FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Natalie Imbruglia

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Rankin

 

Natalie Imbruglia

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I am going to come to…

some new interviews with the amazing and awe-inspiring Natalie Imbruglia. I have a very special relationship with her music. I have been a fan since the 1990s. One of my favourite albums from the decade is her debut, Left of the Middle (1997). She has a new album coming out soon. Algorithm will be released on 4th September. That is one I will definitely be getting. You can pre-order it here. She has U.K. dates this and next month before flying to her native Australia. I would love to see her live, as I have been a fan for decades and love everything she puts out. I am going to come to a 2022 interview before bringing things right up to date. Imbruglia released her album, Firebird, in 2021. It was seen as a sort of a return, even though she had gone nowhere and was active. It came six years after Male. Algorithm comes five years after her current album. This is an artist who puts everything into her music. Arguably, she is at her strongest and most confident now. I do want to head back to 2022 and the twenty-fifth anniversary of her best-known song, Torn. The Forty-Five spoke with Natalie Imbruglia for this fantastic interview:

“It’s been 25 years since ‘Left of The Middle’. Can you remember what your hopes for the album were before you released it?

There’s only a first time once. What was beautiful, was that the world was my oyster. I felt so privileged to have a record deal. Everything was ahead of me. And although yes, I’d been on Neighbours and there was the fear of being another person doing music from a soap. But there was this incredible confidence and joy. People talk about manifesting, it was easier to do it because you had no experience of living up to a previous album. I thought: I can be anything, I could do anything. And I was a sponge, everyone I wrote with was teaching me something I had the opportunity to work with Mark Goldenberg – I loved his work with Eels. And, you know, there was Gwen Stefani and Alanis Morissette and I was like, ‘Oh my God, these chicks are so cool!’ And so it was actually really wonderful. You can’t get that back because you know too much. And so, yeah, fond memories.

I was at the recent Olivia Rodrigo show where you popped up to perform ‘Torn’ with her. It must be cool to be influencing this new gen of artists?

It was very flattering to be asked. Olivia’s a good person. It makes me happy that young girls have people like that to look up to. You could see the respect that we both had for each other. We were literally singing to each other and didn’t want to look at the audience because I was giving props to her, and she was giving props to me. It was so lovely.

Was there anyone you looked up to, that offered you support when you were coming up?

Not on the daily, but the person that springs to mind is Tori Amos. I remember meeting her in the bathroom at her show and giving her a rose quartz crystal and having beautiful conversations with her. She was someone I looked up to immensely, who also seemed to have a quirky spiritual energy – she was into crystals and stuff like me.

I would also say Kylie. I grew up watching her on on Neighbours, and wanting to do what she did and obviously followed in her footsteps. She’s always been incredibly supportive, and gracious, and kind. And even now, when my album came out, she sent me a little message. So definitely, Kylie.

I was watching an old interview with you on TFI Friday where Chris Evans keeps referencing the fact that you wouldn’t date him. Was this sort of thing just par for the course or did it make you anxious doing interviews back then?

I want to give props to Chris. He got me on the show because what had happened was he’d started the whole ‘Natalie didn’t write ‘Torn” thing on the radio. And it was interesting timing because I had just shut him down for a dinner date. Anyway, me being the feisty Aussie that I am, I saw him in a pub and I went up to him and got in his face and was like, ‘You owe me an apology’. He looked terrified and I was like, ‘Do you realise what you did?’ So he gave the most genuine, look-me-in-the-eye apology, and then got me on the show and tried to correct that. So knowing what I’ve just told you, it’s actually a very sweet thing that he did, because he kind of owned it and was trying to repair that damage. But 100% you’re right. Recently, I had to look back through some old press articles – and we can’t put all of this on Chris, this is an industry that certain things were a given – but it’s quite shocking now to look back at some of those old articles. I was made of pretty tough stuff, I just took it on the chin but I think what you see in that ‘Torn’ video is someone taking ownership after being exploited in numerous situations and going ‘I don’t need to show my body. I’m gonna draw a line in the sand’. There were numerous occasions I was called difficult because of that, because I wouldn’t wear a dress. I wanted to cover up and it didn’t go down well.

People like Billie Eilish have taken a similar stance – covering up because they don’t want their body to be a talking point

She’s able to do it – I got called difficult – but evolution is a great thing. They’ve also got to do deal with social media and things that I didn’t have to so it’s all relative. For the things that we’ve corrected, there’s a whole new wave of other shit that teenagers have to deal with for mental health. I was the right person for it to happen to because I’m very strong. And I was able to say no, and I didn’t really care if people called me difficult.

And now young artists like Beabadoobee are citing you as a style icon.

Listen, if you stick around long enough, you come back in flavour. I’m just like, yes! The 90s are trending right when I need them to be! This is amazing! The truth of it is just that I just wanted to be comfortable. And I wanted to wear my own clothes. I think I was also going through curiosity about my sexuality, which is more evident to me now when I look at myself back then. That exploration was a period of time that I had to go through very privately – another thing that people can go through a lot more openly now. Yeah, there’s lots of things going on there. But for people to say I’m this style icon, it’s just so amazing and cute to me. I was wearing the daggiest army pants, they weren’t event a cool brand. I think that T-shirt’s a cheap Portobello Market print shirt. The cool part was probably from a stylist, which was the Maharishi jacket because they were all the rage. And eventually I ordered Maharishi trousers”.

Let’s move things to this year. Algorithm is going to be a wonderful album from this music queen. Someone who has been releasing brilliant material for almost thirty years now. And yet the quality does not dip! It is great that Natalie Imbruglia clearly had a load of fun making this album. As we learn from this Rolling Stone Australia article, this is her at her most relaxed and free I feel:

“The record, titled, Algorithm, will arrive on September 4th.

“On this record I chose to work with collaborators who also co-produce, so from start to finish we were all so invested in every song,” Imbruglia says. “I really hope that people get as much joy from listening to this record as we did making it. And that they dance their arses off.

“This was by far the most fun I’ve ever had making a record. It also happened to coincide with the most challenging time I’ve had with my mental health. This is the beauty of music and artistic expression. You can take something dark and turn it into light”.

I will end with a recent interview with The Times, as there are some interesting things from that chat to discuss. However, The Guardian fired some reader questions at Natalie Imbruglia for their feature. It is a more light and quick-fire thing, but there are some cool answers that reveal different sides and facets to Imbruglia:

“Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Alanis Morissette because, in my earlier career, she was a big influence on me and had a feistiness that you didn’t see much of in women in the industry. Also, she has been very vocal about mental health issues.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Not having the ability to say sorry when they’re wrong.

What was your most embarrassing moment?
Forgetting the words to my own songs on stage. I’m a very good mumbler of my own songs. You’d be surprised how few people notice – if you smile and do it confidently, they’re none the wiser.

What keeps you awake at night?
I worry a lot about how to juggle being a single parent and working – scheduling keeps me up at night!

What would your superpower be?
I’d clone myself so I could work and be with my son at the same time.

What makes you unhappy?
Living in England when there are too many grey days in a row.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?
A hairdresser through the week and a star on the weekends.

What was the last lie that you told?
It was to do with Santa Claus around Christmastime.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?
Junk food – Haribos, Wotsits”.

I do want to end with this interview from The Times. There is discussion around her debut single, Torn, and misogyny that was around in the 1990s. How it must have been a challenge for a young woman coming through in that decade. Now, Imbruglia lives this quieter and more peaceful life and is making some of the best music of her career, without all that toxicity that came when she started out. Though there is still a lot of ageism in music, especially when it comes to festival bookings and women over forty and what stations their music appears on:

“It’s such a blessing,” Imbruglia says of the mega-hit single that reached a billion streams on Spotify last year. “I don’t even know how to put into words the gifts of that song landing. I still feel so connected to it. It changed my life.”

Torn was released in 1997 to worldwide success, topping the US Billboard chart for 11 weeks in 1998. As a teenager in that decade, if you hadn’t been “all out of faith” and “lying naked on the floor”, were you even a teenager at all?

She made the album during a challenging period for her mental health, and while the melodies are upbeat, the lyrics are darker. The lead single, Upside Down, which was released in April, is about finding herself unable to “power through” any more. “What you resist persists,” she says. “I’ve done a lot of spiritual work in my life, a lot of meditation study, and I have learnt that anything you have resistance to, it’s like a tsunami coming at you.”

As was perimenopause, which she hit five years ago and her experience of which has powered the lyrics of several tracks. “Let’s just say it was a grieving process. I was really angry. I fell off a cliff. It felt like someone had taken some of my personality. I’d talk about it and people would try to hush me. Now I’m very outspoken. Thank God for Davina McCall — I bumped into her in a restaurant at the time. I was like, ‘Tell me everything!’ It’s really important that we speak up and stop going, ‘Oh, I just breezed through it.’ How is that helping anyone? Beware, women, if you start saying, ‘I just don’t feel like myself.’ I said that for a year before I addressed anything.”

Her main symptoms were anxiety and anger. “I probably hurt a lot of people that I wish I hadn’t, but until you have the tools and the HRT cream… HRT worked, absolutely. But how wonderful that this is not a shameful topic or a taboo subject. Imagine how it was for our mothers.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Amar Daved

Rather than worrying about revealing too much on the album, she found the experience of making it cathartic. Her debut album, Left of the Middle (1997), sold more than seven million copies worldwide and the pressure to equal it was immense. Eventually that led to a harrowing period of writer’s block. “The best thing that has happened for my songwriting is having writer’s block for five years,” she says. “I got dropped by a label, had a nervous breakdown and was convinced the universe was telling me I shouldn’t be doing this. Not pretty. So I tried to go to LA and be an actress [she starred in Johnny English with Rowan Atkinson in 2003], and that was worse. Epic fail.”

Scarred by her experiences, she was adamant that Algorithm be self-funded and so set up her own label, Landgirl Records, to release it. “I was asking my son what he learnt at school that day and he taught me all about land girls,” she says, explaining the name.

History having revealed the extent to which many female stars were treated badly in the Nineties, I ask how the decade was for her. Was it horrifically sexist? “It was definitely sexist, but I certainly don’t want the tone of this to come across as me being a victim.” She recalls being careful in interviews, knowing that, as a woman, a funny or ironic comment might be twisted. “I was quite feisty and funny but I had to suppress that. So I was very vanilla. Maybe that got me a reputation for being a bit of a diva because I wasn’t revealing of myself. So then a story gets made up about you and how you are.”

It’s sad to learn that she was censoring herself, but unsurprising that she refuses to play the victim. Even at 22, Imbruglia seemed like a woman who knew her own mind. Indeed, if the lyrics of Torn are burnt into the memory, so too is the video, produced during an era when lads’ mags were at their peak and female celebrities were highly sexualised, and featuring Imbruglia dressed like she was off to the small Tesco to pick up a pint of milk, wearing combat trousers, a washed-out T-shirt and a hoodie. With her short hair and face devoid of make-up, she looked like the tomboy next door.

Today she lives quietly in Oxfordshire. “On a farm. In the middle of nowhere,” she says with a grin. “I’m not in the London scene any more. It’s great!” As is being 51. “It’s easier for me, being an older woman. Maybe that’s the opposite to how a lot of women feel, but when you’re given a hard time about the way you look — bitchiness, jealousy — it can be used against you. I used to get asked by journalists if I thought I got here because of the way I look, and I wasn’t allowed to be angry. I had to cleverly answer the question. They don’t give you as hard a time when you get older. I’m actually more comfortable in my skin at this age and haven’t had much problem with getting a wrinkle here and there. It doesn’t bother me. I like this age. I like the wisdom that comes with it”.

I have so much love and respect for Natalie Imbruglia. This amazing and powerful woman who has had this varied and successful career, I am really looking forward to seeing what Algorithm offers! The singles released from it so far are up there with the best stuff she has ever done. Aside from some festival appearances, it would be great if there were any gigs later in the year. Maybe a London date would be awesome, as this is someone I would really love to see live. There is no doubt that Natalie Imbruglia is one of the all-time best artists and has maintained this awesome career. Arguably hitting a new peak right now, I wanted to spend some time showing my appreciation…

OF this musical titan.

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Follow Natalie Imbruglia

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: The Diva (The Red Shoes)/Cathy/Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush and Lindsay Kemp on the set of her 1993 short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve (which was loosely inspired by the 1948 film, The Red Shoes, which share the title of Bush’s 1993 album)/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

 

The Diva (The Red Shoes)/Cathy/Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

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THIS is the penultimate…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

edition of a series that looks at the amazing characters in Kate Bush’s song. I am featuring one track from The Kick Inside for this edition and another in the final one. This inclusion is the most famous and popular song from her debut album. It is Wuthering Heights and Cathy and Heathcliff. These doomed lovers. The ghost of Cathy at Wuthering Heights and trying to grab Heathcliff’s soul, it is one of Kate Bush’s most extraordinary songs. A lot to talk about around this track. I am starting out with The Diva from The Red Shoes’ title track. These are the opening lines from The Red Shoes: “Oh she move like the Diva do/I said “I’d love to dance like you.”/She said “just take off my red shoes/Put them on and your dream’ll come true”. In terms of who this character is, The Diva in the 1948 classic film The Red Shoes is the aspiring ballerina Victoria ‘Vicky’ Page. She was played by the late great Moira Shearer, a renowned Scottish ballet dancer and actress. I will come to a 1993 interview with Kate Bush. I do want to start out with a look at the 1948 film that influenced Kate Bush. It is not unusual for artists to write songs or albums based around a film. Many people will not know about The Red Shoes and its origins. The BFI published an article in 2023 around their Exhibition, The Red Shoes: Behind the Mirror. Among the artefacts included are the ballet shoes worn by Moira Shearer:

“Alexander Korda’s original vision for The Red Shoes

Our story starts in 1937. Leading producer Alexander Korda is searching for his next box office success. It will star his future wife, Merle Oberon. Industry rumours start to swirl of a film “derived from an old legend of a girl who wore red shoes which made her dance unceasingly”.

Korda recruits a series of writers to bring his vision to life. Unhappy with each new version of the script, Korda finally abandons the project in 1939, and in the mid-1940s he sells the concept to Powell and Pressburger. They transform the story. Travelling to Andersen’s home in Odense, the writer-directors imagine a film much closer to the passion and violence of its Danish source.

London-based artist Michelle Williams Gamaker has created a new piece for the exhibition, exploring this early genesis of The Red Shoes story. Oberon (2023) responds to a photographic series in the BFI’s collection, taken at around the time that Korda was developing the script for The Red Shoes.

Oberon had a complex relationship with her visual identity in these years. Make-up and lighting were used to mask the physical trauma of a car accident in 1937. These techniques also lightened her skin on camera. Williams Gamaker interprets the script as a love letter from Korda to Oberon, with Korda speaking the lines of Konstantin – an early version of ballet impresario Boris Lermontov – during a fictional make-up test. The artist reflects on the spaces of casting and screen testing beyond the archival photographs, and the relationships that extend behind the camera to the individuals (mostly men) who held Oberon’s career and her image in their power.

A life-changing role for Moira Shearer

Moira Shearer in costume for the 1942 Sadler’s Wells production of The QuestPhotographed by Anthony. Moira Shearer’s ArchiveMoira Shearer’s pink pointe shoes, and note cards from her time at Sadler’s WellsMoira Shearer’s Archive. Photo: Tim Whitby

By 1946, Powell and Pressburger had a clear vision of the story that they wanted to tell, and were ready to start planning The Red Shoes in detail. It would centre on the story of a young woman, Victoria Page, falling in love: with her art form and with a fellow artist. Powell and Pressburger were aware that its success would depend on the creativity of an established performer to occupy this central role.

In Powell’s eyes, Scottish-born dancer Moira Shearer was the very embodiment of Page. On the brink of international success as a dancer, she was initially hesitant to step into the world of film and declined the offer a number of times. Powell was insistent – the role belonged to Shearer. It took nearly a year, but the announcement of her acceptance came in 1947.

The role would be both career and life changing for Shearer. She was catapulted almost overnight to global stardom, with a tour of the USA following the film’s box office success. Shearer’s image was used to represent the film internationally, and her burnished auburn hair was associated with the unfettered creativity of the scarlet slippers.

The Red Shoes explores the world of a fictional ballet company – the Ballet Lermontov. During a residency in Monte Carlo, the company’s defining production is ‘The Ballet of the Red Shoes’: a reworking of the Andersen fairytale. Cast in the lead role of ‘The Girl’, Vicky Page finds that art mirrors real life. Her desire for artistic fulfilment is challenged when she finds herself falling in love with composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and is asked to make a choice between the part she plays and the life she loves.

The Ballet of the Red Shoes

Within the exhibition we invite you to step over the threshold between a real and imagined world, and into the shoes of Vicky Page. Music, art, light and dance magically combine to transport us, in Powell’s words, “inside the heads of two people who were falling in love”.

The famous ‘Ballet of the Red Shoes’ is presented as a series of ‘scenes’, drawing on the work of designer Hein Heckroth and sketch artist Ivor Beddoes, who, with the help of art director Arthur Lawson, helped to bring Powell and Pressburger’s vision to life. Just as the film is shot out of sequence, carefully pieced together in the editing suite, so too this room of the exhibition is structured thematically, allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the filmmaking process.

The legacy of The Red Shoes

Powell and Pressburger’s totemic red slippers, imbued with a magic that inhabits their wearer, never truly stopped dancing. In interview, Shearer was honest about the mental and physical toll that the production took on her. But just as Vicky returned in the final scenes of The Red Shoes to perform for her company director, so too Shearer seemed unable to resist the possibility of another performance with Powell and Pressburger. She returned in both The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and in Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960). In Shearer, not only the red shoes, but the Girl, danced on.

When Shearer finally hung up her pointes, the magic of The Red Shoes went on to inspire generations of creative practitioners. In 1993, musician Kate Bush created her studio album The Red Shoes, followed by an extended music video, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. More recently, Matthew Bourne’s production of The Red Shoes (2016) brought together Powell and Pressburger’s story with the music of Bernard Herrmann. Victoria Page was danced by Ashley Shaw. With the support of Bourne’s choreography and Lez Brotherston’s designs, Shaw took on the demanding role to bring the blood-red pointes to life for new audiences”.

The Red Shoes was released as a single and reached twenty-one in the U.K. It is the lead track of the short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve. Although it premiered at the London Film Festival in November 1993 (around the time of the release of The Red Shoes), it got a wider cinematic release in May 1994. I have said before how The Line, the Cross and the Curve is arguably the first visual album by a female artist. Bush inspired by this classic 1948 film and producing her own version. Bush re-recorded The Red Shoes for 2011’s Director’s Cut. I think I prefer the 1993 original, as there is more energy to it. Beautiful instrumentation. Gaumont d’Oliveira, Paddy Bush and Justin Vali among the musicians who bring alive this fantastic track. Thinking of The Red Shoes, I don’t think that many people know about the 1948 film. Kate Bush was a fan of it and Michael Powell. The two were going to work together on a project shortly before his death (in 1990). He is immortalised in Moments of Pleasure from The Red Shoes. Thinking of The Diva and that mention in The Red Shoes’ title track, I did want to look at the Powell- Pressburger film and its legacy. Another article from the BFI, it is clear that The Red Shoes has a big modern legacy:

“It’s a spectacular rejection of realism

The Red Shoes (1948) followed a tremendous run of films by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Between 1943 and 1947, they made The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, “I Know Where I’m Going!”, A Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus. For their next trick, they took a decisive step away from the tendency towards realism in postwar cinema, pushing the emotional expressiveness of Technicolor photography yet further, in collaboration with genius cinematographer Jack Cardiff.

Pressburger had originally worked on the idea for the film before the war. Producer Alexander Korda had hired him to write a script that combined the story of the dancer Nijinsky, and his time at Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, with the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale about enchanted shoes that force the wearer to dance on and on until death. He’d also instructed Pressburger to write a role for Merle Oberon, but as that passion cooled, so did the producer’s interest in the film.

IN THIS PHOTO: Moira Stewart (who played Victoria Page) in The Red Shoes/PHOTO CREDIT: Hulton Deutsch

It’s about the agony of artistic expression

Lermontov chides Vicky: “Don’t forget, a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit.” Few films reveal, either as cruelly or as eloquently as this one, the sacrifices that artists make. We see more bruising rehearsals than standing ovations, and yet, the Ballet Lermontov dances on.

Page’s final, anguished choice between love and art only makes tangible the decision that Lermontov clearly made long ago. Walbrook, who plays him so brilliantly, was gay, as was Diaghilev. Lermontov knows nothing of Page’s “charms” and cares less, he says; his “family” is his company, and he asserts that: “The dancer who relies on the comforts of human love will never be a great dancer. Never!”

As certain critics have noted, there is a striking gay subtext to The Red Shoes, but it is a tragic one – Lermontov is a lonely figure whose obsessive nature demonstrates the danger of living for art rather than love.

From Scorsese to La La Land, its influence lives on

The Red Shoes is one of the most widely influential movies of all time. Regularly hailed as a favourite in critics’ polls and by directors including Martin Scorsese (“It’s one of the true miracles of film history”), Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma, it has also been reworked by artists outside the cinema. Kate Bush’s 1993 album The Red Shoes was inspired by the film, for example. Coming full circle, Matthew Bourne choreographed the film as a ballet at Sadler’s Wells in 2017.

The film also has an afterlife in the classic Hollywood musical. Gene Kelly screened the film multiple times for the producers of An American in Paris (1951), as he persuaded them to let him include a ballet sequence in the film. He did, and in the following year’s Singin’ in the Rain too. The popularity of the ballet sequence as a genre trope was underlined when Damien Chazelle included one in his pastiche La La Land (2016).

There are several, pointed, references to the film in a very different musical, the 1985 Broadway adaptation A Chorus Line. That’s not a direct cinematic influence but rather a testament to the film’s impact on generations of girls. The book for that musical was based on interviews with New York dancers, several of whom confided that The Red Shoes inspired their choice of career.

