The soundtrack to a new film about the Denver heavy metal four-piece takes the listener deep into an exploration of outer – and inner – space

Photo credit: Alessandro di Martino

In 2024, Blood Incantation released Absolute Elsewhere. One of the strangest, most compelling and original albums in heavy music of the past decade, it connected with a wide variety of listeners – many within and, crucially, an equal number outside the metal underground.The album used cathartic, whirling death metal with cerebral, unexpected pastures (ambient music, analogue synth freakout, gloriously complex prog passages, vintage kosmische panache) and – as is always the case with Blood Incantation – some serious world building.

As intimate with Popul Vuh and Tangerine Dream as Morbid Angel or Death, Absolute…

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Fire-Toolz

Lavender Networks

Angel Marcloid makes her Warp Records debut – and it may just be her most accomplished and considered record to date

Lavender Networks by Fire-Toolz

There’s a simple beauty to the opening organ chords on Lavender Networks, which whir and crackle in the mix like the equipment is breathing and singing by itself. But maybe there’s beauty in the cartoon sounds which follow: the screamo vocals, digitised grindcore and inversions of new age, prog, IDM and everything in between. All sounds which shouldn’t gel, but Fire-Toolz has been doing so with glee for over a decade, enough so that the specific textures and emotions drawn out are as comforting as they are novel or transportive now.

Chicago producer Angel Marcloid’s most celebrated…

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Written by music journalist Lauren Martin, Aftershock: The Seismic Impact Of Dubstep features words from Mala, Loefah, Kode9 and lots more

Photo by Orson Sieverding

A new book chronicling the history of dubstep is set to be published this August.

Written by music journalist Lauren Martin, Aftershock: The Seismic Impact Of Dubstep builds on a 2015 piece that she penned for VICE in 2015, headlined ‘The VICE Oral History Of Dubstep’. It’s described as the first text-led book devoted to dubstep, and is also illustrated with classic and previously unseen photography, rave flyers and other visual ephemera.

The book is written in an oral history format, building out stories from the late 90s through to 2011 via quotes from 28 artists and key scene…

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Yasuaki Shimizu is also among the latest confirmed acts playing this year’s event

EFG London Jazz Festival has shared a second wave of acts playing its 2026 edition later this year.

The festival takes over a number of venues across London in November, and will feature a special orchestral performance by Goldie called Dare To Dream. Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall will host a matinee and nighttime performance of the show, which features a live band, choir and special guests.

Barbican sister venue Milton Court will host a live set from Japanese artist Yasuaki Shimizu, as well as sets from Estonian composer Maarja Nuut. In the Barbican main hall, rapper and saxophonist Soweto Kinch will revisit the trilogy of works he created with…

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Carmen Villain, Ex-Easter Island Head and more are playing the Belgian event this September

Meakusma Festival has revealed the lineup for its 2026 edition.

Returning once again to the Belgian city of Eupen, the programming will be spread out across multiple venues. The festival will take in live sets from Carmen Villain, Ex-Easter Island Head, Tara Clerkin Trio, Antonina Nowacka, Carrier, Dudù Kouate & Julia Bilat, Ben Vince, The Dengie Hundred, and Demdike Stare.

Valentina Magaletti is also lined up to play two collaborative sets – one with Maria Bertel, and the other with YPY – while there will be DJ sets from JASSS, DJ Anderson do Paraíso, Nosedrip and Bruce, among others. The full lineup takes in more than 140 acts.

Meakusma Festival will…

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On the century of his birth, Daniel Spicer explores the radicalism of the great American poet, both as visionary writer and radical activist for queer rights, drug reform, and global peace

Allen Ginsberg by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wikimedia Commons

The poet Allen Ginsberg is most famous for his long poem ‘Howl’, published in 1956. It’s a foundational text that – together with Jack Kerouac’s On The Road (1957) and William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1959) – kickstarted the artistic and cultural phenomenon that became known as the Beat Generation. But world-shaking as it was, the poem is perhaps the least of his achievements. Ginsberg should be best remembered as a radical catalyst for social change. Throughout the 60s and into the 70s, he was a ubiquitous…

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Feeble Little Horse

Bitknot

Pittsburgh indie rock band draw on the tension between online and IRL

bitknot by feeble little horse

If the term ‘college rock’ still held much purchase in the world of algorithms, autocratic orange men, and artificial intelligence, Feeble Little Horse would be unavoidable. Since 2021, the Pennsylvania four-piece have been modding out genres like shoegaze, noise rock and dream-pop, with digital-era sounds and Gen Z subject matter.

The band’s first two albums, which dealt exclusively in this hyper-computerised slackerishness, were interpreted (perhaps trivialised) as an act of cross-generational convergence by writers and fans alike, who argued that the group’s music stood for a future where screenagers might revive guitar music.

But to call Bitknot, Feeble Little Horse’s third album, guitar music would…

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Hannah Peel & Beibei Wang

The Endless Dance

Arpeggiating electronics meet Chinese water percussion, temple bells and rice bowls on an album that ends up sounding far more coherent and harmonious than it has any right to

The Endless Dance by Hannah Peel

Traditional Chinese percussion and contemporary polyrhythmic electronica – it’s a pairing that should feel like using an iPhone to light a fire. But by the end of Hannah Peel and Beibei Wang’s collaborative album, The Endless Dance, you might find yourself asking, why has nobody thought of this before?

The short answer would be that there aren’t many artists out there who could synthesise Peel and Wang’s varied but equally impressive resumés. Both artists share classical backgrounds, with Wang well-versed in both…

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Strut’s remastered edition restores previously excised material from the original release

Sun Ra And His Arkestra’s 1977 record Somewhere Over The Rainbow is getting an expanded reissue via Strut.

Out next month, the album has been newly remastered from the original source tapes, and will be made available digitally and in 2xCD and 3×12 vinyl editions. The physical release will come with extensive new liner notes by percussionist and composer Chris Cutler alongside video stills from the original concert.

The original record was recorded at the Bluebird in Bloomington, Indiana the same year that it was released, and assembled from two complete concert recordings that were re-arranged out of sequence. Strut’s new edition restores previously excised material from those recordings and preserves more…

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Its release comes ahead of the Scots’ first appearance in the tournament since 1998

Photo by Anna Isola Crolla

Belle & Sebastian have released a Scottish World Cup song, called ‘It Only Takes One Lion’.

The band wrote the song after Scotland’s 4-2 win against Denmark, which saw them qualify to the football tournament for the first time since 1998. They later premiered it at London’s Royal Albert Hall amid their anniversary world tour for the albums Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister.

Speaking about ‘It Only Takes One Lion’, the band’s Stuart Murdoch said: “It’s a personal song about following the travails of Scotland’s national team for the last 50 years and it came out naturally the day after the game against Denmark. The song tries…

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