is gentle brush strokes: as if to manage the listener’s expectations, opening track ‘The Colour of Spring’ doesn’t even fade in the light piano until 20 seconds have passed, revelling in the silence of the moment. Every instrument is performed with the utmost care – even the harmonica on second track ‘The Watershed’ is composed and muted, not an instrument known for its sonic subtlety. At the heart of the record is the eight-minute ‘A Life (1895 - 1915)’, a tribute to a soldier killed in the First World War. What you might expect from a centrepiece like this is some kind of pointed climax. Instead, anxious woodwinds flicker above double bass and brushed percussion.

On the playlist: ‘The Watershed’ & ‘A Life (1895 - 1915)’

Boris – Flood (2000)

Japanese experimental rock band Boris have been fearless creatives since their 1992 inception. An unholy fusion of stoner rock, metal, drone and post-rock, it’s a band without a singular defining record or sound. Like many, I was first introduced to the music of Wata, Atsuo, and Takeshi through 2005’s Pink, which I really enjoyed. But Flood, their 70-minute masterpiece from 2000, was the one I fell head over heels for. A single track split into four movements, it begins with ten minutes of a guitar motif slowly slipping out of time amongst shifting delay lines, then dragging itself into this all-encompassing thrum of noise, taking the listener right into the eye of a storm. Suddenly clearing, Atsuo’s dry kit and a gorgeous two-chord sequence brightens up the once-turbulent landscape with rays of warm light. They expand and inch towards the halfway point, running headlong into one of the most cathartic heavy sections I’ve ever experienced. The reward of patience pays off time and time again – frankly, I’m not sure there’s a better way to spend 70 minutes of your time.

On the playlist: ‘Flood’

Bark Psychosis – Hex (1994)

(Adapted from the deep cuts essential on Codename: Dustsucker)

In a chaotic inversion of sensible writing, I’m ending this two-part feature right where post-rock started. Why? Well, I began with the oft-forgotten second Bark Psychosis record, which to my mind sits right up there with the best. But there’s no way I could sign off without talking about where it all began. A deep, drifting piece of work which glides with grace from track to track, it often feels like being sucked into the depth of a dubby subterranean scape, the percussion a beacon back to the surface. Hex will forever be a landmark statement in experimenting with the traditional instruments of a rock band, deconstructing them alongside samples and electronics, and using the resulting parts to build a beautiful monument of sound. It’s often described as “jazzy”, though I’ve never fully agreed with that label. Perhaps the comparison comes from the genre’s freeform spirit – its way of keeping every possibility open, so the listener can never be entirely sure where the sound will go next. And that’s what this ‘genre’ is in a nutshell: endless experimentation, no guardrails on expression, unlimited worlds to discover.

On the playlist: ‘Absent Friend’ & ‘Pendulum Man’

Thank you for reading – I’ve definitely had to leave out some fantastic records, so please do highlight the ones you can think of in the comments section!

Back on Friday as usual with the next edition of In My Ears.

Earlier this week, my colleague Effie Webb published a story about British right-wing rapper Danny Bones.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism doesn’t frequently offer coverage of emerging artists, tending to spend more time on uncovering corruption and exposing bad actors profiting from injustice.

But this guy is a special case. Often draped in a St George’s Cross or Union Jack, his videos target immigrants and Muslims, and have been viewed millions of times on social media. His lyrics imply that migration is a deliberate conspiracy to divide the UK. One video shows an Asian man within a crowd saying to the camera “We are here” before Danny Bones, in a Union Jack mask, replies “Not for long”. It then cuts to a clip of him throwing a man to the ground and deporting him.

On Spotify, he’s garnering roughly 30,000 monthly streams, with his most popular song ‘This is England’ edging close to a quarter of a million.

The thing is, ‘Danny Bones’ isn’t real. He’s AI slop.

Take one look at the social media accounts of ‘Danny’ and you’ll immediately notice the generated sheen of the videos, featuring a character whose facial structure and appearance change from one post to the next (in one of them, he literally looks like a bald Duke Nukem).

Effie noticed how this character is the front for a secretive influencer collective called The Node Project. She then traced it to Advance UK, who paid the Node Project to produce content in the run-up to its recent by-election campaign in Gorton and Denton.