In a 1970 interview with the New York Times, Shearer expressed a little self-deprecating regret on this score: “I’m a bit embarrassed whenever I hear how many girls were influenced by it. The dancing in it wasn’t terribly good”.

Prior to moving to the second part of this feature, I do want to source a 1993 interview with Kate Bush. The Red Shoes arrived at a difficult time. When there was this balancing of personal loss and change. Her mother died in 1992. Her long-term relationship with Del Palmer ended, and she faced her first real creative and commercial slump. The Red Shoes’ production quite plasticky and compacted. Bush wanted to reapproach some of the songs from the 1993 album in 2011. Give the songs more space. 1993 was a pivotal year. She id pack quite a lot in, though her next album would not arrive until 2005. That is when Aerial was released. Nick Coleman interviewed Kate Bush for Time Out in November 1993. I did want to highlight the section where we get mention of The Red Shoes film:

“She pours tea and places herself on the edge of her chair. She is small, not minute, and erect. One booted leg crosses the other and bumps gently up and down. She cocks her head and waits. She is courteous, cool and suspicious.

My friend Catherine has never opened any post addressed to Kate Bush. There was, however, a letter that came addressed merely to 'Catherine '. So Catherine opened it. Inside was a lot of stream-of-consciousness stuff about dreams, and about how the writer was watching Catherine. So Catherine snorted, noted the postmark and forgot about it. Then another letter arrived, identically addressed, from the same postal region; then another, and another, each of them increasingly weird and disturbing. Sometimes three would arrive in a day. And it so happened that on the day that Catherine decided to go to the police, a letter arrived that included a reference to Catherine's poetry and music, neither of which are big with Catherine. Also, the letter included the appellation Kate.'

'It's so nice to talk about my work for once,' she says. By this she means she's glad we've started by talking about the great film director Michael Powell and his influence on her, which is signally manifest in the title track of her new album 'The Red Shoes'.

'The Red Shoes' is a ballet film made by Powell and Emeric Pressburger in 1948, telling the story of a dancer who is torn between the demands of a great impresario, who can help her to become an artist of destiny, and those of her composer/husband, who can bring her happiness. The story elides an old fairy tale and a take on the power struggle that raged between the dancer Nijinsky and Diaghilev, first director of the Ballet Russe. Bush says the song evolved out of a feeling she had one day at the piano of music running away with itself. The image in her mind 'was like horses galloping and running away, with the horses turned into running feet, and then shoes galloping away with themselves'. Which corresponded, conveniently enough, with the key fairy-tale element in the Powell film: the red pumps worn by the tragic ballerina, which are imbued with a magic that carries their wearer off in a terrible outpouring of expressiveness.

Bush contacted Powell shortly before he died, 'to see whether he'd be interested in working with me. He was the most charming man, so charming. He wanted to hear my music, so I sent him some cassettes and we exchanged letters occasionally, and I got a chance to meet him not so long before he died. He left a really strong impression on me, as much as a person as for his work. He was just one of those very special spirits, almost magical in a way. Left me with a big influence.'

Which makes some kind of sense. Powell's super-rich three-strip Technicolor, his English-ness, his 'expressiveness', his interest in the shadows cast by daylight; even, you could argue, his thematic preoccupation with islands, solitary souls and the unconfined spirit; these are some of Bush's favourite things.

'His work is just so... so beautiful,' says Kate, in her tiniest voice.

Meaning what, exactly?

'Well, there's such heart in his films. The way he portrayed women... that was particularly good and very interesting. His women are strong and they're treated as people...'

That's one kind of beauty.

'The heart, I think, is the main beauty. This human quality he has. Although there's clever shots in his films, they're not really used for effect, to be clever. They're used for an emotional effect. I'd call that a human quality. Like vulnerability. Also, I like the emotional qualities of the characters. I suppose in one way they're very English ...'

To combine her interest in Powell with her lust for new directions, and perhaps to solve one or two promotional problems, Bush has directed a 40-minute film interpreting six songs from the excellent 'Red Shoes' album. It will be premiered at the London Film Festival.

'I'll be very interested to see what people make of it. To see whether they regard it as a long promo video or as a short film,' she says.

Where do your stories come from?

'Oh, all kinds of sources but generally they come down to people. People's ideas or works. Films, books, they all lead back to someone else's ideas, which in turn lead back to someone's else's ideas...'

I've always assumed you must be a bit of an Angela Carter fan.

'Um, no. I don't think I know her stuff.'

She wrote 'Company Of Wolves' and was big, I believe, on pomegranates, the predatory nature of nature, the heat of female sexuality; that sort of thing.

'Oh, yes.' Bush smiles, and her dimple disappears.

Other post addressed to Kate Bush arrived which went unopened. Then one day a letter came for the attention of Catherine Earnshaw. This being ambiguous, Catherine opened it just to make sure. Inside was a note from a Harley Street doctor indicating that Catherine was fit as a fiddle. This was good news. Unfortunately, Catherine had not been to see a Harley Street doctor. She hastily sent the letter on to Bush's record company, blushing at her daftness in not remembering immediately that Catherine Earnshaw is the name of the storm-tossed tragic heroine of 'Wuthering Heights '.

You're 35 and you've been doing this since you were a teenager. How have you changed?

'I think I've changed quite a lot. Essentially I'm still the same person but I suppose I've grown up a lot, and learned a lot.'

What's made you grow up the most?

'You get lots of disappointments. I'm not sure that they make you grow up but they make you question intentions.' She pauses. 'But life is what makes you grow up’”.

From a song on an album influenced by a 1948 film, we now move to a stunning single influenced by a 1847 novel. This is another case of Kate Bush being inspired by the screen. I feel her love of The Red Shoes was centred around the 1948 film. Bush did reads Emily Brontë’s only novel. There is quite a bit to unpack when it comes to this song. There has been a lot of recent interest around Wuthering Heights as Emerald Fennell’s film, “Wuthering Heights”, was released earlier in the year. Starring Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, it did divide critics. It is not exactly true to the novel in terms of its casting and feel. It is a retelling or reimagining. In the same way Bush was inspired by the last few minutes of a 1967 BBC adaptation of the novel when it came to writing the song, I have reengaged myself with Emily Brontë’s novel because of the 2026 film. One of the most pleasing aspects of the film is how there has been interest in Kate Bush’s number one single. I did want to start out with an article from The New Yorker. They write about the “timeless provocation” of this incredible text. Although there has been some controversy around Emerald Fennell’s film “Emily Brontë’s ruthless text will always have the last word”:

“If Victorian fiction ordinarily treats the orphan as an engine of social mobility, whose path involves finding his place in the world, “Wuthering Heights” asserts that any such progress is temporary. At the end, Heathcliff stands alone and “unredeemed,” as Charlotte Brontë wrote of him in 1850. He destroys all his relationships, such that he can’t think of how to write his will and bequeath all the property he’s spent his life vengefully acquiring. Emily Brontë, instead, writes him out of it altogether. He has nothing to show for all of his actions. His sole biological heir predeceases him, and, once he has gone, the two homes in question, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, will pass to Hareton and young Catherine, who continue the Earnshaw family lineage. By the standards of the Victorian novel, Heathcliff, who leaves neither descendants nor legacy behind him, is a dead end.

In this way, Brontë demonstrates that not all trauma has a resolution, that belonging is a gift that not even the most powerful of novelists can readily bestow. She does not tame, contain, or tidy Heathcliff’s wild energy. It shapes his outlook even in death. When Nelly, the Earnshaw family’s longtime servant, finds his body, his eyes are wide open, with a stare both “keen and fierce.” She says, “I tried to close his eyes: to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation, before any one else beheld it. They would not shut.” His tombstone reminds us one last time of how little we know him. “As he had no surname, and we could not tell his age,” Nelly says, “we were obliged to content ourselves with the single word, ‘Heathcliff.’ ”

Whenever a fuss arises over the adaptation of a literary text to screen, I think of what James M. Cain told an interviewer for The Paris Review who asked him what he thought of the film that Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler made of his novel “ Double Indemnity.” Their version made significant changes to the plot. Cain replied that he didn’t like movies. “I don’t go,” he said. “People tell me, don’t you care what they’ve done to your book? I tell them, they haven’t done anything to my book. It’s right there on the shelf.”

“Double Indemnity” ’s plot was reworked, in part, to sanitize the story for screen audiences. The Hays Code, a precursor to the motion-picture rating system that gave Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” an R for its depictions of violence, sex, and death, required that Hollywood movies eschew profanity, obscenity, and other indicators of low morals, and also stipulated that “the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin.” Among other potential issues, in Cain’s ending, the lovers who commit the insurance fraud at the center of the story escape the country, with plans for a double suicide. The film closes, instead, with a confession scene.

It’s hard these days to imagine a situation in which, through a self-imposed agreement among all the major studios, movies and television series would need to be tamer than their source material specifically so as not to corrupt the audience. If anything, in our visual culture, we tend to expect—indeed, anticipate—the opposite. But the impulse behind the Hays Code aligns with a truism of nineteenth-century fiction that its successful writers well knew: that characters who transgress within the pages of a novel could not be allowed to prosper without punishment. It doesn’t take a literary scholar to notice, for example, that adulterous women in nineteenth-century novels—English, French, Russian—meet tragic ends, no matter how sympathetically or charismatically their creators portray them. Even the men must square their accounts. In “Jane Eyre,” Mr. Rochester, Jane’s employer at Thornfield Hall, where she goes to work as a governess, fails in his initial attempt to marry her when the existence of his first wife, Bertha, locked up in the attic, is revealed. He gets Jane in the end, but only after being maimed and partially blinded in a fire set by Bertha, in which she perishes. It’s not exactly an eye for an eye, but it reflects the belief that actions have moral consequences.

“Wuthering Heights” abides by that convention. Heathcliff and Cathy both must suffer and die, lest readers make the mistake of believing it’s acceptable to profess undying love for your childhood companion while you’re seven months pregnant and married to another man (as Cathy does) or to try to kill your wife’s dog (as Heathcliff does), to name but two of their many offenses. The placid romance of Hareton and young Catherine leaves us, superficially, in a peaceful, even hopeful place.

But it is Heathcliff’s passionate declarations and shocking acts that stay in the mind and color our lasting impression of “Wuthering Heights” as strange and uncontainable. They will outlive the blood-red, entertaining raunch of Fennell’s movie, too, in spite of the recency bias that kicks in when we’re confronted with contemporary interpretations of classics. It’s humbling to admit that an isolated nineteenth-century Yorkshirewoman, of whom her sister wrote that “she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the peasantry amongst whom she lived, than a nun has of the country people who sometimes pass her convent gates,” could possibly harbor thoughts as wild or knowing or kinky as we do now. But Brontë’s novel easily checks the first and third of those R-rated boxes. (As for the second, we can make our own assumptions.)”.

I do love how Margot Robbie recreated the dance of Wuthering Heights when she was on the set of the film. This song has enjoyed an interesting life. Noel Fielding performed a version of the song for Let's Dance for Comic Relief in 2009. Prior to ending with a BBC feature about Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. I did want to come to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia and their information about Wuthering Heights. We also get some interview archive where Bush discussed writing this timeless debut single:

“The release date for the single was initially scheduled to be 4 November 1977. However, Bush was unhappy with the picture being used for the single’s cover and insisted it be replaced. Some copies of the single had already been sent out to radio stations, but EMI relented and put back the single’s launch until the New Year. Ultimately, this proved to be a wise choice, as the earlier release would have had to compete with Wings’ latest release, ‘Mull of Kintyre’, which became the biggest-selling single in UK history up to this point in December 1977.

‘Wuthering Heights’ was finally released on 20 January 1978, was immediately playlisted by Capital Radio and entered their chart at no. 39 on 27 January. It crept into the national Top 50 in week ending 11 February at No.42. The following week it rose to No.27 and Bush made her first appearance on Top of the Pops (“It was like watching myself die”, recalls Bush), The song was finally added to Radio One’s playlist the following week and became one of the most played records on radio. When the song reached number 1, it was the first UK number 1 written and performed by a female artist

“I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn’t seem to get out of the chorus – it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn’t link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I’d been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.

I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn’t relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.

It’s funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn’t know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with ‘Wuthering Heights’: I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.

I’ve never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it’s supposed to be.

One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I’ve had from the song, though I’ve heard that the Bronte Society think it’s a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn’t know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I’m really happy about that.

There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV – it was about one in the morning – because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that’s all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence.

Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979”.

Kate Bush did say in another 1978 interview how “This young girl in an era when the female role was so inferior and she was coming out with this passionate, heavy stuff. Great subject matter for a song”. I do think that there is a lot more to be said about Wuthering Heights (the novel) and its legacy in the present day. Following a new adaptation of the novel and Kate Bush’s 1978 single, I do think that more should be written. I am ending with the BBC and their article from last year. They tell the story behind this extraordinary and powerful debut single from Kate Bush:

“Well, I hadn't read the book, that wasn't what inspired it. It was a television series they had years ago," she told Michael Aspel in a BBC interview in 1978. As a teenager she had come across the end of an episode of a 1967 BBC adaptation of Brontë's tale of doomed love. Its startling imagery had captivated her. "I just managed to catch the very last few minutes where there was a hand coming through the window and blood everywhere and glass. And I just didn't know what was going on and someone explained the story."

Bush was just 19 years old when the single was released. Although she may have seemed precocious to the public, she had been writing songs for years. Born in July 1958, the youngest of three children, she grew up in an artistic household in Kent, England. Her father, a doctor, and her mother, a nurse, surrounded their children with music, and encouraged them to learn instruments from an early age. Both of her older brothers were heavily involved in music and poetry, and she would join them performing Irish and English folk songs at home. "My brothers are very musical, yes. They were really responsible for turning me onto it in the first place. They were always playing music when I was a kid," she told Aspel.

Bush began to compose her own songs in her early teens, recording them on homemade demo tapes. One of these tapes found its way via a family friend into the hands of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, who recognised the promise in her songwriting and was particularly taken with the otherworldly quality of her voice. "I was intrigued by this strange voice," he told BBC podcast Profile in 2022. "I went to her house, met her parents down in Kent, and she played me, God, it must have been 40 or 50 songs."

Gilmour re-recorded three of Bush's songs with her in his studio for a new demo, and then encouraged Pink Floyd's record label, EMI, to sign her at the age of 16. As Bush was still at school, she spent the first two years of her contract continuing with her studies, while using the record company's advance to enrol in interpretive dance classes with mime artist and choreographer Lindsay Kemp, who had previously taught a young David Bowie.

In History

"I've definitely been influenced by Lindsay Kemp because he's one of my heroes and he was my teacher for a while," she told Aspel. "Marcel Marceau, I admire his stuff, but it is a little too staid for me. It's the art of illusion. It's not really the actual showing of emotion, which is what Lindsay teaches, and for me that's perfect because that's what music in any form of art is about. It's emotion, it's from inside."

At the same time, she was also honing her musical craft. She formed a group called the KT Bush Band and began playing in London pubs while working on songs for her debut album, The Kick Inside. The singer told the BBC that she tended to compose these songs late in the evening. "It seems to be the time of day that things gather, you know. I wake up about 11pm, I'm sort of sleepy all day, then at 11pm I really wake up." One night when she was 18, she sat down at the piano to write a song from the perspective of Brontë's passionate, conflicted heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, who haunts her lover Heathcliff, both during her life and after she dies. The imagery from the Wuthering Heights TV adaptation "was just hanging around for years", she said, "so I read the book in order to get the research right".

New influences and new technologies

The song's lyrics evoke Catherine's obsessive longing for Heathcliff, her mercurial nature, and the couple's charged, destructive relationship. Bush also wanted to convey Catherine's ghostly presence, so she adopted high-pitched, keening vocals to give the song an eerie, haunting air. "It was really specifically for that song, it was that high because of the subject matter," she said. "I'm playing Cathy and she was a spirit, and it needed some kind of ethereal effect, and it seemed to be the best way to do it, to get a high register."

Wuthering Heights, with its lush, sweeping orchestration, its literary sensibilities, and Bush's soaring theatrical delivery, did not strike her record company as an obvious radio hit. EMI instead wanted the rockier sounding James and the Cold Gun, a favourite from her KT Bush Band's pub set, to be the first single from the album. But Bush was adamant that Wuthering Heights should be her debut – and EMI eventually relented.

To accompany its release, two music videos were filmed. One was studio-based and the other was shot outside, with Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, standing in for the novel's windswept Yorkshire moors. For the shoots, Bush used the interpretive dance instruction she had received to mesmerising effect. Both videos feature her gazing intensely at the camera, clad in floaty dresses while performing dramatic and emotive dance movements to express the spectral essence of Cathy. Her dance routine was so distinctive that it became something of a cultural touchstone, inspiring both comedic homages and an annual event called The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever, at which Bush devotees recreate her performance from the videos.

The single would prove to be her breakthrough. Within three weeks of being released, it had reached number one, getting a boost from Bush's arresting mime-style performance on the BBC's music chart show, Top of the Pops. It knocked Abba's Take a Chance on Me off the UK singles chart's top spot, and stayed there for a month. It also topped the charts in Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and Australia. Her album, The Kick Inside, when it was released the following month, sold more than one million copies. She would go on to collect an Ivor Novello award in 1979 for The Man with The Child in His Eyes, released as her second single from the album.

Wuthering Heights marked the start of Bush's innovative, critically acclaimed and shape-shifting musical career. She has now released a total of 10 studio albums, melding diverse influences, complex musical storytelling and new technologies, such as sampling, to spawn hit singles like Hounds of Love and Babooshka. She has also collaborated with artists including Prince and Elton John. Her duet with Peter Gabriel, Don't Give Up, would pick up another Ivor Novello award in 1987”.

In 2028, we mark fifty years of Wuthering Heights. Still perhaps the most singular and extraordinary debut single ever. There are songs where Bush brought in literary characters. I feel that Wuthering Heights is one of her moist powerful examples. How it was an adaptation of the novel that led her to write this song. How she would then read the text after writing the track. Bush had to perform the song multiple times. On Top of the Pops several times. Around Europe. During The Tour of Life. It must have been quite exhausting, though there was such a demand for this song. Testament to the good sense of the record-buying public in 1978 that they sent it to number one. I think the song resonates because of how Bush represents Cathy. Casting her as this possessed and somewhat horrible spirit. The two videos that were shot for the single. I will always favour the white dress version. In the final part of this series, I am going to unique The Dreaming’s Houdini and The Kick Inside’s Them Heavy People. From The Diva who we can draw to the 1948 film, The Red Shoes, which influenced Kate Bush’s seventh studio album of the same name, she then created a version of that film for her own short film. We then move to a 1967 adaption of an 1847 novel that influenced a 1978 song. So many different years and time periods that connect together. How Kate Bush was drawing guidance from films and T.V. Fascinating and fantastic characters to investigate for this part. I am sort of sad to be ending this run very soon. However, it has been great looking inside Kate Bush’s songs and the vast array of characters. It goes to show what an imaginative writer she is.  No doubt that Kate Bush is…

A songwriting genius.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty-One: Revisiting the Cinematic Potential of The Ninth Wave

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Forty-One

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush shot for The Ninth Wave in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

 

Revisiting the Cinematic Potential of The Ninth Wave

__________

I have written before…

about the cinematic possibilities of Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave. That is the conceptual second side of her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love, which turns forty-one on 16th September. She wrote The Ninth Wave with the idea of turning it into a short film. She managed to bring it to the stage during 2014’s Before the Dawn, unfulfilled that ambition – to an extent. I have said before how there is a limit of what you can create on a stage. Even if it is the Eventim Apollo, there is not the same expanse and space you would have on a set or in a huge water tank. Also, only those who saw Before the Dawn will know what it was like. It was a theatrical representation of The Ninth Wave. To date, there has not been a short film or full-length of The Ninth Wave. I do feel it is important to once more revisit this idea because of Hounds of Love’s anniversary. It is a sweeping and masterful album from a genius producer. The Ninth Wave is this story of a woman who falls into the sea, presumingly having gone overboard and she is now in the water and trying to stat awake. We chart this amazing night of survival as she is under the water and trying to stay afloat. In the end, a helicopter comes alongside and rescues her. In the stages version, there is debate as to whether Kate Bush, who played the heroine, survived or not. She always intended the woman to be rescued. It is a shame that Bush’s original vision was never brought to the cinema. I do think that there is plenty of scope and potential. In terms of who would play the heroine, there are choices. You could see Margaret Qualley playing her. In terms of appearance, there are similarities between her and Kate Bush in 1985. Though actors like Sidney Sweeny or Grace McKenna could play the role. I feel Qualley is a perfect choice.

IN THIS PHOTO: Margaret Qualley/PHOTO CREDIT: Sameer Al-Doumy

What you would have is this story of how the woman got into the water. You would follow this tale of a newly-married couple in New York. I have written a synopsis of the two of them embarking on a honeymoon cruise. The woman falls into the water and there is this struggle. We follow the action and the songs play. Margaret Qualley – or whomever you see in that role – would not sing the songs. It would be Bush’s original recordings. Instead, we would get visualisations of each of the tracks. I do feel there is a lot more you can do with cinema compared to the stage. Having these epic songs given their own feel. Sweeping and dramatic, the film would be split into three acts. The first is the lead-up to the woman going overboard. The Ninth Wave would form the second act, and the third would be the aftermath. As to whether she survived and what happens afterwards. People could argue that Kate Bush has been approached to do this and turned people down. There is no evidence that this has ever happened. People guessing. Personally, I don’t think that there have been pitches to take The Ninth Wave onto the screen, which is a real shame. Above all else, we would get to see something that Bush imagined in 1985. A modern-day version. In terms of budget, it would not be a huge thing. The most challenging aspect is the water scenes. An actor would need to be in a water tank for a number of hours, and the waster would need to be warm enough so they do not get hypothermia. When Kate Bush filmed the video for And Dream of Sheep, she was in a water tank at Pinewood Studios. She caught mild hypothermic and got a small telling off from her doctor. I am not sure how practical it could be to heat a water tank so that it was warm and not that cold.

