Daryl Worthington heads to Riga in Latvia for the annual Skaņu Mežs festival, at which he’s immersed in a bath of “deviant and defiant” music and art

Laura Ortman by Artūrs Pavlovs

It’s long past midnight on a Saturday evening in Riga, Latvia, and HARPY are delivering a cleansing post-industrial ritual, an electro-crust punk sound bath which shocks synapses into hyper acuity rather than tranquility. The Providence, Rhode Island-based duo, Gyna Bootleg and Pippi Zornoza, begin their set with a yearning drone which evokes a broken synth impersonating a hurdy gurdy before a scream emerges from the void and sends a spasm through my core. From there the frenzy keeps building, bass hits with such intensity it could collapse the scaffolding holding…

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Mark Fell

Psychic Resynthesis

Tones drift apart, come together, converse and collide, on Mark Fell’s collaboration with Explore Ensemble

Psychic Resynthesis by Mark Fell

Listening to Psychic Resynthesis is like taking a long trek across a changing landscape. Each track moves through a series of plucked, spiky, and scratchy textures, moments of extended silence, and surprising harmonies. It’s not dissimilar to walking through nature and observing new flora at every turn, uncertain of what the next step will bring. Featuring ten tracks composed by Mark Fell and performed by Explore Ensemble, the album both feels desolate, like a solo hiker on a journey, while remaining rooted in the art of collaboration and communication. It shines most in the moments when all the pieces merge…

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John Freeman was not a fan of post-Witness rebirth Prince. Here he recalls happier days with Dirty Mind. The feature was first published in 2010

Forty-five years ago this month, Prince Rogers Nelson released his third album Dirty Mind. It was his first truly great album, and marked him out as a genre-striding, game changer. In a shade under 31 minutes, it fused rock, funk, soul and even punk. This was the sound of an artist deciding he could be everything he wanted to be – a short, sharp rocket up the arse of pre-MTV America.

Prince may be tiny, but he had huge balls back in 1980. Dirty Mind was the point at which he embraced rock music, and combined the…

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source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/prince-anniversary-dirty-mind-review/

Daniel Dylan Wray argues that the depiction of Steel City life in a little-known 1995 film acts as a “companion and contrast piece” to Jarvis Cocker & co’s commercial breakthrough, released the same year

Wild Dreams. Cool Ambition. Hard Cash. While these words may sound like something you’d associate with a high-octane blockbuster action flick, in reality they are the tagline to a 1995 documentary about life in Sheffield: Tales From A Hard City. 

Directed by Kim Flitcroft and filmed in 1993, it captures people navigating life in Sheffield as the city comes out of an era defined by struggle. In the new decade, steelworks have been knocked down and replaced by shopping centres, new sports stadiums and facilities have been built,…

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In this month’s antidote to the algorithm, Tim Burrows steps into the outer reaches of the music scene of his Essex seaside hometown and tries to get back before the tide turns

The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band on Blue Peter

Southend-on-Sea is defined by the surreal. Take the pier. Well over a mile long, it was built to stretch beyond the vast tidal mudflats of the Thames estuary to greet steamboats and their passengers in the shipping channel. Yet, thanks to the coming of the railways, for years boats have moored there only infrequently. Instead, it lives on as a nonsense structure, a promenade of pointlessness, and is glorious for it. 

The absurdist pier sets other instances of the ludicrous in motion. Stupidly…

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The Dwarfs of East Agouza

Sasquatch Landslide

The Cairo trio of Maurice Louca, Sam Shalabi and Alan Bishop leave the maps behind, heading off into an uncharted sonic territory between post-improvisation, contemporary folk and electronica

Sasquatch Landslide by The Dwarfs Of East Agouza

The Dwarfs of East Agouza is a trio that bridges myth and daily life. Through improvisation and genre-blending, they challenge expectations for music tied to a specific place. The group features Maurice Louca (known for Lehkfa, Karkhana, and his solo-ensemble projects), Alan Bishop (of Sun City Girls and Sublime Frequencies), and Sam Shalabi (of Land of Kush and Karkhana). 

The band’s name evokes a fairy tale, so listeners may expect fantasy instead of music grounded in post-improvisation, contemporary folk and electronica. However,…

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The German robots will play shows in London, Manchester, Belfast, Glasgow and more

Kraftwerk have announced a raft of UK and Ireland tour dates for 2026.

The German group will bring their 3D concert series, taking place under the ‘Multimedia’ banner, to Dublin’s Bord Gáis Energy Theatre on May 17, before shows in Belfast, Manchester, Glasgow, Sheffield, London, Liverpool and Edinburg, among other cities. The tour will take in 15 shows in total.

Headed up by original band member Ralf Hütter, the group last performed in the UK in June, for a headline slot at Milton Keynes’ Forever Now Festival. This is their first full tour of the UK and Ireland in nine years.

Tickets will go on sale at 9am BST next Friday…

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The LP was written and recorded with his partner, Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland

Screenshot

Beverly Glenn-Copeland is releasing a new album, Laughter In Summer.

The nine-track LP was written and recorded together with the artist’s partner, Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland, and marks his first release of new material since announcing a diagnosis of dementia late last year. It follows 2023 album The Ones Ahead.

Two new singles from the record, ‘Children’s Anthem’ and ‘Let Us Dance (Movement One)’, have been released alongside the announcement of Laughter In Summer. You can listen to both below.

Transgressive will release Laughter In Summer on February 6, 2026.

Laughter In Summer by Beverly Glenn-Copeland
…

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Caribou, caroline and Hyperdub are among the latest acts and imprints to sign up to geo-block their music from streaming services in the country

Screenshot

No Music For Genocide, the boycott campaign that is encouraging musicians and record labels to geo-block their back catalogues from streaming platforms in Israel, now has more than 1000 backers.

Launched last month with the backing of more than 400 artists and imprints, the initiative encourages people to remove their music “from apartheid Israel as it commits genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank”. Caribou, caroline, Lorde, Obongjayar, Duval Timothy, Skee Mask, Dry Cleaning, KMRU, Laurel Halo, Orbital and Fatima Al Qadiri are among the latest artists to back the campaign, while labels such…

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Richard Ashcroft

Lovin’ You

The Verve singer returns, but he’s treading water and long out of ideas, finds J.R. Moores

How little music must one have been exposed to in order to actually enjoy the recent comeback single from this Lucky Man?

Surely this drivel would appeal only to those who are so culturally compliant that their favourite TV programme is The Real Housewives Of Vacuityville. As for the paintings on their living room walls? ‘Nice Set Of Pins #236 (working title)’ by Jack Vettriano. Rest in peace, big man. Or, as he was also known, Pabno Picassno. Their favourite novel of the year so far? Dan Brown’s airport bothering The Secretest Secret Of Most Secretive Secretions. The spiciest meal consumed by such incurious…

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