Advance UK told Effie that the campaign videos had done well, and the party planned to commission more. Meanwhile, The Node Project denied its content was Islamophobic.

When she flagged the content to TikTok, the platform banned the account for breaching its rules on hateful content.

So, what does all of this mean?

It’s yet another reminder that platforms owe it to users to label AI-generated content wherever possible. Deezer committed to labelling AI content on their platform, while French streamer Qobuz has talked about wanting to do the same (when I spoke to Qobuz CEO Dan Mackta last year, he said: “If I hear AI music and I like it? Shoot me”).

Spotify is not a platform known for its ethics – that much has been well established in recent times with its programmatic ICE ads and founder Daniel Ek’s investment into weapons tech.

The company told the Bureau that the Danny Bones tracks went through human review and didn’t break its rules. It also said that the AI artist is eligible to earn money on the platform, where songs begin generating payouts beyond 1,000 streams.

I for one would also love to know whether the people watching Danny Bones’ content realise it’s AI-generated. Surely they must be, right? The videos couldn’t be more obviously AI if they tried, filled to the brim with uncanny valley figures and awkward facial movements. But the music is harder to identify as fake if you’re listening in isolation. I don’t think I could confidently pick out any of the piss-poor ‘Danny Bones’ songs as AI out of a playlist.

Where does this all take us, if AI artists can be wielded by political parties to encourage a particular world view? What does that mean for country-wide elections, if a fake rapper can spread nationalist sentiment amongst voters?

Watch this space, I guess. In the meantime, I wouldn’t waste your time seeking out any Danny Bones tracks to listen to. Aside from its regressive politics, it’s proper shit.

Mitski – Nothing’s About To Happen To Me (2026)

Ever since Mitski released the incredible Be The Cowboy (my #1 album of 2018), I’ve struggled to fully fall for her subsequent releases. 2022’s Laurel Hell and 2023’s The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We felt like minor records following her 2018 triumph – definitely enjoyable elements in both, but not truly cohesive and enveloping in the way Be The Cowboy is, or previous records Puberty 2 and Bury Me At Makeout Creek. This latest offering, Nothing’s About To Happen To Me, feels once again like a lower-case ‘p’ project from the American singer-songwriter. The 11 tracks are brief in traditional Mitski fashion, never outstaying their welcome and often leaving you wishing they had lasted longer. Oddly enough, I’ve never felt this about the songs on Be The Cowboy, but that record has such a perfect flow that I would just play the record from the start to experience it all over again. Nothing’s About To Happen To Me stylistically jumps around, keeping things fresh – ‘I’ll Change For You’ is an elegantly-orchestrated 70s ballad, while ‘If I Leave’ returns to the distorted skronk of career-highlight tracks ‘Your Best American Girl’ and ‘I Don’t Smoke’. There’s a deep sadness permeating the songs, a kind of forlorn bitterness that she executes so effectively. I just hope at some point she’s able to match the perfection of that 2018 record.

Taste test:

🟢 ‘If I Leave’ – The build to the fuzzed-out chorus is a delight, Mitski crooning ‘I ride through a tunnel, it’s still dark the whole way’.

🟢 ‘I’ll Change For You’ – A track all about the orchestration, the piano burbles alongside thick bass and snare rim taps, setting the stage for a gorgeous violin motif.

Shane Parish – Autechre Guitar (2026)

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The twin edicts for articles about post-rock are almost unavoidable:

a) Explain that the term was coined by journalist Simon Reynolds in his 1994 review of Hex by Bark Psychosis.

b) Attempt to identify descriptors for a style that gleefully cherry-picks elements from almost every genre imaginable.

I’m not much of a rule breaker, so I’m pleased to be able to pack both into two sentences. You’re welcome.

My own relationship with post-rock probably mirrors that of many of you. I grew up on the crescendo-laden epics of bands like Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. For the longest time, the drama and emotional swell of these bands boxed in my understanding of the genre.

Then, the map expanded. I discovered Bark Psychosis, Talk Talk, Slint, Disco Inferno, and Dirty Three. Suddenly, post-rock dropped its (admittedly addictive) formula of building to lofty peaks and instead became a larger landscape to explore: ambient, electronic, symphonic, heavy, delicate. Lots of opposing sounds, but always the same restless instinct to push rock somewhere else, somewhere new.