There is so much love and curiosity around Hounds of Love. The Ninth Wave is this celebrated second side. It is such a fascinating story. You can only visualise so much through the music. Kate Bush’s music has been used in films though, as yet, there has not been any films based around her music. The Ninth Wave is too powerful and interesting to only be staged during Before the Dawn. I feel a good film could be created, where these incredible songs are at the centre. A film that would not have a massive budget, I do feel like it could be a success. In terms of its box office, there would be a huge pull. Films have explored people surviving at sea and facing the dangers of what lurks beneath. However, there is something unique about The Ninth Wave. This incredible suite that could only come from Kate Bush, visualising it and bringing it to the big screen would be wonderful. Kate Bush surely has thought of that in the years since 1985. I don’t think she has been approached to do it, so I feel there is a real opportunity. Sure, she could turn them down and say it was done for the stage so it does not need to be done on film. There is space for both, as most of us did not get to Before the Dawn. I always feel like the heroine should survive and make it from the water. Though having a sense of mystery would add something to the film. I did want to revisit yet filmic scope of The Ninth Wave. A great director who could bring this to the screen. Greta Gerwig or Olivia Wilde. A fantastic writer(s) who could blend comedy and drama. Though I feel Margaret Qualley would be perfect, there are so many potential options. Maybe Anne Hathaway. In any case, there is something to be said of a big screen transfer of this stunning suite from a genius album. Forty-one years after it was first heard, The Ninth Wave still send shivers. It is such an accomplished piece of work from an incredible artist and producer. Though it has not been made into a film yet, I do hold out hope that the Ninth Wave could be adapted for the screen…

ONE day soon.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Lee Ann Roberts

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Lee Ann Roberts

__________

THERE are…

a few interviews with Lee Ann Roberts that I want to get to. This incredible D.J. and artist has just released her album, TAKE CONTROL. There is a lot of interest around it. I want to start out with Metal Magazine, who “caught up with the South African artist to talk about the project that’s set to redefine not only her sound but the way she sees herself as an artist”:

“IN THE SHADOWS and TAKE CONTROL have already given people a glimpse into this new era. What has surprised you most about the reaction so far?

I think what surprised me most is how many people connected with the message behind the music. Of course, it's always great when people enjoy the tracks, but seeing people resonate with the themes of growth, self-belief and taking ownership of your life has been really special. What I've loved most is the messages I've been receiving from people. I've had so many supporters reach out saying that this feels like the most authentic version of me they've heard in a long time and that they can really hear me in the music. Some of the messages have been incredibly thoughtful and detailed, and that's been amazing to see. As an artist, there’s nothing more rewarding than knowing people are connecting not just with the sound but with the story behind it as well.

You've described this project as a new era rather than simply a new release. Beyond the visible changes, how has this transformation felt from your side?

For me, it's felt like coming home to myself. A lot of the changes people see externally are just reflections of what has been happening internally. I've spent a lot of time reconnecting with who I am, what I stand for and what I want to represent as an artist. That process has been incredibly freeing.

You took a step back from social media and allowed yourself time to reset. Was it difficult to slow down in an industry that seems permanently obsessed with momentum?

At first, yes. There's always that fear that if you're not constantly visible, you'll be forgotten. But I realised that constantly moving doesn't necessarily mean you're moving in the right direction. Taking a step back gave me clarity, and honestly, it was one of the best things I've done for both my creativity and my mental health.

The title TAKE CONTROL feels like a statement. What exactly were you taking control back from?

From external expectations, noise, opinions and the pressure to be something other than myself. At some point I realised I was spending too much time looking outward and not enough time trusting my own instincts. But it also goes much deeper than music. TAKE CONTROL is about taking ownership of your life in general. I've been through a lot of different experiences and challenges over the years, and for me it was about no longer allowing those things to define me. Instead, it was about taking everything I've learned, everything I've been through and using it as fuel to move forward. TAKE CONTROL is about getting back in the driver's seat and deciding for myself who I wanted to be, where I wanted to go and how I wanted to live my life.

For years, people placed you inside the hard techno box. Did that label ever begin to feel restrictive?

I think labels can be useful to a point because they help people understand where you fit within a scene, but they can definitely become restrictive. Especially when you're someone with a wide range of influences and a genuine love for different styles of music. I've never wanted to be defined by a single genre because my influences have always been much broader than that. As an artist, I think it's important to give yourself the freedom to evolve, experiment and bring different elements into your music. At the end of the day, music is far more fluid than any label we try to put on it.

Your career has taken you across the world, but what does a perfect day look like when nobody needs anything from you, and there’s nowhere you have to be?

A slow morning with my affirmations and meditation, a coffee, some time in nature, spending time with my cats, training and/or going for a surf and seeing my friends. Nothing extravagant, just simple things that make me feel present.

When life starts moving too fast, and you feel disconnected from yourself, what helps you find your way back?

Nature, affirmations, meditation and taking a step back from the noise. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, I try to reconnect with the things that ground me. Usually the answers become a lot clearer when you create a bit of space”.

I do want to move to Pioneer DJ and their interview with Lee Ann Roberts. She explains how careful preparation and sobriety shapes her explosive D.J. performance and high-energy sets. This is one of the most talented D.J.s in the world:

“Sobriety has also sharpened Lee Ann’s craft. As we learn below, she feels that having a clear head in the DJ booth has upped her game in basically every respect. “It’s funny because a lot of people think they play better under the influence but I think that’s often because they’ve never really experienced DJing sober, so they assume they’re better,” she says.

As you’ll sense from the interview below—which covers mixing at speed, reading crowds, and switching musical lanes—Lee Ann is someone who thinks deeply about her DJing and is always looking to improve.

Did you learn anything from radio DJing that you carried into club DJing?

Absolutely. Radio taught me the importance of flow, pacing, and taking people on a journey. Even though you’re not physically in front of a crowd, you’re still responsible for holding someone’s attention and creating a mood. It also taught me how to think about track selection more deeply and how to build energy over time rather than just chasing big moments. Those lessons have stayed with me and definitely influence the way I approach DJ sets today.

Do you remember the first setup you learned to DJ on? What was difficult at the beginning?

The first setup I learned on was a pair of Pioneer CDJ-800 MK2s and a Numark DM950 mixer. CDJ-800’s still had CD inserts and it definitely felt like the real deal. I think learning on that kind of setup teaches you the true art of DJing. You had to understand phrasing, timing, track selection, and beatmatching on a much deeper level because there was far less technology doing the work for you.

You established yourself as a DJ and producer playing deeper, minimal sounds. What led to your decision to make a pivot to another style? How difficult did you find this transition?

I never really saw it as a conscious decision to pivot as much as a natural evolution of who I am as an artist. The deeper, more minimal sounds were a huge part of my journey and helped me develop my identity but over time I found myself wanting to express a wider range of emotions and energy through my music. My roots actually come from South Africa’s psytrance scene, so in many ways the harder, more driving sound I make today feels like a return to something that was always part of me. As I grew as both a producer and performer, I became more interested in creating music that combined power, emotion, and storytelling while still maintaining the hypnotic qualities that first drew me to electronic music.

The transition wasn’t without its challenges. Any time you evolve, there’s a risk that some people won’t come with you. But I think authenticity is the most important thing. I’ve always tried to follow what genuinely excites and inspires me creatively rather than chasing trends or expectations. Looking back, it was absolutely the right decision because the music I’m making today feels like the most honest representation of who I am.

Do you have any advice for DJs who are thinking of making a similar lane change?

My biggest piece of advice would be to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Don’t change direction because it’s fashionable or because you think it’s what people want to hear. Do it because it’s a genuine reflection of where you are creatively.

It’s also important to accept that not everyone will come with you on the journey and that’s OK. Every artist evolves. If you’re growing and challenging yourself creatively, some people will connect with the new direction and others may prefer what came before.

Most importantly, trust your instincts. The artists who inspire me most are the ones who weren’t afraid to take risks and follow their own path even when it wasn’t the obvious or popular choice. If the new sound genuinely excites you and feels authentic, lean into it fully and commit to it. People can feel when something is real and that’s ultimately what creates a lasting connection.

What are you reading from the crowd when you decide where to go next?

I’m constantly watching the crowd and looking for small shifts in energy. It’s not just about whether people are dancing, it’s about how they’re dancing, how they’re reacting to certain sounds, whether they’re fully locked in and whether the energy feels like it’s building or starting to level out. Sometimes a crowd wants more intensity but other times they need a moment to breathe before you can take them higher again.

I pay a lot of attention to the emotional response as well. A lot of it is instinct at this point. After years of playing clubs and festivals around the world you develop a feel for when to push, when to hold back, and when to surprise people. Every crowd is different, which is what makes DJing so exciting. You’re having a conversation with thousands of people without saying a word and they’re constantly telling you where to go next through their energy.

Do you always know what track you’ll play first before you step up to the booth?

Sometimes I know exactly what I’m going to play first but most of the time I don’t decide until I’m standing in the booth. A lot depends on the event, the time slot, and the energy in the room. Even if I’ve got a few ideas in mind beforehand, I like to take a moment to suss out the vibe, see how the previous DJ has left the dancefloor, and get a feel for what the crowd is responding to. I’ve always preferred to leave room for spontaneity. The first track sets the tone for everything that follows, so I want it to feel right for that particular moment rather than forcing something I’d decided on hours earlier.

How has your music discovery process changed since you became a professional DJ?

It’s changed quite a lot. When I first started, discovering music was really just about finding tracks that I personally loved. These days, I’m still looking for music that excites me but I’m also listening through the lens of a DJ and thinking about how a track will work on a dancefloor, where it might fit in a set and what kind of emotion or energy it creates. I also receive a lot more music now than I did in the beginning, whether it’s promos, demos, or unreleased tracks from friends and producers, so there’s a lot more filtering involved. You have to become quite selective. That said, I still genuinely love digging for music. There’s nothing quite like finding that track that gives you goosebumps or discovering an artist you’ve never heard before. Even after all these years, that feeling hasn’t changed”.

A couple more interviews to cover before wrapping things up. Let’s get to 1883 Magazine and their eighteen-question interview with Lee Ann Roberts. I have chosen a few of the questions to highlight. They spoke with this prodigious artist and D.J. “about losing her mother, rebuilding her life in Lisbon, and why she stopped chasing trends to trust her own instincts instead”:

“Where do you feel most at peace when life and touring become overwhelming?

Nature… without a doubt. Growing up in South Africa gave me a deep connection to the bush, and whenever life gets overwhelming, that’s where I feel most grounded. Whether it’s the ocean, a forest, or just somewhere quiet, it helps me reconnect with myself. Since moving to Lisbon, I’ve also put a lot of effort into creating a calm, peaceful home environment. When you’re constantly travelling, having a space that feels safe and grounding becomes really important, and Lisbon has been such a healing and calming place for me.

What’s something people often assume about you that couldn’t be further from the truth?

Assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups. People think they know who you are from social media or from afar, but that’s only a tiny part of the picture. At the end of the day, you should never judge a book by its cover… people are always far more complex than they seem. So I don’t really spend too much time worrying about what people assume. But if I had to pick one thing, it’s probably that people assume I’m naturally outgoing all the time. The truth is I’m actually pretty shy. I can be very extroverted at times, but I think that’s often something I’ve learned to do to compensate. Once I’m comfortable, I’m great, but naturally I’m much more reserved than people expect.

PHOTO CREDIT: Nik Mueller

If you weren’t making music today, what do you think you’d be doing instead?

That’s a difficult one because music has become such a huge part of who I am. But I think I’d probably still be doing something creative or entrepreneurial. I’ve always been driven to build things and create opportunities for myself. Having said that, if I wasn’t in music, I could definitely have seen myself becoming a lawyer or going into criminology. I’ve always been someone who likes to ask questions, challenge things and fight for what I believe is right.

You’ve spoken before about growing up in South Africa and feeling like creative expression wasn’t something that was encouraged. Looking back now, how much of your drive comes from proving to yourself that you could build a different life?

A huge amount of it. Looking back, I think a lot of my drive came from wanting to see what I was capable of and how far I could push myself. Growing up in South Africa, a career in music didn’t necessarily feel like the obvious path, so building a life around it has been incredibly rewarding. It was never really about proving anyone wrong; it was about proving to myself that with enough hard work and belief, I could create a life that felt true to who I am and achieve anything I set my mind on, no matter what the circumstances.

There was a point where modelling was opening doors for you internationally. Was there a specific moment when you realised music wasn’t just a passion anymore but the thing you wanted to dedicate your life to?

Yes, there was. When I moved to Los Angeles for modelling, I reconnected with a friend I’d met in South Africa who is a producer from Houston. I originally went there to spend some time on his turntables, but we ended up spending two weeks in the studio together and made two tracks, “Sensational Lies” and “The Subliminal.” That was the moment everything clicked for me. Up until then, music had always been a passion, working in radio and so forth, but after those two weeks I remember thinking, “Oh my God, this is what I want to do with my life.” From that point on, I never really looked back.

In several interviews you’ve described techno as something that helped you process difficult experiences. Do you think music saved you in some ways?

Yes, I do. Music gave me an outlet when I didn’t always have the words to explain or express what I was feeling. It gave me purpose, direction and a way to channel emotions that otherwise could have stayed buried. I don’t know where I’d be without it”.

I am going to end with Numéro Netherlands and their great interview. Lee Ann Roberts is a fascinating D.J. and artist. She spoke about “changes behind this new era, finding the way back to herself, and why now felt like the right time to take control”:

“A lot of people know you for hard techno, but this project brings you back to your psytrance roots. Why did you want to explore that side of your sound again?

Psytrance is where my journey began. It’s who I am. It’s in my blood, my DNA. Before I was a DJ, I was spending every weekend stomping for days at psytrance festivals in the vineyards and mountains of South Africa, completely losing myself in the music. Those experiences shaped me long before I ever stepped behind the decks.

As my career evolved, I explored different sounds and genres, but over the last few years I’ve found myself reconnecting with the music that first made me fall in love with electronic music. There’s something about psytrance that feels like home. The energy, the freedom, the sense of community—it’s always been a part of me. This chapter isn’t about going backwards. It’s about embracing the foundation that shaped me and bringing it together with everything I’ve learned along the way.

This EP feels more emotional and cinematic than some of your previous work. Did making these songs help you express a different side of yourself?

Definitely.  Music has always been how I process things that I struggle to put into words. A lot of these tracks were written during a period of huge personal growth and reflection. There are emotions, memories, and experiences woven into the  music that people might not immediately hear, but they’re there. This project allowed me to be more vulnerable and tell a deeper story.

The visuals for this new era are very striking and fashion-focused. How important was it to create a new visual identity alongside the music?

Very important. I’ve always believed that music is more than just sound. It’s a feeling, a world, and an experience. The visuals help tell the story behind the music.  Fashion has always been part of my life, so it felt natural to bring that influence into this chapter. I wanted the visuals to feel powerful, mysterious, and cinematic while reflecting the confidence and evolution behind the music.

The tracks on the EP move between dark and uplifting moments. Was there a story or feeling you wanted listeners to experience?

The EP reflects a journey. There are moments that represent struggle, uncertainty, and confronting parts of yourself, but there are also moments of freedom, strength, and hope. Life isn’t one emotion. It’s all of those things at once. I wanted listeners to feel like they were moving through different chapters and ultimately arriving somewhere stronger than where they started.

PHOTO CREDIT: Nik Mueller

As a female producer, have you ever felt pressure to fit into a certain box, and how have you learned to stay true to yourself?

Of course. There are always expectations about how you should look, sound, or behave. Early on, I probably felt those pressures more strongly, but over time I’ve realised that authenticity is your biggest strength. The moments where I’ve grown the most have been the moments where I’ve stopped trying to fit into someone else’s idea of who I should be and simply focused on being myself.

After years of touring and building your career, what have you learned about yourself during this new chapter?

I’ve learned that success means very little if you’re disconnected from yourself. For a long time, I was focused on the next show, the next milestone, and the next goal. This chapter has taught me the importance of balance, self-worth, and creating a life that feels meaningful outside of music as well. I’ve also learned that some of my greatest strengths come from the challenges I’ve overcome.

This feels like the start of something new for you. What do you hope people take away from TAKE CONTROL and this new era of Lee Ann Roberts?

I hope people see that it’s never too late to evolve. We all go through difficult periods, setbacks, and moments where we lose our way. TAKE CONTROL is a reminder that you can always choose to begin again. If this music inspires even one person to trust themselves, embrace change, or step into their own power, then I’ve achieved what I set out to do”.

I shall wrap things up. I am a new convert of Lee Ann Roberts. Her new E.P., TAKE CONTROL, is sensational. If you are in a position to see one of her D.J. sets then make sure that you do, as she is a phenomenal and unique talent. You can see where she is playing here. If you have not done it already, make sure that you follow…

THIS D.J. queen.

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Follow Lee Ann Roberts

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Shirley Manson at Sixty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Nate Ryan 

 

Shirley Manson at Sixty

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ONE of our…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Willsher

best artists celebrates her sixtieth birthday on 26th August. Shirley Manson is the lead of Garbage. I have been a fan of hers for many years. I am going to end with a Garbage playlist. Before I get to that mixtape at the end, I am going to get to some biography from AllMusic. They give us an insight into this brilliant artist:

“Scottish singer/songwriter Shirley Manson is best known as the iconic lead singer for the alternative pop/rock band Garbage. Prior to Garbage, she was a member of Scottish bands Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie and Angelfish. It was in a music video for the latter group that she was discovered by her future bandmates Butch Vig and Duke Erikson.

Manson was born in 1966 and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, influenced by her mother, Muriel, a onetime jazz singer. Growing up, school was a particular problem, with Manson teased by classmates about everything from her hair to her eyes. Manson's focus soon shifted toward a life of drugs, sex, and depression. However, one thing proved to be a light in her life: her love for music. She began playing keyboards and singing backup for local rock bands, then went on to be a lead singer. Although she thought Angelfish would be her big break, the group didn't score any hits. However, it did get her noticed, and in 1994 landed her the lead singer spot in Garbage.

Garbage's multi-platinum self-titled debut was released in 1995 and would go on to become a seminal record of the era, with singles like "Only Happy When It Rains" and "Stupid Girl." The band's popularity grew, fueled by the charismatic frontwoman. Their sophomore set, Version 2.0, another platinum hit, arrived in 1998. After a slight slip in the charts with their third release, 2001's Beautiful Garbage, Manson and company debuted at number four in 2005 with their comeback LP, Bleed Like Me. A greatest-hits compilation followed in 2007 before the release of their fifth album, Not Your Kind of People, in 2012. Their first in seven years, People peaked in the Top Five of the Billboard independent, alternative, and rock charts. Strange Little Birds arrived in 2016.

In addition to fronting Garbage, Manson also acts. Her earliest role was on the television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, in which she starred from 2008 to 2009. Manson also recorded vocals for the theme song for the 2017 series American Gods. Her contributions to the big screen also extended to the James Bond franchise with Garbage's 1999 theme "The World Is Not Enough." She has also recorded with Queens of the Stone Age, Gavin Rossdale, the Bird and the Bee, Serj Tankian, and Brody Dalle”.

A very happy birthday to Shirley Manson. When she turns sixty on 26th August, I hope there is a lot of celebration. Still going strong with Garbage, she is one fo the greatest band leads of all time. We all need to show love to…

THIS music icon.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Nia Archives

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Lewis Vorn

 

Nia Archives

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THE brilliant…

Nia Archives has released one of the best albumns of the year with Emotional Junglism. I am starting out with an interview from Rolling Stone UK. They spoke with an artist whose mission was to champion Jungle. Now, this “girl for the genre’s renaissance is spreading her musical wings and being unapologetically herself”. I have been following her for years. Seeing her growth and evolution has been amazing:

“Over the past five years, Nia Archives has become one of British music’s most magnetic success stories. The self-funded producer who once paid for her debut single ‘Sober Feels’ with her student loan is now a history-maker in her own right: the first jungle artist to receive three BRIT Award nominations, the first in more than two decades to be shortlisted for the Mercury Prize, and a support act for Beyoncé at a London stadium show. Between festival takeovers, magazine covers and industry accolades, she’s established herself as the unmistakable face of jungle’s new generation. If Britain’s electronic scene has spent the past half decade searching for a poster girl, it found one in Nia Archives.

The producer doesn’t reject that title. If anything, she thinks she helped build it. “I think I did that to myself a bit too, [but] I had to back it,” she admits. And when jungle needed a louder champion, she rarely shied away from being one. In 2022, she lobbied for the return of the MOBOs’ Best Dance Act category with a public letter. Across the table, Nia reveals that she convinced herself that the institution would “hate me forever”. Instead, the category returned and she became its inaugural winner – a full-circle moment for someone who had attended the ceremony as a teenager. “I think it’s a great Black institution in British music,” she says of the organisation. “What [late MOBOs founder] Kanya [King] did is amazing and her legacy will go on forever. I feel honoured to be a small part of that legacy.” But, despite all this history-making with the genre, she’s equally keen to remind people that Nia Archives has always been bigger than jungle alone.

That philosophy sits at the heart of her upcoming record. Despite the title, she is quick to point out that this isn’t really a jungle record. “It’s called Emotional Junglist, but it’s not a jungle album,” she says. “It’s an alternative record.” She starts reeling off the music that shaped it almost instinctively: Madonna’s Ray of Light, Blur, Pulp, Saint Etienne, Massive Attack. Jungle still dictates the pulse – the breakbeats, the basslines, the skeletal framework of the songs – but almost everything else has been given permission to wander. “With jungle, I’m inspired by the drums and the bass production and the structure,” she explains, “but I’m not necessarily inspired by the synths. I take way more inspiration from alternative music, guitar music and trip-hop.”

