
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…

Honey Gentry has featured on these pages before and we’re very into the baroque, creeped out pastoral Americana she’s producing. And so to her take on the Queens of the Stone Age song, ‘Go With The Flow’. Bands don’t normally veer too far from the source material (which is a shame), but on this, the…

Aphex Twin and Warp Records were teasing stuff, and eagle-eyed fans spotted pretty quickly that it was something to do with ‘Selected Ambient Works Vol II’, and as it’s the 30th anniversary imminent, it was obvious there was a new version of it coming out. That’s still good news though, for electronic music heads! This…

In British English, the word ‘duff’ is pretty common parlance. In dictionary jargon, it’s something like ‘adjective INFORMAL: BRITISH 1. of very poor quality’ – you know the score. Outside of Britain, the word may or may not be used – we’ve not checked, but we’re going to assume that at least in the States,…

Compton’s very own, Channel Tres, is back with another slice of sophisticated party house, and in addition to that, there’s going to be a debut LP too, released on a major label because he’s talented like that. The album is called ‘Head Rush’ and you’ll be able to get it on June 28th on RCA,…
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