None of this is to say that those early gateway bands are lesser – far from it, and several appear below. But as my listening widened, so did my definition of what post-rock could be. And you know what? If it uses rock instrumentation and the songwriting is unconventional, then it’s pretty much fair game.

Some of my picks might more neatly fit in an adjacent micro-genre (a rabbit hole you could happily explore on RateYourMusic or Album of the Year), but everything on this list shares the same impulse: music that treats ‘rock’ as the very first step of a much longer journey.

The rest can be whatever gets unearthed along the way.

If you want to listen along whilst you read, I’ve curated the usual playlists on Spotify and Apple Music. I hope you find something new to enjoy!

The Evpatoria Report – Golevka (2005)

In the spirit of my earliest discoveries of the genre – surging emotion, towering crescendos – I thought I’d kick things off with a lesser-known record in the canon of 2000s post-rock. The Evpatoria Report was founded in Switzerland in 2002 by five talented musicians, who went on to release just two full-length records and one EP before disappearing into the ether (they have since returned to play a handful of shows, so perhaps new music could be on the way?). Their first record, Golevka, wears its heart on its sleeve from the first moment to the last: leaning its full weight into a deep lachrymosity, extended violin motifs soar above clean guitars and a pleasing loose performance on the kit. When sparing distortion is employed, it achieves the kind of transcendence only the most skilled can harness. An alluring, morose journey.

On the playlist: ‘Prognoz’ & ‘Dipole Experiment’

Bark Psychosis – Codename: Dustsucker (2004)

Two records in? You must be shocked! All joking aside, I know I mention Graham Sutton’s defining project more than is probably healthy. But between this and its predecessor (more on that next week) they are impossibly high watermarks of the genre. In my extended deep cuts essential piece on this record, I said: “You can almost sense the shadows stretching out across tarmacked roads and blocks of concrete, an empty alley running alongside railway tracks, the light fog painting a halo around street lamps. For all of its ambience, this urban sketch is very different to a lot of ‘post-rock’ – it’s not interested in a pastoral beauty, it seems to strive for a different kind of comfort amongst the high rises and empty midnight streets.”

On the playlist: ‘The Black Meat’ & ‘INQB8TR’

Dirty Three – Horse Stories (1996)

(Adapted from an August edition of In My Ears)

Long after we’re all dead and gone, Warren Ellis will likely be remembered foremost as a Nick Cave collaborator and long-time Bad Seed. But for some of us, his most enduring work will forever be a string of instrumental post-rock, folk-tinged records, under the guise of Dirty Three. The Aussie trio have released some of the most poignant albums you’re likely to encounter, their power stemming from the graceful interplay of Ellis’ violin and viola, Mick Turner’s guitar and the drums of Jim White. My favourite of the lot has always been 96’s Horse Stories, which got an extended outing last year to mourn missing out on tickets to their Barbican gig last December. I’ve been told that the elegiac beauty of their music is only bettered when they perform it in front of a crowd, so heaven knows when I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself.

On the playlist: ‘Sue’s Last Ride’ & ‘Red’

The Necks – Unfold (2017)

You wait ages for a bus, then two come along at once. Or in this case, two incredible Australian instrumental trios. What are the odds? The Necks have been a much more recent obsession for me, having loved their 2025 record Disquiet and then jumping feet first into the rabbit hole of their music. As I’ve written elsewhere, they are a group for whom improvisation isn’t just a method, but a philosophy that turns repetition, texture and time into something transcendent. You might want to call it ‘jazz’, but the wandering tones and atypical rhythms that roam between Chris Abrahams’ keys and Lloyd Swanton’s double bass are more like lyrical impressions, unfixed and emboldened by a disinterest in genre. Unfold’s four tracks run the gamut of the band’s creative force, from the flighty organ on ‘Overhear’ to Tony Buck’s erratic percussion on ‘Timepiece’.