As a music listener and fan, Nia Archives has long admired artists who refuse to sit still. “Madonna did that so well across all her eras – always pioneering, always asking, ‘What’s next?’” she says. “I’m really inspired by people like Madonna and Björk, who keep innovating. [FKA] twigs too, she’s always kept it moving.” Now, Nia is ready “to fuse genres, find the next combination of the things I like – that’s what excites me at the moment.”

The music itself isn’t what worries her. Putting it out into the world is. “I’m really worried,” she admits with a laugh. “People are expecting 15 straight-up jungle tracks. I’ve done that already. I hope people allow me the grace to just try some shit.” For an artist who spent years loudly staking her name on jungle, there is an irony in now having to convince people to follow her somewhere else. The question is no longer whether she can make jungle bend to her imagination, but whether her audience will trust her without knowing exactly where she’s taking them.

That freedom extends beyond the production. She has always written candidly about her life, but admits she once used the frenzy of her music to obscure just how much she was saying. “I used singing more as a musical tool than a vocal showcase,” she says. Even on her debut album Silence Is Loud, widely praised for its emotional openness, she was wary of revealing too much. When its raw title track quickly became a favourite among her team, who wanted to make it a focus of the campaign, Nia pushed back. “I was so scared,” she remembers. “I was like, ‘It can be on the album, but I don’t want it to be the focus.’” This time, there is nowhere near as much distance between the woman living through these experiences and the artist singing about them”.

Polyester spent time with Nia Archives. In addition to discussing her new album, she discussed being shy. If you have not discovered this incredible artist then do go and follow her work. Emotional Junglist is such a stunning album:

“Making a second album is stressful. The pressure, the lack of innocence…I made Silence is Loud in two weeks. This album took me a year. It’s a really different process. What I really like about both is I was going for a particular sound and with Emotional Junglist, I doubled down on it.”

Her fear of the sophomore slump is a valid one; the second albums of so many artists have been cast away as failures by the culture, punished for veering too far off their more famous older sibling. It is a limitation that breeds risk averse musicians, genre used to offset experimentation or too much individuality like a cane.

“I hope people allow me the grace to be an artist and experiment and not be bound by the restraints of what dance music should be because I’ve never wanted to be bound by that,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to try stuff and make stuff for fun. As I get further into my career, I feel like everyone just expects the same thing but I don’t want to do that. It’s boring!”

“I feel a lot of pressure to make “Baianá” over and over again. Or even“Forbidden Feelingz”. I just feel like I made those tunes for fun. I don’t want to make the same song again. I think my music prior to this album and this era has been a little confusing to people.”

Silence is Loud’s charm comes exactly from the fizzy youthfulness and naivety of the artist who made it. It would not work now, precisely because Nia is not the same person she was when she started out.

She does the intelligent thing here, building on the cheeky Britpop writing and unrepentant jungle beats of work past while giving space to the assured melancholy and introversion our mid-twenties force upon us all; it is a sonic maturation in the clearest sense. “Boys in Blue,” a punk anthem jeering at the alarming decision by an ex to intimidate her by calling police to her door, is just a sample of the kind of assuredness she exhibits on the project.

“It’s definitely a more female gaze kind of album, so I want to see a lot more girls at the gigs this year.”

“I’m really happy with that song because it’s a middle finger, a bit of a victory lap. It’s so empowering. Sometimes I feel like I’m moaning?..It’s nice to have a song that’s not like ‘woe is me’. It’s nice to have a song that’s like, ‘I’m that girl. I can’t believe you even dared to do something like that.’”

Many would have licked their wounds in private, but being an emotional junglist requires a  candidness that would have been impossible at 22 simply. The point is to cry in the club with your girlfriends and count your battle scars.

“I’ve always written really personal songs but because the production has been so intensely instrumental, I’ve kind of hidden behind the production in previous music. There’s moments of sparseness (on Emotional Junglist), stripped back vibes so I think you can hear what I’m saying a bit more.” She laughs self-deprecatingly. “Weirdly, even though I’ve always been front facing, I feel even more front facing in this era.”

I ask, on a whim, if she’s an introvert.

“I’m naturally a really, really shy person! As I child I was very shy, really quiet,” she says. “In this job though I feel like I have to force myself to be more extroverted than I naturally am.” Her aversion to chaos and attention has cropped up a few times (at one point she tells me that her preferred pre-show ritual is silence: “I like avoiding people before the shows. It sounds really bad but I really don’t like talking”) but you wouldn’t expect it of someone with such formidable energy on stage.

Now, she is once more preparing to face crowds and fans again, this time with an older, wiser version of Nia Archives.

“I’m putting myself out there again. I’ve been doing my own thing away from everyone’s criticism for the past year so I’m preparing to deal with that again.”

She’s being diplomatic about the backlash present in the discourse around both her experimentation across forms as well as the perceived ‘commerciality’ of her work now that her star has risen to BRIT-nominated heights. “Online is just negative vibes. I try to detach from it because people always have so much to say. Even today, I was scrolling TikTok just to wake up and the first thing I see is someone being negative about me.”

Punishment for visibility and mainstream success is not a new phenomenon. Pedestal tearing has become as integral a part of online fandom spaces as thirst edits and shipping culture. Die a hidden gem, undervalued and underpaid or be successful and pay for it with the cultural currency amassed earlier in your career. No artist seems to have squared this incongruous circle, of holding both democratic fame and underground genius.

“That’s why everyone is moving to America, not just in music but in everything. It’s just very British. In Australia they call it tall poppy syndrome. When someone gets to a certain level…people start to resent that and they try to humble you. It’s a cultural thing. In many ways I think it’s good to be grounded but it’s kind of a shame when the community you give so much to can be negative when you do all the things they supported you doing. Skepta had that…I just think it’s part of the journey.”

“I care but I don’t because all the people talking don’t even make music. They’re always talking about junglist this, junglist that but I know all the original junglistst”.

I am going to end up with a review of Emotional Junglist from CLASH. I do think that it is one of the best albums of this year. Such a remarkable work from Nia Archives. That is why I wanted to feature her here, as she is one of our greatest artists:

“Spearheading the new wave of 21st century junglism, Nia Archives swept the competition aside with her excellent 2024 debut album ‘Silence Is Loud’. Since then, the Bradford-raised producer has expanded her sound, fully unpacking her influences in the process. Along the way, her heart has taken a few bruises, and it’s this mixture of personal and technical which makes expansive second album ‘Emotional Junglist’ so compelling.

If one of the standard criticisms of Nia’s work was that she was too in thrall with jungle’s heritage, well, this album demolishes that entirely. Citing everyone from the Streets and Happy Mondays through to LTJ Bukem as a point of inspiration, it’s a weighty 15-tracker that embodies her quicksilver creativity.

The highs come thick and fast. ‘Feelingz Go Numb’ is a superb opener, a neat point of connection between her crisp debut and the frenetic creativity of the follow-up. ‘Around Tha Bend’ utilises a guitar line worthy of The Cure, while ‘Danger’ merges dancehall impulses with industrial tones worthy of Nine Inch Nails. A heady thrill, it somehow remains firmly under the jungle imbrella.

It’s this push-and-pull between her sonic ambitions and her fixed roots which gives the record such a dichotomous energy. If William Orbit’s late 90s work haunts ‘Vertical’ then something like ‘Train Of Thought’ is a more down-the-line liquid DNB offering (albeit with the vocals of an angel).

Indeed, if Nia Archives’ debut album was defined, then her follow-up is fusion oriented. ‘Almost Always’ has a sombre, post-punk guitar line; ‘Dance With Me 2Nite’ is unafraid to embrace pop, and ‘The Darkest Hour’ has an orchestral sweep.

The guests, too, are expertly chosen. Ethan P Flynn helps to engage the creative process, Julia Michaels pops up during a writing trip to Los Angeles, and as a whole the record fully embraces a live-in-the-studio full band feel. Sampha is typically radiant on ‘Tender’ – an open song of longing – while old friend Jorja Smith appears on ‘Get Me Down’, perhaps the apex of ‘Emotional Junglist’ both as a project and as a concept.

In refusing to be hemmed in Nia Archives has built a space to call her own, building outwards on her firm breakbeat foundations. ‘Emotional Junglist’ is a dense mosiac of sounds, but the feelings are pure and distinct – a step forwards from her debut, it’s a fascinating second chapter.

8/10”.

I will wrap up here. Nia Archives is such a tremendous talent. I am wondering where she goes from here and what her next album sounds like. Emotional Junglist is the sound of an artist in full flight. I think that it could be in with a shout of a Mercury Prize nomination. If so, it would be the least that she deserves. We should all salute…

THIS wonderful artist.

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Follow Nia Archives

FEATURE: Spotlight: Flava D

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

Flava D

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I am spending…

some time with the amazing Flava D. This is one of our best D.J.s. Hailing from Bournemouth, this incredible D.J. has been making music and performing sets for many years. She has a busy next couple of months ahead. However, there was a lot of interest around her last year, as she released the album, Here & Now. I want to get to some 2026 interviews with Flava D. I am starting out with Asbo Magazine, who caught her at Gemfest:

“Okay, so you can start by introducing yourself.

Uh, hey, I'm Flava D. I'm a DJ producer that’s been making music for about 15 years, kind of specialising in electronic dance music, like garage, drum and bass. Most recently, kind of dubstep stuff; done grime back in the day, so I'm quite across the board.

Nice, so how did you first get into performing, and what got you into the scene and inspired you?

It was about 2011. So, yeah, about 15 years ago, I kind of had my break with my 1st grime song. That got some circulation, and then as the years went on, I started making garage, and that's when my 1st DJ sets came about, and like my 1st ever booking, and then it just kind of went from there.

What tracks are you most excited to play tonight, and will we be hearing any new music?

Yeah. I've got a lot. So I'm starting my set tonight with a collab with me and Hamdi. So, yeah, it's a song we actually finished about 2 weeks ago, but yeah, I'm pretty stoked to play that. I've got a lot of music with me, Peekaboo. Yeah, there's like at least 5 new tracks. I'm testing, so it's quite a lot.

Do you have any new music coming out?

Yeah, lots. A lot. Every month, I think, I've got a song coming out this year, so... Yeah, so I'm going to be playing; I've got a single dropping in 2 weeks. I'm actually playing it today 1st time as well. So I’m like, GemFest is really getting the exclusives.

And then lastly, where can we expect to see you performing this summer?

The summer is quite a lot. I'm in America quite a lot at the end of the year, but I'm at quite a few festivals in England. Croatia's coming up next month with Hospitality on the Beach. So that should be good. Uh, God, I kind of have to think on the top of my head. But yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. I'm about”.

I am getting to an interview with UKF. They spoke at “UKF Invites at London’s Colour Factory where Flava D’s is joint headliner”. I do think that it is important to spotlight D.J.s in addition to artists. D.J.s never really get the exposure that they deserve. Flava D is a global sensation:

“I’m ten years into my career and it was never really a thing I wanted to do. Until just before COVID, when I was about to start it. But then I put it on pause for a bit because of the way the world was. It just didn’t feel like album time.

I only feel like it was last year that I really got the tracks, and I really found myself. I found my confidence, I was happy with the tunes I was making, I was happy with my mixing down. I felt satisfied and I felt like I had something that I was satisfied with.”

Growing up on the UK’s south coast was very different to Flava D’s time in London’s dirty South. However both areas have strong underground music scenes. Spending her formative years across the two areas it is easy to see how her diverse range of influences had contributed to the breadth of her soundscapes today.

“ I was born in Bournemouth, but I lived around South London for about 10 years, and then last summer I moved back to Bournemouth. It’s quite a change. I miss London- certain things, the environment, the energy, the nightlife, things like that. But then you’ve got the seaside. I love the seaside, and my family are around me. It’s a nice change that I think I needed.

My raving years were a bit in Bournemouth and a bit in London. When I originally moved out of Bournemouth I moved to Maidstone in Kent and when eventually I could afford it, I headed to South London, in Lewisham, Catford and then Bromley.

There used to be a lively drum and bass scene in Bournemouth- it’s not quite the same. About 10 years ago, Bournemouth was known as ‘that party town’

As I was growing up everyone around me was into different things, but dance music was a big thing. My auntie was into old school garage, my mum was very much into trance and euphoria- she had all the Ferry Corsten CDs. My dad was very into acoustic rock and my cousins were into Cyprus Hill, Nas and Lauren Hill. So I had such a complex musical palette at a very young age. When I was ten I was listening to J Dilla, and everyone in my class was listening to the Spice Girls.

Being musically different from my peers didn’t bother me at the time. I was just very into what I was into. I was a bit of an introvert anyway so I would buried myself in my music and passions at school.”

Those of us with enough fine lines to remember Channel U and SBTV will have fond memories of the many, many hours sacrificed to watching our favourite MCs spitting over the intriguing, frenetic new genre- grime. The explosion of music television meant that swaths of young people now had access to underground genres that had previously only been easily available if you lived within the reach of a pirate radio tower.  Flava D had found her sound, even though she didn’t know what it was yet.

“My first break though music I’d say was with grime. When my mum got us Sky, we had this whole new array of channels and I was like, “Oh My God”, and I eventually found channel U. Living in Bournemouth you didn’t have Pirate FM, you didn’t have local radio stations playing things, so that was my gateway into grime.

“More Fire Crew, So Solid Crew, all the early garage. I was obsessed with Ms Dynamite. I was captivated by what this really raw sound was that I hadn’t heard before. Dizzee Rascal ‘Boy In The Corner’ I had that album on repeat- I think we all did. Those were the days that I was learning to produce music. I was like ‘I don’t know what this is, but I’m gonna try to make some. And that’s how I started my catalogue of grime.”

Although self-taught, Flava D surrounded herself with a support network of friends and colleagues who filled an almost mentor-like space without ever needing the title. She attributes the nuance of her unique sonic style to the underrated beauty in making mistakes. 

“I was about 17, 18 when I started to produce grime. I was self-taught. I was working at a record shop in Bournemouth when I was 16. My boss was a top-three DMC turntableist champion. He was very into his hip-hop and he had a copy of Ableton and he gave it to me on a disc. I took it home, there was no youtube then, no tutorials, no nothing. So I really had to find my feet in it, but I’m so glad I did because I feel like I wouldn’t be me, if I had learnt today with so much information around me.

“If everyone’s learning from the same youtube videos, everyone will have the same sound- the same formula. It’s not cheating, but you are fast tracking a little bit and I feel like sometimes the beauty can come from experimenting, just, you, yourself. Trial and error. I think that’s how you really develop your own style as well.”

Ten years ago social media was in its infancy artists didn’t have the access to the copious amounts of online resources and support that we are blessed with today. If you wanted to make it in the industry you had to get out there and make friends and mentors and do a lot of learning on the job.

Often referred to by Wiley as “Eskibeats one and only female producer”, it’s no secret that gender imbalance is prevalent across the entire music industry, and while underground and dance music are some of the more progressive and inclusive genres, UK bass music is still heavily dominated by male identifying individuals. Today we’re seeing a slow and steady shift in this ideology but ten years ago, while Flava D was coming through and making a name for herself, it was almost impossible to see women in the bass music sphere, especially within the ruff, raucous and “masculine” energy of grime. Although the imbalance was very noticeable Flava D wasn’t particularly bothered by it, and it certainly didn’t affect her work ethic or determination.

“If I’m totally honest I wouldn’t say that I was bothered by how male dominated the industry was. I’ve always been a very tunnel vision person. I think what helped me was that I was surrounded by this very boisterous masculine crew. The grime lot took me under their wing a bit.  I was always very protected and I think they respected me because I was this very niche female in this particularly masculine group. This little blond, white female who’s too shy to speak – but they just liked my beats. They were almost like older brother figures in a way. I made a lot of connections with a lot of friends and the respect level just always remained from then on.”

We reflect on the very obvious juxtaposition of Flava D and her comrades. A blond, white, incredibly quiet female from a typical British seaside town against her group of predominantly black men, raised on the rough and ready roads of London. We wonder if this added to Flava D’s je ne sais quoi.

“Up until I signed with Butterz a lot of people didn’t even know Flava D was a female. People would be like “What you’re Flava D? You made that?” I’d never had a manager, I’d never thought about branding. I liked to stay behind the scenes. When I signed to Butterz I finally had this really solid branding. They knew how to do marketing and releasing officially and my first ever press shot I got was after meeting Elijah and Skilliam and that’s when people actually started to know that Flava D is a girl. There was no difference in reaction, but I think people were just surprised.

“If anything, I think it was probably more refreshing to the female audience that were just discovering me, back then a female produced in the underground scene was quite rare.

“It’s a massively different landscape for women today, there’s still a lot more to be done, with the attitude and the energy towards tokenism and stuff like that. But it’s a completely different way to what it was then, and it’s so good to see. In lockdown, because we all had so much time a lot of women learned to produce, they learned to DJ. Getting in touch with their hobbies and we’re really seeing the results of that coming into fruition now”.

I actually want to end with an interview from last September. This one is from Beat Portal who spent some time with the incredible Flava D. “She rose from the garage scene, but Flava D has just released her debut album 'Here & Now' – a 15-track masterclass in drum & bass production. Beatportal uncovers the story behind the milestone”:

“As an artist who’s been active in the bass music scene since 2013, it may come as a surprise that Flava D is only now releasing her debut album. After originally making a name for herself in the garage scene through anthems like “Soul Shake” with My Nu Leng and “Vibsing Ting” as part of TQD, when she joined the Hospital Records roster, it was a significant career switch-up. Not only was she joining a new label, she was stepping into a genre she’d never worked in before – one she had looked up to since she started following the label’s music when she was just 14.

“If you’d told me 10 years ago I’d be releasing a d&b album, I’d say you were lying!” She jokes. “...It's been a massive learning curve moving into d&b from garage. I thought I was a good producer until I started making d&b…I would be playing my sketch ideas next to a break tune, and it would make me want to quit.”

But it’s a challenge she’s thankful for: “Moving across to d&b has levelled me up in a way that is crucial if you want to have your tune stand up,” she adds.

This level up is audible on Here & Now. The most detailed Flava D work to date, the album showcases her ability to work between d&b’s lines. From the soulful tones of “Can’t Get It Back” with SOLAH, to the dance floor energy of “Reesey Thing,” to the jungle breaks of “The Function" with Logan_olm, Here & Now is a vibrant picture of a genre that has captured Flava D’s heart.

“I wanted to have a bit of everything on there,” she says. “I've always been eclectic with my music and my sets. My album is like that too.”

While connecting with the genre on a deeper level has been a motivation for Flava D, this drive has also been her downfall in getting the album finished sooner: a project she has been working towards since putting out her first d&b single “Return To Me” in 2019. “It’s taken a while to get here because I was over-scrutinizing how I wanted it to be,” she admits. “With it being my first album, and fully d&b, I felt the pressure to match the high-bar of the genre.” It was only a year ago Flava D “got to a place where I felt satisfied with my music. Once I achieved that, ideas started flowing.”

The album  – a project she describes as “my musical diary for the last year and a half” – is some of her “most expressive work yet.”

“I wanted the album to be more personal with more vocal-based songs, rather than just club bangers,” Flava D says. “I love the track with Lauren Archer, ‘The Cycle’. It was an emotional tune from the soul I made to help me get through something.”

As we talk, it’s clear Here & Now is not just a representation of where she is at musically, but also personally. From getting married earlier this year to embracing sobriety at shows over summer, there’s a refreshing sense of being present that radiates from her, something she admits hasn’t always been the case.

“Last year, there were lots of changes going on in my personal life, being a workaholic for so many years caught up with me. I took a break to figure things out while focusing on getting the album right. I'm in a good space now, but last year was like a therapy for myself. With the title of the album being Here & Now, it felt right to portray exactly what I am and what I'm feeling.”

While the album’s primary focus is showcasing where Flava D is in the present, sonically, it also nods to her roots, namely in songs like “Do You Want Me.”

“I intentionally used some of my garage basslines and melodies from the past and reworked them on that track,” she says. “It's very old-school me, but today in d&b. I even use my voice for the vocal.”

Flava D’s experimentation won’t stop with Here & Now. With her debut album now out in the world, Flava D is keen to continue honing her “UK sound” by paying homage to the corners of bass music that have defined her journey: “Even though I’m constantly trying to do things differently, I’m always mindful to revisit sounds I've used in the past or create melodies in a patch I’ve used for a TQD track. That helps me to keep my sound more recognisable.”

Having fun with her music and not putting pressure on herself to stay in one lane is something listeners can expect to see more of from Flava D on the road ahead, across 140 BPM sets like she did at UKF Invites London earlier this year, and more productions outside of a d&b tempo, such as “Dutty” with P Money. It all comes back to the UK sound she’s representing.

"I’m looking to come back to my roots again over the next year, releasing more garage and 140,” she says. “I’m having fun experimenting with my music and not overthinking it. I’m trying to avoid putting pressure on myself to make music that sounds a certain way. I’m enjoying having that freedom and I’m excited to see what next year holds”.

Go and follow Fava D. I am not sure what her diary is like in terms of touring and gigs, but I would love to see her D.J. The music she has produced and the sets I have heard are absolute amazing. She is such a prodigiously talented D.J. A queen that deserves your love and attention, it was a no-brainer including her…

IN this Spotlight feature.

