But music remains, as ever, our sanctuary. This year has been peppered with fantastic releases, with some big hitters dominating headlines. Beneath all that, however, you’ll find some entrancing advancements - the continuation of so-called ‘deep dubstep’, laptop twee, London’s magnetic folk community, and the ongoing splinters within UK rap have all made for engaging talking points, and some ace listening.

In my day job at CLASH, we recently rounded up 60 of the year’s best releases (so far) and it was a revealing task. “Was that really this year?” was a recurring phrase uttered, testament both to the onslaught of sound that’s come our way, and also the sheer disorienting impact of UK life in 2026.

A short note on how that list - and our End Of Year lists more generally - are done: it’s democratic. We have a pool of around 200 contributors who are invited to send in their Top 10 albums, we input the data into a spreadsheet and pore over the patterns that emerge. That’s essentially it.

And that’s also how we pieced together the most recent poll documenting a solid 50% chunk of 2026.

As an exercise in listening, I’m expanding on my personal list - I stopped at 16 as an arbitrary number but could have waffled on for significantly longer.

Aldous Harding - Train On The Island

Honestly, she never misses. Each time a new Aldous Harding album comes along I’ll play it once and wonder if it’s a special as her last one… and, somehow, it actually is. Even within her own unique catalogue ‘Train On The Island’ feels distinct - surreal, whimsical, and jarringly emotional, it contains 10 tracks of peerless musicality. Her show at the Barbican was easily one of the best I’ve seen in 2026, too, if you’re asking (and you should).

SLAYYYTER - WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA

There’s a fair argument that ever since ‘BRAT’ dropped pop has pivoted away from pristine careerism and towards the chaotic. While you can debate that all you like, there’s no arguing that SLAYYYTER’s album ‘WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA’ is (a) completely chaotic and (b) one of the year’s best pop records. Styling, cool, and openly anarchic, it riffs on Tumblr nostalgia while still sounding completely fresh. Love it.

Jump Source - Fold

This is, pound for pound, the most purely enjoyable electronic record we’ve seen this year. Montreal duo Patrick Holland and Priori are wicked solo artists, but something magical happens when they become enmeshed in the studio. 11 club shellers that pilfer from house and techno while also absorbing the heft of late 90s Big Beat productions, ‘Fold’ is littered with stellar guests - Helena Deland, Poison Girl Friend, even avant-rap guru billy woods - giving it a community feel. A warm embrace of a record.

K Wata - Give U Space

I didn’t wake up on January 1st anticipated dub techno to dominate my 2026 listening, but here you go. New York’s K Wata released ‘Give U Space’ back in May and it’s a considered eight-track suite, melding clinical programming with the producer’s painterly flourishes. Quietly entrancing, it’s cerebral but daringly emotive, a work peppered with corner-of-your-eye illusions and unexpected flashes of machine daring.

Sam Grassie - Where Two Hawks Fly

Ridiculously productive - he released a new EP just the other day - Sam Grassie’s new album ‘Where Two Hawks Fly’ is a fine update of the British folk guitar canon. Nimble and dextrous, he’s technically wonderful but also capable of subverting those tropes, and saying something new. Part of the Broadside Hacks community, Sam borrows from key influences across the record, but uses them to channel something personal, and unique to him. A truly rewarding folk record.

Beatrice M. - Sinking

Paris DJ and producer Beatrice M. is part of a thriving club community in their home city, recalibrating bass-led club programming from a new angle. Debut album ‘Sinking’ moves between Basic Channel style dub techno through to sleek dubstep warmers (it’s actually released via Pitch’s influential Tectonic imprint) while steadfastly asserting its own identity. A record that makes sense both as a chest-rattling club experience and a headphones listen, ‘Sinking’ feels like a significant moment.

Beth Orton - The Ground Above

Beth Orton’s third album in a decade, and easily one of the best of her career. Considered, ornate, and piercingly emotive, ‘The Ground Above’ is direct without being confrontational, poetic without falling to whimsy, and melodic without losing its intensity. A wonderful record, one that is continually return to. Side note: why wasn’t this on the Mercury list?

Olivia Rodrigo - you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love

Olivia Rodrigo - for me - hasn’t put a foot wrong. Right from ‘driver’s license’ it was evident she was evolving into something truly remarkable, and her opening two albums offered pop of a supreme elixir. ‘you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love’ feels like The Point Where It All Comes Together - you can feel pop culture’s tectonic plates shifting under this record, the strength of the songwriting opening up fresh paths in the process. Sometimes the year’s most popular record is also one of the best.

Charli xcx - Music, Fashion, Film

Every time I write out ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ I panic and double check if I got it in the right order. And, given Charli’s ubiquity in pop culture this year, that’s a lot of anxious verification. ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ - for thine is the order - revels in punk-like brevity and its dual ability to reveal and confuse. If I’m honest, I haven’t fully made up my mind on this record, but I keep on playing it regardless.

Her show at the Scala provided one of the year’s more humorous gig moments, when a chap from The Sun was blocked from creating content on his phone… because the person in front of them was waving a massive Peppa Pig.

GENA - The Pleasure Is Yours

Karriem Riggins and Liv.e unite as GENA, and truly the pleasure is all ours. Honeyed neo-soul that feels both exquisitely melodic and daringly original, it’s a dream-like album, one that gently smothers you in its charms. Shaz from CLASH did a fantastic job interviewing them and you can read it here.

underscores - U

Blessed with more ideas over its slender 34 minute span than most musicians have in a lifetime, underscores’ third album ‘U’ is a blizzard of invention, a whirlwind of innovation, a nine-song assault on the senses that manages to channel Skrillex at his most outlandish while still feeling recognisable as pop music. There’s an age-old idea that innovation in pop music has somehow stumbled to a halt - play them this at ear-splitting volume. A melodic universe unto itself, ‘U’ is baffling, perplexing, and totally brilliant.

IZCO - POWERSCROFT

Released via Brownswood, IZCO’s debut album ‘POWERSCROFT” was a homage to his East London youth. Filtering aspects of jazz, broken beat, UK funky, and more into a potent brew, the carefully chosen guests - Reek0 voices two tracks, for example - serve to amplify his autobiographical vision. Pointless trivia: I used to live one street along from Powerscroft Road. Which means I’m entitled to say the following: this is as refreshing as a pint of lager at Biddle Bros.

RenzNiro - NO WEAPON SHALL PROSPER

Manchester has long been a hub for left-field sonics - go check Space Afrika’s current Wire cover interview for a more in-depth take on that statement. RenzNiro draws from his energy, and his mixtape ‘NO WEAPON SHALL PROSPER’ is one of the most unique UK rap records I’ve heard this year. A project that never quite settles in to one place, RenzNiro’s shape-shifting abilities permeate the dank, fractured electronics. There’s real strength to the storytelling, too, something that allows ‘NO WEAPON SHALL PROSPER’ to coalesce as something profound and truly impactful.

Boards Of Canada - Inferno

The year’s most-apt album title? Perhaps.

A long, long-awaited return, one that didn’t disappoint. A fascinating, ambitious, but ultimately imperfect return, yet also one whose imperfections seemed to entrance, and keep me up at night. Because I am, ultimately, the sort of person who lies awake at 2.45am thinking about oblique cultural reference points within Boards Of Canada records. Entrancing, cultish analogue electronics from the best to ever do it.

My New Band Believe - My New Band Believe

Cameron Picton moves beyond the wreckage of black midi for a progfolkopus. Bizarre, bewildering, and entrancing, his expression, multi-layered songcraft is exhibited across a breathlessly ambitious record, the kind of frenetic, soulful, genre-breaking musicality Van Morrison once strived for in the wee small hours of the late 1960s. Uniquely fresh and dazzingly detailed, Cameron’s debut felt like watching an Abstract Expressionist layer up their canvas in colours you’ve only ever dreamt about.

Lime Garden - Maybe Not Tonight

29 minutes of pure, absolute enjoyment. Lime Garden make all-out indie bangers, and they aren’t about to apologise for it. A half-hour of joyous guitar pop, packed to the rafters with whip-smart lyricism and more hooks than a fisherman’s convention. There’s depth, too - I’m on listen number 368 and I’ll still uncovering fresh details. Addictions don’t get more wholesome than my infatuation with this record.

Recently Nicola J Davies was kind enough to invite me to add a few words to her excellent IN SITU newsletter, a regular Substack (and IRL event strand) that probes culture, music, and marketing. Nicola has written (always excellent) work for CLASH for years, so she simply dashed over a WhatsApp question: Why does music have such a unique power to reach previously unattainable audiences for brands outside the industry?

And I thought: huh.

For me, music is the most democratic artform there is. Kids with sticks can make music. Adults with pristine high-end studios can make music. Sometimes the kids have the edge on us, but that’s true about most things. Music seeps down into every facet of society, and thanks to streaming and social media it’s become an instantaneous transfer of information. Music has an ability to represent the new while also building on top of the past - soundsystem culture appearing in the DNA of grime, indie rock’s ability to reinvent itself while still remaining steadfastly the same.

Sometimes I like to focus on the past, other times I like to fixate upon the new. Guess how I’m feeling today? Clue: it’s the fourth edition of New Music Almanac.

Kibo - ‘Kwengletaria: Ragamyff’

Kibo is hands-down one of the brightest minds in UK music right now. A rapper from Harrow who caught attention with his freestyles on those Victory Lap broadcasts, he’s able to take that insouciant approach into the studio matching his easy-going nonchalance with a bright, vivid imagination.

Seizing on the lawless creativity of grime but with a much broader sound palette to pull from, Kibo is essentially a kid with an over-active imagination, and an endless supply of pirate radio tapes and wrestling videos to inspire him. Debut mixtape ‘Kwengletaria: Ragamyff’ is absolutely brilliant - the beats are top tier, the word play is inspired, and his sheer charisma beams through on every track. Together with full length releases from Catch and PS Hitsquad, Kibo has been soundtracking my summer.

Worldpeace DMT - ‘Flowers Powers’

Laptop twee is a genre tag that’s been bandied about for a while now, and there’s some excellent - usually American - writing about it online. Try this Bandcamp primer, for example.

Essentially Moldy Peaches style indie pop with skittering laptop beats over it, there’s a healthy London component. Charli xcx invited The Femcels - whose recent album was an addictive January listen - onstage at her recent Scala show, and if that’s not a co-sign then I don’t what is.

50% of Femcels are also in Worldpeace DMT, whose 2025 album ‘The Velvet Underground & Rowan’ was a word-of-mouth success. A new album is on the way, but before then we’ve got this - an 11-track mixtape of eye-boggling alt-pop that will have you muttering “they can’t be serious… oh, they are serious” every 30 seconds or so. Sex’d up serio-comic observations on 2k26 life, it also includes a demented Joni Mitchell cover. As Homer Simpson may well put it: “mmm sacrilicious…”

Kilig - Robots Will Take Over And Wonder Why We Have So Many Group Chats And So Few Hospitals

Unquestionably the year’s best album title. After all, what’s better? ‘Music, Fashion, Film’? Oh, puh-leeeez.

A 10-track meditation that echoes Boards Of Canada and Autechre while still refusing to be overawed by those influences, it riffs on the past to absorb the present. There’s something beautifully pure about this release - the vivid audio painting, the lucid sound sculptures, the subtle sense of humour (the album title!) and the absolute, steadfast seriousness with which Kilig completes his task. This is an amazing listen - a gripping, cinematic journey through analogue electronics that leaves a palpable emotional impact.

