Doomgaze girls Blackwater Holylight blend doom-laden hard rock riffing with walls of psychedelic shoegaze on new song Heavy, Why?

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The Fat White Family return with a career-spanning live album recorded in a single day, led by this new recording of Hits Hits Hits.

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Charli XCX teams up with John Cale on an extraordinary spoken-word collaboration between two musicians born half a century apart.

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Here is a beautiful melange of interesting jazz-adjacent sounds by Romanian pianist Mischa Blanos, a new name to me.

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Lucinda Williams returns at the age of 72 with another state of the nation critique, The World’s Gone Wrong.

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To celebrate Samhain – or Hallowe’en if you prefer – here is my latest autumnal playlist. We start and finish with radically different versions of Ghost Town, from almost 45 years apart. In between there’s something old-but-new by T.Rex and more Glam from Sparks and Suzi Quatro. Plus a lot of steamy early-’70s funk and jazz-funk, and some Soft Cell in tribute to my old pal Dave. 

Lankum transform The Specials’ Ghost Town into an otherworldly Irish folk-drone-techno banger for a new generation. (more…)

Siouxsie Sioux channels her inner Shirley Bassey to sing the best Bond theme never to appear in a Bond movie.

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Dave Ball was one of the least starry rock stars I ever met. It’s probably why we became mates.

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Tom Misch’s jazzy house update on Roberta Flack’s 50-year-old chart topper Feel Like Makin’ Love is the kind of thing you might hear at a beach bar in Ibiza. 

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