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FEATURE: Spotlight: femtanyl

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Jacqui Sharah for NME

 

femtanyl

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QUITE rightly…

this duo are blowing up right now. After releasing their debut album, MAN BITES DOG, earlier in the year, femtanyl are getting a lot of praise and buzz. They consist of Noelle Stockwood (also known as Noelle Mansbridge) who is the lead singer, songwriter, and producer who founded the project as a solo act in May 2023, and Juno Callender, their incredible multi-instrumentalist and producer who joined the band in August 2025 after initially performing as their live drummer. The superb femtanyl make phenomenal music. They are a mighty force to be reckoned with. I am going to start out with an intervbiew from Metal Magazine that was published around the release of their debut album in February. As they note in their heard, “Whether you’re head banging, punching, or desperately flailing on the dance floor, there is no one right dance move for this Canadian-American duo, just so long as you’re shedding your outer shell and revealing your most unashamed self. Noelle Stockwood and Juno Callender transformed from strangers into bandmates and then into best friends through the genre-bending group, Femtanyl. After releasing their debut album, Man Bites Dog, earlier this month, the pair are now embarking on a US tour, ending with a festival appearance at Primavera Sound in Barcelona”. This is a duo that you really do need to check out:

“Are you guys based in Seattle full-time or split between Toronto and Seattle?

Noelle: We were originally split, but around eight months ago, I moved up to Seattle so we could work on the album full-time together.

That was around the time when Femtanyl transitioned from a solo artist to you two being a duo, right?

Juno: Yeah, but we also worked remotely for a while before that. We sent a lot of project files back and forth between Seattle and Toronto, but that wasn’t necessarily ideal. We still got a lot of work done, but the difference between how efficiently we worked together after Noelle moved up here was night and day.

The album was written and recorded virtually between Toronto and Seattle. What were the most challenging, and also rewarding, parts of that experience? I’m sure it must’ve created an interesting creative dynamic.

Noelle: We fell into this weird time sync where I’d wake up and Juno would have sent me a file that she had been working on, and then I would be like, yo, this is awesome. Then I’d work on it for the entire day and then she would wake up and work on it until like 5:00 a.m. We were never really awake at the same time except for maybe two hours.
Juno: We had a weird, regimented sleep schedule like Noelle was talking about. I would always wake up to something that she had sent me with a very long explanation of what she did. I would take that and work on it, and she would go to bed and then I would basically do the same thing and send it back to her right before she woke up. It was fun every day waking up and listening to what had changed, but then on the other hand, it doesn’t hold a candle efficacy-wise to working together in the same room at the same time on the same thing.

You’ve said that being a trans woman, or transfem, comes with a high level of experimentation with yourself and also through interests like music. How is that journey of self discovery represented in your music?

Noelle: When I first started transitioning, music was the only place I could feel that aspect of myself. I could augment my vocals and talk about it openly. It again became my outlet because I wasn’t on any hormones and just sitting in my room thinking, this sucks, dude. I feel good that there is a type of music for trans people that’s just about being an idiot and being unfiltered and messy and rough around the edges. There’s a lot of pressure on trans people to be very manicured and, with this music and space, it’s nice that we can all get in a room and just be really loud and sweaty and a bit embarrassing.

Juno: Music and art were so important for feeling like my identity was creatively accepted and made me feel so comfortable in expressing and exploring it. In a situation where we’re already held to such a monstrously high standard as trans people, it’s nice to have music that is focused on the trans experience and uplifting the community. With Femtanyl, we do that, but we also go in an alternate direction where we're trying to portray it as close to the human experience as possible.

I’m sure there is. With your upcoming tour, is the space that you create in each venue different, or does it have more of a common community that feels like it’s removed from space and time?

Noelle: In terms of our fan base, it’s decently uniform across a lot of places. You get a little bit of variation per city, some show cultures are a bit different. But our fans typically show up and go crazy and have a great time. Our fan base is a bit younger than a lot of our contemporaries, so their first experiences with this kind of music are at our shows and it’s very fun to see them fall in love with that environment like I did at a young age.

Juno: The live show experience is such a sacred and important thing to being a music fan that a lot of what we try to bring to it is creating a space where it becomes impossible to focus on anything but the music and the live performance. We want everybody there to transcend into the Femtanyl space for that hour. I want people to be able to feel like they’re getting plucked from their lives and then they need to take some time to readjust back to their normal life afterwards”.

I want to come to an important interview from NME. This is a recent one. It is important, not only because it is deep and the conversation is great, open and fascinating. It is press from a major U.K. source, so it will highlight femtanyl and expand their growing fanbase here. They did a run of dates in the U.K. and Ireland last month, so I hope they come back at some point. In an interview published this month, NME spotlighted a duo whose “hellacious live show that’s landed them support slots for Danny Brown and The Prodigy, they’re hurtling to a new level”:

“Draw a Venn diagram of the gaming, breakcore and furry communities, and you’ll also find queer people smack bang in the middle. Both Mansbridge and Callender are transgender women, and many Femtanyl fans, too, are young and trans.

The lyrical themes of alienation, suicide and self-harm in Femtanyl songs have resonated with their fanbase. Today, Mansbridge assures us she’s in a “better place now”, adding that the self-destructive sentiments in her older material were, in part, a psychological exorcism. “That was stuff that I was dealing with,” she acknowledges, “but there were a lot of thoughts I was having that I really didn’t like. I wanted to explore those [thoughts] in music and imagine a worse version of my current self.

“It’s very difficult for me to get back into that headspace, or even imagine the person that I was being so upset and angry,” she adds. “I have definitely grown a lot as a person.”

Mansbridge credits music with saving her from perpetual bitterness. “At that point in my life, I had two people who were my friends, and I’d been in and out of the hospital,” she explains. “I felt very destitute and alone. When [my music] started getting traction, I was able to feel like someone that had something to offer to the world. People wanted to talk to me, and I was able to show that I wasn’t just a crash-out. I stopped isolating myself in my own bedroom, and I let myself be a person.”

emtanyl’s friendship proved instrumental to the creation of ‘Man Bites Dog’, especially given the extensive challenges they faced during the album’s production. Mansbridge was stuck in her native Canada for nine months waiting for a visa to visit Callender in Seattle, meaning the pair had to work long-distance with misaligned sleep schedules. “We were not awake at the same time except for an hour out of the day,” Mansbridge recalls.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jacqui Sharah

Callender’s own working conditions weren’t totally ideal, either. She recalls fine-tuning the particularly ferocious track ‘Helltarget’ while visiting her parents’ house in Southern California, which was in the midst of renovations. “All the doors had been taken out, and there were white sheets everywhere,” Callender recounts. “It was one of the most privacy-less, dreadful, terrible, scary environments to have headphones on for 12 hours a day, adding ever-so-tiny variations over and over and over again.”

“I thought it was gonna be that lady who came to your house while you were working and was like, ‘my dead sister’s ghost is in your basement’,” Mansbridge interjects.

But Mansbridge takes issue with Femtanyl being reduced to “trans music” by cisgender male commentators, who group them with contemporaries like 100 gecs and Jane Remover – despite their distinctly different sounds. “It can be a little frustrating, because it feels like they’ve accepted us as people, but now they’re just a bit too vocal about it,” she explains. “It’s like your uncle getting to terms with the whole thing, but he’s still awkward about it.”

Another unique challenge, Callender adds, is how the band can evolve out of their emotionally heavier material, which still means a lot to many of their fans: “There’s a pressure to remain in the same negative headspace that you were in.” Though she thinks fans don’t “necessarily, actually” want this to happen, she nonetheless theorises that “a part of them wants you to remain in a state where you’re not happy, because then they feel like they can connect to you more”.

“They should be able to look at this as a sign of: ‘Hey, this is something that you can do’,” Callender adds. “This is aspirational. You can improve, you can get better… but it’s very challenging when you’re not doing very well.”

Femtanyl certainly aren’t waiting around to move on. With Mansbridge finally relocating to Seattle to work in-person with Callender, they’re returning to the “bright” and “melodic” style of their older songs, which you can hear in their latest single ‘Magfest’. Callender adds that Mansbridge is “expanding so much as a frontwoman”, her bandmate blushing in response”.

I am going to end with a review from Pitchfork of MAN BITES DOG. It is an album that I feel has cross-genre and crossover appeal. It is a Hardcore album, I guess, but there are other sounds and influences. So it means that people who might be wary or new to the genre are not hesitant to check out a superb album:

“The production is raw but precise, a mechanical bull with adjustable shocks. “Helltarget” opens with bulbous bass pads that instruct the listener to gird their loins, before the drums crash in and Mansbridge’s vocals stagger onto the scene. The next three minutes loop cyberpunk synths while flashing between ideas: a brain-smacking rap-screamo section; a vaporwavey dream hole; a movie sample. Halfway through, everything slows down and you think it’s over—but no, like Six Flags Twisted Colossus, there’s a second drop. By the ride’s end, you’re gasping for air, a little puke stirring in the belly. Now repeat for nine more songs that are sometimes thrilling and sometimes too much—beats wound beyond the point of pleasure, mixes overwhelmed with shrapnel.

You could say the music has caught up with Mansbridge’s perennially scary lyrics, a nightmare gallery of caskets, peeled-off skin, and viscous gut-fluid. “Body the Pistol” envisions the human body as a weapon shooting out blood and bones and stomach matter. In a recent interview, Mansbridge underlined the need for trans people everywhere to make their presence known in defiance against a government trying to eliminate them. You might view femtanyl’s music through the lens of body horror, a genre many trans people appreciate for how it captures gender dysphoria and the feeling that your flesh is alien, something corrosive. But here, the body isn’t a site of discomfort so much as destruction—a flamethrower ready to ignite.

This album also sounds like two DIY scene vets trying to prove their punk bona fides. The hyper-rave hi-jinks of Machine Girl and digital hardcore OGs like Atari Teenage Riot loomed large before, but now it’s also the cybergrind screamo of Blind Equation. The warped thrum of “Video Nasty” recalls the empty-room eeriness of the Deli Girls ’ “ Officer.” Apart from “Shows You the Way to the Hiway,” a highlight that’s like femtanyl approximating pop, the atmosphere is mostly deep and dark, heavy on evil clanks and clatter. “City” shakes like a meat grinder chopping up monster limbs as layers of voices both heroic and hellish gasp for attention. “Sick of It” has the beefy synth bassline of an aughts electroclash anthem, filtered through the brain of someone obsessed with the gnarly edge of LustSickPuppy and horrorcore RPGs.

MAN BITES DOG unloads a rush of peaks: the glittery old-skool stabs of “Head Up,” the hard gore shrieks and sickly torrent of leeches and vomit on “Body the Pistol.” Mansbridge’s serrated guitar cuts through the mix like a glowing blade. But the textures also start to get too uniformly shadowy, the beats too stiff. Mansbridge’s earlier EPs were hooky yet haywire, animated by pulpy carnage like the ravenous scream ripping across “ Katamari,” or a sedate lilt caressing the feral aggression on “ Its Time.” When femtanyl try a similar trick with overlapping vocals on “Is This It,” it gets lost in the speedfreak density. The slapdash euphoria that electrified 2024’s REACTOR comes in small doses here. When femtanyl’s music first broke out, haters called it Geometry Dash brainrot (and what’s so wrong with that?), but the more apt critique was “’90s rave pastiche.” MAN BITES DOG aims to beat both allegations, and for the most part it gets there. It also feels like femtanyl are still searching for their final form”.

 I am going to bring things to a close. I would urge everyone, regardless of their musical tastes, to spend some time with femtanyl. MAN BITES DOG is a tremendous debut album from a duo that we will be hearing a lot more from. The fact they are being featured by NME and being hailed as this amazing new act shows that they are connecting with people and have substance and staying power. I would love to see them in London soon as I feel femtanyl will be winning hearts and putting out incredible music…

FOR years more.

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FEATURE: Spotlight: Siiickbrain

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Sean Behr

 

Siiickbrain

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THIS incredible…

artist and model is Caroline Miner Smith. As an artist, she trades under the name of Siiickbrain. Hailing from Carolina. Her new album, HOUNDSTOOTH, is fantastic. I am going to end with a review. I want to start out with some interviews. House of Solo spent some time with the incredible Siiickbrain:

“Touching on some of your earlier work, your 2021 song “Silence” is about toxic love. When you look back on it now, how does the song make you feel?

Luckily, my love life, as I’ve grown, has become so healthy and stable, and that’s something that takes a lot of inner work and also choosing a partner who is willing to grow with you and communicate in a positive way. I think my choices in romantic relationships in the past definitely are a reflection of what I believed I was worth, and that makes me sad. But at the same time, I think making mistakes and the wrong choices are all part of the path that leads you to making the right ones.

I love how you also slowed the tone down on your 2023 song “Liar.” What do you love most about writing from that honest, exposed place?

I love that song so much! I think it all comes down to the mood that I have surrounding the topic at the time, and bringing the emotion not only through lyrics but through production as well. It can be cathartic to lean into the melancholy feeling surrounding certain topics, but with the upcoming project, I feel that I’ve flipped certain feelings. I have to see the positive and regain control of my emotions in that way, and that’s something that I wanted to communicate through production.

You grew up in small-town North Carolina and ended up in the heart of LA. What do you love most about who you are today, and how have both worlds shaped you?

I love how growing up in North Carolina really taught me about the importance of family, and being raised on a farm around animals instilled in me the importance of being present and empathetic. Also, in the South, I was shown a lot of things that taught me who I don’t want to be. It’s a place where, unfortunately, racism and homophobia, along with the judgment of those who struggle with mental health, are still wildly prevalent.

Growing up around people like that in the community was really eye-opening and disturbing from such a young age. Seeing the impact that it made on people I hold so dear to my heart, and myself in some ways, was extremely shaping. The most important thing to me is pure humanity and respect for the real world, not just the entertainment world and the fashion space. As much as I love that, and that’s my career, if all of that were stripped away, I can say confidently that I would be the same person I am today.

We just touched on your style, which I love. It’s so important for young women especially, to know they can be whoever they want to be. If you could speak words of love to your younger self, or even young people in the industry, what would you say?

I would say keep experimenting because you’re never going to find yourself if you don’t allow yourself to make mistakes or take risks.

I started making music as a form of therapy, so naturally, it’s continued to feel that way, and I feel so lucky that I have it as an outlet. Building production with my collaborators that translates the feeling I have surrounding a topic, and listening to that as I write lyrics, helps me to process how I feel and turn it into something that feels more empowering and positive.

No matter what I may be going through, I feel that if I look at it through a different lens and process it with a different outlook, I almost always feel better and stronger after making a song that way. It sounds cliché, but it works for me.

The title of your new album Houndstooth is so personal, paying homage to your Scottish and Irish heritage. Was there any music from your childhood that your grandfather introduced to you that has impacted you?

My grandfather mainly listened to NPR, so I think I was definitely more impacted by my parents and my siblings in terms of sound. My sister played a lot of Radiohead and Imogen Heap, and I think, if anything, those artists influenced the sound the most on the project, along with others that I discovered on my own as I grew up.

Last question, your music blends so many genres. What do you love most about genre-blending, and where do you feel it could take your sound next?

I love experimenting, and I think that a lot of artists that I look up to have their own sound. So I think that just trying to do my own thing and find my own sound, which I feel like I’ve done with this project, is something I can just keep building off and continue to let evolve naturally without holding back. I’m sure that the next project will feel in a similar world, but who knows what could be next? I’m just as interested as you are to find out.xt? I’m just as interested as you are to find out”.

Let’s move to an interesting chat with The Luna Collective. I am quite new to Siiickbrain, but I am really hooked already. I do wonder if she is going to come to the U.K. at some point and play here. I would really love to see her perform:

“LUNA: “PALO SANTO” and “MURKY WATER” are glimpses into your upcoming album. I would love to hear anything that you would like to share on the project and what you wanted to explore this time around?

SIIICKBRAIN: The project ties into the topic of “MURKY WATER.” The album is called Houndstooth, which is a pattern, and it's just literally about patterns repeating themselves, whether it's politically, whether it's in the space of being a female. Honestly, I feel like everyone can relate to these patterns repeating themselves and getting stuck in certain loops. It's about breaking out. “PALO SANTO” specifically is more about bringing in the positive, and less about talking about what the unfortunate realities are that a lot of us have to face. It's more about looking forward to the future and manifesting a better one for ourselves. I think that overall, this project is not meant to be something where we're coming together and sulking in our experiences, we are taking back our power on this one. With my visuals, there's a lot of women and there's a lot of owning our own autonomy. It is literally about regaining our power back, especially serving provocative and owning our bodies and our skin. That is really important to me because I think that we should all have power over autonomy.

LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially your femme audience — can connect with or find power in this new era of  music from you? What emotions or messages do you want to leave with them?

SIIICKBRAIN: I don't want it to feel like a trauma bond experience. I would rather have the project resonate with the people it’s meant to resonate with and how they perceive each song for themselves. Letting it be unique to each listener. My hope is just for people to feel a little bit less alone, and hopefully bring some uplifting, positive vibes. There is a world where we go through these things and we come out and we can still be fun and happy and own our autonomy no matter what has gone on and what has happened to us.

LUNA: Your work is very multidisciplinary. Do you approach music visually first — imagining the world, the character, the aesthetic — or does the sound come before everything else?

SIIICKBRAIN: It really depends. I feel like it's unique to each song, to be honest. I definitely, as I'm recording visuals, literally in the moment when I hear a sound, I know exactly where I want it to be and what I want it to look like with the matching visuals.

LUNA: In this current era of your music, how are you expressing yourself visually? Are there specific makeup styles, textures, or aesthetics you’ve been drawn to experimenting with lately?

SIIICKBRAIN: Something that I am experimenting with throughout the album is doing half a wig. The reason behind that is there have been some comments saying it was Skrillex hair, which shout out to Skrillex. It's actually an ode to my past self and dealing with these same patterns. No matter what I looked like, no matter how I presented myself, I've been presented with the same patterns, but in that same sense, it also shows the duality between my past self and my present self, and that also ties into houndstooth, the pattern, which is so black and white.
LUNA: Are there any visual artists, designers, or subcultures that continue to inspire your aesthetic direction?

SIIICKBRAIN: I love Rick Owens. I also have a friend named Catherine and she has a brand called Asylum, and she's a really good friend of mine. Her designs really inspired the world as well. I think that there's a lot of designers that I think are incredible, and I love fashion. I love Kim Shui. I am obsessed with the new Demna for Gucci. I think it's really cool.

LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new chapter in your career?

SIIICKBRAIN: I have been really paying attention to the things that I genuinely like to get in the car and put on, because I want to literally get to a place where I just want to get in my car and blast my stuff. I feel like in the past, I've really loved my music, but when I want to vibe and jam and have something positive to listen to, it's hard to put on that stuff. I want to have fun with it. I want to get in the car and listen to my own music. I want to be able to play it back-to-back with JT or something. I want it to live in that space.

LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like that you would like to share with Luna?

SIIICKBRAIN: I'm feeling really excited about my music, but also at the same time, it's really hard to ignore what's going on in the world. I'm trying to just find the positives, to be honest, and I think that it's really difficult, because we're faced with all these challenges that we can only control so much and we can do our part to try and keep the world moving in a better direction. But unfortunately, we're up against something really challenging and dark, and so I'm really just trying to provide more of a positive vibe to lean into. Me, myself, and my personal life, I'm really just trying to stay positive and play that happy  music”.

The final interview I am including is from Metal Magazine. I am fascinated by her aesthetic and music. Siiickbrain is someone that everyone needs to know about. She is truly wonderous. Such a potent and distinct force:

“Outside of music, what has been making you feel most alive lately: a film, a place, a person, a habit, a tiny obsession?

Outside of music, I feel most alive when I’m out at night, surrounded by my friends or partner, feeling completely free and surrounded by love and good energy, and discovering new music.

Your music often sits between industrial, electronic, alternative, hip-hop and heavy sounds. Do you think in terms of genre at all, or is it more about texture and instinct?

I don’t think about genre when I make music; it’s definitely more about the feeling and what comes naturally. I think when artists get too caught up in genre, it can hold them back creatively.

You have a very recognisable vocal presence: screams, spoken moments, melody, distortion, attitude. How do you know what a song needs from your voice?

I honestly had to learn over the past few years what a song called for, rather than trying to turn it into something that I felt like it should be. It’s super easy to ruin a song with things that it doesn’t need, and it’s important to exercise that instinct.

Houndstooth feels like a very physical title: sharp, patterned, almost animalistic. What did that word unlock for you when you were building the album?

I really wanted it to reflect the themes of the album, like exactly what you said: breaking patterns and the sharp reality that comes with breaking free from old habits. When I think about my personal experience with that, it’s a lot of emotion, like strength, power, vulnerability and freedom, but also a bit of fear.

PHOTO CREDIT: Sean Behr

Filthy, featuring Fetish, sounds like it belongs to the more abrasive side of your world. What made Fetish the right person to bring into that song?

I have always loved her and how she writes and expresses herself, so when I made this song, I immediately knew I wanted to ask if she wanted to be a part of it. I also have so many hip-hop and rap elements on the project, and I thought maybe this could help listeners understand where my mind was during the recording process.

You have worked with artists from very different worlds, from Skrillex to Willow and Maggie Lindemann. What do you look for in a collaborator?

I honestly have only collaborated with friends and people that I truly love as a person, as well as the art they create. I’m very blessed for my collaborations to all feel very natural.

Compared with My Masochistic Mind, where do you feel Houndstooth is harsher, and where do you feel it is more vulnerable?

I think they both have vulnerable elements and elements that come from a place of expelling emotion and expressing them in different ways, whether it is lyricism, vocal delivery or production. I do, however, think Houndstooth is more fun and energetic.

There is a lot of intensity in your work, but also humour, confidence and playfulness in the way you inhabit your persona. What do people often misunderstand about you?

People think I’m much rougher around the edges when it comes to my personality before they meet me. That’s something I hear all the time, and I fully understand why. But my music is still so me; it is just where I feel safe enough to let my emotion out, rather than vulnerably in a conversation or room with someone I have just met. But I have always been this way: I keep those things tucked away”.

