Nick Hudson reports from Georgia with his guide to the gripping, eclectic and unpredictable music currently being produced in the Tbilisi underground, and how the city’s musical communities are stepping up in the face of significant repression

Protests in Georgia, photo by Jack Hubbell Rosene

It’s 5 May 2023 and Georgian anarcho-industrial collective Quemmekh are playing the Holoseum in Tbilisi’s old town. They’re flanked by wall-to-wall screens depicting burning cop cars and riot footage as a tall, imperious, rainbow-ribboned shaman – performed by queer Tbilisi icon Andro Dadiani, who has since found political asylum in Brussels – stands in the audience with a live sheep on a leash. It’s a gripping, emotionally violent and unforgettable show.  

Flash forward to spring 2024 and the…

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Erik Hall

Solo Three

Minimalist music by Laurie Spiegel, Glenn Branca, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine reconfigured as nimble-fingered solo works

Solo Three by Erik Hall

Minimalist music takes on many forms. It encompasses works made of short phrases that interlock and repeat, getting more complex with each reintroduction; compositions that observe sound’s gradual transformation; pieces that leave space for chance, interpretation, and the unexpected. But most minimalist music shares one guiding force: a search for presence. Michigan-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Erik Hall has the chance to join that continuous expedition on Solo Three, his latest album that revisits and retools minimalist classics into solo works. But his arrangements, however technically impressive, often fall short of realising the flow state that defines the genre.

Solo…

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The drone metal band’s Instagram page said the venue “put politics above music and have cancelled the show tonight”

Earth’s show at Bologna venue TPO last night (January 27) didn’t go ahead because Dylan Carlson, the band’s frontman and sole permanent member, reportedly objected to the display of a Palestinian flag at the side of the stage.

As Stereogum reports, the venue reportedly refused to remove the flag, which had been on display since a two-day event, O Re o Libertà, this past weekend, which brought together different activist groups to hold panel discussions – TPO hosts cultural events, as well as music gigs.

Posting a photo from last night’s show, Instagram user @zang_tumb_tuumb wrote in Italian: “Dylan Carlson, upon seeing the flag,…

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“It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbours, and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renée Good,” the US artist said in a statement

Bruce Springsteen has released a new protest song which takes aim at Donald Trump and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Unveiling the track, titled ‘Streets Of Minneapolis’, the US artist said in a statement: “I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday, and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbours, and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renée Good.”

The song makes specific references to ICE’s recent killings of protestors Pretti…

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The Sheffield group will play six shows across the US and Canada this May

Cabaret Voltaire have shared details of their last-ever North America tour.

The Sheffield group will play six shows across the US and Canada in May, kicking off at Seattle’s Moore Theater on May 4. Gigs in Vancouver, Portland, Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco will follow through the remainder of the month. Tickets for the tour run are on sale now.

The shows will come ahead of a final tour of the UK and Europe later this year. Coming more than 50 years on from the formation of the band, the 11-date run across the UK will see Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson, who co-founded the project with the…

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The 59-page report supports the introduction of a Nightlife Commission with statutory powers to protect the city’s nighttime economy

A new report shared by the London Nightlife Taskforce includes a number of recommendations to city officials on how they can support London’s nighttime economy.

The 59-page document, commissioned by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and published today (January 27), aims to put forward a variety of measures that can help to fix the “fragile and fragmented” condition of the capital’s nightlife. These recommendations cover reforms related to licensing, planning and transport, warning that without urgent and sustained action, the city’s nighttime economy will lose venues, workers and patrons at an ever-growing rate.

Chief among the report’s recommendations is the introduction of a London…

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Dialect

Full Serpent

Andrew P.M. Hunt makes music for small speakers and close quarters, a tender kind of futurism

Full Serpent by Dialect

In just the first three weeks of 2026, the world has become more uncertain than it has been in the entire past twelve months. Low temperatures in Kiev, protests in Minneapolis, marches in Nuuk, Greenland. Is anyone else wondering where the world is heading? Overwhelmed by this news, it would be best to hibernate and wait out what is overwhelming us.

Andrew P.M. Hunt – one quarter of one of the best contemporary “guitar” bands, Ex-Easter Island Head, and at the same time an exceptionally creative solo artist – returns with an EP lasting just twenty minutes. Released a year and a…

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Ahead of the first ever vinyl reissue of Djelika, Mary Chiney provides ten entry points into the work of the master kora player from Mali, tracing a lineage that stretches back 71 generations

The word “fusion” was an insult to Toumani Diabaté. Throughout his life, the maestro of the kora, the 21-string West African harp-lute, rejected the term with a polite but steely firmness. “Fusion means confusion,” he often told interviewers, his voice low-pitched gravel, possessed of a gravity that seemed to pull the room toward him. “I don’t do fusion. I do a meeting. When you meet someone, you talk to them. You don’t become them.”

This distinction is the key to unlocking the strange, sprawling, and intimidatingly beautiful world of Toumani…

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Ian Wade meets Peaches in Soho to discuss the 13 records that have shaped her life and work, from Lil’ Kim to Laurie Anderson, disco to krautrock

Photo by The Squirt Deluxe

With Peaches’ new album No Lube So Rude arriving next month, the temptation to call it a comeback seems, well, rude. Sure, it’s her first release in 10 years, but that’s not to say she hasn’t been busy. There have been films, a succession of features on other people’s records as well as her own exhibition Whose Jizz Is This? In Hamburg. There have been anniversary tours as her seismic debut The Teaches of Peaches first reached 20, then 25 last year, and three documentaries about her career. Her influence…

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Backengrillen

Backengrillen

A garbled and rushed melding of doom metal and free jazz born from the ashes of Refused’s recent demise

Backengrillen by Backengrillen

On 21st December 2025, Swedish post-hardcore stalwarts Refused played their final gig in the group’s hometown of Umeå. A sweaty and teary affair, Refused unleashed a rolling broadside over a brisk 90 minutes, unfurling the entirety of the band’s dedication to weighty and outspoken hardcore in a fierce and conclusive salvo.

As tastefully monochrome images of the band embracing were dragged and dropped onto social pages, you would assume that after thirty-plus years of sonic vitriol the group might sit back for a bit of R&R; a bit of fika maybe? Maybe this would have been the right move considering the…

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