The Hen Ogledd family keeps on expanding – the group’s sound, likewise. But more than anything, Discombobulated sounds like the present, finds Jeanette Leech

Image by James Hankins

Hen Ogledd’s Discombobulated is in the radical mould of music that tackles the now. Unconcerned that references may go out of date, the timelessness of their sound comes in documenting the present, rather than in seeking to transcend (or ignore) it. Lyrically, Discombobulated celebrates dissent with all the force of the protest tradition in folk music; musically, the album glues together sounds and genres to evoke the chaos of today.

Hen Ogledd is the project of Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington. The first releases were just Dawson and Davies; since then,…

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Voka Gentle

Domestic Bliss

Greek mythology, Kraftwerk synths and Jude Law wend their way through the trio’s follow-up to 2021 album Writhing!

Domestic Bliss by Voka Gentle

Ten thousand years ago, a man died in what would become Somerset. His bones waited in a cave until 1903, when they were discovered and given a name: Cheddar Man. Now he’s the subject of a song by Voka Gentle, who use his story to contemplate what we’re doing to the places where people have lived for millennia. “Let’s say the sea levels rise and we lose north Somerset, which, by the way, is looking increasingly likely…” William J Stokes’s voice is dry, conversational, with the studied neutrality of a local news presenter. Beneath it, the music…

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Claire Rousay, KMRU, Ex-Easter Island Head and more will play the four-day event this April

Claire Rousay

Bristol New Music has shared the lineup for its 2026 event.

The biennial festival, which returns this year for its sixth edition, will take in four days of music and visual arts-based programming, including live performances from the likes of Claire Rousay, KMRU, Ex-Easter Island Head, Emptyset, Hatis Noit and Lucy Railton.

The festival will also take in a number of special collaborative performances, including Cara Tolmie and Rian Treanor; Harry Górski-Brown, Wojciech Rusin and Phaedra Ensemble; Saint Abdullah, Eomac and Rebecca Salvadori; and Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley and Evan Miller.

Bristol New Music’s programming will be split across a number of Bristol venues, and further acts will…

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The LP comes amid the group’s final run of live shows through this year

Cabaret Voltaire are set to release a live album.

But What Time Is It Really? features live version of 16 tracks from across the band’s back catalogue, which were recorded during their UK tour last year to mark 50 years since the project’s formation. Its release will coincide with Cabaret Voltaire’s final tour dates across the UK, Europe and North America through this year.

In a statement, the band’s Chris Watson said: “This record captures the powerful essence of contemporary live performance and establishes a visceral connection to the history of the band.”

Fellow member Stephen Mallinder added: “It was an opportunity to capture the shows as a unique moment…

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In a memo sent to staff, he said he had “become a distraction” to the company’s work

Casey Wasserman, founder and CEO of talent and marketing agency Wasserman Group, is placing the company for sale amid the fallout from his appearance in the Epstein files.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, Wasserman sent a memo to staff on Friday (13 February) telling them that he felt he had “become a distraction”, and that he would thus begin the process of selling the company. 

It comes after flirtatious email exchanges between Wasserman and the now jailed Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, which dated back to the early 2000s, were released online as the US Justice Department continues to share evidence it gathered in relation…

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From the record that made him cry while filming Stranger Things, to the surprising location of his Bob Dylan tattoo, actor and musician Jamie Campbell Bower takes Claire Biddles through his life in music

Photo by Zeb Daemen

“We always had such a broad spectrum of music in our house,” explains musician and actor Jamie Campbell Bower from his flat in London. “While I was growing up, it spanned from classical music all the way through to Springsteen and The The. I can’t remember it for shit, but the first show that I was taken to as a child was Guns N’ Roses.” His parents both work in the music industry, and he would spend time rooting through their varied collection for…

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Charli xcx

Wuthering Heights

For all its gothic touches stripped of all modern references, the soundtrack to Emerald Fennel’s new Brontë adaptation is still very much a Charli xcx album, finds Kate French-Morris

On the front of Wuthering Heights, Charli xcx’s soundtrack for the divisive new Emerald Fennel film, a girlish hand dangles a soldier of toast above a soft-boiled egg, between a man’s roughened, firmly planted hands. It could be a magnified section of a 17th-century Dutch realist painting, but is in fact a still from the film: the hands in question belong to Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

The songs on the album sit at a similarly tasteful remove from the film: so far from Fennel’s brash maximalism, in fact, that Wuthering…

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The follow-up to 2017’s Reassemblage is out in May

Photo by Jonathan Sielaff

Visible Cloaks, the experimental ambient music duo of Spencer Doran and Ryan Carlile, have a new album on the way.

Marking the follow-up to their 2017 debut Reassemblage, and 2019’s collaborative LP serenitatem with Yoshio Ojima and Satsuki Shibano, the new record features 14 tracks and includes contributions from the aforementioned Ojima and Shibano, as well as Félicia Atkinson and Motion Graphics.

Commenting on the LP, Doran said: “Instead of creating pieces that function horizontally as environments, we wanted to conceptualise them as living material changing in space, continually in flux.”

Doran and Carlile have shared the Motion Graphics-featuring lead cut ‘Disque’ to mark the announcement of Paradessence. You can watch…

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Daniel Avery, Smerz and more will join headliner Blood Orange on the bill

Photo by Jake Davis

London’s RALLY festival has announced the lineup for its fourth edition, taking place this August.

Returning once again to Southwark Park, this year’s event will be headlined by the previously announced Blood Orange, while there will also be live sets from Daniel Avery, Smerz, james K, YHWH Nailgun, GENA (featuring Liv.e and Karriem Riggins) and keiyaA, among others.

The festival will also take in DJ sets from Optimo (Espacio), Parris and Paquita Gordon, among others.

RALLY will take place on 29 August 2026. Find more information here.
…

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Poem 1 is led by new single ‘Keepsake’

Photo by Isak Berglund Matsson-Mårn

Ana Roxanne has shared details of her first solo album in six years, titled Poem 1.

Spanning nine tracks, the new record follows 2020’s Because Of A Flower and a 2023 LP she released alongside DJ Python under the alias Natural Wonder Beauty Concept.

To mark the announcement of her third solo LP, Roxanne has shared lead track ‘Keepsake’, which you can listen to below.

Kranky will release Poem 1 on 1 May 2026.

Poem 1 by Ana Roxanne
…

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