I am going to finish with Out of Rage and their review of HOUNDSTOOTH. They awarded it eight out of ten. If you have not heard the album yet, I would recommend you give it a listen. It is one of the best albums of this year I think:

“With HOUNDSTOOTH, SIIICKBRAIN builds a record that feels like stepping into a dark, sweat-soaked room and letting the walls close around you. It is abrasive, hazy, clubby, vulnerable, and strange in all the right ways, pulling from industrial grit, electronic production, hip-hop beats, alternative pop structures, and something far more instinctive. It never feels interested in sitting neatly within one sound, and that restlessness becomes part of its identity.

The album opens with a short, haunting intro, almost mechanical in its delivery, declaring “this is the sound of breaking the loop” before launching straight into PALO SANTO. It is an effective introduction to the world SIIICKBRAIN is creating here, immediately pairing rave-like instrumentals with softer, more ghostly vocals. That contrast becomes one of the album’s biggest strengths. There is a constant push and pull between aggression and fragility, between control and collapse, and HOUNDSTOOTH often feels most powerful when those sides are allowed to clash. FILTHY, featuring FETISH, is a standout example, carrying a sense of intoxicating danger that made it such a strong single before the album’s release. Its heavy, industrial-leaning production and club-ready pulse make it feel grimy and physical, with punchy drums and distortion giving the track a razor-sharp edge. SIIICKBRAIN’s vocals sit somewhere between seduction and menace, making the title feel deliberate rather than decorative.

DELICATE is another example of that masterful tension. Built around a trap-leaning, hip-hop influenced beat, it starts with a vulnerability that feels bruised but not passive. Lines like “they promised it all, left me worse than before, I did what was told but they just wanted more” are open enough to be read through multiple lenses, whether that is toxic love, exploitative friendships, or the pressure of industries built on image and consumption. As the track progresses, SIIICKBRAIN delivers “I’m tired of being the victim”, with the vocals eventually becoming harsher and more forceful, cutting against the softness suggested by the title. By the end, this track feels less like a confession and more like a breaking point. That sense of taking power back runs throughout the whole album.

There are repeated images of godhood across HOUNDSTOOTH, not in a hollow, ego-driven way, but as a kind of survival mantra. On I WOKE UP ALIVE, the repetition of “I am a god” lands with a ritualistic force, as though saying it enough times might make it feel real. It taps into the wider emotional thread of the record: reclaiming autonomy, rewriting old patterns, and finding empowerment not through easy triumph, but through confrontation.

Elsewhere, HER introduces one of the album’s more accessible moments, with a chorus that almost leans into pop. In another context, that might soften the record too much, but here it works surprisingly well against the layered electronic details surrounding it. It is arguably one of the lighter-sounding tracks on the album, but still feels distinctly tied to the same world, never losing the eerie, off-kilter quality that makes HOUNDSTOOTH so compelling. By the time closing track FAWN arrives, the album pulls back slightly from some of its denser moments, but without losing any of its atmosphere. It feels darkly cinematic and shadowy, letting the record fade out with tension rather than closure.

While each track holds its own, HOUNDSTOOTH is especially rewarding when listened to in full. Across the album, SIIICKBRAIN creates a world that is confrontational, contradictory, and occasionally uncomfortable, but still deeply magnetic. Some moments are more disjointed than others, though that never feels like a flaw. If anything, it suits a record built around shedding old versions of the self and refusing to be made smaller. HOUNDSTOOTH”.

I shall leave things there. Go and follow the tremendous Siiickbrain. She is gathering a lot of momentum. I am not sure how well she is known in the U.K., but I know she has a huge following in the U.S. I am very new to her work so am making up for some lost time. I am definitely now a fan…

OF the awesome Siiickbrain.

_________

Follow Siiickbrain

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: The Roots

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Natkin

 

The Roots

__________

THIS edition of

IN THIS PHOTO: QuestLove and Black Thought attend the Nordstrom NYC Flagship Opening Party on 22nd October, 2019 in New York City/PHOTO CREDIT: Dominik Bindl/WireImage

The Great American Songbook is with The Roots. They formed in 1987 by singer Tariq ‘Black Thought’ Trotter and drummer Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson in Philadelphia. Their album, Illadelph Halflife, turns thirty on 24th September. Game Theory turns twenty on 29th August. The group are touring at the moment and will be in the U.K. next month. Ahead of that, I wanted to highlight the brilliance of The Roots and end this feature with a twenty-song mixtape of their best tracks. AllMusic give us detailed biography about this incredible group:

“A rare hip-hop band and the longest continually active rap group, the Roots are also among the most progressive acts in contemporary music, combining hard-hitting rhymes, instrumentation, and sample-based production techniques throughout a vast discography of inventive studio albums while upholding an unchallenged standard of live performance. The Philadelphians, led by virtuosic drummer/producer Questlove and revered rapper Black Thought, seemed like a novelty when they broke through with their gold-selling sophomore album Do You Want More?!!!??! (1995). However, they soon became a hip-hop institution. They crashed the Top Ten of the Billboard 200 with Things Fall Apart (1999), featuring the Grammy-winning "You Got Me." By the end of the next decade, they had additional Top Ten entries with The Tipping Point (2002), Game Theory (2006), and Rising Down (2008), among other conceptual studio efforts, and had been installed as the longstanding house band for late-night television host Jimmy Fallon. During the first several years of their TV gig, the Roots put together artful works such as Undun (2011) and ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin (2014) while also co-headlining albums with John Legend, Betty Wright, and Elvis Costello. Years later, Questlove and Black Thought branched out with individual pursuits that included the former's award-winning work as a director and the latter's first solo projects. The Roots Come Alive Too: DYWM30 Live at Blue Note NYC (2025) celebrated the 30th anniversary of the band's second full-length.

The Roots' focus on live music began back in 1987, when rapper Black Thought (Tariq Trotter) and drummer Questlove (Ahmir Khalib Thompson) became friends at the Philadelphia High School for Creative Performing Arts. Playing around school, on the sidewalk, and later at talent shows (with Questlove's drum kit backing Black Thought's rhymes), the pair began to earn money and hooked up with bassist Hub (Leonard Hubbard) and rapper Malik B. Moving from the street to local clubs, the Roots became a highly tipped underground act around Philadelphia and New York. When they were invited to represent stateside hip-hop at a concert in Germany, the Roots recorded an album to sell at shows; the result, Organix, was released in May 1993 on Remedy Records. With a music industry buzz surrounding their activities, the Roots entertained offers from several labels before signing with DGC that same year.

The Roots' first major-label album, Do You Want More?!!!??!, was released in January 1995. Forsaking the usual hip-hop protocol, the record was produced without any samples or previously recorded material. It peaked just outside the Top 100 of the Billboard 200 and made more tracks in alternative circles, partly due to the Roots playing the second stage at Lollapalooza that summer. The band also journeyed to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Two of the guests on the album who had toured around with the band, human beatbox Rahzel the Godfather of Noyze -- previously a performer with Grandmaster Flash and LL Cool J -- and Scott Storch (later replaced by Kamal Gray), became permanent members of the group.Early in 1996, the Roots released "Clones," the trailer single for their second album. It hit the rap Top Five, and created a good buzz. That September, Illadelph Halflife appeared and made number 21 on the Billboard 200. Much like its predecessor, though, the Roots' second LP was a difficult listen. It made several very small concessions to mainstream rap -- the bandmembers sampled material that they had recorded earlier at jam sessions -- but failed to make a hit of their unique sound. Their third album, Things Fall Apart, was easily their biggest critical and commercial success. Released on MCA in February 1999, it entered the Billboard 200 at number four and went platinum, and "You Got Me" -- a collaboration with Erykah Badu -- peaked within the Top 40 and subsequently won a Grammy in the category of Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Malik B. left the group around this time, but he would contribute to a couple studio albums the following decade. 

The long-awaited Phrenology was released in November 2002 amid rumors of the Roots losing interest in their label arrangements with MCA. In 2004, the band remedied the situation by creating the Okayplayer company. Named after their website, Okayplayer included a record label and a production/promotion company. The same year, the band held a series of jam sessions to give their next album a looser feel. The results were edited down to ten tracks and released by Geffen in July 2004 as The Tipping Point, another number four hit on the Billboard 200. A 2004 concert from Manhattan's Webster Hall with special guests like Mobb Deep, Young Gunz, and Jean Grae was issued in February 2005 as The Roots Present in both CD and DVD formats. Two volumes of the rarities-collecting Home Grown! The Beginner's Guide to Understanding the Roots appeared at the end of the year.

A subsequent deal with Def Jam fostered a series of riveting, often grim sets, beginning with Game Theory (August 2006) and Rising Down (April 2008), the band's third and fourth Top Ten albums. In 2009, the group expanded their reach as the exceptionally versatile house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The new gig didn't slow their recording schedule. In 2010 alone, they released the sharp How I Got Over (June), as well as Wake Up! (September), where they backed John Legend on covers of socially relevant soul classics like Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "Wake Up Everybody" and Donny Hathaway's "Little Ghetto Boy." It earned Grammy Awards for Best R&B Album and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance. As they remained with Fallon, the Roots worked with Miami soul legend Betty Wright on November 2011's Betty Wright: The Movie, and followed it the next month with their 13th studio long-player, Undun, an ambitious concept album whose main character dies in the first track and then follows his life backward.

Work on the group's next studio LP was postponed as an unexpected duet album with Elvis Costello took priority for the group in 2013. Originally planned as a reinterpretation of Costello's songbook, the record Wise Up Ghost turned into a full-fledged collaboration and was greeted by positive reviews upon its September 2013 release on Blue Note. Within six months, the band joined Fallon in his new late-night slot, the high-profile Tonight Show program. Another concept album, the brief but deep ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin, was released in May 2014. Black Thought released his first solo projects, the first two volumes in his Streams of Thought series, in 2018. Early members Malik B. and Hub died respectively in 2020 and 2021; Hub's cause of death was multiple myeloma. During the latter year, Questlove made his directorial debut with the Academy Award-winning documentary Summer of Soul (...or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Black Thought and Questlove continued with many assorted outside pursuits as the Roots remained with Fallon. In 2025, the Roots held a three-night, six-set residency at the Blue Note in New York. The gigs celebrated the 30th anniversary of Do You Want More?!!!??!, as documented by The Roots Come Alive Too: DYWM30 Live at Blue Note NYC, issued that November”.

I am keen to get to that mixtape. Their most recent studio album, ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin, came out in 2014. I wonder whether there will be another album from the group. Their catalogue is among the most extraordinary in all of music. A salute and show of affection for…

A wonderful group.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Dennis (In Search of Peter Pan)/Daddy (Cloudbusting)

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

 

Dennis (In Search of Peter Pan)/Daddy (Cloudbusting)

__________

THERE are three more parts…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush on the set of Cloudbusting/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

of this series that I have left. The antepenultimate one pairs characters from 1978’s Lionheart and 1985’s Hounds of Love. I shall come to a character in Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting. A song inspired by a book, there are real-life people who were very much at the centre. I wanted to start out with a song from Lionheart. Kate Bush’s second studio album, it came in November 1978. Rather than talk about Peter Pan, there is a character called Dennis that is mentioned in the lyrics. “Dennis loves to look/In the mirror/He tells me that he is beautiful/So I look too, and what do I see?/My eyes are full/But my face is empty”. It does make me wonder who that person is and what could have inspired those lines. Rather than speculate whether he could have been named after a famous person, I have been considering the sense of fantasy and escape in Kate Bush’s music. Bush did discuss what the song is about:

“There’s a song on [Lionheart] called ‘In Search Of Peter Pan’ and it’s sorta about childhood. And the book itself is an absolutely amazing observation on paternal attitudes and the relationships between the parents – how it’s reflected on the children. And I think it’s a really heavy subject, you know, how a young innocence mind can be just controlled, manipulated, and they don’t necessarily want it to happen that way. And it’s really just a song about that.

Lionheart promo cassette, EMI Canada, 1978”.

That is really fascinating. The second song in this feature is another that is influenced by a book. It is work considering the text. The Peter Pan story first came to life on 27th December, 1904. It debuted as a stage play in the heart of the West End at the Duke of York's Theatre in London. Author J. M. Barrie later turned the play into a classic novel in 1911. Despite the fact that it is seen as whimsical and fantastical, it is actually quite a sinister text. Something that could well have intrigued Kate Bush. A song written before 1978, In Search of Peter Pan was dusted off for Lionheart. In 2011, The Guardian explored the darker elements of Peer Pan:

“That we now know so much about the story behind Peter Pan is mostly down to one writer. It can be hard to forgo any myth of departed splendour, and for me, watching Andrew Birkin's The Lost Boys (1978) itself fostered nostalgia for the hallowed decades of British television drama. The programme's brilliance arises both from Birkin's commitment to accuracy and from the knowledge that truth must be something concealed from us, somewhere playing hide and seek among the manuscripts and letters. The acting is note-perfect too, especially Ian Holm's performance as Barrie. The attentiveness and patience of the piece, its combining the richness of a novel and the virtues of theatre with the resources of television (the voice-over, the use of landscape) are qualities that it would be hard to find now on British TV.

Holm has played both Barrie and Lewis Carroll; more recently, and more implausibly, Johnny Depp has nearly followed in his footsteps by acting both The Mad Hatter and, in Marc Foster's Finding Neverland (2004), the author of Peter Pan. Finding Neverland tenders the same story as The Lost Boys, but this time as a sweet romantic fable. Everything odd and intriguing about the real story is smoothed away – no inconvenient Arthur Llewelyn Davies, no thought of blaming Barrie for the failure of his marriage, no marked interest in the boys as boys, no insight into Barrie's glum and fantastical complexities. Instead there's just a summer-soaked hymn to the imagination and a subdued, unspoken love affair, Brief Encounter with Billy Liar dream-escapades thrown in. There is plenty of boyish romping, but no scene that lingers long enough to give room to complexity. And so all the power of Barrie's strangeness slips away, leaving only an immense pity for a young mother dying and leaving her sons.

Just as we return over to Barrie's personal life, versions of the Peter Pan story itself proliferate (we hurry past Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991), averting our eyes in silence); the play still on occasion holds the stage. But these multiple reimaginings only perpetuate a process that Barrie himself began. The first problem faced by Maria Tatar, the editor of The Annotated Peter Pan, is what version of the story one would choose to annotate. There are least six possible contenders: The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, purportedly by Peter Llewelyn Davies, a photo book of the Llewelyn Davies boys playing out the adventures of shipwrecked sailors, of which two copies were made in 1901; The Little White Bird (1902), a novel for adults with some chapters devoted to Peter Pan; the original stage play (1904); the Peter Pan chapters from The Little White Bird reissued, with Arthur Rackham's wonderful illustrations, as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906); Peter and Wendy (1911), "the book of the play", and the closest thing to a standard children's book; and finally the printed, much revised play text of Peter Pan published in 1928. It's a bibliographer's dream, and an editor's nightmare. Understandably Tatar plumped for Peter and Wendy, though in my view, the play is the thing, the finest and most interesting expression of Barrie's personal myth.

Nonetheless, Tatar makes up for her choice with four separate introductions, plus Barrie's introduction to the play, FD Bedford's original illustrations to the children's novel, Rackham's illustrations, an essay on Rackham, a facsimile printing of The Boy Castaways, Barrie's scenario for a proposed silent movie version of Peter Pan, an essay on adaptations, prequels, sequels and spinoffs, and a collection of quotes and responses by people as diverse as George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell and Patti Smith. As will be obvious, it's a sumptuous and copiously illustrated book that anyone who loves Peter Pan would love.

Barrie is the most ironical of children's writers. He stands always at a winking distance from words, making faces behind the phrases. This is why the play remains the classic version. For here Barrie bases his story of a child given over to perpetual playing in the fact that theatre anyway consists of adults seriously playing the childhood game of "let's pretend". Here there are only pretend mothers and fathers, pretend food, pretend deaths. The play's stage directions call for an infected realism, precise and literal, and yet utterly fantastic. The play's preposterous demands, with its flying children, swimming mermaids, pirate ship and hungry crocodile, dance around the limits of theatrical illusion. And then the horrible appeal to the audience comes, that they should play "let's pretend" too and assert their belief in fairies, to clap their hands and save Tinkerbell's life. They must pretend really to believe in the pretence, and act as though they are more childlike than they are. No wonder that when he saw the play as a child, Graham Greene sat on his hands.

IN THIS PHOTO: J.M. Barrie in 1902/PHOTO CREDIT: George Charles Beresford

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens dishes up a potent local myth, one that even now endows that park with magic. To have permanently altered the way we imagine a part of London is a grand achievement. The later reworking of the plot, with Tinkerbell, pirates, Indians and the Darlings lost this specifically local beauty, but gained a great deal. Above all, it discovered Neverland, that map of Barrie's imagination. Other than its central myth of eternal youth, the life of Peter Pan itself now resides mostly in Captain Hook – a man hungry for admiration, flamboyant, maimed, vindictive, a passionate hater of the child and yet condemned to play for ever in a world of children. He's the bad parent waiting to be slain. In the story, fathers come in for a hard time, conceited and insubstantial Mr Darling being consigned to the kennel; mothers on the other hand have it even worse. Barrie contemplated naming the story "The Boy Who Hated Mothers", and tried to have the actress playing Mrs Darling double with Captain Hook (Barrie himself remarked, "There is the touch of the feminine in Hook, as in all the greatest pirates). In a remarkable moment in Peter and Wendy, the narrator declares that he despises Mrs Darling; a little later, he says that he likes her best of all. Out of such idiosyncratic, rapid switches of feeling, this classic draws its life.

Pan kills Hook; it's only "pretend", only a play, of course, but also an intimation of a darker world. It reminds us that RM Ballantyne's The Coral Island inspired both Barrie and William Golding's The Lord of the Flies. Peter is both the hero of the play and its true villain; there is something of the Hook in him too. The fact that children are learning to become moral agents and accept a place in the world failed to touch Barrie. Imaginatively he loved children's amorality, and wished that they could stay outside the world, before it or beyond it, inside the fenced-in territory of Kensington Gardens or marooned on a faraway island. He himself freely mixes sentimentality with heartlessness. The joke was to present emotional situations and then to refuse emotion for them, not to play "the crying game". Perhaps for Barrie feigning heartlessness rescued him from the pain of loving, whether an unwinnable mother or the lost boys themselves.

But what's oddest of all is that the public shared Barrie's private fantasy. In literature, success means finding a market for monomania. In order to resurrect Tinkerbell, adults as well as children applauded. They too, it seems, were attuned to Barrie's desire to remain a child. For us that desire has gone. Who now would really want to be a child and never grow up? Of course, in our wish to escape from work, responsibility, or money worries, I am sure that many on occasion would like to be a kid again. But a hankering for childhood – that now seems entirely lost. Very likely the long, protected "childhood" was anyway a myth, a middle-class prerogative, but then Peter Pan is a very middle-class tale. Still it is hard to imagine anyone now suggesting that childhood is holy, or that it represents the peak of life, with everything that comes after being merely a long descent. We are more likely to call someone a Dorian Gray than a Peter Pan.

These days it seems that the twilight zone of adolescence is the preferred place to be shipwrecked. "Youth" has advanced on two fronts, seizing the ground of "childhood" while occupying the place of maturity. As on that beach in Brighton, many look to loiter for ever in a state once considered ephemeral and transitional. In The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), Neil Postman persuasively argued that with childhood's disappearance, adulthood vanishes too. All that is left is one marketed expanse, where the consumers cling to the illusion of youth, a Botoxed utopia”.

I will come to Kate Bush quoting from Pinocchio for the final section of In Search of Peter Pan. I do like the study of adolescence and how she approaches it for this song. Wondering if Dennis is a childhood friend or someone she used to know, he sits in this fascinating song. I am interested in what Dreams of Orgonon say about In Search of Peter Pan:

“Peter Pan is effectively popular culture’s favorite anthropomorphization of adolescence. As he will never grow up, he embodies childhood as an endless state which actively revolts against growing up. Given that Bush had been writing fairly adolescent songs not too far back, it’s clear to see why she’d use Pan as a touchstone. Yet her path differs from Pan’s: in the chorus, she declares her desire to grow up and “find Peter Pan” (perhaps as some kind of star sailor) and escape from the trap of adult life. The departure from Peter Pan is that Bush states that she will become an adult instead of just flying to Neverland. Part of being an adult to Bush is being able to enjoy childlike things. More pertinently, as a child you believe you will hold onto childish things forever, and as an adult she holds onto this belief. The culture of children is an important part of Bush’s ethos — it presents an alternative to the tedium of adulthood. She’s never let go of childhood as an ideal, letting it play a role in her work as late as Aerial.

Bush’s quotation of Disney in the outro is an extension of this. The quote she knabs is the most famous part of Pinocchio: “when you wish upon a star/makes no difference who you are/when you wish upon a star/your dreams come true.” This is the Disney theme song, the saccharine aphorism on which their brand is constructed. Bush is quoting the most fantastical idea of childhood possible. Yet she takes this overused quote and turns it into the song’s most interesting musical moment. She sings the quote in a minor key, slowly descending as she does it. It’s not a straight quote; Bush outright warps the song. As Bush won’t pretend childhood is without pain, depictions of it must reflect some kind of wrongness and pain.

“In Search of Peter Pan” has no shortage of adolescent agony. At the start of the song, Bush has given up and declared that she “no longer see[s]” a future. Throughout the song she sings about a child whose life has been derailed by adult interference, taking the game right out of it. Modes of escape are flights of fancy, whether it be the singer’s friend Dennis who fancies himself beautiful (a queer part of the song) or flying away to be Peter Pan. Fantasy is a refuge for Bush: when in doubt, remember your inner fantasist”.

