The autumnal return of the K-Music Festival, which started in 2013, is good news for those who like their world music adventurous, surprising, challenging. Over the years we’ve heard Pansori (a form of Korean folk opera that’s on Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list), drone-drenched post-rock from bands like Jambinai, post-classical sonic meditations from Park Jiha on otherworldly looking instruments such as the piri, yanggeum, and saenghwang, as well as more conventional jazz and classical collaborations.After launching with a multi-artist showcase at Hackney’s Earth, upcoming concerts Read more ...

A young electronic music producer of my acquaintance recently wrinkled their nose at Chase & Status’s last mega hit “BACKBONE,” saying “it’s just presets”. That is, they thought C&S were using familiar digital drum sounds and synth tones as they come ready made in music software packages. Well, perhaps they were, but this is missing the point. It’s like criticising Adele for using a minor chord, or Lamborghini for using carbon fibre. And maybe that’s what the album title title here alludes to. C&S’s genius, which enabled them to conquer first underground drum’n’bass, then the Read more ...

Test Dept are pioneers of hardcore, ear-battering industrial music who first got together in the early 1980s. They may have originally called it quits in 1997, but for the last ten years they’ve been back in the saddle and working to their original template of fierce beats and strident resistance to political oppression at a volume that is rarely heard in live concert venues these days. In short, Test Dept are a tonic in an age of hyper-commercialisation where artists tie themselves up in knots so as not to offend anyone – especially their sponsors. But what kind of a show are Test Dept Read more ...

Dance culture is constantly remixing its past, but it seems like we’re in a sudden burst of interesting twists on that. Just in the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen British reggae DJ David Rodigan oversee a project turning house music classics into dub and jungle, and the New York house legend reverse that process and turn the foundational 1994 jungle tune “Burial” by Leviticus aka Jumpin’ Jack Frost into house. And on top of that a new EP arrives with Brighton based DJ Sophie Lloyd working magic on four tracks from the huge London Records catalogue.That’s not the Decca offshoot London of the Read more ...

I saw Sam Sweeney and Grace Smith perform back in August at the Sidmouth Folk Festival, in the function room of one of the bigger hotels overlooking the seafront. It was sold out, standing room only, barely even that. For the next hour or so, the two of them – Sweeney with his years as a member of Bellowhead and Leveret and Smith with her own trio and string quartet Methera, weaving English traditional folk into classical chamber music – played their new album of English traditional tunes from the 17th to 19th centuries, recasting them for two fiddles in conversation with that tradition, and Read more ...

Apparently, HAAi’s latest long player was originally meant to be a companion piece to her HUMANiSE album from last year. It clearly soon evolved into a completely stand-alone piece of work though. For where HUMANiSE is characterised by laidback and mellow ambient pop, DIGITiSE is unapologetically aimed at dragging listeners onto the dancefloor to work up a glorious sweat – even if it does continue to explore what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world.Blurring the lines between trippy vibes, warm melodies and techno-flavoured beats, it has more than a sniff of the 1990s’ Read more ...

Blossoms, yet another indie wonder from the ever-so-fertile Northwest, in tune with the Manchester mayor turned PM, have had a string of No. 1 albums, and their latest continues to display an uncanny ability to tailor infectiously danceable hit material, as good for the heart as the head.This will delight their many fans, with oven-ready singalong catchiness and a feel-good factor steeped in contagious love. This isn’t music for solitary introspection but a vehicle for communal fun.There is a ruthless and seductive efficiency about the band’s ability to create an irresistible combination of Read more ...

There’s a lot of grit in Wynonna Judd’s new album, in her voice, in her lyrics, in the back stories, the ones underfoot and in her past. She’s been places most of us haven’t. Raised with her sister Ashley by a single mum and nurse, Naomi, in the hard-scrabble setting of Ashland in Kentucky, a little town on the banks of the Ohio River.She had her first No. 1 hit with her mum Naomi in 1984, with “Mama He’s Crazy”. She was just 18, and mother-and-daughter would become a huge multi-Grammy-winning country music-pop success – a success held together by a deep but deeply conflicted personal Read more ...

From The Smiths to Electronic to The The to Kirsty MacColl to Gorillaz to Beth Orton to Billie Eilish, Johnny Marr has proved himself a musically inquisitive, skilled and imaginative collaborator. Over the last decade-and-a-half he’s also built himself a steady solo career. The Age of Everything is his fifth fully solo album. Unfortunately, it’s not very interesting.Marr long ago proved he has an eclectic musical palette but there’s also a side to him, as per his past membership of Modest Mouse and The Cribs, which revels in the comfort of meat’n’potatoes indie rock. This comes to the fore Read more ...

The excitement surrounding Man/Woman/Chainsaw is such that their current jaunt around the country has been superseded, with another tour of larger venues already announced for next year. Given that the cramped confines of King Tut’s was packed out a step up in size is unsurprising, and there was a genuine buzz when the London six-piece emerged onstage, 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” ringing out as accompaniment.Rap is one of the few genres that hasn’t percolated into the group’s own music yet, but they have made a fair go at most others. It was almost dizzying just how much was crammed into the Read more ...

There’s a whole sonic aesthetic that’s everywhere now. A kind of ghost of the Eighties, or maybe a throwback to a cocaine-comedown Eighties: the kind of deluxe digital uncanny you can hear in records like Fleetwood Mac’s Tango in the Night, weirder Eurythmics songs or Dennis Edwards and Siedah Garrett’s “Don’t Look Any Further”. It first got resurrected in 2000s “glo-fi”, “chillwave” and “hypnagogic pop”, was perfected by Dave Okumu in his production for Jessie Ware’s 2012 Devotion and seems to have filtered from there all the way through general pop all the way up to Harry Styles and Taylor Read more ...

“Running”, released in the autumn of 2024, is one of the most irresistible, over-the-top bangers of recent years. Its parent album, Fat Dog's debut, Woof., contained more in that vein. And their live shows are notoriously energised. In fact, their second album is, they say, called Cancel Me (I’m Tired) because their performances are so in-demand that they want a break. If that’s the case, they could have made their new music slower and less relentless. They don’t.The London band, led by cowboy hatted singer Joe Love, have patented a galloping electronic sound that mingles punk rock urgency, Read more ...