In 2025, I got to watch some incredible performances from legendary artists like Stevie Wonder and Laaraji to pivotal bands who opened up new sonic worlds for me as a teenager like The Beta Band, The Flaming Lips and Tortoise to...
I’ve found myself drawn to more reflective and meditative music in 2025. It’s felt necessary to lose myself in carefully crafted soundscapes, to be absorbed in other sonic worlds. I have happily discovered albums that...
Once a week, my grandad would bring me a McDonald’s strawberry milkshake. For a poor kid in the eighties, this was a mega treat. I have a clear image of him, standing impressively large in the doorway to our kitchen...
Trellick Tower held between overhead wires, bright brittle chords, symbols crashing, accelerated greens, parkland amongst the scrubs, weeds amongst the rubble. Industrial skeletons, structures exposed, and a fiddle bows in a...
Hungover, jet-lagged, close to delirious in a vintage fashion boutique in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I don’t feel quite in my body, drifting somewhere beyond, behind. The hipster shop assistants suggest with their poise and cool...
Another year has passed and, once again, it’s been soundtracked by remarkable works of art from musicians still finding new ways to express themselves and connect with listeners. The albums compiled here, those I’ve...
2024 was another year of incredible live music, spanning intimate performances to crowd-pleasing festival sets to once-in-a-lifetime shows. I got to witness a 17-year-old guitar prodigy at the start of her career and a...
Second-hand records are stories. Each one contains some trace of its previous owners in its grooves. It could be a first kiss, maybe even ‘their song’, or the time she realised she could lose herself completely in...
Chester has so many Tudor buildings that wandering its streets feels like you’re surveying a giant dismembered zebra. Of course, you also have the ancient city walls, a 1000-year-old cathedral and plenty of Roman ruins too...
It’s hard to put into words what makes my friend Becca so special. Perhaps it’s easier to describe what it’s like to spend time in her company. Almost instantly, you are infected with her enthusiasm and...