I don’t think that her words for In Search of Peter Pan reflect any struggles for Kate Bush. In terms of her own childhood. She had a stable upbringings with her parents and two older brothers, John and Paddy. Though I can see why she wrote this song. Something about Peter Pan and its darker side. There is this unsettling aspect to J.M. Barrie’s work. This article talks about the legacy and modern relevance of Peter Pan:

“More than a century later, Peter continues to fly through our cultural imagination. But why?

1. The fear of adulthood is timeless

In an age of delayed adulthood, “kidult” culture, and economic precarity, Peter’s refusal to grow up speaks louder than ever.

2. Nostalgia sells

From Disney remakes to fashion lines, Peter is a global brand. But behind the sparkle is something more melancholy: a longing for a past that never was.

3. The orphaned hero trope persists

Peter, like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker, is a child without parents, thrust into leadership, adventure, and emotional solitude. It’s a potent narrative formula.

4. We recognise the cost of freedom

Peter is free - but he’s also alone. He forgets the people he loves. He doesn't change. In many ways, he’s a ghost. That ambivalence keeps the story alive for modern readers.

A Legacy That Lasts Forever

The story of Peter Pan has been retold in countless adaptations, from stage plays and films to spin-off novels and reinterpretations. Its universal themes of adventure, freedom, loss, and the magic of childhood ensures that it remains relevant to every new generation. Barrie’s brilliant blend of humour, fantasy, and emotional depth makes Peter Pan a book that truly stands the test of time”.

Before moving on to one of Kate Bush’s most famous and popular songs, it is worth talking about the words from Pinocchio that are used. “When you wish upon a star/Makes no difference who you are/When you wish upon a star/Your dreams come true". Pinocchio has been referenced a few times in Kate Bush’s work. I have said before how she is almost unique among established artists in that she has written her own material. You have songwriters like Joni Mitchell who have written their own stuff, though there are so many established and long-running artists who have co-writers. What we get from Kate Bush is a discography of here own words. In Search of Peter Pan does contain some words from elsewhere. There are the odd bits here and there where Bush has referenced other sources, though her studio albums were written by her. I think that this individualism and assurance makes her songs so enduring. This is an artist who did not want to collaborate or include cover versions. I think that it is impressive that Bush wrote her songs. Even today, many major artists have others adding to their work. From the very start, Kate Bush wanted only her voice in the songs. A track like In Search of Peter Pan could not have been written by anyone else. On the promotional cassette for Lionheart, Bush was interviewed and asked whether any classic English themes would be explored. If that is something that was going to be big. Although In Search of Peter Pan sources from a Scottish author, I guess there was an element of a classic British setting. Oh England My Lionheart is another. Though I don’t think Bush was trying to write English or British songs. She was fascinated by different themes and threads. I do think about Dennis and what his role is. Someone who Bush names in the song, I think he might have been a family friend or someone that she knew at school.

Let’s move to Cloudbusting and Daddy. Of course, this song is about Peter and Wilhelm Reich. The Cloudbuster is a controversial, pseudo-scientific weather modification device invented in the 1950s by Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Designed to manipulate "orgone energy" (a universal life force Reich believed existed in the atmosphere), it supposedly could cause rain or clear clouds by drawing this energy into a grounded water source. In the Cloudbusting video, Bush plays Peter Reich. The son. Looking up to Daddy, played by the late Donald Sutherland. Prior to getting to Kate Bush and why she wrote Cloudbusting, this article examines this strange and wonderful machine that was designed to make it rain:

“Wilhelm Reich invented what he called a “cloudbuster” after observing the behavior of water in a bucket when a pipe was held above its surface. He was even hired by blueberry farmers in Maine to end a deadly drought that threatened their harvest and livelihoods. As reported in the Bangor Daily News on 24 July 1953:

“Dr. Reich and three assistants set up their ‘rain-making’ device off the shores of Grand Lake, near Bangor hydro-electric dam, at 10:30 on Monday morning 6 July. The device, a set of hollow tubes, suspended over a small cylinder, connected by a cable, conducted a ‘drawing’ operation for about an hour and ten minutes….

“According to a reliable source in Ellsworth the following climactic changes took place in that city on the night of 6 July and the early morning of 7 July: ‘Rain began to fall shortly after ten o’clock Monday evening, first as a drizzle and then by midnight as a gentle, steady rain. Rain continued throughout the night, and a rainfall of 0.24 inches was recorded in Ellsworth following morning.

“A puzzled witness to the ‘rain-making’ process said: ‘The queerest looking clouds you ever saw began to form soon after they got the thing rolling.’ And later the same witness and the scientists were able to change the course of the wind by manipulation of the device”.

Like In Search of Peter Pan, I think childhood links it to Cloudbusting. There is this dynamic between father and son. This almost mad inventor trying to make it rain. His young son in attendance. Discovery and chance are to key to some of Kate Bush’s best songs. Seeing the last fifteen minutes of a 1967 BBC adaptation of Wuthering Heights and then writing her debut single. For Cloudbusting, rather than it being a T.V. show, a book caught her attention, as we discover here:

“This was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It’s about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child’s point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a ‘cloudbuster’; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy – as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then – and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn’t allowed to keep it. But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden, so that he would placate his father but could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It’s a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo – how special it was – and yet how dangerous it was considered to be. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people); and he loved how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve it whenever he wanted to play with it. But there’s nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it’s very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child’s eyes, but told by a sad adult.

Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985

‘Cloudbusting’ is a track that was very much inspired by a book calledA Book Of Dreams. This book is written through a child’s eyes, looking at his father and how much his father means to him in his world – he’s everything. his father has a machine that can make it rain, amongst many other things, and there’s a wonderful sense of magic as he and his father make it rain together on this machine. The book is full of imagery of an innocent child and yet it’s being written by a sad adult, which gives it a strange kind of personal intimacy and magic that is quite extraordinary. The song is really about how much that father meant to the son and how much he misses him now he’s gone.

Conversation Disc Series, ABCD 012, 1985”.

Can wee see Cloudbusting as a summer anthem? We have just endured a torturous and hot summer and am relieved that it is autumn. Though there is so much atmosphere and weather on Cloudbusting. I will end by looking at its video and how Donald Sutherland became involved. Though this feature argues how Cloudbusting could be the sound and song of every summer:

“Bush was inspired to write “Cloudbusting” after reading about the relationship between the psychologist Wilhelm Reich and his son Peter. The track concerns their practice of trying to make rain using a machine Reich built, called a cloudbuster. A singular song with very few points of comparison within the pop music canon, “Cloudbusting” is a piece of work on which it feels easy to project your own feelings, because it is neither happy nor melancholy. Instead, the song is on the cusp of something, and it’s expansive, the way languid summer days are, vessels ready to fill with what you make of them. The quickly recognisable cello part ebbs and flows like water lapping your feet, rising like a tide at the song’s crescendo, allowing you to ride whatever emotion you like on its wave. “Cloudbusting” has bookended my summers: it has been there during a glorious 5AM sunrise, as pink light melted through my window, and for total stillness at the height of a sweaty, sleepless night. On both occasions, and in all of the moments when I’ve heard it in between, the song’s largesse allowed me to simply be enveloped by it, as my heart swelled up with whatever it wanted, the strings stretching like muscles.

In that way, there’s a sensuality about “Cloudbusting” that makes it feel like it belongs firmly within summer, the most tactile season. Bush’s voice, which tangibly sighs and pleads across the track, feels like it’s trying to grab onto something, like fingers in sand, or feet climbing a hill under beating sun. Her lyrics are largely centred on the Reichs (singing from Peter’s point of view, Bush is concerned with Wilhelm Reich’s arrest in 1941: “I can’t hide you from the government / Oh, God, Daddy, I won’t forget”), and yet the hope at its core, paired with the rousing, lilting musicianship that could mean anything at all, allows the song to maintain a universality that is bigger than their story. In fact, “Cloudbusting” is just one of many examples of Bush’s gift for taking a narrative (think, even, of her most famous song “Wuthering Heights”) and reinventing it for her own purposes, to make more all-encompassing points.

That broadness can be observed at all levels of the song, and I think I like best about “Cloudbusting”. It’s rare that you hear pop music that feels so simply big. It is an island of a song, existing in and of itself, and it lies outside of trends, expressing itself entirely without need for them. It is not the Song of the Summer, but the Song of Every Summer, because it can mean something different every time. It tells a story that is small – the tale of a son and his father – but inside that specificity there are pockets of enormity: there’s a whole sky just in its soaring chorus.

It’s here, in the chorus, where the summer in “Cloudbusting” seeps out. Bush’s voice, pretty but somehow beseeching, conjures sun after rain, light after dark, summer after a long, punishing winter. It’s a perfect image of possibility, made more powerful by the surge of the cello. And then there are the words themselves, like an incantation opening up the sweeping vistas of life that summer promises in a way that other times of year just cannot: I just know that something good is going to happen. And I don’t know when. But just saying it could even make it happen.

I am quite sure that there are no words that feel truer on a summer evening, which is as close as nature gets to real magic – the cloudless heavens turning purple, your body warm and light like the air – than those words of Kate Bush’s from “Cloudbusting”’s chorus. Close your eyes and say them for yourself. I just know that something good is going to happen. And I don’t know when. But just saying it could even make it happen. Perhaps it really could”.

Kate Bush did perform Cloudbusting as part of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. This idea of Donald Sutherland playing Wilhelm Reich. That bond between him and Kate Bush playing father and son. It does bring to life the power of the book and the story about Wilhelm and Peter Reich. The tale of how Donald Sutherland came to be in the video for Cloudbusting is interesting. Bush would have been moved by countryside and trees and wind when sitting to write the lyrics. That idyllic setting around her. I do love how Kate Bush turned up at his hotel and pitched the video, as this 2025 article explores:

“One afternoon in 1985, Donald Sutherland was enjoying the rarefied tranquility of Suite 312 at London’s Savoy Hotel, when there was an unexpected knock at the door.

With its panoramic view over the River Thames, Suite 312 was the Canadian actor’s favourite place to stay when in London, due to its position and the way it made him feel, in his words, “so cosseted, so private”.

The knock at the door was a rare event. The Savoy’s floor butler was usually the only one who ever knocked.

When Sutherland opened the door, standing in front of him was Kate Bush.

“She wanted to explain what her video was about,” said Sutherland in a 2015 interview with Dazed magazine. “I let her in.”

Weeks earlier, Bush had approached a mutual contact to ask Sutherland if he would appear in the video for her forthcoming single Cloudbusting. Sutherland promptly declined the offer, so Bush decided to pay him a visit to try and change his mind.

Bush explained the song to Sutherland and her idea for the short film – directed by Julian Doyle and conceived by Bush and Terry Gilliam – in which she would play Peter Reich and Sutherland would play his visionary father.

“She sat down, said some stuff,” continued Sutherland. “All I heard was ‘Wilhelm Reich’. I’d taken an underground copy of his The Mass Psychology Of Fascism with me when I went to film [Bernardo] Bertolucci’s Novecento in Parma… Everything about Reich echoed through me.

“He was there then — and now he was here, sitting across from me in the person of the very eloquent Kate Bush. Synchronicity. Perfect.

“She talked some more. I said okay and we made Cloudbusting. She’s wonderful, Kate Bush. Wonderful. I love that I did it.”

Cloudbusting is a magnificent song, one that hones in on the touching relationship between father and son as seen through the boy’s eyes.

The resulting short film that Donald Sutherland co-starred in was a breathtaking visualisation of Bush’s retelling of Peter Reich’s story. 40 years on from its release, Cloudbusting has lost none of its emotive power and it stands as one of Kate Bush’s finest, most enduring works”.

The two had a clear affection. That comes through in the video. Donald Sutherland died in 2024. However, he had a brilliant experience working on a music video. CLASH provided some of the great memories. Hoe Sutherland almost was like a father figure to Kate Bush on the set:

“She’s wonderful, Kate Bush. Wonderful. I love that I did it,” Sutherland continued. “I remember being in the car and the hill and them taking me, taking Reich, away and looking back through the back window of the car and seeing her, seeing Reich’s son Peter, standing there. And I remember the first morning on set seeing her coming out of her trailer smoking a joint and I cautioned her, saying she shouldn’t smoke that, it’d affect her work, and she looked at me for a second and said she hadn’t been straight for nine years and I loved her.”

For her part Kate Bush told MTV: “Whenever we were acting, he was my father. I just had to react to him like a child. He made it very easy”.

I have two more features to go. I am going to end with songs from The Dreaming and The Kick Inside for the final piece. The next feature will unite The Red Shoes and The Kick Inside. It will be sad bringing this all to a close, as the characters in Kate Bush’s songs are tremendous and so interesting. From Dennis in In Search of Peter Pan to Daddy in Cloudbusting, we get angles to explore. Bringing out new layers…

IN Kate Bush’s songs.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Mariah the Scientist

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

 PHOTO CREDIT: Vijat M

 

Mariah the Scientist

__________

SHE is busy on tour…

PHOTO CREDIT: Carl Chisolm

and will play in the U.K. in August at All Points East 2026. Mariah the Scientist is someone I spotlighted in 2022. I did want to come back to this artist, as she is one of my favourites. Her album, HEARTS SOLD SEPERATELY, came out last year. I want to start out with Rolling Stone and their chat with Mariah the Scientist. They spoke with the “R&B star on the set of a new music video to go deep on her excellent new album, being more than a famous girlfriend, and getting what she deserves”. I have chopped the interview up a bit, but I did want to include these particular sections. She was being interviewed with her sister, Morgan. It is an interesting conversation:

“However, Hearts Sold Separately is Mariah living in her truth: it’s a concept album about her fierce willingness to love, even when she and women like her are treated like disposable, tiny toy soldiers instead of real forces that can change lives – and the world. It’s her best work yet, a tight, cohesive 10 tracks of literary, diaristic songwriting and expansive production. But on the promo circuit, her romance with Thug – indeed a major source of inspiration – can take up too much space. In the YouTube comments of a recent interview on a prominent platform, a fan wrote of the host, “She asked about Thug the whole time like we don’t care abt [sic] him.”

Speaking generally, Mariah says, “I think that it’s crazy when I go to an interview and somebody is making it seem like they care about me and my success and they care about my music and they fuck with me as a person, and then all they want to talk about is my relationship. Or you notice that they know more about what they’ve seen about my relationship than actually being a listener of my music. What I don’t like is when interviews will be an hour long, two hours long sometimes, and the one headline they choose is ‘Mariah the Scientist is with Young Thug.’ It’s like we literally just sat here and talked about all this other shit, and this is what you chose to publicize about me?”

The album is so cohesive, thematically and sonically. How was working with Dvsn’s Nineteen85?

I think everybody should be a big Dvsn fan. I feel like they’re a really good tag team, for sure. Me and Nineteen85 are also a really good tag team. He definitely showed me the value in collaboration. Before I worked on this project, I was more the type to be like, “I don’t need no help. I’m just going to use this very basic YouTube beat that has no evolution at all.” I thought that was going to be enough. He helped me realize what it could be like to think outside of a box and explore more texture.

So this is your first time working with one executive producer from start to finish?

Yeah, for sure. I had never been to the studio with a producer and just sat there and worked on something. I used to get so much anxiety from it, so with him, it was definitely a slow start. I didn’t know what to say or what to tell him. I’m not super well-versed on musical terms. Obviously, as you grow in making music, you learn more about it, but at the time I couldn’t be like, “Oh, maybe if you cut the metronome on, then I can tell you that I wanted to be on the fourth beat instead of the third beat.” Working with other people who are not just musically inclined but knowledgeable on things like that, it made the process more technical.

You’re also such a words person. Even the way you creatively speak and conceptualize things in interviews seems to translate to your lyrics. Where did that come from for you? Did you read a lot as a kid? Talk to adults a ton? I was an only child, so I was always chatting with grown-ups.

I feel like my sister – I only have one sister [motions to Morgan] – tells me that the way I piece words together [is] unconventional. I don’t know. I went to college, [but] I’m not blaming college. You know when you see a new word for the first time and you don’t know what it means? It’s almost like I don’t want to take the easy route and just define it. It’s like I’m trying to use the context clues to figure it out before I actually define it. Sometimes I’m wrong, but I think over time, the words that you didn’t know at all, I feel like they just stick out. I struggle with exactly what I’m trying to say, but there’s almost always a word that could describe it. Maybe you just don’t know the word yet. And I do feel like when I find new words, I like to try to incorporate them. I just try to use what I think I know.

What are your favorite things that you’ve written for this album?

There’s a song called “Rainy Days.” I just like the word play. When I make a song and the words are basic, I don’t want to use the song anymore. I almost feel like with “Burning Blue,” the wording was basic. Not the first verse, but the hook though. I just feel like it was so simple. I just feel like that’s not really my style. I would like to elaborate more in the music. There’s another song [on the album] called “Eternal Flame,” and I like that one because I did a good job in describing this metaphorical place. I feel like people are going to wonder what that song is about.

What inspired Hearts Sold Separately?

The climate of the world made me want to make a whole project about love. I feel like nobody prioritizes love. Everybody looks at love like it’s a problem. I feel like back in the day, it wasn’t like that. Everybody wanted to have a family unit and be married. Now it’s like everybody is shying away from that a little bit. I just feel like there’s this long-standing war between men and women and I don’t know what that’s about. I wish it wasn’t like that, but it just is. And the more men and women I meet, I realize even though we are all human, there are huge fundamental differences that you don’t really acknowledge when you’re younger. I just feel like I’m Eve and I fucked around and bit the apple or something. Now I see everything totally different than what I thought it was. That was the catalyst of everything I wrote.

It also sounds like, in the song “United Nations,” you’re also expanding this idea of love as a potential solution for bigger social problems, not just romantic dynamics. It sounds like you’re also evoking your faith in that song, too.

Yes, for sure. Yeah, it was longer. I cut it a little bit short because I feel like when you talk about what you believe in, sometimes your listeners….I’m not trying to preach to them. I’m just expressing my own beliefs and hopefully that encourages other people. “United Nations” was one of the first songs I made that fell into the theme of what I was trying to get across.

I am really moved by the parts in “United Nations” that aren’t just about romantic love. Do you feel like your love for your sister is reflected on the album, too? Are there more platonic types of love that you feel like you’re exploring here?

We really have a weird relationship, not in a bad way. It’s just that we are different. I don’t know why I feel so strongly about people who are different from me. I have to get to the value and the balance. I don’t know why I’m doing that instead of just withdrawing or retreating.

But that sounds like how you’re thinking about men and women, right? It’s like there’s a difference there, but it’s worth understanding.

Yeah, for sure. I feel like I’m always chasing understanding, which is a problem. It really makes you not be able to rest. So I’ve been trying lately to practice my I-don’t-give-a-fuck vibe. But it is just not the way I am. I do feel like something like “United Nations,” saying “Forgive us for the fuss and fighting” is probably about me and my sister. I don’t have many songs that aren’t about a romantic relationship. It’s actually really rare that I can write something like that. So I do feel like I must have been writing about something that I felt really strongly about, and it’s not very many things that can get me worked up. My sister is one of them.

I know you have to go shoot this video. So this is your most successful music on radio with “Burning Blue,” and now “Is It a Crime” climbing up the charts, how has reaching this new height in your career impacted what your vision is for yourself and for your future?

I feel like when I first started off, from Complex asked me something about doing certain numbers and I told him that I remember reading that to get [RIAA] Gold was 75,000,000 streams. At that point, I had never done any of that. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t think I’ll be able to do this ever.” And now I have done it multiple times. And with the radio stuff and the Billboard Hot 100 and all that, it’s just like because I’ve never had it, I didn’t know how it works. It’s almost like imposter syndrome, and people are like, “Oh, you had a number one song on rhythmic and urban radio. How do you feel about it?” Hearing my song on radio is like so weird. I can’t believe that. Or if I’m in a store and they’re playing it and they don’t know that I’m there, it’s very interesting”.

I want to move to this year and an interview with Billboard. They spent time with Women In Music Rising Star. An artist growing in confidence, I do feel that everyone should be following Mariah the Scientist. There have been a couple of great collaborations this year. Make Me with Latto and Bottles & Lights  with Chxrry:

“Brought up in her beloved Atlanta, this year’s Women in Music Rising Star has been singing all her life. After moving to the Big Apple to study biology (hence her stage name) at St. John’s University, Mariah dropped out her sophomore year to embark on a music career at the encouragement of friends who had heard some of her original songs. She released To Die For, her debut EP, on SoundCloud in 2018, and buzz around the project caught the attention of Tory Lanez, landing her a deal with RCA Records in conjunction with his One Umbrella label, where she started building her lovelorn catalog with 2019’s Master and 2021’s Ry Ry World. By 2022, she left those deals for a six-month stint as an independent artist, before landing at Epic Records, where she remains today.

On those early projects, Mariah fine-tuned her confessional songwriting style and sharpened her ear for her now-signature ’80s Prince-inspired soundscapes — and on 2023’s To Be Eaten Alive, her first album on Epic, she made serious commercial advances. The set became her first project to reach the Billboard 200, and in early 2024, Mariah also made her first two Hot 100 appearances as a featured artist.

As Mariah’s star rose, so did internet scrutiny of everything from her live shows to her tumultuous relationship with headline-grabbing Atlanta MC Young Thug, with online commentators frequently making Mariah the butt of ther jokes. “I don’t even laugh at that,” she says bluntly. “I don’t laugh at none of that s–t. I think that ridicule is really unnecessary.”

But Mariah didn’t allow the chatter, particularly around her high-profile relationship, to cloud her year. As Thug navigated his rocky homecoming following his RICO case victory — including a collection of messy leaked jail conversations between him and his boo — Mariah stayed true to the “war on love,” toy soldier aesthetic of Hearts Sold Separately, hitting the road for her biggest headlining tour yet, playing iconic venues like Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

When we speak, as she nears her trek’s April 10 conclusion at Atlanta’s Coca-Cola Roxy, Mariah is already formulating her next project — and it likely won’t be what fans expect. “I’m trying new things and doing new things, but the heartbroken narrative is kind of jaded for me,” she says. “That’s my whole MO and my claim to fame, but that’s not how I feel every day of my life.”

