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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Danny L Harle

Cerulean

PC Music wunderkind packs up his donk in order to flame on with the alt-pop Avengers: Caroline Polachek, Clairo, Oklou and PinkPantheress

Cerulean by Danny L Harle

Fans of The Devil Wears Prada will remember Miranda Priestly’s tirade about cerulean blue and that colour’s important influence on fashion from Yves Saint Laurent to the clearance bins of a budget shop: “That blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs.” 

So, perhaps it’s unsurprising that one of the pivotal members of PC music, whose influence has trickled down through pop music and no doubt made “millions of dollars and countless jobs” for the genre, has named his latest album after that same shade of blue.

Cerulean is the follow up to his 2021…

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Noel Gardner returns once more from Britain’s sonic undergrowth, with an improv-dominated edition of New Weird Britain that also includes epic fringe folk, shuddering static from London via Beijing, and much much more

Tim Hill’s Leviathan Whispers

Improvisation tends to be a lurking possibility in these columns, even if not actively being practised, but for the first New Weird Britain of 2026 it’s the dominant theme. No reason that my conscious is aware of, and this February edition mops up a few releases from late 2025 (the last ‘proper’ NWB column having been in October) such as Enough, the debut LP of rafter-rattling, all-improv loft doom by Long Swan Tongues.

LST are a duo of bassist Al Wilson, who also released albums with…

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Though eclipsed by what came in its wake, The Colour Of Spring, at the heart of Talk Talk’s catalogue, is no less astonishing. Forty years on, Wyndham Wallace commends the inaugural rebirth of Mark Hollis’ synthpop band

Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end, but, as contemporary narratives demand, Talk Talk’s has come to be told in reverse, caring little for distractions. There are ‘wannabe’ years and ‘we-made-it’ years, but it opens with the death in 2019 of their inscrutable mastermind, when an unforeseen outburst of respect and affection for singer Mark Hollis rivals tributes to Prince and David Bowie. Unexpectedly, these eulogies dwell not on the conventional success of early endeavours, nor his biggest hits. Instead their…

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Martin died earlier this year aged 39

Photo by Simon Kallas

Tributes have been paid to Oliver Martin of Ghold, one of tQ’s favourite heavy bands, who died recently following a serious illness, aged 39. Donations in his memory are asked to be made to helpmusicians.org.uk.

News of Martin’s death was shared by his bandmates on social media on 2 February, where they said: “We lost our best friend, our brother, comrade & companion recently. We do and will continue to miss him so dearly. Love and power to an incredible person and musician whose influence on us will never leave.”

Martin was born in Bexley on 27 August 1986. He met his future bandmates Paul Antony and Al Wilson in 2013, who were…

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Hen Ogledd talk us through musical influences on astounding new album Discombobulated (the results are compiled into a playlist exclusively for tQ Subscriber Plus tier members)

Music journalists love to tell you they know all the influences that has gone into a new album, but a lot of the time the artists responsible themselves are left baffled by these comparisons. We thought, why not go straight to the source?

Hen Ogledd are Richard Dawson, Sally Pilkington, Dawn Bothwell and Rhodri Davies, whose brilliant new album Discombobulated is released on 20 February via Domino. Here, in their own words, they let us know what the actual influences that shaped it are, spanning ambient, free jazz, a 70s Japanese folk rock gem and more….

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Nightingale Floor

Five Stagings

A remarkably assured debut from a new ensemble formed with members of Ex-Easter Island Head and Powders plus poet Lauren McLean

Five Stagings by Nightingale Floor

Poetry and music have a complex, sometimes uneasy, relationship. Poets put the music in the words, while lyricists tend to strip their writing back to leave space for the music to occupy. It can be tricky to balance writing and playing so each enhances the other, but when it works, it can be something special. This is where Nightingale Floor come in. They are a quartet of improvising musicians and a poet, and Five Stagings is their first album. It’s a record made in the North West. The words are written and spoken by…

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