From Tokyo speedbastards to small town Connecticut hardcore, to a band billing themselves as a two-piece despite one of them being a dog, Noel Gardner’s roundup of the best in global punk returns

Béton Armé, photo by Jesse Ramirez

Renaissance (La Vida Es Un Mus), the debut album by Montreal’s Béton Armé after six years and a fair whack of shorter releases, dropped just after the last one of these columns was published. Still, I don’t think it’s a big stress to review something whose sound is somewhere between four and five decades old two months late, all things considered.

I’m being facetious, slightly: Béton Armé play, in essence, skinhead punk rock in the classic fashion, and being Quebecois (Quebec Oi!s, if you…

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Tony Njoku

All Our Knives Are Always Sharp

With features from Tricky, James Massiah, and Ghostpoet, the latest album by the London-based composer-producer combines liquid coos with vaporous electronics, finds Eden Tizard

ALL OUR KNIVES ARE ALWAYS SHARP by Tony Njoku

The shadow cast by Tricky is a long one. But beyond the raspy, roach toke vocals, what does a Tricky tune look like? What shape does it take? It’s hard to say. You can point to the downtempo bass and murk, but that foundation leaves you with plenty of room to roam. His spirit can be felt in Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, Tirzah and Coby Sey, Young Echo and Space Afrika. The list goes on.

More than one of these artists show up…

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Farshad Akbari

Echoes of Nothingness

Squealing bleeps, synthesized winds and melancholy themes evoke an arid desert soundscape on the latest album from the Iranian-born electronic music composer

Echoes of Nothingness by Farshad Akbari

The sun, a skull, and a vast expanse of desert. The imagery that makes up the woven artwork for Farshad Akbari’s Echoes of Nothingness provides an intriguing signpost for the headspace that this music was created in and where it leads its listeners. Whilst the sand-filled skull might be a signifier, this isn’t the desert psychedelia of El Topo, or the paranoid insanity of Gerry. Nor is it the peculiar sprawl of Walkabout and Picnic at Hanging Rock. It arises, instead, from Akbari’s homeland of Iran, the same landscape depicted by…

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Ben Pester’s brilliantly surreal new book is a “horror novel about office work” where the monster is a business park. Here he takes us through the songs he played while writing and the songs the book seems to summon for him now it’s finished and (almost) out in the world

We should get it out of the way early that I am not cool. I have written a kind of horror novel about office work – about worrying if you are good enough as a parent, as a person, and about how we all seem to be disconnecting from reality in a permanent way. The monster in this story is a self-growing business park. The unseen fear is that of being…

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The major label is seeking $9.2 million in unpaid royalties, and a possible $36 million in further damages from copyright infringement

Sony Music Entertainment (SME) is suing Rhapsody International, the parent company of streaming platform Napster.

In a lawsuit filed last Friday (August 1) in Manhattan federal court, Sony claimed that Napster failed to make royalty payments for over a year, while continuing to include music from its catalogue on the streaming service. It’s now seeking $9.2 million in licensing fees and unpaid royalties from Napster, as well as a potential $36 million in damages from copyright infringement.

In March, the Web3 startup Infinite Reality acquired Napster in a deal worth $207 million. At that time, Rhapsody allegedly owed over $6.5 million to Sony Music…

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Originally announced last week, the event has been co-organised by Eno

Together For Palestine, the charity concert recently announced by Brian Eno, has now announced its lineup.

Taking place at London’s Wembley Arena on September 17, the gig will feature a rare live set by Eno, one of the event’s co-organisers, as well as live music from the likes of Damon Albarn, Hot Chip, Obongjayar, James Blake, Sampha, Cat Burns, King Krule and Greentea Peng. PinkPantheress, Rina Sayawama and Riz Ahmed are also among the figures who will make guest appearances at the gig.

Eno previously described Together For Palestine as “a night of music, reflection and hope”, and it has been organised amid Israel’s ongoing military assault on the Palestinian people in…

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A lean and raw live recording of Galaxie 500 captures the band just as they were on their ascent. A new mix of this previously bootleg-only performance makes a vital addition to their slender back catalogue, says W.B. Gooderham

Between 1988 and 1990, Galaxie 500 released a trio of essential albums – Today, On Fire, and This is Our Music – before geographical and personal differences saw them quietly implode just as their star seemed on the ascent. And while each of the studio albums are pretty much perfect in their own ways – and each is a subtle development on a minimalist sound that has been variously described as proto-slowcore, lo fi, shoegaze, dream pop and more – there is…

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Ethel Cain

Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Love You Forever

Combining the dream pop Americana of Preacher’s Daughter with the drones and experiments of Perverts, the Florida-born singer-songwriter-producer may just have come up with her most realised project to date, finds Cal Cashin

Illinois slowcore band Good Night & Good Morning were criminally underrated during their original lifespan. Their one full length LP Narrowing Type, an enveloping mix of hibernal slowcore, ambient guitar squall and twinkling vibraphone, was released in 2011 without much fanfare – completely at odds with the neon shimmer of the mainstream indie music of the period – and the group burnt out, vanished, disappeared without as much as a goodbye.

However, in the decade following Narrowing Type’s release, it has grown in…

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The news was confirmed via a death certificate that the late Black Sabbath singer’s daughter Aimee submitted in London

Photo by Ross Halfin

Ozzy Osbourne died as a result of a heart attack, it has been revealed.

The Black Sabbath frontman died on July 22 at the age of 76, and a death certificate submitted in London by his daughter Aimee has now revealed the cause of death, as The New York Times reports. The certificate also confirmed that Osbourne had been living with both coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s – he first publicly revealed the latter diagnosis in 2020.

Osbourne died just weeks after what was billed as his final concert at Villa Park in Birmingham, where Sabbath and Ozzy solo were joined by…

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The London day festival’s trio of afterparties will take place across Venue MOT, Ormside Projects and Avalon Cafe

London festival RALLY has announced three afterparties, kicking off nearby when the daytime event finishes.

Scheduled for August 23, the parties will take place at Venue MOT, Ormside Projects and Avalon Cafe, close to RALLY’s daytime home of Southwark Park. The Venue MOT event will feature sets from Pariah back-to-back with a special guest; FAUZIA; RHR; and more.

At Ormside Projects, Valentina Magaletti, Al Wootton, Nosedrip and Katie Shannon are on the bill, while New York-based rapper MIKE will DJ at the Avalon Cafe event.

RALLY takes place on August 23, with the likes of Floating Points, Moin, Astrid Sonne, MIKE, Ben UFO and Geordie…

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