Daniel O’Sullivan

Eros

Backed by a 14-piece classical ensemble, the Grumbling Fur member’s latest is both rather whimsical and rather beautiful, finds Ed Power

Eros by DOS

There is a secret-ish history of whimsy as a driving force in English music that runs from the Beatles and early Pink Floyd all the way through to Aphex Twin. Forever approaching silliness yet never tipping over the edge, the mood is summoned anew on Eros, a delightful new orchestral project from Manchester experimental composer Daniel O’Sullivan. 

A wearer of different hats and a conjurer of many moods, O’Sullivan is perhaps best known as one-half of the ominous instrumental duo Grumbling Fur. He has also collaborated with drone metal wizards of chill, Sunn O))), and Norwegian experimental electronic band…

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As his novel Bass Instinct returns to print after 30 years as part of a long-overdue reappraisal of his trilogy of books about jungle, bass and rave in 1990s London, Two Fingas speak to Rob Corsini about being one of the few to document the subculture from within

Photo by Leo Williams

It’s a Saturday night in 1993 and you’re looking for a place to go out, maybe a club, maybe a rave. A friend knows someone who knows someone who’s having a house party. When you arrive you put your bottle in the kitchen. The living room is pitch black, the furniture’s been pushed back against the walls, and the first thing that hits you is the sound. The system is…

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‘The Brown Album’ is pays testament to the thrilling, sometimes contradictory power of rave as a culture, just months before it splintered, says Joe Muggs

Orbital 2 by Orbital

1993 was the last hurrah of rave’s original explosion. In 1994 the Criminal Justice Act would serve as a symbolic clamping down on raving. If you wanted to be fanciful you might paint a picture of it as a boot coming down and smashing the scene’s unity into a million social and stylistic pieces, but in fact things were already fragmenting. Rave culture was still at fever pitch in 1993, but the centre couldn’t hold. All the various elements that had gone into it were pulling away in their own directions,…

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These New Puritans

Crooked Wing

On their fifth album, the brothers Barnett tap into a peculiarly English unusual, channeling their unique romanticism towards new forms of intensity

Crooked Wing by These New Puritans

One of the strengths of These New Puritans is how the expressive vulnerability of Jack Barnett’s vocals sit within the battering of twin brother George’s drumming. In this relationship, I’ve always heard a dance of the aggression and softness of masculinity, something that’s reinforced on their fifth album Crooked Wing by how it begins and ends with the full yet delicate voice of a treble voice from Southend Boys Choir. As the years have passed since I first saw what was then a fourpiece rattling away in tiny London venues, this dynamic has…

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41 Longfield Street Late ’80s is due out in September

Four Tet is releasing a new album with Nashville-based folk and country musician William Tyler, who was part of the band Lambchop from 1998 until 2010.

Credited to Four Tet’s real name, Kieran Hebden, 41 Longfield Street Late ’80s features seven collaborative tracks by the two artists and was born out of a shared love of 80s country and folk artists such as Joe Ely, Nanci Griffith and Lyle Lovett.

This is the two musicians’ second collaboration together, after they put out the two-track record Darkness, Darkness / No Services in 2023. They first met at Tennessee festival Bonnaroo in 2013.

“I think we both in our own specific ways want to…

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The updated editions of Grinderman, Grinderman 2 and Grinderman 2 RMX are due out in July

Photo by Deirdre O’Callaghan

Grinderman are reissuing their three albums: Grinderman, Grinderman 2 and Grinderman 2 RMX.

New editions of the three albums will be released on eco-conscious black vinyl and CD. It marks the first physical pressing of the three albums since their respective original releases.

Birthed as a more primal side project to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, the group consisting of Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos released the first Grinderman album in March 2007 having birthed the project around two years earlier. The more psychedelic-sounding Grinderman 2 was released in 2010, and was followed in 2012 by Grinderman 2 RMX,…

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It’s the second single to be shared from forthcoming album More

Photo by Tom Jackson

Pulp have released a new song, titled ‘Got To Have Love’.

Described by frontman Jarvis Cocker as “a slightly hysterical song that tries to talk about love as I see it now,” the new cut appears on forthcoming album More, which is the band’s first studio LP in almost 24 years and was announced last month with lead track ‘Spike Island’.

Speaking further about ‘Got To Have Love’, Cocker said: “‘Love’ is a word I was unable to say until I was approaching 40. I listened to love songs all the time but couldn’t use the word in real life. The words to this song are me having a…

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Sunn O))), Unwound and Divide And Dissolve are among the acts playing the Utrecht festival later this year

Le Guess Who? has revealed the first wave of acts playing its 2025 edition this November.

Returning once again to multiple venues across the Dutch city of Utrecht, the four-day festival will this year take in sets from the likes of Sunn O))), Unwound, Divide And Dissolve, Julianna Barwick, BIG|BRAVE, Emptyset, The Congos, Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force, Jabu and Fatima Al Qadiri, who is lined up to play a DJ set.

As ever, the festival will also welcome a number of guest curators. Among them is jazz artist Amirtha Kidambi, who’s invited the likes of One Leg One Eye and Saint Abdullah & Jason…

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The record meshes elements of gqom, dubstep, footwork and broken techno

Slikback is releasing an album for Planet Mu.

Titled Attrition, the 11-track record marks the Kenyan artist’s debut full-length proper following a series of self-released records and a compilation collecting his EPs for Nyege Nyege Tapes offshoot Hakuna Kulala. The new album combines elements of gqom, dubstep, footwork, broken techno, drum & bass and other experimental club music forms.

The album came to life while the producer was waiting for a visa to be confirmed having recently moved to Poland from Kenya. With an unexpected pause in travel, he found himself working at a slower, more deliberate pace. “I was finally able to explore ideas to a point where I didn’t…

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In this month’s Low Culture Essay, Wrongtom weaves the life of his jazz pianist grandad into his encounter with Norman Cook & co’s 1990 hit single, and explores how it changed his own musical trajectory

Perhaps it began in my grandparents’ living room in the spring of 1990. I watched, quizzically, as my cousin Nancy popped her Walkman headphones over my grandad’s thick ears, and clicked the clunky play button. He looked as puzzled as me, then lifted one of the fuzzy earphones and asked “what is this?” Nancy replied with unabashed enthusiasm, “it’s rap”.

I was up like a shot, grabbing the headphones to find out what rapping delights she’d bestowed upon my grandad, and just in time to catch a…

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