Eden Samara - ‘Oracle’

Pretty often, whenever I’m in the vicinity of Gen Z drum ‘n’ bass I’m reminded of the words of Vito Corleone: look how they massacred my boy.

It’s not all bad, however, and with Tim Reaper supplying beats this new track from Eden Samara can’t fail. Stripped from her incoming album ‘Odyssey’ it skips between rugged system business and a gospel-like sense of the sublime. An effortlessly gorgeous piece of music about hope, despair, and how true redemption can only come from within. Tip!

megiapa - ‘Open Your Eyes’

Chicago has a rich avant-garde lineage. Los Angeles has a potent history of lo-fi beat making. megiapa has - at one time or another - called both cities home, and her new song ‘Open Your Eyes’ is an effective fusion of both those disciplines (and more).

The slightly raw feel to the production works in the song’s favour - quietly assertive alt-R&B mechanics, the poetic quality of her lyric is set against a fantastic P-Funk bassline, and a woozy Dilla-esque structure. Done and dusted in 135 seconds flat, ‘Open Your Eyes’ points to greater treasures on her soon to be released International Anthem supported LP.

Alice Barlow - ‘Behind’

A new signing to Domino Records, who - let’s be real - only tend to sign the good sh*t. Alice Barlow is from South London, she’s also in the band WOOM, and she’s got a monthly show on Sister Midnight.

More importantly, she’s an undeniably fantastic songwriter. Take a listen to this: sloping Life Without Buildings style bass, eerie electronics, and a guitar line that seems to ooze out of the universal consciousness, it’s a work of pensive beauty. A brilliantly understated opening gambit.

8485 - ‘Buzzbands’

A song seemingly designed to be posted about on Hipster Runoff circa 2009… and to be quite honest, that’s not actually a bad thing. 8485 thrives on closed off corners of the internet, the DIY electronics acting as part punk assault and part hedonistic soundtrack.

A snotty micro-drama that touches on relationship drama, information overload, and hyper-sexuality, ‘Buzzbands’ practically demands you sweep your fringe, snap on some over-sized hoop earrings and head to Barden’s Boudoir.

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Seriously, those bookshelves are heaving with titles. Up until the turn of the Millennium, most book shops had about six music releases – one each for Lennon and McCartney, a Bowie tome, and a couple of random assortments. Now virtually everything under the sun is covered – from cult icons to mainstream figures, from Taylor Swift to Alice Coltrane.

One key facet of this is that the subject matter – the actual music itself – has become incredibly diverse. If once those hardbacks were dominated by the pale, male, and stale, it’s now… well it’s not a rainbow or anything, but it’s a lot better than it was.

In this country in particular, it feels like Black British history is finally being given a bit more respect. This summer Jesse Bernard – long one of my favourite writers – published his first book, with Escaping Babylon offering an intimate portrait of multiple generations of Black British genius and resistance. Placing this country’s music scene – and the people behind it – in a global context, it’s also a hugely personal book, and no doubt a cathartic one.

A recent visit to V&A East exhibition The Music Is Black brought home just how much this country owes Black British musicians, and how poorly documented and appreciated their lives have been until relatively recently. I was lucky enough to chat with Jacqueline Springer – the lead curator of the exhibition – and her passion and knowledge was a sight to behold.

It’s traditional for places to offer summer reading recommendations, so with that in mind I thought I’d dig out a few fantastic books that, for me, offer unique glimpses into pivotal areas of Black British excellence. Some of them you may know, others might be unfamiliar, but I hope you find something worth checking out.

Sounds Like London – Lloyd Bradley

Lloyd Bradley’s Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King is hands-down one of the greatest books ever written about music, so when Sounds Like London was released in 2013 off to the bookshop I went. Bass Culture obviously touches on Black British music in several ways but Sounds Like London is a much more focused love letter to the writer’s home city, weaving its way across multiple generations and genres.

Stretching all the way from Dixieland jazz in 1919 through to the birth of 1Xtra, it is vast in scope, but through focussing on select stories – and his own quicksilver prose – Bradley applies a real sense of pace to the book. Whether it’s South African émigré jazz rebels or the rare groove warehouse era, you’re drawn to incredible characters, battling against a system that feels designed to make them fail. There’s so much to love here – if you haven’t already done so, then maybe start here.

Or you could also try: Tighten Up – The History Of Reggae In The UK, Michael de Koningh

Where We Come From – Aniefiok ‘Neef’ Ekpoudom

I can honestly say I was on to Neef’s work from early, as one of his first regular writing gigs was a column for CLASH online called Tales From The Grime Generation. Honestly, from his very first article I was hooked – as a writer Neef is drawn to the longer, sports-based character study journalism of David Finkel and Gary Smith. I vividly recall somebody on Twitter commenting on an early Neef piece: “Some guys are out here writing content, this guy is here writing novels”.

Where We Come From finally afforded Neef space to go deep – really deep – on UK rap and the communities around it at a truly national level. So, you get trips to Manchester, Birmingham, and Cardiff, while also zoning in on the different communities within London. It’s touching, sometimes funny, and always revealing. Vital reading.

Or you could also try: What Do You Call It? David Kane

State Of Bass – Martin James

The vast majority of music books capture moments retrospectively. That’s just the nature of the beat – from commission to final proof to printing to distributor is a long process, and musical genres can completely change within 18 months.

Astonishingly, State Of Bass is a portrait of jungle’s gestation in real-time. Originally published in 1997 is perfectly captures the sense of flux and revolutionary sonics of the era, and most of its outcomes stand up. Whether that’s zeroing in on the initial fusion of house and breaks or the emergence of darkcore, it’s impeccably detailed without becoming a heads-only kinda deal.

Hauling the reader from the end of Acid House through to 1997 – the year Roni Size defeated Radiohead to win the Mercury – it’s a phenomenal survey of a crucial era in soundsystem culture. Velocity Press kindly re-issued it but I got my copy for a bargain price at Notting Hill Book Exchange (as I continually enjoy pointing out to people).

Or you could also try: Renegade Snares – The Resistance And Resilience Of Drum & Bass

All Things Remembered – Goldie

It’s one thing for the publishing world to acknowledge Black British music, it’s another for those companies to actual empower the musicians to tell their own stories. Goldie’s excellent All Things Remembered appeared round about the same time as Wiley’s book, and the two are parallel figures – renegades who sculpted genres, and built their own paths.

Goldie’s book stands out due to the searing honesty – taken into care at the age of four, he was subjected to sexual abuse while a child, before drifting into crime. Art – in the form of graffiti – and music completely changed his life, giving him a space to transform all that innate energy into something transfixing and beautiful. An incredible production force, the walk-on roles – from key collaborators, to David Bowie knitting in a caravan on the Isle of Man – are worth checking out in their own right.

Or you could also try: Mister Good Times – Norman Jay

Grime Kids – DJ Target / Inner City Pressure: The Story Of Grime – Dan Hancox

In my mind, these two books work together as a pair. Published around a similar time frame, they touch on similar ground while telling those stories in very different ways.

DJ Target is obviously one of the most influential figures in the evolution of modern British music, a DJ, producer, and broadcaster who remains deep in the trenches. Grime Kids was a rare look back – a funny, wistful, revealing look at the early years of grime, when a bunch of kids with a dream and a shaky radio transmitter spun Britain on its axis. Whether its arcane post code beefs or eventful trips to Ayia Napa, this is a real page turner.

Inner City Pressure also documents the gestation and rise of grime but does so from multiple different angles. Few can better Dan Hancox’s knowledge of the music, given that he’s met and interviewed (multiple times) every single one of the key players. This is a thorough, insightful, challenging read that remains totally in love with the music.

One of these is the insider’s tale, the other is the outsider’s observations – my advice would be to read both.

Random aside: I once interviewed Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and had finished Inner City Pressure on the tube on my way to do the chat. He’d been desperate to read it, so I just passed-on my publisher’s proof copy as a gift (cos I’m nice like that and it didn’t cost me anything anyway). About a week later Bobby popped up at the Q Awards to present Stormzy with a trophy, and he quoted from Inner City Pressure in his onstage recitation. The power words can hold eh!

Or you could also try: This Is Grime – Hattie Collins, Olivia Rose

Unapologetic Expression - André Marmot

London never fails to surprise me. Just over a decade ago the city’s jazz scene started twisting, turning, and contorting, with a flood of new musicians taking the sound out of the carefully delineated jazz club realm and into interesting new spaces. Musicians like Shabaka, Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd, and Ezra Collective led the way, alongside organised such as jazz: refreshed and Church Of Sound, and community groups such as the long-standing Tomorrow’s Warriors.

It’s a beautiful - and still ongoing - story, a vivid exhibition of the way in which music can create communities, in addition to allowing those self-same communities to find their voice. As a live agent, André Marmot was in the centre of it all, and his book Unapologetic Expression foregrounds the experiences of those musicians, while acting as an informative guide to the events of the past decade. It’s a great read, one that will have you scurrying to Spotify in order to explore records you’ve missed.

Or you could also try: From Jazz Funk & Fusion To Acid Jazz, The History of the UK Jazz Dance Scene - Snowboy

Happy reading, folks!

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As Charli xcx once so succinctly put it in t-shirt form: “They don’t build statues of critics”.

It’s a topic that roared back into view this week, when the decidedly un-statuesque form of YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano started trending over social media. The cause? A two-year-old review of a Halsey album, naturally.

‘The Great Impersonator’ tackled subjects of sickness and renewal, marking some of Halsey’s most personal and intimate moments. At the time, Fantano – who in truth has never been a particular supporter of her work – tore it down, and criticized aspects of the material that felt driven by ego.

At the time, Halsey’s stan army hated the review. Over the weekend, thought, a perfect storm brewed. Anthony Fantano set live a chat with pop-main-player-of-the-moment Olivia Rodrigo; Swifties felt alarmed that their fave had been usurped, and for whatever reason the YouTube host opted to dive back into the Halsey dialogue.

Spotting this, Halsey unleashed sheer hellfire. She responded by saying:

I’m certain my least memorable song will be remembered more fondly and for more time than anything you ever do with your life will be. Everything you say is more “whiny” and “edgy” than I was at any point on that album. But at least I had the excuse of going through chemo.

Before clarifying her thoughts with a series of updates, including this zinger:

Who cares he gave a bad review? I care that a pay for clicks reaction YouTuber can facade as a pro critic and say it’s “main character syndrome” for an artist to lament her medical suffering on an album (surprise!) about her own life. He’s a raised-by-4chan edgelord bully. Yuck.

Look, I’m not here to defend Anthony Fantano’s words – he can do that for himself. He’s been running his YouTube channel for well over a decade now, and has developed a style that works for the format. He knows what he’s doing. And that probably explains why this has blown up the way it’s done – as a regular Fantano watcher, he has a prickish side. How else do you explain posting a video of him taking a nap for a review of Gunna’s ‘One Of Wun’?

What’s interesting is the depth of the debate, and the largesse behind Fantano’s own response during a short phone conversation with Variety. “I don’t have to prove my track record to Halsey,” he said at one poit. “I have been the most relevant and impactful music critic of my — and any — generation for over 10 years now. You can’t really debate that. There’s no music critic bigger than me who’s had more impact than me for as long as I have, consistently. And if I die tomorrow, nobody’s going to outdo that run.”

