Hey Colossus

Heaven Was Wild

A new record from the noise rock stalwarts will always have us pricking up our ears at tQ towers, but despite a newfound sense of joy and even a certain swagger, this latest album is far from the group’s peak, finds Laviea Thomas

Heaven Was Wild by Hey Colossus

When Hey Colossus released their debut album Hey Colossus Hates You in 2004, they turned heads, as one of the few bands experimenting with a sound that was both psychedelic and hardcore. Planting themselves at the heart of the noise rock scene, the group made it known that they were a product of roaring guitars and hellish screams. Their sound was raw, completely authentic and oozing with pure passion.

Now over…

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Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip takes us through the musical influences on his multifaceted new solo record Paris In The Spring, with the results compiled into a playlist exclusively for tQ Subscriber Plus tier members

Photo by Alexandra Cabral

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?

Alexis Taylor is best known as the frontman of longstanding electro-pop favourites Hot Chip, whose new solo album Paris In The Spring blends cosmic country and leftfield pop via collaborations with The Avalanches, Green Gartside, Air’s Nicholas Godin and many more,…

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Seals versus pedal-steels, a DIY symphony of garage rock & Super Nintendo synths, and a shadowy drone crew borrowing a 12 century church; Daryl Worthington dives into the tapes of March

Joanna Duda portrait by Patrycja Płanik

African Grey Parrots are disarming creatures to share time and space with. Their ability to mimic sounds isn’t as bewilderingly comprehensive as the lyrebird, and they don’t have the raucous squawks of macaws, but the symphony a group of them emits is stunning – a babble that sounds like a tapestry of radical synthesizer noise sewn with strands of human speech. They’re friendly creatures, seemingly fascinated by humans. Attract one’s attention and they’ll come close and start tentatively trying out their curious collection of sounds…

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Bill Callahan

My Days of 58

The artist FKA Smog keeps on trucking, now sounding warmer than ever

My Days of 58 by Bill Callahan

“You know I’ve been writing songs and singing them / For nigh on 30 years / I like it / I love it!” So sings Bill Callahan on ‘Pathol O.G.’, a knowing cowboy retrospective of his life and career. In some ways, the Texas bard formerly known as Smog has been doing the same thing for three decades: making records with consistently sharp portraiture, and at once funny and heartbreaking observations. His voice now – rich and deep like few others – is the same as it was in the mid-90s.

Anchored by the reliable strength of his songwriting, Callahan…

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Our beloved subscribers can nab the latest mammoth musical compendia now!

After the moderately quiet but of course far from silent month of January we’re back with a bumper blaster in this month’s Subscriber Playlist stakes, with about five hours of music from the likes of Cobrah, Hen Ogledd, Shackleton, Lana Del Rey, Bill Callahan, Kevin Richard Martin, Maria BC, Peaches, Loula Yorke, Jill Scott, Annie Hogan, Squarepusher, Kim Gordon, Robyn, Converge, Geologist, Alan Sparhawk, Sunn O))) and much much more. You can of course find out which of these made it to our music of the month list here. Just to recap, for our Subscriber and Subscriber Plus tier members, the Low Culture Podcast for February was on Missy Elliott’s Miss E… So…

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The Bong remains the same… almost. Kez Whelan talks to Dawn Terry of the newly resurrected Newcastle drone rock band who’ve undergone restructuring

From the ashes of legendary Newcastle drone metal band Bong comes Bong II, as vocalist & bassist Dawn Terry reunites with drummer Mike Smith whilst welcoming Smote’s Daniel Foggin on guitar.

“I very much wanted it to be a continuation – being the original Bong but minus one member, it’s not far off,” Dawn explains. “I really love what Amon Düül did with Amon Düül II, so it’s a little bit of a nod to them. There’s a certain absurdity already to the name of the band, Bong, and to add the II on the end, it adds a…

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The Early

I Want To Be Ready

New album by Philadelphia post-rock duo keeps things tight, amps up the tension

I Want To Be Ready by The Early

The songs across <i>I Want to be Ready</i> are in no rush to introduce themselves. They bask in their own ambient delight until they feel ready to shout. The Philadelphia outfit unfurl across an iridescent run of five tracks, each one more grandiose than the previous. Instruments and textures retreat as quickly as they appear, creating a distinct sense of dynamism. There’s a potent sense of urgency to some of these recordings, and a twinge of unease, yet it never strays into a Swans-like delirium. The mallet-driven verve of tracks like ‘Sand Clock’ grounds the record,…

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The acclaimed NME photographer guides Wyndham Wallace through a selection of pictures from his first book, which documents life in the indie trenches

kinickie Lauren Laverne Marie du Santiago Emmy-Kate Montrose NY 1995

What’s the missing link between Ricky Gervais and Kurt Cobain? The answer is Martyn Goodacre. In 1989, he was skint, a wannabe music photographer working in a stationery shop at the University of London where the Student Union’s Entertainments Officer began giving him passes for shows. Within just months, he’d prepared his portfolio, and though it took persistence – not to mention pockets of small change so he could pester their offices from his local phone box – he soon landed his first NME,/i> commissions.

Working out of a darkroom…

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Records from Hen Ogledd, Shackleton and Mandy, Indiana pop up among our picks of the past month’s best new music

While the depths of winter continue to punish myself and other readers in the UK, the past four weeks have been rich as ever in delivering standout full-length records and on-repeat new tracks as 2026 fully whirs into life. As ever, tQ’s staffers have pulled together to round up our favourite music of the past month, picking out meandering, percussive psychedelia from Shackleton, chaotic protest music by Hen Ogledd, abyssal ambient from Kevin Richard Martin, and plenty more.

Everything featured below, as well as all the other knockout music we’ve covered at tQ this month, will be compiled into an hours-long…

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Cal Cashin salutes the patchwork Goliath that is Circle X’s Prehistory; a post punk, post rock, post-everything-else masterpiece

Much has been written about the Transatlantic fallout of punk rock, with every crevice of the era meticulously scanned in the hope of a lost classic. Whilst Circle X’s fractious run, two albums and two EPs, over a span of seventeen years, might not signify complete unknown status to seasoned crate-diggers, their minimal place in the history books belies their brilliance. 

Formed in 1978, in Louisville, Kentucky – by brothers Rik and David Letendre, alongside Tony Pinotti and Bruce Witsiepe – Circle X emerged from the ashes of the city’s very first punk bands No Fun and The I-Holes, surfing the shockwaves created…

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