Ula Nowak

Blindsided By Love: Sharon Van Etten Interviewed

After escaping an abusive relationship and earning a slew of high-profile supporters for her bare-all songwriting, Sharon Van Etten endured two years of homelessness while making her new album, Tramp. She speaks to Cian Traynor about toughening up and learning to camouflage heartache

What kind of Language is this? Kate Bush’s Aerial At 20

Two decades on Matthew Barton considers how the revered artist came back after a 12 year absence with an album that was well worth the wait

Marco Shuttle

Systhema

The Trouble With Menimalism: Rescuing Histories From The Cutting Room Floor

The BBC's recent minimalism series has turned the form into a narrow, exclusive Music For (Male) Musicians narrative. Jennifer Allan argues that the media needs to catch up with fast-evolving histories

What Does ‘Hard’ Mean, Anyway? Unpicking Dance Music’s Extremity Fetish

Ben Cardew looks at how dance music's obsession with hardness is an arms race that cannot be won. Image via Bangface.

Reel Sounds – Vol. 4: St. Vincent, Damien Dempsey And More At Doc’N Roll 2021

This year's Doc'n Roll festival grapples with artifice and authenticity as it returns to the big screen, finds Neil Fox

Bill Orcutt

A New Way To Pay Old Debts

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner’s August Punk & Hardcore Column!

In this month's column on the best in punk and hardcore, Noel Gardner bastes his ears with new music from Snõõper, Landowner, Parallel Worlds, Gimic, Fashion Change, Piñén, Spirito Di Lupo, Motorbike, JFA, as well as a reissue from early 90s Glaswegian group Dawson

Dig it: Mining The Deep Horizons Show In Middlesbrough

John Quin burrows away at a collaborative show in MIMA featuring work by Martin Creed, Theaster Gates, Hannah Rullmann and Faiza Ahmad Kahn

LIVE REPORT: The Human League

Touring in support of the kind of retrospective that the band, and their fans, truly deserve, Ian Wade finds the Human League showcasing their versatility and their steadfast commitment to being — as the record says — "a very British synthesizer group." (Photos by Maria Jefferis.)

Columnfortably Numb: Psych Rock For April Reviewed By JR Moores

JR Moores momentarily prises himself away from web-based lexicon challenges to bring a fresh batch of psych. Home page photograph: 50ft Wave

Hulubalang

Bunyi Bunyi Tumbal

An album of maximalist electronica from Indonesia proves an ambitious, if difficult listen for Alex Rigotti

Rum Music For May Reviewed By Jennifer Lucy Allan

Jennifer Lucy Allan's latest dispatch from the zone features an extraordinary compilation from a Shenzen label and bookshop, archival recordings of one of the greatest Māori singers of all time, and a special album from Cheri Knight

Betrayed By Our Nature: Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth

In a world where our relationship to safety is changing beyond repair, Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth offers a bombastic psychedelic escape. But, asks Kiran Acharya, are we emerging into heaven or hell?

Spool’s Out: Cassette Reviews For October By Daryl Worthington

Singing devices, an almighty snare drum rucus, and a council estate reimagined through an echo chamber. Daryl Worthington dives into this month’s cassettes

Electrifying Lady: Janelle Monáe At The Roundhouse

The Kansas-born Q.U.E.E.N. shows London she's the torch-bearer for a dying tradition of life-changing pop, says Simon Price