In the return of his quarterly column exploring bold new takes on traditional music and sounds, Patrick Clarke speaks to the figures behind the new Black British Folk Collective about their story so far, and reviews eleven new records including harsh noise bodhran, an extraordinary Occitan freakout, Armenian duduk, Polish oberek and more

Bianca Wilson at Land In Our Names’ Birthday Folk Session. Photo by Fatima Yasmin

In October last year the musician Angeline Morrison, whose 2022 masterpiece The Sorrow Songs drew on deep research to present new folk music that centred the real Black British figures who are often written out of history, was invited to curate an all-day programme at Cecil Sharp House – the headquarters of the English Folk…

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Annie Hogan

Tongues In My Head

Intense but beguiling, former Marc Almond and Einstürzende Neubauten collaborator conjures sensual rituals and half-dirges

Annie Hogan is something of a quiet icon of goth and post-punk. A longtime friend of Marc Almond, she put on early Soft Cell shows and played with his dark cabaret side-project Marc and the Mambas. She appears on Barry Adamson’s seminal Moss Side Story and has worked with Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave, and several members of Einstürzende Neubauten. She’s also been releasing evocative solo music since the late 1980s, the latest of which, the six track album Tongues In My Head, strikes an elegant balance of light and shade.

Opening track ‘Alles Ist Verloren’ is measured but bleak, a taxonomy of a…

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Manchester’s Mandy, Indiana haver never sounded so direct, so fierce, so angry as on this, their second album, a record which forcefully calls out rape culture and toxic masculinity amidst racing polyrhythms and a barrage of noise

Photo Credit: Charles Gall

The striking cover art for Urgh depicts a human head recoiling in what looks like shock and agony. It’s one of “founder of human anatomy” Andreas Vesalius’s illustrations, rendered here in RGB layers by the artist Carnovsky, and a perfectly fitting image for an album that radiates abhorrence at recent events, both political and personal.

Developed over a rough couple of years for the band, with both singer Valentine Caulfield and drummer Alex Macdougall battling sickness and enduring multiple rounds of surgery,…

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The Liverpool festival will host ØXN, Mohammad Syfkhan and more this May

Outer Waves has confirmed plans for its second edition, taking place across two days this May.

Following its inaugural edition last year, the Liverpool festival will return once again with programming taking place across Invisible Wind Factory and Make North Docks in the city. This year’s lineup features the likes of ØXN, Mohammad Syfkhan, Dame Area, WaqWaq Kingdom, Lord Spikeheart, Sex Swing, Carmel Smickersgill, and Keeley Forsyth & Matthew Bourne, among others.

Beyond the music programming, the festival will also feature workshops, panel discussions and art installations, with full details on those set to be announced in the coming months.

Outer Waves will take place from 23 to 24 May 2026. Find…

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When There Is No Sun draws on the Arkestra’s 2022 album Living Sky, as well as a 2023 release celebrating Sun Ra’s poetry

Ricardo Villalobos has curated a new remix compilation of work by Sun Ra Arkestra.

The 12-track When There Is No Sun sees the likes of Underground Resistance, Calibre, Chez Damier, A Guy Called Gerald and Villalobos himself rework material from the Arkestra’s 2022 album Living Sky. The compilation also makes use of 2023 release My Words Are Music: A Celebration Of Sun Ra’s Poetry, which saw the likes of Saul Williams, Tara Middleton and Mahogany L. Browne deliver spoken word pieces inspired by the late musician’s poetry.

Listen to Underground Resistance’s Saul Williams-featuring take on ‘When Angels Speak’ below.

Omni Sound…

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The band’s second album is getting an updated release to mark its 45th anniversary

Clock DVA’s 1981 album Thirst is getting reissued.

Marking 45 years since its original release, the band’s second studio LP has been newly remastered especially for the updated edition. The reissue will also include live and alternate versions of tracks from the record.

Speaking about Thirst, Clock DVA’s Adi Newton said in a statement: “We set out to form a new sound combination; to combine acoustics and electronics, merging the German electronic wave with the edge of The Stooges, the avant-garde of the French GRM musique concrète, and the pioneering audio-visual creativity of The Velvet Underground. To create a harder form of electronic music with real energy.”

Listen to the…

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As he prepares to embark on his first ever headline music tour, Peter Capaldi takes Jude Rogers through 13 records that have defined his life, from the parallels between Talking Heads and Doctor Who, to the time he found himself in a room with Kate Bush

Photo by Ray Burmiston

Peter Capaldi’s latest role isn’t to fuck the fuck in (or indeed fuck the fuck off) like The Thick Of It’s Malcolm Tucker, or nail an outfit inspired by David Lynch and David Bowie as he travels through time as the Twelfth Doctor. It’s to sit on a tour bus from Newcastle to Edinburgh, Cardiff to Brighton, get behind a microphone, and sing.  “I’m not trying to be a pop star or…

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Harry Sword explores the world of the cult London shop and record label – one of the most vital imprints for adventurous leftfield heavy metal – offering ten entry points into one of the most beguiling and bewitching catalogues out there

Crypt of the Wizard have ploughed an idiosyncratic furrow through the strangest corners of deeply underground sonics of cleaving ferocity and beyond since 2015. The shop has become an idiosyncratic institution through sheer dogged belief in the power and glory of heavy metal. Setting up on Hackney Road – and expanding to found a label in 2018 and a festival starting in 2024 – CotW remains the only specialist metal emporium in London. Initially the brainchild of founders Charlie Woolley…

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Shackleton

Euphoria Bound

More dreamstates and haunted dancefloors from the Lancashire-born producer in permanent exile

Euphoria Bound by Shackleton

The gamification of the music industry isn’t a choice anymore, it is part of the hustle and grind. As the discourse flits from topic to topic like a hummingbird, the actual art behind the wall of commerce gets brutally atomised. Instead of democratising music, platforms like TikTok have turned musicians into manic clowns: aggressively performing their next trick for a dead-end of likes and disembodied yellow thumbs. Music is part of an extended human centipede of content. Sometimes, it’s the least important bit.

So when an artist is truly disconnected from the machine, it’s not just an enviable flex of self confidence, it suggests they are…

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The jungle producer’s second album for the label is out in March

Screenshot

Xylitol, the production moniker of Catherine Backhouse, has a new album on the way for Planet Mu.

Spanning 10 tracks, Blumenfantasie builds on the melodic jungle sounds of Backhouse’s previous LP for the label, 2024’s Anemones. Sarajevo-born minimal synth composer Miaux, whom the producer has described as “a kindred spirit in terms of her directness and melancholy, as well as her lightness of touch”, is listed as an influence on the album.

Expanding further, Backhouse said Miaux was the “single biggest inspiration in the shift between Anemones and Blumenfantasie and I think the shift of mood and palette is quite apparent, even if our music is very different in how it presents”….

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