I mean… this is quite something. Quite something indeed.

In fairness to Fantano, he is perhaps the most prominent music blogger on YouTube. He’s spent more than a decade utilising constant content to amass an in-depth archive of music reviews, racking up imposing figures in the process. But he’s both propelled by, and limited by, the form: it’s YouTube, and a substantial proportion of the audience are watching for entertainment, for the zany effects and moments of controversy, rather than having their tastes shaped and informed.

Indeed, it’s here that Halsey’s point probably rings home: Anthony Fantano is a product of the vacuous nature of the internet where the hot take matters more than the subject itself. He cranks up numbers, but do metrics truly shape opinions? A lukewarm review of 2024 album ‘Manning Fireworks’ did MJ Lenderman precisely zero harm at all.

It’s notable, too, that for all his success, it’s hard to pin-point an artist Anthony Fantano could claim as his own. Pitchfork famously propelled Arcade Fire’s ‘Funeral’ towards its mainstream run, and NME can hold sway over the reputations of countless artists. With the floodtide of music in the streaming era, reaching any form of consensus is incredibly difficult – if the job of a music critic is to pull voices out of the noise and play the front and centre, then no one person (for all their YouTube subscribers) can truly do it.

But there are voices worth seeking out. Laura Snapes wrote words so potent that Matty Healy read them out at the BRIT Awards podium. Anthony Fantano can’t claim that. The internet’s self-styled busiest music nerd may have interviewed Olivia Rodrigo this week, but Shaad D’Souza has chalked up Olivia and Charli xcx in a month.

Pitchfork’s Alphone Pierre is excellent. The Wire do exemplary work. TheQuietus exists. Alexis Petridis continues to sharpen his quill for the Guardian. And Substack, too, is beginning to flex its muscles – the Chaotic Good story broke here, after all, and Passion Of the Weiss is uploading phenomenal work on a daily basis. MusicStack may not have the immediate metrics of YouTube (or TikTok) but it undoubtedly has the influence.

As if by some act of cosmic anti-critic collusion, James Blake also posted his own broadside against journalists (and, admittedly, the industry as a whole). He wrote: “Can’t trust a review because blogs/mags stopped making money so journalists now get paid off by labels. Can’t trust a comment section cause it’s full of fake fan accounts saying ‘omg their voice’ to create bandwagon effect. Can’t trust YouTube numbers because labels buy them.”

The English songwriter rolled it back, however, with a memorable #notalljournalists update: “I feel bad for the increasingly underpaid critics and journalists with integrity, that they’re dragged into it. I have come up alongside many of you and respect your work and dedication. But I’m watching you be replaced one by one for figures who will say what is asked of them.”

As much as artists may not like to admit it, criticism matters. To the critics that remain: be obstinate, be infuriating, be honest.

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After a hectic Spring magazine life decided to hop in to top gear for the opening weeks of summer – it’s all joyous, of course, and nothing can really replace the thrill of it all coming together, but it’s left my battery depleted and my bandwidth fully occupied.

So, this latest New Music Almanac has come slightly later than I anticipated.

Like many of you, I’ve been reading a lot of ‘How To Get Good At Substack, Dummy’ type articles, and they recommend a structured rhythm to your posting. But seriously, who has the time for that? Splurge it out on the page and blast it out into the universe, that’s my approach.

As ever, there’s a tonne of new music coming my way, and a lot of it is excellent. Some of it might not be new to you – I’ll be the first to admit I’m slow off the mark sometimes – and others are perhaps established in their micro-niche, but deserve a bit more love in the broader sphere. It’s all relative at the end of the day, and ‘new’ is an elastic currency in the hyper-accelerated online sphere.

The unrelenting torrent of fantastic music hitting my life never ceases to amaze me – truly, we don’t have time for all this culture. And I guess that’s where a new music almanac (hopefully) comes in handy, eh?

Tara Clerkin Trio – Somewhere Good

Not a new group per se but ‘Somewhere Good’ is Tara Clerkin Trio’s first album in six years (!) and their first release of any kind in three years. Why does it take them so long? I’d argue that genius doesn’t come easy and ‘Somewhere Good’ features more fresh thinking and playfully creative idioms across eight tracks than most bands muster in a lifetime.

Moving from Canterbury style psych-pop to soothing yet subversive jazz and dubby low end ‘Somewhere Good’ is an absolute joy. One of the best things about this record is that fully unpacking it doesn’t come easy – only after eight or nine listens do some of the deeper ideas present themselves, and even then some of the brightest aspects fulfil themselves in corner-of-your-eye flashes. A remarkable record.

K Wata – Give U Space

Is dub techno back? Did it ever go away? Is this a talking point? Or am I wasting my time? French producer Beatrice M. released a dazzling album on June 5^th, hot on the heels on this dose of crepuscular echo chamber electronics from K Wata, so I’m going with: yes, dub techno is inherently back and I’m not going to stop talking about it.

‘Give U Space’ is an entrancing listen, an album I’ve come back to countless times in the past few weeks. K Wata is based in NYC, lynchpin of the SLINK crew, and on this evidence a ferociously gifted and deeply individual producer. There’s so much to immerse yourself in across ‘Give U Space’ – fleeting glimpses, dead-ends, and the kind of digital world-building that can only come from the cavernous depths of a soundsystem. Heavy.

KuleeAngee – Love & Affection

So KuleeAngee are two sexy Scottish rave boys who met in the queue at East London’s ever-debauched Dalston Superstore and started a band right there and then. If you want an elevator pitch, I’d go with ‘Screamadelica’ for Gen Z party animals, and debut EP ‘Love & Affection’ goes a long way to back this up.

One of the most straight-forwardly enjoyable projects I’ve heard this year it moves from lush house grooves to crunching geetar action – get your rocks off, baby! – all with a beaming (some would say MDMA enhanced) grin on its face. They’re also ridiculously fun live – with bonus crop tops!

CARI – Crashing Out

There’s no shortage of fantastic R&B coming out of the UK right now, but CARI is worth making time for. Debut EP ‘Flux’ landed in 2025, with Destin Conrad revealing himself as a huge fan – he not only shouted her out online but also invited CARI to join him as tour support.

New single ‘Crashing Out’ is a gorgeous listen – controlled of vocal and expressive of lyric, she seems to fully inhabit each and every word. The self-supporting R&B network is already buzzing, too – Sasha Keable and kwn are enraptured, and truly who am I to doubt their wisdom…?

Formal Sppeedwear – Who Needs Spain Ball?

As heard on late night BBC Radio 6 Music. The link between the online sphere (where new music traditionally germinates) and late night radio shouldn’t be overstated – it’s a small industry after all, and we’re all looking over our shoulders.

I’m not sure Formal Sppeedwear actually have a publicist yet, so this immediately sprang out with a ‘oh I didn’t hear this today, actually’ style klaxon. Hailing from Stoke-on-Trent, they’re a three-piece who craft the same endearingly awkward blend of art-pop which makes Field Music and Dutch Uncles so beloved. Funky, early Roxy Music vibes on this one – is the title a World Cup reference? Am I over-thinking this? Do I over-think everything?

Claudia Isaki – The Lies

It’s nice to be sent music on email, but it’s also nice to get recommendations from chance encounters. Working in a café recently a music manager came in on a recce, aiming to take it over for an event. Explaining a bit more, he seemingly works with Claudia Isaki, a name I prompted smashed down on my phone and kept for later.

As it happens, it’s right up my street: gorgeous, textural alt-R&B, she’s a French-Congolese singer whose work speaks of love, self-doubt and resilience. ‘The Lies’ is highly recommended – marbled production and terrific lyricism.

TR Gobrazy - FORREDUCI

TR Gobrazy is one of those annoyingly gifted 360 types – a wicked producer, a whiplash inducing MC, and he’s already got serious links in the fashion world. Bubbling up over the past two years, ‘FORREDUCI’ is a real heavy hitter – serious pen game, the addictive beat finds its own niche in the underground sphere, nodding to UK rap lineages while also effortlessly breaking the rules.

wing! – Hold Them To It

A track sent over by the wonderful label Memorials Of Distinction with admirably little additional info. Do you really need context to enjoy new music? I’d argue too much information clouds it – you don’t need War & Peace to launch a buzz band, after all.

In this case, what you need is a murky trip-hop opening segment that slowly manoeuvres its way three-point turn style into a finale dominated by rolling breakbeats and crushing pop energy. There’s a new EP incoming and wing! play a short residency at London’s Avalon Café if you’re interested (and you should be!).

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Last week, London hit that switch. Or you could say, Arsenal won the league – and the city’s mood, even the weather, seemed to alter overnight.

I am not an Arsenal fan. For my sins, I’m a Dundee FC fan; the more unpopular, perennially under-performing side in what many people classify as one of Scotland’s more unpopular, under-performing cities. The last time we won the Scottish cup was in 1910 – the Captain of the Titanic was still alive, and still sailing boats.

But I couldn’t resist going to the Emirates on Tuesday night. It’s not my team and not my party, but something lured me in. I live about 25-minute walk from the stadium, and the noise of the crowd was swamping every street in our corner of North London. From the moment the final whistle went, cars went screaming down the street, red scarves and red flags fluttering down the sides. The outpouring of joy was simply volcanic, the mood inescapable.

There’s something about being in a huge crowd of people that seems to uplift you. That’s partly why people go on about the magic of Glastonbury – because being in the same place at the same time as 100,000 people, experiencing the same emotions, seeing the same things, is a uniquely powerful experience.

And wandering around North London that evening was truly powerful. By the time I got to the Emirates the place was – to switch back to Scottish parlance – absolutely hoaching. Rammed. Packed out. People were pouring out of the busses and tube stations, every single person clad in red. Somewhere, in amongst them, was Ian Wright, popping champagne and leading the chants.

And it was all remarkably peaceful. You only have to look at Celtic supporters in Glasgow’s Trongate to see a contrast – one was spontaneous and light, the other slightly forced, entitled, and aggressively triumphalist.

Much has been made of Arsenal’s 21^st century re-branding as London’s de facto football club. Embraced by the African diaspora – a slew of Black sporting icons helped in that regard – the club occupies an outsize fanbase in British music, adding to the cool points. Even Dua Lipa says she’s a fan – well, she did spend her teenage years working in a Camden coffee shop.

For the past week, London has felt different. You don’t even have to be a participant in all this joy to be touched by it – seeing cyclists waving to kids wearing their Arsenal tops, hearing cars honk celebrations at one another, just witnessing the beaming smiles on people’s faces… it’s like a perfume that you can’t shake off, a scent that has hung over the streets and buildings like smoke from a barbecue. It truly does recall the Olympian glow around the summer of 2012 – the feeling that deep down, we’re all social animals, who long to experience emotions in a collective way.

Sunday brought Cross The Tracks in Brockwell Park, a festival whose excellent curation and familial atmosphere means that it ranks – in my opinion – as the city’s best one-dayer. And this year’s Cross The Tracks must-have fashion accessory was an Arsenal top – whether the latest model or a snazzy 90s retro option, Brockwell Park seemed to be overrun with Gooners.