On the playlist: ‘Overhear’ & ‘Timepiece’

These New Puritans – Field of Reeds (2013)

This is hallowed territory for me. In 2020 video ‘The Best 50 Albums of the Decade’, I stuck Field of Reeds right at the top, and six years later I couldn’t be happier with the placement. Jack Barnett and twin brother George’s third record was a bold step in the journey of These New Puritans – coming from the angular art rock and Taiko drumming of 2010’s Hidden, Jack took it upon himself to learn neoclassical composition for the next outing. Armed with one Graham Sutton on production duties, Field of Reeds is a masterclass in dynamics and space, a shapeshifting surprise from one track to the next. Fragments of a half-remembered rendition of Burt Bacharach’s ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’ open the record, before giving way to a soaring trumpet and grandiose orchestration. The inclusion of orchestral instruments never feels shoehorned into the songwriting, instead becoming its essential centrepiece.

On the playlist: ‘The Light In Your Name’ & ‘Organ Eternal’

Toe – the book about my idle plot on a vague anxiety (2005)

Japanese quintet Toe have two things in common with the great Don Caballero: one is having a foot firmly placed in the contorted stylings of math-rock. Another is how they prioritise percussion in their music. Kashikura Takashi’s drums are dry and textured, placed squarely at the front of the mix as the duelling guitars of Mino Takaaki and Yamazaki Hirokazu weave around one another. It’s not often you get such a focus on percussion in this more traditional rock set up, but it allows the listener to revel in the precise ghost notes Takashi brushes across his snare, the definition of his strikes against synthetic drum skins and bronze cymbals. While I could have saved this record for a future math-rock edition of this series, the atmosphere and colour the band evokes on their brilliant debut just felt wrong not to include here.

On the playlist: ‘孤独の発明’ & ‘past and language’

Slint – Spiderland (1991)

Has a more iconic photograph of a band been taken? Neck-deep in the murky waters of an Indiana quarry, it was one of the last things the Slint boys did before they split. It adorns the cover of their second record Spiderland, an album which was released to limited praise and fanfare (other than Steve Albini, who championed its originality and even wrote a review of it for Melody Maker). Strange how hindsight makes everything seem so blindingly obvious, because now Spiderland is rightfully hailed as one of the most important rock records of the 90s, and the primordial ooze of the post-rock sound. Even now it sounds jagged and dangerous, Brian McMahan’s spoken word vocals haunting its six perfectly-formed tracks. I’m still not sure I can identify a closing track more bone-shaking than ‘Good Morning, Captain’. Even after 100+ listens, McMahan’s anguished cries of “I miss you” still raise the hackles on my neck.

On the playlist: ‘Nosferatu Man’, & ‘Good Morning, Captain’

Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up There (2022)

In the blink of an eye, Black Country, New Road went through a wholesale metamorphosis – days before second record Ants From Up There was released, lead vocalist and guitarist Isaac Wood left the group, citing mental health reasons. Their potent take on post-everything (punk, rock, whatever) has become something more akin to prog chamber folk in the years since Wood left, which appears to suit the remaining members very well. But I for one deeply miss the BC,NR of old, and this record was the absolute pinnacle: Wood’s uncomfortable confessional lyricism and disarming humour was a perfect foil for the full band glee of guitars, flute, piano, mandolin and the rest, a beautiful cacophony from young musicians bursting with ideas. The ragged final chorus of ‘The Place Where He Inserted The Blade’ is unparalleled, except for perhaps in the majesty of final track ‘Basketball Shoes.’ Hope you’re doing well, Isaac.

On the playlist: ‘The Place Where He Inserted The Blade’ & ‘Basketball Shoes’

Mogwai – The Hawk Is Howling (2006)

The Mogwai record generally hailed as their peak tends to be Mogwai Young Team, the 1997 debut from the Scottish band. And I can’t lie, they struck lightning first time with that one. But over the past two decades, I’m still returning to their sixth record The Hawk Is Howling, which happened to be my first exposure to their work. The reason for my first listen back in 2006 is a wholly juvenile one: picking up the CD in the local HMV, I thought the track titles were hilarious. Who wouldn’t want to listen to a song called ‘I Love You, I’m Going To Blow Up Your School’? Of course, when I got home and hit play there was none of the hilarity of the track titles in the music; just transcendent grace, huge lead lines, and not a vocal in sight. If I look back, it’s probably one of the early records that opened my eyes to rock music without a singer. Cheers, laddies.

