Carl Cox is one of the key DJs of his generation, the generation that propagated the club culture which blossomed from the European acid house/rave scene (and originally, of course, from black American house and techno).

The Oslo World organisers are at pains to point out that, despite the name, they are not a “world music” festival. And with good reason, really. There may have been a few familiar WOMAD veterans headlining over the week-long event – Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour, Malie's Fatoumata Diawara, the queen of Cuba Omara Portuondo – but the emphasis was emphatically not on any kind of beads-and-bongoes authenticity.

There is now a kind of “leftfield mainstream” in electronic music. It’s populated by people a decade or more younger than the original acid house generation, but who take their core inspiration from post-rave experimentation of the early-mid Nineties. Dusky, Bicep and to an extent people like DJ Seinfeld, Four Tet and Jon Hopkins all channel the rich melodies and textures of Future Sound of London, Orbital, early Aphex Twin, Underworld and co to arena-filling effect.  

The journey of Ross “Hudson Mohawke” Birchard has been truly one of the most extraordinary in modern music. From teenage scratch DJ champion and happy hardcore raver in some of Glasgow’s more feral club environments, in the late Noughties he quickly moved through making rhythmically fractured hip hop.

Last days of June 2022, I sit in my writing hut. My liver is radioactive jelly, my nose reinforced concrete, my leg muscles marathon-cramped, and poisoned perspiration rolls down my forehead, stinging my eyeballs.

The endless circles and spirals that dance music moves in can take you to some strange places.

There is never one Glastonbury Festival. There are as many Glastonbury Festivals as there are people who attend. Thus it ever was, even back in 1992 when the capacity was only 70,000 (plus multitudinous fence-jumpers!). What follows, then, is a cross section of memories, from bands, performers, journalists, rave crews, and those behind the scenes.

Theartsdesk is a labour of love. Bloody-mindedly run as a co-operative of journalists from the beginning, our obsession with maintaining a daily-updated platform for good culture writing has caused a good few grey and lost hairs over the years. But it has also been rewarding – and looking back over the 10 years of Disc of the Day reviews has been a good chance to remind ourselves of that. 

Ten years ago yesterday, on Monday 14^th February 2011, one of theartsdesk’s writers, Joe Muggs, reviewed an album called Paranormale Aktivitat, by an outfit called Zwischenwelt. It was the first ever Disc of the Day, a new slot inserted into theartsdesk’s front page design, where it still resides today.

Slowthai’s debut Nothing Great About Britain was both strikingly intimate and anarchic. He rapped about his childhood and British inequality over grime beats that sounded as if they were falling apart around him. Here "abrasive" and "insightful" coexisted within the same songs effortlessly.

On TYRON, slowthai divides these two attributes, splitting the album into a raucous first half and a sombre second. The caps lock is used to hammer home this overarching theme of dualism.