new music interviews
Graham Fuller

This September Steven Wilson issued The Harmony Codex, his seventh solo record in 16 years. Though rooted in mortal concerns and alert to real-world dangers, this radiant suite of electronically textured songs is so dreamily redolent of movement it makes you (or me, anyway) think of astral journeys. Not the space rock variety but those taken across the plains and through the valleys and canyons and cities, some of them ruined, of private inland empires.

Cheri Amour

Just over 30 years ago, avant-pop icons Stereolab released their debut album Peng! establishing the early hallmarks of the English-French band’s sound; 1960s pop harmonies, chorus-laden guitar riffs and a borderless world of analog electrics.

Tim Cumming

One day, someone will compile a full illustrated history of Rolling Stones press conferences, going right back to Mick and Keith in 1964 buying a couple of pints in a pub in Denmark Street for journalists from the NME and Melody Maker – both now in the dustbin of history – and telling them, “here’s our album, have a listen” and leaving them to it.

Kieron Tyler

With the release this week of Blómi, her sixth studio album, Norway’s Susanne Sundfør discloses more about herself than she previously has through her music – but nothing is made obvious. As she says during this interview, the driving concept became complex.

Nick Hasted

Wilko Johnson, who has died aged 75, enjoyed an astonishing afterlife while he was still alive. After Julien Temple’s Dr. Feelgood film Oil City Confidential (2009) restored his crucial former band's profile, a terminal cancer diagnosis in 2013 perversely flooded Wilko with the wonder of life, leaving this melancholy soul content for perhaps the first time.

Tim Cumming

South-African cellist Abel Selaocoe is about to begin his third major concert in London in under a year. As the support artist for kora player Ballake Sissoko and cellist Vincent Segal at the Roundhouse in January, he received a lengthy ovation for his 30 minute set, having demonstrated an uncanny ability to play the audience as dexterously as he plays his cello.

Harry Thorfinn-George

Soft Cell, the duo consisting of Marc Almond and Dave Ball, announced they were calling it quits in 2018. The two sold out shows at the 02 in London were supposed to be their swan song, waving goodbye to their Soft Cell days. But as their eponymous Eighties single hinted, waving goodbye is often paired with a hello. In 2020 they embarked on a nationwide tour, playing their classic 1981 album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret in its entirety. This wasn’t just a nostalgia tour though.

Guy Oddy

Jarboe is a singer and musician who first rose to prominence as a member of Swans from 1985 to 1997. During this time, she and her then partner and fellow Swan, Michael Gira, also released three albums as Skin (known as World of Skin in the USA).

India Lewis

Perhaps appropriately, when I called Pete Tong for his 10 questions I was hungover, on the phone in a park after a night at a very good party. It’s a sign of the times that things are appearing to return to a relative normal, despite the threat of Omnicron and a precipitant winter lockdown.

Nick Hasted

Miles Davis stole Charles Lloyd’s band, and much else.