2025
Not gonna deny I am biased when it comes to promoting local artists, so I make no excuse for posting Rose Gray’s tribute to our shared home borough in her ethereal techno tune Hackney Wick.
Max Romeo’s career spanned the early days of ska through rocksteady to fiery roots reggae with a political conscience, peaking in the mid-’70s.
Protoje is flying the flag for old-skool reggae music from Jamaica, with tunes like this tribute to sound system culture, Big 45.
It’s so sad to learn of the death of Blondie’s drummer Clem Burke, another of the Class of ’77 who has left us far too soon. Is this his finest moment?
The New Pornographers wrote and recorded this wistful elegy for the long-lostd last payphone in New York City.
Here’s my latest playlist – a spring-flavoured selection from March, ranging from The Damned to Miles Davis, Roy Ayers to Fontaines DC. It starts with a bang, to mark the death of Brian James, before settling into a smooth soul groove, dipping into the Nineties now and then for what we once called ‘indie’ music, making a detour into the Seventies, and ending up back in the Fifties and Sixties with some fiery blues and cool jazz.
Ezra Collective became the first British jazz band to make a splash at the Brits in 2025, winning Best Group and making headlines with their plea to save the nation’s youth clubs.
Ebba Åsman’s smoky late-night jazz is adorned with crackles of electronica on this brief taster from the Swedish trombonist’s new album.
Beirut return with a beautifully mournful and melancholy ballad about a mystical South Seas island paradise that vanished from the map.
The thing about soul – soul in the musical sense – is that you’ve either got it or you haven’t. You only have to listen for a moment to know that Jerry Butler, who died this week, had soul.