On the playlist: ‘The Sun Smells Too Loud’ & ‘I Love You, I’m Going To Blow Up Your School’

Balmorhea – Constellations (2010)

This isn’t the first time I’ve waxed lyrical about this Austin, Texas duo – their palatial neo-classicism has been another obsession of mine over the last year, and discovering the wonders of their discography has been a delight. In terms of categorisation, you might disagree with Balmorhea being post-rock. Maybe I do, too. But considering my other picks in this feature so far, Michael Muller and Rob Lowe’s perception of texture and landscape couldn’t be left out for the sake of a clean taxonomy. Constellations flirts with folky mandolin, resonant pianos and the scratch of acoustic guitar, building to a project that makes me want to wander through fields in the rain.

On the playlist: ‘Bowsprit’ & ‘Night Squall’

Swans – Soundtracks for the Blind (1996)

Just before their extended hiatus in 1996, the influential no wave group fronted by grumpy cowboy Michael Gira went fully off the rails and released an uncategorisable double album of experimental sounds, driving rhythms, and ambient discomfort. Field recordings and samples of surveillance tapes impose themselves, layered across soundscapes that feel tailor-made to unsettle the listener. Meant as the final statement of Swans, they of course returned in 2012 with The Seer, introducing themselves to a whole new generation of fans (myself included). Those records continue Gira and co.’s exploration of space and patience amidst long, drawn-out tracks, but with much more brawn and immediacy. The strength of Soundtracks for the Blind is its meandering execution, like plodding through a dingy world rife with danger at every turn.

On the playlist: ‘Helpless Child’ & ‘Minus Something’

Disco Inferno – D.I. Go Pop (1994)

Every time I go back to D.I. Go Pop, I’m struck by how defiantly it rejects comparison – genuinely, it sounds like almost nothing else before or since. Released the same year the term ‘post-rock’ was unleashed into the critical lexicon, the Essex trio appeared to exist in a parallel creative universe entirely of their own making. As you would likely expect, the album title is something of a cheeky misnomer; what you actually get with D.I. Go Pop is a prismatic musical landscape, more interested in textures, atmospheric density, and noise than the conventions of traditional pop songwriting. It’s chaotic and can feel like whiplash on the first few listens, as grooves dissolve into waves of abrasive feedback. But beneath all the madness lies a strange, warped charm, strung together with Ian Crause’s distinct vocal lines.

On the playlist: ‘A Crash At Every Speed’ & ‘Footprints In The Snow’

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000)

This record was the first time I understood the term ‘cinematic’ in music. I constantly fight the impulse to use the phrase in my writing, both because it’s a little ephemeral as a descriptor and because it becomes almost meaningless the more it’s wielded. Nevertheless, my maiden listen of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven felt like a life-affirming journey into the unknown, exploring a billowing world of gorgeous landscapes pockmarked by the might of Mother Nature. The Canadian group’s second record put them on the map, and delivered an experience that was nothing short of revelatory for listeners across the world. Made up of four tracks of roughly 20 minutes each, the band patiently builds these beautiful songs with orchestral instrumentation, often featuring spoken word extracts and coursing ambient interludes. Still one of the best records of the 2000s, I’m jealous of anyone who gets to experience this for the first time.

[Not] on the playlist: ‘Storm’ & ‘Sleep’

caroline – caroline 2 (2025)

The most recent record in this two-parter, I’m still falling for caroline 2 as we approach its one-year anniversary. Placing it at number three in my Albums of the Year 2025 piece, I said: “The eight-piece London collective refuse to rush through anything on caroline 2, often playing with sparseness as if it were an instrument. There are these sudden collisions of sound which make for such huge moments – opening track ‘Total euphoria’ trips along, its stop-start rhythms slinking over one another. You almost get the impression of a polished jam session, each musician feeling out the elements of the track and their place within it. ‘When I get home’ has this distant pounding bass drum, streets away from the room in which this otherwise lilting acoustic track is playing out.”

On the playlist: ‘Total euphoria‘ & ‘When i get home’

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think should be on the second half of the list next week!

I’ll be back on Friday with the next instalment of In My Ears.

For this week, the excellent folks at The Line of Best Fit were happy for me to republish an interview I did for them back in 2018 with the visionary Daniel Lopatin, a.k.a Oneohtrix Point Never. Since then, Lopatin has been on a stratospheric trajectory: f…

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