Compact but detailed, the site lay-out means that you can turn Cross The Tracks into a kind of soul-meets-jazz buffet. Scottish songwriter Brooke Combe brought her Northern Soul flavoured songwriting to the main stage, before a quick wander unearthed an intimate DJ set from UKG pioneer Wookie – he of ‘Battle’ fame – and an all-star jam led by American-in-London Goya Gumbani. Spiritual jazz group SHOLTO re-cast a Dorothy Ashby classic in their own unique way, The Blues Project introduced some wicked street soul vibes, and KOKOROKO smothered Brockwell Park in highlife-flavoured vapours.

Virtually everywhere you looked, Arsenal tops sprang out. I spotted Joy Crookes backstage in hers, hanging out and celebrating with friends. Islington’s own Little Simz wasn’t immune to it, either – starting her focused, powerful, and euphoric set in a chic leather jacket, it was then removed to reveal the Highbury club’s trademark red.

There are times when London feels remote, alien, and fragmented, and there are times when London feels accessible, warm, and whole. Cross The Tracks has always sought to reflect the community-minded nature of music-making, noted for becoming a festival space that embraces the city’s jazz scene – so often powered by grassroots organisations – in addition to other forms. Music can act as a social mesh, a means of building community through allowing people to find their voice. Sport can do this, too – your first Premiership title in 22 years has a habit of bringing people out into the streets. London is made up of little worlds, and it takes a huge flood to sweep over those dams and bring people together.

This week felt like London crossing the Rubicon once more, moving from the transitional blossoming of spring into full blown summer. One of the best books I’ve ever read about this city is The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon, a 1956 novel that captures all the cold cruelty and warm inspiration of a dichotomous metropolis. During its mid-section, the tempo of the book entirely switches from its wintery opening passages, evoking a galloping, breathless survey of London during summer, with all its hedonism, escapism, and dream-like freedoms:

“Is one of those summer evenings, when it look like night would never come, a magnificent evening, a powerful evening….”

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A few weeks back I spotted a notice online which explained Tain Royal Academy was finally closing, the much-delayed freshly-built Campus 2.0 now approaching its actual, definitive opening date. The builders are going to be set loose, the windows will be removed, the roof dismantled, and the walls smashed to bits, before probably being crumpled up and buried somewhere.

It’s prompted a weird set of emotions. For a long period of time, I wasn’t happy at high school. I felt like I didn’t fit in – I was alienated, self-shaming, and shamed by other people. Bullied. It’s one thing to feel estranged or isolated in a city – but Tain is a semi-remote town in the Scottish Highlands. To get there you fly – fly! – to Inverness, then drive another hour on not particularly trust-worthy roads. Isolation in the wilderness has the ability to cut a little deeper.

When you’re on your own, you tend to develop extremely close bonds to culture. For me, that was music and literature. But rather than just ape the tastes of the people around me – none of whom I seemed to feel any kinship with anyway – I went a bit rogue. Obscure indie. Psychedelic folk. Delta blues.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve attempted to locate any genuine, bona fide Mississippi bluesmen in the Highlands of Scotland, but they’re not particularly common. It is fair to say people were absolutely baffled by what was going on in my headphones. Withdrawing more and more, I took to wandering around the school not speaking to anyone, repeatedly playing ‘Never Understand’ by the Jesus and Mary Chain, which is woefully pretentious but also, a pretty amazing tune.

The music press and late-night radio was my sanctuary. I was absolutely down-the-line the epitome of a small-town kid living out their fantasies through the NME. Tain didn’t have gigs, didn’t have clubs, didn’t have rehearsal rooms – I would pore over the gig listings, absorbing the names of spaces I wished I could enter. The pages were oracles to a different world – sure, I refused to offer NME my outright trust (I was an angsty teen, why would I bother doing that?) but the process of arguing, even internally, with these people was something I adored.

I can vividly remember reading about The White Stripes for the first time in my life. It’s a fact not always mentioned that before high-speed broadband and streaming you’d often read about music before you actually heard it. In this case, a blurb on the cover of the NME for “the year’s hottest tour” directed me to a full-page live review by John Mulvey, rhapsodising about a band who fused Delta blues with cataclysmic garage punk.

I read it over and over and over and over. And then I read it again. It felt like I was pinned in place by lightning.

That live review is honestly one of the definitive events of my teens. In the space of a single page – with only one photo – I’d gone from being completely, catastrophically alone to suddenly being aligned to the coolest band on the planet.

It’s all a long time ago now. For a while, I harboured a lot of resentment and pain about growing up with so much absence in my life. It can really eat away at people, if you allow it to chart chewing on your soul. One of the last things Janis Joplin did in her life was attend her 10-year high school reunion, at the hick town in Texas she wasted away her adolescence in. There’s footage online of the interview she did there – the bravado cracks, the doubts bubble up, and the painful memories are visibly playing on her mind. A month and half later she overdosed and died.

With my old school finally closing, former pupils were invited to come back to an open day. I toyed with it, but started to feel real, palpable anxiety. So I shelved it. Approaching that kind of loneliness isn’t for me these days, but I’ve got something else in my life.

I have always felt that the most beautiful thing about music is community. Whether that’s Northern Soul or grime, magazines or messageboards, the noises those instruments make – and the people behind them – help forge us together. When I kicked off my first zine – using the photocopier at my Dad’s office, distributing them by hand in record shops – I wanted to give voice to the creativity of Dundee, the city I’d wound up studying in. As an introvert, it became a means to meet people, to share ideas, to contribute meaningfully and engender debate.

Remarkably, I’m still here. The zine opened up pathways in freelancing, and then I applied for an internship at CLASH. That was 18 years ago – we are now getting internship applications from people who weren’t even alive when I started.

We’re often encouraged in therapy-speak to nourish our younger selves, and I think it’s fair to say I’ve done that. The venues I dreamed about visiting are now on my doorstep, and I’ve been lucky enough to interview some of my all-time heroes. I’ve always enjoyed working with and encouraging younger writers – maybe it all stems from the same place, that need for connection fostered through a period of being totally alone.

A fortnight ago Fender flew me – and some other journalists, I’m not that special – to Nashville for a special one-off concert. Taking hold of the fabled Ryman Auditorium – the Mother Church of Country Music – they celebrated the 75^th birthday of the Fender Telecaster, a design classic and a cornerstone of modern music.

As luck would have it, Jack White is both a Nashville resident and a Tele fan. Indeed, he has his own signature model. Breezing out onstage, I sat only a few yards in front of him as he blazed through ‘Ball & Biscuit’, one of the seismic, blues-infused White Stripes tracks that lifted off the roof of my mind all those years before.

If I was to play one song to my younger self, it would be a video of that performance. And some advice: don’t give in - music is a means to feel less alone in the world.

What song would you play to your younger self? And why? Let me know in the comments.

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Now technically The Great Escape kicked off yesterday but truthfully, who turns up on a Wednesday? That’s serious Pick Me Energy right there, and since most acts play multiple shows you’re missing nothing and expending valuable energy in the process. Remember: this is a marathon, not a sprint, and Brighton is built on a bloody great big hill so you’ll need to conserve yourself a little or your calves will curse your very name.

Let’s face it: The Great Escape may be one of life’s joys, but it’s also an imposing beast, and it can get the better of you. So, here are some tips on how to make the most of it.

Make A Plan

This might sound basic but I’ve encountered an endless parade of people over the years who travel down to Brighton and just get swallowed up and spat back out again by the madness. Fail to see any of the bands you wanted? That’s because you didn’t make a plan. Well, fear not, weary traveller, for there is still time – download the app RIGHT NOW and start ticking the acts that prick your fancy.

There can be a curious kind of snobbery about wandering around a mammoth new music showcase with an actual plan of action, but I’d rather be a geek than spend the week with the yawning realisation that the band I couldn’t possibly miss had played an hour before. It’s not just you, either – I vividly remember bumping into the Yala! Records team in the queue for Dry Cleaning’s breakout show, and they not only had a physical notebook, but they had an intricate colour-coded listing system based on the time of day and approximate distance between venues.

[In case Morad and Felix from YALA! are reading this: OK the above is an exaggeration but you were very well organised, you have to admit]

Prepare To Break The Plan

OK, you need a more-than-vague idea of what you want to get out of The Great Escape but don’t let it become a bind. If you bump into people whose taste you respect and they’re urging you join them for a life-changing show for then for God’s sake go. No one will thank you for stubbornly watching an Anglesey math-rock band alongside four people on a windswept pier when all your mates are having their souls re-arranged by music’s next big thing.

There does need to be a certain degree of flexibility with The Great Escape. Also, as intimated in the introduction, most acts play multiple times – so you can play hard and fast with the rules at times.

Factor In A Time-Out

This is something I only truly figured out recently, but giving yourself an hour away from The Madness Of It All completely changed the way I grappled with The Great Escape. If there’s a slight lull in the timetable then get the hell out of dodge – go back to the AirBNB, pull the curtains, rock backwards and forth, and attempt to take stock of it all.

The Great Escape will drain your social battery like nothing else. You will experience terrifying amounts of FOMO. Literally everyone will have their Game Face on, and their careers seem to be going a lot better than yours ever could. Your calves are killing you from hiking up and down that sodding hill. It’s time for a break-out session with yourself – pull a French Exit, let the social battery re-charge, and then resume exactly where you left off. No one will notice because they’re all day-drinking anyway.

The Actual Conference Is Pretty Good

Yes, you genuinely do reach a point in your life where sitting down – bliss! – listening to a 15 minute TED Talk about publishing rights in the streaming era is every bit as nourishing as an East Anglian buzz band. And East Anglia has a lot of buzz bands.

Stepping away from the noise to immerse yourself in the broader industry might not be sexy, but it’s genuinely interesting. It’s also largely non-alcoholic. And avoiding drinking to excess is probably a sub-category all of its own.

Enjoy Brighton

Again, this might seem a basic thing, but every year most people’s feedback seems to be: I enjoyed The Great Escape but feel like I didn’t see much of Brighton. And that’s completely normal and valid – Brighton is pretty ace, the music scene is wicked right now, and the vintage shops are the best in the land.

So make the most of it. Get up early and go for a walk along the beach. Head to Resident Records. Check out the vintage shops. Wander around the Lanes.

And that’s that. I could throw a few minute titbits of advice in here – don’t go to The Queen’s Hotel after 12, you’ll talk rubbish and resent yourself the next morning – but one of the best things about The Great Escape is finding your own path through it all. Godspeed traveller, I’ll see you outside the Mash Tun.

It’s been a busy time for me personally, with a quick trip to Nashville acting as the pinnacle of that. It’s a fascinating city – broadway, the glitzy neon lights of the strip, is an obvious highlight, with country music of all stripes ripping out of each bar from dusk ‘til dawn. East Nashville is the more creative, quirky outpost in the city, and I hugely enjoyed making friends there, while checking out the local vinyl (and CDs and books) hotspot Grimey’s, which seems to be one of the fulcrums of the often-overlooked non-country music scene in the area.

Back home, The Great Escape is motoring into view. CLASH is hosting a stage at Patterns with some wicked artists, so roll through if you get the chance.

The run up to Brighton’s new music marathon tends to bring with it a flood of releases, so I’m bringing back this here New Music Almanac as a means to focus my thoughts, and offer up some recommendations.

