
If you’ve been reading the music press this week, there was some alarm or peevish glee (depending on where you were doing your reading) that vinyl sales had dropped. A Billboard piece stated that vinyl sales dropped by 33%, which is not insignificant. That’s selling 34.9 million units, down to 23.3 million in 2024. Are…

At the country music awards, they didn’t nominate Beyonce for anything despite her all-conquering country LP and while many shrugged, many were irritated by the whole thing. The irritation came from all sides, but more importantly, so did the shrugs – apart from something for the shelf in the spare toilet or a sticker to…

There’s something about golden era rap that just loves a fancy action figure, to place on your shelves next to your collected essays from hip hop journalism, tchotchkes, rap comics and high-end record middles and the like. It’s very wholesome, honestly. Well, Doom’s ‘Mm… Food’ is getting a reissue for its anniversary on November 15th,…

Once upon a time, music retreated away from the bombast of Britpop and US rap-rock, and all over the place, more introspective bedroom producers were making tricky electronic music and singer-songwriters gravitated toward the acid-folk of the ’70s, focusing more on cottage industries and community. Tunng managed to straddle both worlds, with critics dubbing their…

Look, most bands put a song out to let you know new things are coming, but not 2nd Grade. The power poppers from Philadelphia have chucked THREE whole songs at our ears and mercifully, they’re all really fun and filled with skuzzy pop hooks and jangly guitars. The revival of power pop is very welcome…

Today is John Lennon’s birthday – he would have been 84 – and to celebrate this, we’ve been treated to something rather surprising. While a lot of repackaged music from musicians can feel a little exploitative at times, churning out old stuff without much new going on, that’s not the case with this latest Lennon…

The excellent GULP are having a party for the 8th instalment of their broadsheet counter-culture magazine, which features all the wonderful words, tidbits, diatribes and cool design we’ve come to expect from them now. The issue drops on Friday 11th October and you can get down in person at The New Cross in Manchester’s Northern…

Look, no-one knows everything and has heard every song. We only just heard of Scorpions’ ‘Sails of Charon’ and we’re 100% obsessed with it, top to bottom. From the blistering guitar work at the start, to the stank-face funkiness that makes the drummer stick his chin out, to the tiny-ass singer dancing in his heels,…

Margo Guryan’s music just keeps getting rediscovered, and with that momentum, a tribute comp has been made called ‘Like Someone I Know: A Celebration of Margo Guryan’, which will see the light of day in November. To whet the appetite, we can now listen to Frankie Cosmos and Good Morning’s version of ‘Take A Picture’,…

First off, let us give the band their proper name – Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – it doesn’t fit nicely in a headline, but whatever, this is one of the best bands on Planet Earth right now, mixing funk and psychedelic rock with Turkish, Anatolian music. We’ve written excitedly about them before. The group…

Being honest, FKA Twigs can be a little frustrating musically BUT it is always interesting, and she definitely means it man, so we shouldn’t let our personal tastes get in the way of the sheer enjoyment of having her around. Anyway, there’s a new track called ‘Eusexua’, co-pro’d by Twigs herself with Koreless and Eartheater.…
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