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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The Public Enemy frontman has always been one of rap music’s most articulate advocates, but in 2022 he shifted career from MC to university lecturer. In an exclusive extract from his new book, In The Hour of Chaos, Chuck D talks about the cultural politics of hip hop and what it means for the future

Chuck D speaks to students as the sessions begins. May 4, 2022. Photo by Bad Man’s Son

My nearly four-decade career as a professional has been in truth and honesty for the culture. I don’t think I remember a time that we, as Black people, were not in an hour of chaos. But the culture, the art, the music, and the people are what I’ve always been…

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Litany For The Border takes place in Berwick this month

As anyone who has taken the East Coast Main Line between the east of Scotland and England will know, one of the finest parts of the journey is when the train curves around the estuary of the River Tweed, giving an incredible view of the ancient and sometime-contested border town on the far bank. If they’re able to see through the permanent rain lashing the carriage windows, travellers in February might be able to see the view lit up by a major new installation from artists Gareth Hudson and Toby Thirling, while those on the banks can also hear musical accompaniment by composer Eleanor Cully Boehringer. The collaboration takes place with light…

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The author of Human Punk and The Football Factory trilogy speaks to Tariq Goddard about class, Greek prisons and his new novella Peekaboo Bosh

John’s King’s The Football Factory was a novel for people who thought reading might not be for them, the power of those first discomforting pages as transportive as waking up in the Gulag with Solzhenitsyn or thumbing a lift with Kerouac. Beginning in the mind of a character literary fiction had taken care to avoid, the novel explored a sensibility that had traditionally been the province of pulp, its portraits as fully realised those found in McEwan or Barnes, but with none of that pair’s decorative courtesy or insistence that lead personae ought to be middle-class professionals….

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Brian Coney celebrates the raging isolationism and precision destructiveness of the Canadian jazz punk trio’s first essential album, Sex Mad

Sex Mad by Nomeansno

To parse the logic of Sex Mad, one must first inhabit the isolation of 1985 Victoria, British Columbia: a provincial capital where middle-class security doubled as a picturesque cemetery for the newly wed and nearly dead. Here, as the looming artifice of Expo 86 threatened to modernize the coast, the Pacific horizon acted as a literal dead-end and the Wright brothers’ basement as a laboratory. While the global hardcore scene was calcifying into a thudding caricature – The Exploited’s gurning pantomime merging with the metal-hocked bluster of the US crossover set – Rob and John Wright were busy…

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Jill Scott

To Whom This May Concern

A decade on from her last album, the influential neo-soul pioneer returns with an album of deft storytelling, rich jazz instrumentation and a cast of collaborators including Tierra Whack, Trombone Shorty and Maha Adachi Earth

There’s real power in the act of stepping back and taking a breather. In our fast-paced, mile-a-minute everyday, we’re not often afforded such an opportunity but having time and space can be transformative, especially in a creative context. For actress and singer Jill Scott, who makes her long-awaited return with her first album since 2015’s Woman, her new project is a product of having had that room to step back, live life and reflect on the world at large. The end…

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