Mala

How Pet Shop Boys Sold City Glamour to Queer Suburban Kids

John Grindrod discovered his sexuality in the streets of Croydon, always looking up the tracks to London, and argues that no other artist articulate this tension between city, suburbia and LGBT+ lives quite so beautifully as did Messrs Tennant and Lowe. This BST comes with a Pet Shop Boys Suburbs vs City playlist exclusive to our Subscriber Plus supporters.

Parquet Courts

Sunbathing Animal

Primal Scream to Play ‘XTRMNTR’ in Full on UK Tour

The Scottish band will celebrate the album in a run of shows this September

Things Learned At: Bestival

Karl Marx once described the Isle Of Wight as a 'little paradise', and it certainly was for this year's 'Summer of Love' themed Bestival. Christopher Sanders was on hand to revel in all the peace, love and harmony on offer.

Future Sound Of London

Environment Five

Jane Weaver Septiéme Sœur

The Fallen By Watch Bird (Expanded Edition)

Fifteen years ago, Jane Weaver's took a sharp left towards a strange and almost magical new sound. Now, she revisits that classic album with new material and a suite of reinterpretations by the likes of Demdike Stare

Back Spinning: Mariam Rezaei’s Favourite Music

Ahead of her performance at OUT.FEST, The Newcastle turntablist and composer tells Alastair Shuttleworth about some of the records that have shaped her career – from Pauline Oliveros to Missy Elliott.

Reissue of the Week: Billy Woods’ Today, I Wrote Nothing

As it receives a new 10th anniversary release, Zachary Lipez delves back into the metafiction, self-interruptions, complexitiesm digressions and inversions that made Billy Woods' Today, I Wrote Nothing a masterpiece

WATCH: Eric Chenaux Video

Canadian reins supreme with new video

This Is My Sermon: M Gira Of Swans Speaks To John Doran

Ahead of the release of magnificent new Swans album To Be Kind, Michael Gira speaks to John Doran about that LP's ferocious grooves, his role as band leader, Haitian history, the early days of the group, and his terror at the ever-increasing commercialisation of our society. Photography by Jennifer Church, Sebastien Sighell and Matias Coral

Opened Conversations: Heroines Of Sound Festival 2022

Esme Bennett presents her picks from the performances at this year's Heroines Of Sound festival in Berlin, dedicated to experimental and multifaceted works of the world's most forward-thinking female and non-binary composers. Photos by Ulla C. Binder

The City Surreal: How Underground Rap in the 2010s Located Truth in the Bizarre

Liam Inscoe-Jones explores the psychedelia inherent in the music of Danny Brown, Earl Sweatshirt and others, arguing that it reflects the increasingly surreal reality of working class life far more effectively than rock’s outdated cliches 

Warmduscher

Too Cold To Hold 

London miscreants draft in the voices of Irvine Welsh, Lianne La Havas and Jeshi for expansive new self-produced record

Sote

Sound System Persepolis

Ata Ebtekar's latest re-imagines the Iranian landscape as an ecstatic sonic geography

Ange Madame

Ange Madame

Angel-Ho is reborn as a twisted cabaret star on a record stuffed with eccentric and at times testing ideas, writes Skye Butchard

Afrofuturist Sonic Dreamworlds: On Black Panther

On place, history, and identity in Ryan Coogler's Black Panther film