Jump Source – Fold

Big time dance music tip. Patrick Holland and priori are cornerstones of the Montreal scene, and their eclecticism – combined to its digital effervescence – mirrors the city as a whole. New album ‘Fold’ is excellent – pound for pound one of the most purely enjoyable dance full lengths 2026 has offered us (so far), pinging its way between heads-down techno aspects, electro effervescence, and luminous pop-edged electronics that recall Underworld in their late 90s pomp.

The album dashes from idea to idea like an out-of-breath toddler, the glossy choruses and unexpected rap dalliances serving to amplify the energy to quite ludicrous degrees. Held together by a palpable sense of purpose, ‘Fold’ feels Montreal to the core – an outward-facing, liberal-minded port city that loves to party. As if that wasn’t enough, Jump Source have recruited some wicked guest voices (Helena Deland! billy woods!) to complete their multi-faceted vision. Heaps of fun.

Little Grandad – Sleepwalking / Unmasked

The little band that could. Merging indie rock with Americana, Little Grandad are probably the most-tipped group on the London scene right now. According to lore, 6 Music doyen Steve Lamacq has seen ‘em 25 times already, and I spotted him down the front at Little Grandad’s recent 100 Club show. That makes it 26 now Lammo!

New singles ‘Sleepwalking’ and ‘Unmasked’ show what all the fuss is about. It’s simply terrific songwriting – breezy indie rock with ace harmonies and lyrics which fall like gentle Autumn leaves on the soul, this double-single offers a pair of Britainicana (to use Westside Cowboy’s phrase) pearls.

Naima Adams – How Long Till I Know?

Naima Adams popped up in my Inbox during the week, sending a lovely introductory email alongside a flurry of reference points that ticked all my boxes. Feather-soft neo-soul with jazzy overtones, ‘How Long Till I Know?’ channels a beautiful sense of intimacy, the airy production allowing the painterly colours of her assured vocal to speak all the more emphatically. This is the closing song on her new EP, which lands on May 27^th – can’t wait to check out the full release.

Ceebo – Parable Of A Skinnyman

A crucial if slept-on figure in the Ug wave, Ceebo’s 2025 album ‘blair babies’ was an incisive look at his generation. Close to jim legxacy, he shares the Lewisham artist’s world-building finesse and ear for a beat, while also building his own distinctive, fully fledged identity.

‘Parable Of A Skinnyman’ pins newgen sounds to old school UK rap lore – Skinnyman famously missed out of the royalties to his seminal work, with Ceebo using that as a launching pad to discuss the ways in which the industry fails to recognise some of its finest voices. A message that is both timeless and timely, ‘Parable Of A Skinnyman’ states its case over one of the year’s most infectious beats.

Martial Arts – Before The Fire

24 hours ago The New Statesman set live an article proclaiming ‘The case for Manchesterism’ – a plea for the rest of the country to take on board some of the lessons behind the rise and rise of the Northern Powerhouse.

If the New Statesman are referring to absolute indie bangers like this new single from Martial Arts, then sign me up. An exciting new band seems to pop out of Manchester on a weekly basis right now, and this five-piece – signed to 5dB Records – are at the forefront, with ‘Before The Fire’ blending scuzzy Pavement style guitars to a compelling vocal.

Carré - Mercy

Carré sits at the apex of a new wave of energy in mutant 140 BPM electronics, infusing that spartan, alien dubstep sound with fresh ideas. Her ‘Hibiscus’ EP has been a continual replay for me, and this new track ‘Mercy’ displays her knack for reinvigorating system tropes.

Essentially a re-flip of Nivea’s 2002 single, ‘Mercy’ recalls the way James Blake would tease out new information via his Harmonimix series. Stripping out the back, Carré replaces it with shuddering, metallic electronics, the tension of her production located behind that chill vocal.

bed - 肪 | Bo

I’ve been sent a lot of Great Escape tips, and to be truthful, I’m still sifting through them all. With 100s of gigs planned – and that’s not to mention the Alternative Escape – the line-up is a bona fide mountain offering every genre under the sun.

That being said, I can’t let this moment pass without mentioning chest-crushing Japanese outfit bed. Imagine Giant Swan appearing in a Manga comic alongside The Horrors and you’d be close, with their noise rock extravagance hemmed in by a sense of pop lustre. New single ‘肪 | Bo’ is an absolute madness.

If you fancy following my new music playlist on Apple Music then hit HERE, folks.

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This week the Popjustice Forum shuttered. Founder Peter Robinson confirmed the news at the beginning of April, explaining that it was “not an easy (or quick) decision, but we are where we are.”

The site itself was launched in 2000 – the year of the Millennium Bug, and prior to high-speed broadband hitting (most of) the country, or smart phones entering our pockets. The internet – if you even had access to it - was a place in the corner of your house or local library, a digital realm you were allowed to traverse for about an hour at most before a parent or elder pulled out the cable.

In its pomp, Popjustice helped to usher in a style of pop writing that was spectacularly irreverent while being utterly serious that This Really Mattered. Peter led the way, inarguably the foremost pop writer of the era – funny, deeply knowledgeable, unafraid to ask difficult questions while absolutely going out to bat for his favourites, successful or not.

The forum held sway as a space where opinions were forged. Over its two-decade life, the Popjustice Forum was both cherished and feared, a space where artists were hoisted to absurd levels of adoration or savagely defenestrated.

Its rise coincided with all manner of forums popping up across what gets loosely referred to as Web 2.0 – IE everything post-hamsterdance song, if you will. DrownedinSound dominated indie conversations, even spawning a successful independent record label, while Dubstepforum was my go-to after-work waste of time for far too long that I care to admit. At times, forums could be absolutely riveting viewing – anyone who recalls Zomby’s astonishing levels of rage against people who couldn’t recall the difference between niche and bassline will instantly connect with the feeling of hitting refresh to see what total insanity was about to unfurl.

Virtually every niche musical interest was catered for by forums, becoming crucial points of connection for the full spectrum of music fans. The Modculture forum for example helped act as a conduit for 60s buffs around the globe, with the DJ playlist section helping to propel tunes from bargain bins to eye-watering prices on eBay.

One by one, however, they’ve predominantly passed away. ILoveMusic for example, used to be a crucial space for Real Music Writers to hang out, and while it still exists, its centrality has diminished – replaced at first by Facebook, then by Twitter, and now…

It’s strange to see where we are now. Friendships and relationships were formed on Popjustice – countless threads over the years acted as points for people to meet, whether at gigs or other events. More than that, though, it acted as a rallying cry for people who didn’t exactly click with the world around them – in 2005 being a Serious Pop Fan was a tall order, the music subjected to scorn and derision against the world of guitars and synths (endless synths). The forum acted as a safe space, where your voice would actually be heard above the din of power chords and whatever haircut was fashionable in Hoxton that week.

The loss of the Popjustice Forum wipes out two decades of opinion, fact-finding, and social history. Web 2.0 has proved to be an appallingly porous archive for our lives – anyone who lost a much-coveted (and probably embarrassing, let’s be real) MySpace or Bebo page can attest to this. It’s remarkable to think that the years 2000 to 2015 (to pluck a date out of the ether) will be amongst the worst documented for youth culture in modern history. Where once we had zines to fall out the back of a cupboard, or flyers sitting underneath old boxes, now we have faint memories of key URL spaces that will simply be vaporised into thin air.

For a while, Wayback Machine had our back. A website that screenshots other websites, it acts as an ad hoc history of Web 2.0, a space to revisit all those whims and foibles. But now multiple corporations, each hiding their material (for better or worse) behind a paywall are waging war on the internet’s primary archive. Key cultural history is being wiped away before our eyes, and there’s very little we can do about it.

The internet has changed into something atomised, our experiences silo’d and our identities affirmed as something solo, unique, and isolated. It’s worth pointing out that this is deliberate – it’s the work of literally five white men, each worth in the region of billions, who have worked out that we will click more and spend more if we’re not working in tandem.

But there’s still hope. One of the reasons I joined Substack – after 12 months of more-or-less swearing off social media – is that it feels slower, more tactile, reminiscent of Web 2.0 in places but also highly embedded in contemporary culture. The one messageboard that remains – Reddit – is a goliath, with r/grime – to pluck out one example – acting as a key pivot for arguments, debate, and the sharing of information. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are utillising dumb-phones and Snapchat, while Whatsapp has evolved into a bona fide community-led social media network, with groupchats involving thousands at a time. Personally, that sounds like an absolute headache – I’m here for the subversion, but please don’t add me to one.

There is also the lingering echo of community across the otherwise bleakly silent world wide web, the faint memory that things used to be different, somehow. Renegade Popjustice users have banded together to form their own, brand-new forum – Popsquare – and its launch is incoming. Web 2.0 may be over, but the search for community remains.

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New music eh? There’s a lot of it about. The sheer torrent of creativity the digital era has unleashed is staggering, and it can be hard to locate a path through it all. I spend the bulk of my day sifting through emails, clicking on Promo Jukebox links, and untangling YouTube videos, and by the end… well, it’s knackering, let me tell you.

It’s funny, though, as I often find the best form of recommendation remains word of mouth. Friends whose taste you trust, unexpected support bands, a producer you admire sharing a link to a radio show; the music industry is all well and good, but developing your own networks can’t be rivalled.

When I kicked off Substack I wanted to explore two things – forms of writing that might not sit directly under CLASH, and a space to bring together new music tips. Obviously the latter stems from my work on the never-better, completely-unrivalled ClashMusic.com – please visit today and click on all the ads, thankyew – but it’s helpful for me on a personal level to have a column / newsletter / Stack (whatever these are actually called) as a space to bring my thoughts together and work out what I actually like amid the barrage.

Gabriela Richardson – ‘ISOLA’

The album I’ve had most luck turning people on to this year. Baroque and ornate while remaining incisively emotional, ‘ISOLA’ started as a winter listen, but has become the perfect soundtrack to the warming days of spring. It’s a beautiful record – sharply melodic but also understated, you can hear aspects of Brazilian bossa in there next to Iberian folk musics, in addition to more straight-forward indie, electronics, and alt-soul. Divine.

Sam Grassie – ‘Where Two Hawks Fly’

Guitars are back, baby. I recently wrote a primer for Bandcamp on the surprising up-swing of energy within solo British guitar music, and I stand by that. Welsh primitivist Gwenifer Raymond is currently storming across the United States, Henry Parker has an ace new EP on the way, and Sam Grassie has gifted us his debut album (proper).

A fantastic instrumentalist – not for nothing is this release supported by the Bert Jansch Foundation – Sam Grassie is one of the cornerstones of Les Caravanes, the kind of travelling folk club that emerged from Broadside Hacks. ‘Where Two Hawks Fly’ is a gripping listen – moving from fluttering Celtic grace notes to storming, Fahey-adjacent work, his brooding vocals perfectly anchor the songwriting. Very much a moment for the Scottish-born guitarist.

Kibo – ‘ShubzOnline’

So Kibo started gaining traction with his stand-out performances on Balamii hosted Victory Lap series, running rings around more experienced MCs and gaining shout-outs from Skepta, Jme, and more.

Hitting the ground running in 2026, his approach – a quickfire run of singles, continual content dominating social media – is spot-on for the current environment. It’s more than that, though – a kid from a run-down London suburb, his music speaks of the eternal experience of being on the fringes, romanticising a moment, and moulding it to suit your worldview. He’s also, in my opinion, one of the most technically gifted rappers out there.

‘ShubzOnline’ is my pick of the bunch, but in truth he hasn’t missed yet.

Night Swimming – ‘Nothing Safe Is Technicolour’

I was only tangentially aware of Night Swimming, but popped down to see them at the Sebright Arms one unprepossessing Tuesday about a fortnight ago at the recommendation of their PR (who also doubles as a lovely man).

This is really intriguing stuff. There’s no shortage of dream pop in the world right now – which is in itself a good thing – but the dubby low-end points to their Bristolian background, and the mesh of musicality gives them a deeper well to draw on than most. I’ve been listening to their slim Venn Records aided catalogue frequently since then, and there’s definitely something impressive emerging here.

Zoh Amba – ‘Another Time’

Just a phenomenal piece of songwriting, imho.

Zoh Amba is seemingly a colossus of the New York jazz avant-garde – good for them, but a trip back home to their teenage bedroom saw Zoh becoming re-acquainted with the guitar, and the sounds of their adolescence. A full album is incoming, led by this – stunningly impactful indie-folk of the Big Thief guild, ‘Another Time’ is incredible. Can’t wait for the album to land.

H.LLS & Lucy Park – ‘GUERILLAZ’

An enigmatic London production trio, H.LLS tend to exactly what they want, when they want. New single ‘GUERILLAZ’ is a riveting link-up with emerging alt-soul force Lucy Park, and I’ve been addicted to it since the song landed on streaming a few weeks back.

The snappy riddim points to UKG, while the glossy electronics actually put me in mind of Radiohead circa ‘Everything In Its Right Place’. Lucy Park’s vocal is the glue that holds it together – calm amidst the storm, her zen-like calm resonates deeply.

The Gnomes – ‘Magic Man’

These Aussie garage-pop beserkers smashed their way into my Inbox this month with new single ‘Magic Man’. Done and dusted in two minutes 55 seconds, it sits halfway between the Monkees’ staple ‘Last Train To Clarksville’ and ‘My Pal’ by the almighty GOD. Stripped back ultra-muscular gonzoid guitar minimalism, it’s a caveman stomp underpinning a candy floss-sweet pop song. Full EP incoming - heavy recommend.

RenzNiro – ‘ACW’

Manchester’s DIY scene is pretty much unrivalled right now, with a slew of wicked artists emerging from the city. RenzNiro just confirmed a new mixtape, and it features some of the best artists Manchester can offer.

New single ‘ACW’ is vaporised grime rebuilt around his own rugged vocal, the bleak futurism enhanced by the brutality of the sonics. A feature from Prettyboyface lifts the track to a different plane, while also underlining the communal nature of the sessions behind the tape as a whole. There’s something crucial going on in Manchester right now – let RenzNiro guide you.

Sophia Stel – ‘B*tches Talk Sh*t’

Stemming from the much-vaunted Vancouver DIY scene Sophia Stel’s synthetic pop is untethered from traditional boundaries. 2025’s impressive ‘Object Permanence’ was followed by January’s excellent ‘How To Win At Solitaire’, and you can hear aspects of (early) Grimes, U.S. Girls, or even Ethel Cain in her analogue brew.

The final cover star of The Face – RIP – Sophia Stel breezed into fabric this week for a sold out headline show. Swapping digital abstraction and DIY subtlety for foul-mouthed splendour, new single ‘B*tches Talk Sh*t’ was the gleeful highlight – purring late night electronics set to a disarmingly off-the-cuff vocal of quiet defiance.

If you fancy following my new music playlist on Apple Music then hit HERE, folks.

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And I’m here tonight at the Colour Factory in East London. We’re packed in like sardines, but no one seems to be complaining – this is their smallest show in years, designed to honour a full decade since the release of debut EP ‘Chapter 7’.

It’s a typically eclectic crowd. Young club kids and older jazz heads intermingle; married couples stand next to people on their jack jones – it doesn’t matter if you come alone, you’ll leave with friends at an Ezra Collective show.

Drummer Femi Koleoso has a dual role as the group’s de facto spokesperson, the one who spends the most time with the mic onstage. He’s an advocate for joy – it’s a word that occurs throughout his speeches to crowds over the world. Joy, he explains, is something we can all access in our lives – it doesn’t matter about material challenges, somewhere deep inside is a torrent of joy.

Femi is a church-going man – he still works with a youth group in his native Enfield, and even plays in church when he can – and that word ‘joy’ perhaps stems from the style of worship he was brought up around. I’m a little different. Whereas Femi’s Black British church experience embraces ‘joy’, my own Scottish Presbyterian background is… well, it’s many things, but I can’t imagine a Highland preacher dancing with joy.

That’s why approaching the Ezra Collective live experience can be such a powerful, almost provocative act. Experiencing joy – and it is, definitively, joyous – shakes you up; we are each of us wearing armour we’ve built to navigate this world, and it numbs down our emotions. Times are dark, and we’re isolated from one another. Being in a room together, at the same time, experiencing the same thing, is a powerful thing. A small beam of light shining down can sometimes make you realise how dark your environment truly is.

I’ve seen people spontaneously burst into tears at Ezra Collective shows – not out of sadness or sorrow, but more that those intense emotions can’t be restrained any longer, and just have to come bursting out. That explosion of unrestrained joy can feel so overwhelming – and so alien – that is drags up all manner of other things. Seeing Ezra Collective live is a soul-stirring experience.

And tonight is truly special. Playing ‘Chapter 7’ front to back – some of these songs haven’t appeared on their set list for five years or more – they’re joined by magnificent vocalist Zara MacFarlane, before Femi honours the late, great rapper Ty, who guested on the EP’s title track.

As a finale, Ezra Collective make room onstage for some of their illustrious peers. The band formed as a result of jam sessions at Tomorrow’s Warriors, a London-rooted, community-minded jazz organisation. Tonight is kind of a reunion – blazing through a stunning medley, Ezra are joined by Moses Boyd, Theon Cross, Nubya Garcia, and Shabaka Hutchings. Each a phenomenal instrumentalist in their own right, and each helping to place jazz back into UK music conversations it had long been shut off from.

It’s a wonderful, deeply emotional moment. It’s staggering to think how far each of these instrumentalists has come, and the music feels more alive, more engaging, more joyous than ever.

‘Joy’ of course has another advocate in pop culture. Maria Kondo, the queen of trimming down your possessions, continually asks if something sparks joy. But doesn’t ‘spark’ suggest that joy is fleeting, something that lights up then fades? In Femi’s eyes, joy is more like a river – an ever-present feature in our spiritual landscape.

As the crowd tumbles out into Queen’s Yard, perspiration and beaming smiles lighting up the East London night, I’m left to wonder how long this blissful halo of joy will last. During challenging times we can rely on our memories – the fleeting recollections of fantastic shows, and the impact they made. For me, Ezra Collective’s story is one of community. The band found one another as kids, community-minded organisations like Tomorrow’s Warriors bringing them together for summer courses and jam sessions. Spearheading a new wave of energy in UK jazz, they shifted the context the music could be found in, and built their own tribe. During a decade of fragmentation and isolation, this is truly music as an expression of community. And that, to me, is joyous.

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Yet in some of the best record shops across the country, something curious is happening. While the High Fidelity (book, film or TV show – take your pick!) vision sells records and nothing but records – well, the odd cassette and CD, too – the most vital outlets are moving beyond this to become true cultural hubs, home to radio stations, live broadcasting, concerts, and beyond.

To use London as an example, Rough Trade East has long mastered the art of the in-store, the shop’s bar normally acting as the first stopping off on a jaunt around a revitalised Brick Lane. New kid on the block Kindred has quickly established itself as one of the city’s most influential outlets, hosting fantastic events – CLASH attended Sir Spyro’s EP launch recently – in addition to a slew of broadcasting. Down in New Cross, Planet Wax has asserted its position in the bass spectrum with killer programming, often captured for posterity on its ever-essential YouTube channel. The ambitious Next Door Records has established two sites – in West and East London – that act as vinyl hubs, listening bars, and excellent venues. I actually DJ’d at their West London outlet recently, and can attest that it’s a wicked set-up (alongside some well curated racks).

It’s becoming clear that vinyl sales are just the beginning of what a modern record shop can offer. Central London big-hitter Phonica has long led the way in this, with its events – and previously, its connection to online title FACT – giving it a unique place in music culture. This model, once an outlier, is now the norm. The long-held social worth of the humble record shop is expanding in different directions, amplifying their cultural importance in the process.

This cycle mirrors a broader pattern in retail. As Andie Dev noted in her recent Substack, outlets are selling space, not just products. Almost everywhere you look shops are opening cafes or even bars on their premises, a reaction against online shopping that foregrounds the physical experience, and a sense of community building.

You can see this in music, too. Record shops have to compete against streaming, first and foremost, but they also have to operate against the ease and simplicity of a Discogs sale, or a Juno purchase. To do this, they have to offer something more – a retail tactic that has become a palpable means of connection and communication.

I don’t think that record shops are being cynical in doing this. For most people, a browse is the furthest they’ll go – placing a coffee machine in the corner gives shops another means of income. Once you do this, you may as well get a booze license. If you’ve got a license to play music, you may as well stretch to a performance license. And so it continues.

Equally, record shops have never solely been places of commerce. The furore over Kanye’s ill-fated attempt to play London reminded me that perhaps his first ever appearance on UK soil was at legendary hip-hop shop Deal Real on Carnaby St – you could actually rock on up to Central London after work and see a pre-fame Kanye, popped collar and all.

It’s an acceleration that has perhaps been made more potent due to the assault on third spaces. Bars are struggling, clubs are closing, youth centres and libraries are being emptied out by the dozen, and around 50% of independent music venues made a loss in 2025. With that backdrop, record shops – and their attendant cultural cache – become invaluable sites of connection, conversation, and discourse. Vinyl is only the starting point – what modern record shops are selling is much more complex, and infinitely more valuable.

Record Store Day is this Saturday, April 18th. If you enjoyed this article buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi to support my work.

It can be a debate that feels exhausted, but this week Neil Tennant – Pet Shop Boys lyrical wizard and esteemed music scribe himself – added something new. A former Smash Hits staffer (indeed many of those early Pet Shop Boys hits were dreamed up while pithily reviewing Heaven 17 and Dollar singles), he offered the following tit-bit of wisdom: staples are good, spines are bad.

Chatting to the Guardian – a broadsheet whose own internal mags are staple bound – the singer explained that print circulations of the staple variety have risen in the past few years, while glossy mags have fallen.

“The New Yorker. The Spectator. The Atlantic. The stapled magazine opens invitingly, whereas the instinct of a perfect bound magazine is to close.”

As ever, Neil Tennant has a point, and paints it in a sublime fashion.

The rise of the glossy, perfect bound magazine sits in line with the fusion of music and fashion, with the latter tending to be where the big bucks are. Image-centric magazines – iD, Dazed, AnOther, NOTION, CLASH – have been in the ascendancy, with advertising tending to focus on allowing fashion brands (with bigger spend) into the music realm.

But ultimately those images tend to live online. An explosive viral shoot – Ayo Edebiri for PAPER as a recent example - will produce a flood of likes and re-shares on Instagram and Pinterest, and it’s easy to mistake that for real world sales. Sometimes, I’m not so sure there is a correlation.

Anecdotally, book publishers are commissioning fewer and fewer coffee table tomes. The lavish, image-lead, hardback goliaths of old are largely a thing of the past, as the audience has collapsed – if those iconic images can be found on social media, the reasoning goes, then who wants to buy a book for 60 quid…?

The magazines Neil Tennant offered as examples – “The New Yorker. The Spectator. The Atlantic.” – offer opinion and insight. Words over images. The expertise of lexicon over the dazzling impact of photography.

It’s also true, however, that those titles focus on politics and current affairs, something we have no shortage of at the minute. It’s only fair that the readership of political titles should soar when we are living in the opening phase of World War Three – politics is more current in our lives than ever before, and it would be useful to contrast the uptick of those sales with, say, the apolitical apathy of the late 90s. Equally, cheaper paper (and staples) means that those magazines have a comparatively accessible price point – it’s easy to imagine someone filling up petrol in their car, noting the eye-watering price, before grabbing some Lucozade and the New Statesman as they complete their purchase.

There is a lesson for music magazines in here, and the sector more broadly. Glossy, perfect bound titles sit in an uneasy uncanny valley – pitched as a luxury purchase, they’ve up-scaled cultural criticism into something image-focussed, and broadly that works, in terms of ad spend. But surely there’s room for a music magazine led purely by writing – one that is solely focussed on critical insight and in-depth interviews. A successor to The Word or Observer Music Monthly or The Stool Pigeon, perhaps.

This gap in the market is partly why I hold out such hope for the music press – it’s an unfinished story. A recurring phrase in the music industry – popularised by Sean Adams of DrownedinSound – is that music magazines will have a vinyl moment; that after years of decline a sudden up-turn in fortunes could take place.

I think there is merit in this. I am a habitual purchaser of music magazines and zines – while I recognise such a hobby is up there in geek-dom with sailing model yachts on a local pond, it’s also something I value. But fundamentally, magazines do not hold the cultural cache of books. Dua Lipa will be papp’d with a paperback in her hand, but she will never be seen in public with a copy of Dazed under her arm – magazines are still viewed as ephemeral objects, to be read once and then recycled.

Moving past this preconception – as vinyl once did – will take time. One key problem that magazines face is distribution. Newsagents are tumbling one by one, crushed by supermarkets who only tend to focus on mass audience publications. There are fewer and fewer outlets who will stock independent titles.

Into that breach has stepped a number of direct-to-consumer spaces. Bandcamp, for instance, contains numerous zines ranging from metal to indie pop via house and Ug. Record shops are gradually opening up to stocking magazines alongside books. The staple-bound So Young sells to fans at live shows, and their own online shop. And Substack is also key to this – in the food space, Vittles moved successfully from email newsletters to print media. The grass-shoots of recovery are already in place. There is clearly an innate need to have and to hold the physical object – pick up a music magazine today, you won’t regret it.

It’s a lot.

Recently I’ve been spotting the term ‘archivist’ everywhere. It’s gone from a fairly niche interest to becoming a buzz phrase. The journalist, broadcaster, compiler, and – yes – archivist Emma Warren has done more than most to popularise it. Her seminal 2020 pamphlet Document Your Culture is an example of the right idea expressed eloquently at the exact right moment. The pandemic saw people left with swathes of time during furlough, and endless hours stuck indoors (remember your one hour per day bout of exercise? I certainly do). It was the era of The Grand Clearout. Filtering through boxes of stuff, we were left to construct our own narratives. Was this purely debris and detritus? Or something more profound?

Emma’s contention that being an archivist is an activity of genuine worth, one that should extend beyond, say, preserving the letters of neo-Raphaelite painters or the notepads of T.S. Eliot, was an assured one. Aspects of culture such as nightlife and youth clubs are pivotal fourth spaces, outlets for community that are often fleeting, and whose impact on our social well-being – and culture at large – can be immense.

The term ‘archivist’ is now adrift in society, and that’s a good thing. It can be empowering. Black British communities found that racist door policies in cities such as London, Manchester, and Bristol forced them to use their own spaces, such as blues parties. Scarcely documented in official channels, photography, flyers, and more serve to preserve the memory and impact of those spaces.

Likewise, homosexuality was criminalised in the UK was illegal until 1967 (and its criminal status extended in parts of the country until the early 80s). Gay clubs, lesbian societies, trans balls – these were powerful spaces on the fringes of society, and the fleeting glimpses we have of them are uniquely insightful. It’s in avenues such as these that archiving becomes an act of rebellion.

But, looking at acres of records, leaflets, club flyers, wristbands, magazines, and lanyards, all spread across my floor… is this an archive? And if so, what does it actually say?

The journalist Jesse Bernard recently spoke to the cultural commentator Elijah for his Deep Feedback podcast, and it was a fascinating conversation, one I highly recommend absorbing at length. At one point, Jesse described his own family’s hoarding habits as an inter-generational archive, and remarked that the distinction between a collection, say, and an archive is one of intentionality.

Likewise, Mal @ The Passionate Ones wrote eloquently about this on the recent Substack article It’s More Than Just An Archive, commenting that the process by which a project is completed is often just as fascinating and enriching as the end product itself.

The term has been swirling around my mind for weeks now. When does a collection become an archive? What do these objects – some of whom I can’t actually remember acquiring – say about the broader cultural climate I exist in?

Searching through these records, books, flyers, and wristbands, I’m left to wonder what through-paths we can find, what desire lines we can embark on. I’ve always valued eclecticism – the records move from Northern Soul to dubstep via successive waves of indie pop, left-field folk and beyond – and there’s little direct overlap at times.

But then, perhaps that’s the point. I’ve always cherished collections, and the role of the collector. When visiting a friend’s flat, I’m forever drawn to bookshelves and records – why this book, and not the sequel? Why that record, and not the solo project? What does these objects say about us as people?

A long time ago in another life, I used to travel to Northern Soul events across Scotland. After an all-dayer in Edinburgh, a guy called Ali Duff gave me a lift back to Dundee, where I was living and working at the time. Ali was a great guy, the kind of bloke who would politely but firmly decline any form of payment for petrol, and gently offer tips on record buying, pointing out people would give fair prices, and who to avoid.

As we drove along the road and miles to Dundee, Ali recalled a close friend who had recently got out of the Northern Soul scene. The friendship would continue, but Ali mourned the breaking up of his pal’s record collection. It was unique – the manner in which it was assembled, the way the sounds sat together, said something important, something that couldn’t be replicated. He was genuinely sad to see it broken up.

While the objects we accrue in our lives – the stuff I’m looking at on my floor right now – can be tethered to broad social truths, and the waxing and waning of cultural movements, there’s also no shame in them acting, purely and simply, as mirrors of personal stories, as sigils for unique moments that cannot otherwise be communicated.

When I was younger, I used to think that a good record collection was an astonishingly vast pile of records. Like, shelves of the stuff. Entire rooms, even. As I grew older, I felt this was foolish – why keep hold of records as your tastes evolve past them? Records are tools after all, and if you’re not listening to them what role do they serve?

I remember reading about a blues collector in the United States, someone of real renown in their field. Across the years, they had criss-crossed the continent searching out rare 78s, helping to document and preserve voices that would otherwise have been lost. Yet when it came to their own collection, it was relatively spartan. Like the sun burning away sea water to reveal lines of salt, the years had found him off-loading anything that didn’t speak to him on a pure, personal level. The remaining records veered from priceless cultural artefacts to ten-a-penny novelty cuts, telling a story that was uniquely, perfectly his own. He kept them in a huge vintage leather trunk under his bed, wheeling them out only for those he judged worthy of seeing them.

There’s great value in a collection, but there’s also value in simply being a collector. Looking over these piles of records, fanzines, flyers, and Lord-knows-what-else, I don’t see an archive – I see myself. And that’s enough.

So, Offcuts is going to be a regular feature in which I look back on interviews I’ve done over the past 18 or so years, and reminiscence a little. There will be plenty of never-before-seen content, and hopefully the odd revelation or two. It’s amazing what you can find lying in the cupboard.

With the physical edition coming off sale, I’ve decided to revisit my cover interview with Hayley Williams from last year. I’d fought hard to get press time with her, and the day itself was remarkably busy. The team were also working on a three-person shoot, which meant a triplicate of on-set interviews and video content to be arranged.

When the time came, I was able to slip into a side studio to be on my own for a Zoom chat with an alt icon. Hayley was remarkably candid – prompt, she appeared on-screen before the PR and we made small talk about Nashville.

The conversation itself was fascinating. Everything was up for discussion – clearly eager to use the interview setting to process her emotions, we lingered on the (excellent) solo album ‘Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party’ before veering into shifts within alt culture, Paramore’s experiences on the Eras tour, the exposed manner of working alone, and the often tortured legacy of Southern identity.

So, here’s a few bits that didn’t make the final piece. All photography Zachary Gray. Buy the physical edition HERE.

On the release of her new album…

I was nervous, for sure. I mean, it kind of helped the way that I put the songs out there first… it was like a light drizzle before the rain - before drinking out of a fire hose! It was like I entered a foyer before going in.

I think I’m surprised, but I’m like, so proud of it that I’m also, at the same time, I’m trying to really own it and be like: yeah… you did something great. And I just feel really, like, supported by my peers. It’s kind of humbling.

On social media…

I’m still sort of trying to break the habit of my iPhone. I got Tiktok on my phone when we were on the Eras tour last year - I mean, there was so much free time! I really enjoy watching politics on there. I feel like I see a lot of my local shit from Nashville on there. So there’s still obviously a lot of good about this connectivity that we have.

On joining Substack…

I’m really enjoying it. I was kind of late to it, but I got it years ago just to watch and read, and have that experience. You post, and you’re left feeling, like, wow. I have a dashboard, you know, this can be my little vehicle that I drive around the interweb.

I don’t know, there’s something really nice about that old internet that we had, and how it felt like you could maybe read everything. It felt more tactile. I’m sure someone’s gonna ruin it, but it’s just so nice to be able to show up and kind of blurt out some random shit or something that I’m really thinking about heavily.

On signing a major label deal at 15…

You just can’t have the full picture when you’re 15 years old, you know, as much as I thought I was so smart, and that I knew everything that I wanted to know. Which served us, probably, too.

On journaling during the album process…

Sometimes it’s just great to just journal, and like, free write - almost like Artists Way, morning pages kind of thing. I was kind of looking through a lot of those different perspectives as well.

Moving from the Eras tour to a stadium record…

I miss so much of my own artistry sometimes in those spaces because I’m projecting so far outward and I’m not always getting a more selfish experience. So with this music - and even stuff that I’ve been writing since this record came out - I keep having this conversation with myself about what it looks like or feels like in my when I’m not having to project so far out there. Like, I’m really here in this moment, singing these thoughts, playing these parts. What does that more selfish artistic experience feel like? I’m learning how to sort of lay back into my voice and not always have to turn it up to 11.

On embracing eclecticism…

We tried so many styles, and let ourselves go in every direction. So I got to yell a little, I got to scream, I got to talk, and I also got to feel like I was speaking to myself more than anyone.

On the femininity of her new writing…

It feels more feminine than a lot of my other writing. There are other examples of that in my work, but they’re few and far between.

‘Negative Self-Talk’ – there’s something in there that feels earthy and rooted, and it also feels like it can swim up. You know? It kind of feels like it embodies all the elements.

it’s such a it’s such a sweet feeling to think that me kind of bubbling through my own life and making things that make me happy has been helpful to people that obviously, yeah, that’s a great feeling.

What she loves about David Byrne…

The feeling of being able to go anywhere you want as an artist. I want that for every artist. Bands like Talking Heads gave me permission in my own songwriting to try everything.

If I want to make a concept record where I stick to one genre, then great, but I actually think what’s more likely for me is that I’ll continue to learn about music and artists that inspire me, that do all sorts of different things, and I hope it keeps drawing out different sides of me.

Lauded on its release – nominated for the Mercury, and named TIME’s Album Of The Year – the fifth anniversary has brought a divisive response online.

To some, it’s more a mood piece, a series of perfectly nice-sounding recordings with a jazz colossus on top. To others, it became a gateway into other worlds. Pharoah Sanders worked on a number of central albums in what would become known as spiritual jazz – the point in the 60s and 70s where cutting edge jazz releases absorbed aspects of Indian and African sounds, in addition to non-Western spiritual beliefs. Retrospectively defined, the term has garnered traction in recent years, and – no matter your opinion on its contents – ‘Promises’ helped ease spiritual jazz into something approaching the mainstream.

It’s far from the only UK release containing this tag. A genre descriptor that is wide to the point of being undefinable, spiritual jazz has enjoyed a fertile decade on these shores, with a flurry of musicians adapting it for a new era. Some embrace the term, some ignore it, but it remains central to understanding a slew of releases.

Here’s six UK spiritual jazz albums you need in your life.

Sarathy Korwar – My East Is Your West

Recorded in actual church, Sarathy Korwar’s ‘My East Is Your West’ has more claim than most to represent jazz at its more spiritual. Constructing a group steeped within Indian classical music traditions, the mighty performances here attempt to write Indian voices back in to the spiritual jazz sphere. Long, exploratory performances, they re-work a number of core texts from Alice Coltrane, Joe Henderson, and more to stunning effect. Truly a record to immerse yourself in.

Shabaka and the Ancestors – Wisdom Of The Elders

While his more recent work on numerous flutes no doubt contains aspects of spiritual jazz in its DNA, Shabaka’s work alongside the Ancestors gets the nod here. ‘Wisdom Of The Elders’ is terrific – bracing, arresting music, the improvisatory instincts find the group working with utter freedom. Honouring elder pathways and lineages, the session took place in Johannesburg, aligning South Africa’s own vibrant jazz scene to the UK.

Chip Wickham – The Eternal Now

A hugely experienced figure, Chip Wickham has recorded everything from broken beat to soul jazz, but always with a sense of depth, and absolute commitment to his art. Drawn into the orbit of Manchester-rooted label Gondwana, ‘The Eternal Now’ represents Wickham at his most spiritual – lyrical playing, beautiful, drone-saturated arrangements, and stellar grooves.

Work Money Death – A Portal To Here

Leeds-based Work Money Death is a collective which draws on numerous sources – the members play variously in afrobeat group The Sorcerers, Mod jazz outfit The Lewis Express and beyond. Part of the vibrant ATA Records crew, Work Money Death is their spiritual jazz outlet – building a unique catalogue that honours and advances the sounds of those pivotal 60s and 70s recordings, new album ‘A Portal To Here’ is perhaps the pick of the bunch. A searing cycle of grief and continuation, it’s a bold and often moving listen.

Alina Bzhezhinska, Tushi – Whispers Of Rain

The centrality of Alice Coltrane’s role in the spiritual jazz canon has permanently bound the harp within the genre’s confines. While that’s perhaps reductive – there’s a lot more to jazz harp than spiritual inclines – it remains an evocative signifier that something meditative is afoot.

A glorious musician, Alina Bzhezhinska combined with Tulshi on the excellent 2024 release ‘Whispers Of Rain’ – a beautiful, at times feather-soft soundscape, it’s also capable of rising to crushing, transcendental form. Bliss.

Nala Sinephro – Endlessness

A release that perhaps defies any tag placed against it, Nala Sinephro’s ‘Endlessness’ tethers spiritual jazz aspects against other rivulets of ambient composition. A stunning achievement, it features the cream of the London jazz scene, with Belgian-born Nala Sinephro’s exquisite harp conjuring entire symphonies of sound. From experience: this is a wonderful record to work to.

If you like these, perhaps also try:

Ancient Infinity Orchestra – River Of Light
Hiro Ama – Music For Peace & Harmony
Amanda Whiting – The Liminality Of Her

I am reading: Still In A Dream - Simon Reynolds

There will be no rejoicing in its demise from me. The title’s familiar red banner is seared into the imagination of anyone with even a passing interest in publishing – founded in 1980, it become the most influential, cutting-edge title of its generation, reinventing what could pop up in your local newsagent. Launching the careers of countless writers, photographers, and designers, it covered both music and fashion while somehow eclipsing both. It wasn’t a magazine you could really categorise – it was The Face.

Initially shuttering in 2004, news of its revival was long in the works. Relaunching with Harry Styles on the cover (and Rosalia, and Tyler, the Creator) in 2017 truly felt like an event, and the team there have pulled together innumerable highs in the past few years.

I enjoyed reading The Face. As a fan, it provoked, thrilled, and revealed. As a peer, it inspired and challenged.

This is bad news for the sector. Firstly, my thoughts are with everyone on the team who are facing uncertain times. Music Director Davy Reed is terrific, a focussed, intelligent writer and editor. Consultant Editor Craig McLean is a force of nature. Editor-in-Chief Matthew Whitehouse steered the title with aplomb.

It was – without doubt – a difficult job. Competing in the current marketplace is difficult enough, but team had to compete not only with the factual legacy of The Face, but also its mythos.

These are hugely challenging times for titles. It’s easy for some to look at this news and say, “oh, print is dead”. I don’t think that’s the case. The Face previously closed in 2004, and print titles continued. Currently, Dazed has a strong cover run, their sister title AnOther has Solange on the cover, and iD feels revitalised. That’s not to mention Notion, CLASH, Disco Pogo, DIY, DJ Mag, So Young, and countless other media outlets who choose to remain in print. The physical artifact is, I think, not going anywhere.

But there is a huge problem in publishing. Continual economic flux has drained the advertising pool. I think it’s more the case that – financially – there just isn’t enough advertising going around in London right now to support multiple titles on the scale of iD, Dazed, and The Face, all of whom have huge staffing and overheads. That’s not to mention mid-tier and smaller titles, eating away at the revenues. Something had to give.

Indeed, the closure of The Face could well be tactical. The magazine is, or was, part of the Wasted Talent group, which also includes Mixmag and Kerrang. Could the company be set to pivot its assets towards those titles? Kerrang remains a powerhouse in alt culture, while those in the dance arena long to see Mixmag return to print.

But perhaps that’s placing too positive a gloss on this situation. According to those in the industry, The Face employed around 40 people – that’s a lot of talented individuals now facing an unknown future during a testing time for the British economy, particularly in the media and culture sectors.

We continue to move through choppy waters. In the words of Andrew Weatherall – “fail we may, sail we must…”

I am reading: Andrew Greig - At The Loch Of The Green Corrie

*taps mic*

OK let’s begin.

I abandoned social media about a year ago. It felt like those spaces were increasingly dying, and that conversation was essentially impossible. Each point made would be treated in appallingly bad faith, shutting down conversations at their root. The joy of discovery disappeared.

And ultimately that is the main focus for my job as an Editor and music journalist – to discover new things, to tell different stories. It’s an idea which is integral to way we should be approaching culture, but it’s increasingly difficult to pin down how discovery works.

Back when I first started out on [gestures widely to the world] all this, it was easy. I started my own zine in 2006, when the world felt a bit more analogue. Digital downloads had changed the game, for sure, but social media was in its infancy. Print media and record shops were primary points of introduction, alongside live shows – getting down early to catch the supports – and a smattering of late-night radio broadcasts.

When I first started at CLASH in 2007, the postie would bring massive bags of promo CDs to our office – an old Victorian bakery (that’s it up above, byraway) whose endless nooks and crannies meant it was impossible to keep warm. As an intern, I had the job of maintaining the album review planner, which involved the glamorous task of separating the CDs out into piles – must-listen, could-be-good, and a dollop we would uncharitably refer to as ‘probable weirdos’.

Fast forward to 2026 and even attempting to track the amount of releases we’re sent on a weekly basis is nigh-on impossible. The volume of music has exploded exponentially, and some of the figures thrown around are staggering. For instance, I read that in one-month last year the amount of music given an official release surpassed the entirety of 1987.

Journalists aren’t alone in feeling that the situation is slightly broken. When I do panels – another excellent way to encounter new musicians – the most frequent question the audience will ask is usually a variation on: where do you discover new music?

Beyond the Inbox swamp, I have to say the main way I discover something new is word of mouth. Social media amplifies this – not for nothing was Twitter once referred to as the world’s street corner – but it remains true. You gravitate to people whose tastes and opinions you respect.

It’s maybe heartening that even though the technologies may change, the manner I discover new music hasn’t really changed all that much. Asking the person behind the till in a record shop who’s playing right now; getting down early at a gig to find a decent spot, and being blown away by the support act; finishing work and hitting 6 Music or NTS shows to unwind. The actual impact of these things is diluted by the challenges of a finite audience, and near infinite supply – but it remains an impact.

I would also put the music press as remaining central in that. Not an Everest-like peak, for sure, but still out there, in the mountain range.

I’m going to treat Substack essentially as a brain splurge, loosely focussed on music recommendations that are new to you – new releases, and also deep cuts from the past that deserve a bit of love. There will also be plenty of musings on the music press as a trade, and what it’s been like to survive almost two full decades in the trenches.

So, discovery. I use an Apple Music playlist to keep track of cool things I’ve been sent or spotted – recent additions include everything from mutant grime to Irish avant-folk via feral femme pop and whatever-the-hell you would describe underscores as.

Check it out here, if you fancy, or click the massive image below.

It’s also worth spotlighting a few tracks that have drawn my attention.

Jet Blonde – ‘Uh’

This track featured on the new Slow Dance compilation, and it’s actually the work of Marco Pini (attached to RIP Magic and Sorry, amongst others) and the actress Eloise Thomas. All trip hop murk and afterhours paranoia, the dubby effects are ripped apart by rivulets of industrial noise. A headphone listen, for sure.

Ruby Plume – ‘Pindrop’

This nimble piece of acoustic guitar driven pop music was actually released five months ago, before finding its way into my algorithm. It’s fantastic – lithe, and packed with energy, the lyric expresses a longing for connection that can’t help but be universal.

Ivy Knight – ‘Swimming In Blood’

New to Scenic Route – a label whose output is always worth checking out – Ivy Knight’s reverb-soaked minimalism achieves the kind of intimacy Jessica Pratt has long since made her own. The kind of track where you can hear someone’s hands slide over the guitar frets.

Low End Activist ft Tia Talks – ‘Fake Idols’

Bristol producer Low End Activist’s previous album ‘Municipal Dreams’ is phenomenal – an incredible feat of sound design, his fractal approach recalibrated soundsystem musics for a highly personal analysis of the British working class experience.

‘Fake Idols’ finds the producer firmly in club mode – the kind of production that would have demolished seminal instrumental grime club Boxed, it’s voiced in fine style by Tia Talks.

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I am currently reading: James by Percival Everett.

Catch you next time.