Does the title Rising Star resonate with you?

When some people hear “rising star,” they may go, “I heard of her several years ago, how is she even included?” But those are the kinds of people who would prefer to continue letting you go excluded. I’m appreciative of the consideration.

You are the third consecutive R&B singer and the fourth consecutive Black woman to be named Rising Star. What does that mean to you?

I never expected to do these things, so to be honored for my art makes me think it wasn’t so random. Maybe this is something I’m supposed to be doing and continue doing. This gives me motivation to continue pursuing longevity in my career.

Was there a particular show on this tour that proved that you’ve reached a new level?

That South Africa show [on Jan. 3 at Pretoria’s SunBet Arena] was probably bigger than any show I’ve ever done, and they were screaming and crying at the top of their lungs. English is not necessarily everybody’s first language in South Africa, so it was honestly unbelievable. It left a huge impact on me; I can’t forget it. I want to go back.

Have you found time on tour to write?

I try to create space for it. I’m more inclined to write by myself. I don’t like to do that around people, and I’m always around people on tour. When I’m on the bus or in my room, maybe I can listen to things and try to come up with ideas. Otherwise, I’m too overstimulated.

Were you expecting a Grammy nomination last year?

I don’t want to say I expected a nomination, but when I wasn’t included, I was like, “Well, damn, what do you need?” “Burning Blue” went gold [in three months]; it went platinum the same calendar year. It debuted on the [Hot 100] at No. 25 — ain’t nobody doing that these days, especially not Black artists. [“Burning Blue” was the highest-debuting female R&B song on the Hot 100 in 2025.] But they don’t owe me anything.

But I will say this: Kehlani definitely deserves what she got. If anybody was going to get [that Grammy], I would rather it be her. I told her, “I really hope that they don’t do you wrong.” She deserved that.

How have the women on your team pushed and protected you during this moment in your career?

Everybody knows my sister [Morgan] is insane. It’s an element to her character and vibe — before she walks in the room, you know she’s a force to be reckoned with. My cousin, Ty, is my assistant and she’s really helpful, never takes anything personally and can get almost any job done. I’ve started incorporating a stylist named Jaclyn [Fleurant], and she takes the weight off my shoulders as far as procuring things.

Jennifer [Raymond] is my A&R, and her personality is like a rainbow. She’s such a positive person and truly shows up. And, of course, everybody at Epic and Olivia [Mirabella], who’s my agent at CAA. It seems like she can get me booked anywhere, anytime. She really kept me on the road for so long, so shoutout to her. I appreciate that because it has paid my bills!

Do you have new music on the way?

I’m itching so bad to put new music out, but I want to set aside a time to cultivate a cohesive project the same way I did with Hearts Sold Separately. When I get off tour, I’ll probably go and sit in the studio a little bit. But I do have some songs that I’m considering including”.

There is not a lot of press or interviews from this year. However, People chatted with Mariah the Scientist. She was nominated for five awards at the 2026 BETs. She won one award: the Viewers' Choice award for Burning Blue. I wanted to spotlight Mariah the Scientist again, as a lot has changed in the past four years:

“On the title of the album, Mariah chose to play with the phrase "parts sold separately" in toys — and related it back to relationships.

"I feel like with toys or things that you buy in the store... You buy a toy and you think, 'Oh my gosh, I'm going to get home and I'm going to play with it.' And it's nothing like breaking the box open and then [you realize] you need batteries," she says.

"I feel like in relationships it's like that. Maybe you see something that you like, but you're not thinking about the fact that you had to put a lot into it to make it work," she adds. "It's not like you rip it out the plastic and it's go time. It just doesn't work like that. I feel like it requires more to power it and keep it lasting and working. It's not as simple as what it looks like in the package."

Now, on top of the writing process being so freeing, she feels seen when her fans sing the lyrics back to her at her shows.

"When I wrote 'No More Entertainers,' I thought that it would be hard for people to listen to because [not] everybody has dated an entertainer, but they sing the song so aggressively at my shows and I start thinking, 'Did you date Leonardo DiCaprio?'" quips Mariah, who got engaged to Young Thug in December.

"They just see me, I don't know. It's almost as if they don't even care what I say or what I'm talking about, kind of how I feel about somebody like Frank Ocean," she continues. "I feel like I don't know exactly what he's talking about. Maybe his exact experiences aren't mine, but maybe it's because he's speaking metaphorically or in these parables-esque talk that it makes it easy for me to digest."

At the 2026 BET Awards, which are happening on Sunday, June 28 in Los Angeles, Mariah received five nominations — including album of the year. Reflecting on the nominations, Mariah says she doesn't want to set her expectations too high for taking home a trophy.

"I'm like, 'Wow, 2026 is just coming in hot,'" she says. "I feel like every time I turn around, they're saying, 'Mariah, you have this new nomination.'”

She continues, "I just think that being considered in general is nice. I feel like it's almost the highest form of respect for your art to be considered”.

That is about it. I think it is important to focus on the brilliant Mariah the Scientist. She is a brilliant artist who I feel is underrated and deserves a lot more attention. If you do not follow her already then make sure that you do. This is an artist who I really love and feel you should check out. Mariah the Scientist is…

A hugely important force for good.

__________

Follow Mariah the Scientist

FEATURE: Spotlight: Anfisa Letyago

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Anfisa Letyago

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THERE are some other interviews…

that I want to get to. I will start out with Schön! and their interview from last October with Anifsa Letyago. This is an amazing D.J. that I wanted to highlight, as she released the E.P., Bubbledance, in June of last year. TUNELS, an album with Unfinished Portraits, came out last year. Last September, at BEONIX Festival, Schön!  Spoke with the Russian-Italian D.J. had played a set. “Hypnotic yet propulsive, her sound was like a siren call that echoed through the brutalist shell of the Hangar. Before she bent the space to her will with technical prowess and charisma, Schön! caught up with Letyago backstage”:

“You’ve played on such a wide range of stages around the world. In what way did this one distinguish itself for you?

It’s never about the stage itself, it’s all about the crowd. As DJs our role is to establish a connection with the people in front of us and take them on a journey through our music selection and mixing techniques [and] make them have fun.

With that context, how did you shape the flow of your show?

I love to read the crowd and feel the vibe of the night. It’s a spontaneous process and it works like a conversation between me and the people on the dance floor. I’ll play a track, see their reaction and that tells me what to do next. It’s about being in the moment and creating a unique experience for that specific night.

Your sound spans from hypnotic depths to powerful intensity, how do you decide which side to reveal more?

I don’t like to limit myself to just one style. I always keep a techno identity, but I love to travel between genres. The decision depends entirely on the atmosphere of the night and how the crowd responds. Sometimes the energy calls for a more intense sound and other times it’s more about a deep hypnotic vibe. The goal is to take people on a journey, and that journey needs different moments of both light and shade.

How does the process of creating music in the studio compare to bringing your sound to life on stage?

In the studio, it’s a very personal and intimate process. I’m alone and I can be very focused on the small details. I can explore different ideas and sounds without any pressure. It’s where I build the foundation of my sound and where I can live in my “fantasy world,” as I like to say. When I’m on stage it’s a different kind of energy. It’s about sharing that sound and that energy with a crowd. It’s a very physical and interactive experience. The crowd becomes part of the creative process. In the studio, I am the creator. On stage, I am the conductor. They are both essential parts of what I do”.

I will come to an interview from this year. However, sticking in 2025, Beatportal named  Anfisa Letyago their Artist of the Month in June. She talked about her “clubland beginnings, and the sonic vision behind her bold new EP and audiovisual show”. I do love highlighting D.J.s for my Spotlight feature, as they tend not to get as much focus as artists:

“Anfisa has since travelled the world as a DJ, and her sound has evolved too. Present-day Anfisa Letyago productions traverse groovy and trippy techno, flecked with spacious soundscapes, hypnotic motifs, and aquatic basslines. “I think I’m still working on my sound,” she says. “It's a never-ending story. And recently, I noticed that I’m very obsessed with the details. Because the more time you spend in the studio, and the more time you spend producing, the more your focus goes to the details.”

It’s for this reason that Anfisa spent two years producing the EP Bubbledance. The result is “something unconventional” but it’s certainly suitable for the dance floor, with pacey BPMs, playful melodies and bouncy atmospherics. But it’s Anfisa’s enchanting vocals that add a quirky touch to the EP. “It’s not going to be viral,” she says. “I didn’t make the EP for that kind of promotion, but this is what I really feel when I work and write in the studio. Maybe it’s very conceptual, or a little bit conceptual, but at the same time, it satisfied what I feel and what I really want as an artist at this moment.”

The single “In My Arms” is an extension of Anfisa’s unconventional world. It’s due for release on 11th July via her own imprint, NDSA, which she named after the smallest island on the Gulf of Naples called Nisida. The single hits that sweet spot where classic trance and club-cut techno collide, laced with emotional pads, a bouncy lead melody and more of Anfisa’s whispery vocals, adding an introspective flare.

Plus, the single comes with a video that examines the fluidity of perception and identity. Anfisa teamed with AI artist duo Supernova (AKA Jacopo Gennari), fashion specialist director with years of experience and collaborations with major brands, and Matteo Masali, a video artist and editor. Together, and with Anfisa’s creative direction, they crafted an Anfisa-shaped character in the video, inspired by action sci-fi movies like The Matrix and ​​The Fifth Element. “I don’t want to be an old school girl,” she laughs, referring to the age of both films, which were released in the '90s. “But it’s a very cool video. It’s a kind of a like dream where I move my character through an urban scene, a cosmic scene and an underwater scene. So it changes all the time. I really want to show you this video, but we’re still finalising it. We’ve been working on it for months.”

Working with AI and collaborating with digital artists excites Anfisa. Last year, she debuted her audiovisual show 'Partenope' and showcased it in Barcelona, Napoli, and London. Prior to this, Anfisa spent about a year and a half putting it together with the digital artist and creative technologist Giusy Amoroso, AKA Marigoldff, who built the character of Partenope (based on 3D scans of real-life Anfisa) and her sidekick (based on Anfisa’s cat Leo). “The resonance [with the crowd] was very big and people really loved it,” she says. “So it makes sense to continue to work on it. It’s not easy and it takes a lot of time to organise everything and to set up, but it’s worth it. It works.”

Next up, Anfisa will take 'Partenope' on the road again in November, but before that, she’s got a summer packed with gigs in Ibiza, the Netherlands, Croatia, the U.S., Cyprus, Mumbai and more. In the meantime, she’ll continue working on new music, working on the 'Partenope' A/V show and running her label NSDA. She uses the imprint to promote and collaborate with emerging artists like Keira Meier, Sole Dosi, Hoymans, and many more. She’s also planning NSDA workshops in Italy, France, and the UK.

Taking stock of her journey so far, Anfisa says she’s still evolving as an artist, but she’s staying true to herself and loves taking risks. “And it’s very cool, because everything comes with experience… when I see myself 15 years ago and when I see myself nowadays, I was always improving. It’s very nice growing through music. I would say that music has improved me as a person and as a woman. I’ve become more mature. Now I’m really sure about what I’m doing. And it’s so cool that everything has happened through music”.

Let’s finish off with a recent feature regarding comments Anfisa Letyango made on Twitter. He words about the state of Electronic music sparked debate. Whether, beyond posts and the algorithms, the music was still moving people and engaging. It is an interesting topic. One that I don’t think we are done discussing:

“Anfisa Letyago has set off a wider debate about the state of electronic music. The Russian-born techno DJ and producer took to X this week to share an unfiltered take: “The current situation in the electronic music world, 100% hype, 0% music.”

Crucially, the post has landed as one of the most discussed industry conversations of the week. As a result, fans, DJs and label heads have all weighed in across socials.

Notably, Anfisa has built her career on the opposite end of that spectrum. The Naples-based artist runs her own label N:S:DA and is known for relentlessly heavy, melodic techno productions. Furthermore, she has headlined major rooms from Awakenings to Coachella while remaining vocal about craft over clout.

Meanwhile, her comment touches a raw nerve. The wider electronic music economy increasingly rewards short-form content, viral edits, influencer touring, brand partnerships and TikTok algorithm chasing. Indeed, plenty of artists have voiced frustration that production quality and dancefloor craft now feel secondary to social-first thinking.

Equally, the debate isn’t new but the framing is sharper. From Bob Sinclar recently calling Ibiza too focused on VIPs to Deborah De Luca calling out gendered scene criticism, artists with long careers are increasingly vocal about what the industry has prioritised. In short, the hype-vs-music conversation has become its own loop.

Still, Anfisa‘s words cut through because she has the catalogue to back them up. Crucially, her post asks something simple: what is the music actually doing right now? Beyond the engagement numbers, the playlist placements, the algorithm reach, the question is whether the tracks themselves are still moving people.

Furthermore, the dance music economy in 2026 lives across radio, festivals, TikTok edits, brand deals and editorial cycles. Equally, that fragmentation is what enables hype to outpace music. In short, Anfisa Letyago just put the most viral framing on it yet”.

I do think that Anfisa Letyago is a pure talent and artist whose music is moving people. As a D.J., her sets are bringing people together. She is someone who very much gets to people and delivers these incredible sets. Her own music so engaging. It goes beyond hype. Go and make sure that this incredible women is…

ON your radar.

__________

Follow Anfisa Letyago

FEATURE: Spotlight: sim0ne

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: The Cobrasnake

 

sim0ne

__________

I did want everyone…

to get to know the Scottish artist and D.J., sim0ne. Her extraordinary E.P., Zer0, was released in June. I shall come to that. There are some chats from this year that we need to get to. So we can discover more about this staggering talent. I really love what sim0ne is doing. Her E.P. is one of the best of this year. The Cold Magazine interviewed an artist who knows how to have fun. Talking About her own club night, Kylie Minogue and the then-upcoming E.P., it is an illuminating and incredible interview:

“sim0ne is a through-and-through party girl, a profession she threw herself into when she was just 15 years old. Now the founding mother of her own club night, club zer0, and a world-renowned DJ and rave fanatic, sim0ne spoke to The Cold Magazine just ahead of New Year’s Eve 2025-6 to talk about her upcoming EP zer0, catharsis and Kylie Minogue.

Before I interview Simone Murphy, better known as sim0ne, I know it’s going to be fun. Because, dear reader, not all interviews are fun. Some are like pulling a thorn out a finger. But I know this one will be.

The reason I know this is that, in the week before interviewing her, everybody I told had some story of bumping into Murphy at some London club and repeated the same glowing words: oh, she’s so lovely; she’s so down-to-earth; she’s so not how you’d expect a child model turned DJ (there’s more of them than you’d think) to be. And so, when she rings me from the back of an Uber, signal sketchy, half-way between wherever sim0ne starts her Friday night and wherever she ends it, the interview is fun: less of an interview and more of a powwow, both of us gushing about the underappreciated (outside of Scotland, at least) greatness of happy hardcore, how Salford’s White Hotel is England’s finest club and about the timeless brilliance of Kylie Minogue.

Murphy hails from Edinburgh and first forayed into stardom when she finished fifth place on Britain’s Next Top Model’s eleventh cycle. Modelling is a profession she had been exploring since the age of two, when she appeared in the Scottish Herald’s fashion supplement. A Scottish Sun article, reflecting on her elimination from BNTM a decade later, rages about how the ousting of the “Edinburgh beauty” had sparked a national “outrage”. At least things have turned out alright for her since.

It was Murphy’s mother, a stylist, and father, a photographer, who initially clued her into the twin worlds of clothing and club music, helping to raise her on a diet of minor modelling gigs and northern soul. By 15, Murphy was running roughshod through Edinburgh’s nightlife: “My long-suffering parents can attest,” she tells me, “We’d get the 18-year-old boys we knew to come out with the wristbands, and we’d snog them to get them to give them to us.”

“When you’re out, you’re faced with something happening in front of you,” Murphy says, “there are people around you and you’re confronting the world around you. I think it’s important for young people to have third spaces like that.” She says she herself learnt a lot about the world this way – though, when I ask for specific memories, she validly concedes, “a lot of it is quite blurry”.

But sim0ne, a humanities graduate and perennial activist, understands the club’s latent radicalism well. She also understands the pertinent importance – both personal and political – of just being around other people, having started DJing in the mandated isolationism of lockdown. This is why she founded club zer0, her touring club night, a couple of years back. “It’s such a nice community,” she says, “I get to lock in with these smaller crowds who are all here for the same reason, hands in the air and dancing. I love seeing it because when I go out, I want it to be like that, dancing and having fun with my friends.”

Murphy knows that today is an anxious age: clubs are shutting; algorithms and AI are changing the way we exist in the world. But her existence is almost that of the cyborg, in nostalgic sympoiesis with the technology that raised her in a post-Y2K age when the world was still optimistic about the Web’s democratisation of cognition and connection. “I love that early 2000s style,” she says, discussing the metallic visual aesthetic of the EP, “when everybody was really excited about technology: the muted, glowy tones; the old PlayStation adverts.” 

Murphy and I call at the end of 2025, as one year wraps itself into another. I ask sim0ne if she has any New Year’s Resolutions and she says no, that she just wants to keep travelling and playing music. In January, the following month, she’ll be taking club zer0 to Australia. As the clocks strike midnight and announce a new start, she’ll be playing to hundreds of shit-faced Melbournians who will be among the world’s first to enter 2026 due to their advanced time zone. She says she’s excited to play them Kylie.

But how to usher in the New Year? I ask if sim0ne yet has any clues on what song she’ll play as the first of 2026. But like with most answers she gives about the future, she prefers to be non-prescriptive. “Well,” she starts, “I am Scottish and it is New Year so I think I’m going to play a verse of Auld Lang Syne, it feels correct.” A cutesy laugh – it’s a surprisingly rustic pick. “And then,” she continues, “I’m going to drop it into heavy techno.” More on brand. “Or maybe,” she giggles, “I’ll treat them to one of my new tracks”.

Beatportal named sim0ne their artist of their month earlier in the year. In their in-depth interview, she “discusses injecting joy into hard dance and why protecting club culture matters more than ever”. Do make sure that you connect with this incredible artist. Someone who I feel is going to be around for decades more:

“Despite only teaching herself how to DJ and produce during lockdown, sim0ne has rapidly become one of the hottest names in dance music. “I was really late to the game,” she admits, “but because I have ADHD I'm not great at getting myself to sit down, especially if it's at the start of learning to do something.” Thankfully, everything clicked relatively quickly: “I remember thinking ‘wow, I can't believe I just figured this out in my bedroom’,” she says of the achievement changing her neuro-plasticity: “I thought ‘if I apply myself for long enough, then I'll be able to do this’.”

Having since honed her skills and become a regular fixture on festival line-ups, club posters and the fashion circuit, sim0ne has built a community of her own. “Everyone is so locked in,” she says of her club zer0 events, including a particularly memorable sold-out party at Village Underground in London. “People weren't going out for cigarette breaks. They weren't moving again. There wasn't a crazy amount of phones in there. In all the pictures, everyone is dancing and having a good time,” she beams. This, sim0ne explains, has always been the goal: “I wanted it to be about people who really wanted to leave the outside world behind and lose themselves. There's something so cathartic about dancing and jumping up and down with your friends. I love that club zer0 is a place where people can do that.”

Getting to curate the line-ups feels incredibly fulfilling, too. “That’s one of the funnest parts,” she says. “When I’m booking it, I’ll look at flyers for the local scene, see who is coming up and who is trying really hard to get their name out there.” Aside from local acts, she’s enjoyed having free rein to hand-pick some of her favourite artists to join her, including hyperpop-star Hannah Diamond. “It was slightly different musically but I love PC Music because seeing and hearing them gave me the confidence to get into making music,” she recalls of their unconventional methods. “I didn't grow up being musically trained and that’s how they all got into music,” she shares. “They were breaking a lot of rules that didn't matter, and it still sounded great and they were so cool.” Hosting Diamond to play after her, then, felt like a full circle moment: “I was really fan-girling,” she laughs, adding that “everyone stayed right through to the end; it was incredible to see”.

“Other than online?” she offers tentatively. “Being in the club really forces you into the present, and I think that's what's so nice about it.”

What can be done to stop, or at least prolong, this Black Mirror-esque prediction from becoming reality? Aside from Nadine Noor, founder of the queer club night Pxssy Palace, being appointed by Mayor Sadiq Khan to the independent London Nightlife Taskforce in February 2025, sim0ne says she “hasn’t seen anything like a huge interjection from the UK government. I’m aware it’s probably not their top priority… but I do think it's a really important space for young people to have”.

While they’re still open, then, you’ll continue to find sim0ne on the dance floor. “The only way to really see how a track feels is to be there yourself,” she suggests of the way raving informs her own BPM-building DJ sets; “you’ve got to keep getting involved!” A recent visit to Basement in New York springs to her mind: “my friends and I had been techno dancing for hours and then, out of nowhere, [Madison Avenue’s] ‘Don’t Call Me Baby’ dropped. I literally screamed and we were all grabbing each other… I think it's so great to have a moment of respite from the kick drums,” she continues. “People love a bit of melody, and I’m always incorporating that in my music.”

All this is at the core of her first full project, ‘zer0’, the dopamine-releasing tasters of which she has been sprinkling into her recent DJ sets. “When people get really excited when you play your own track, that’s the best thing in the world,” she concludes of the reactions she’s been getting. “It feels amazing because it’s like, ‘oh, you guys came to see me, and to see me play this”.

Let’s finish with Metal Magazine and their interview with the tremendous sim0ne. I think that she is one of our greatest D.J.s and artists. I am not sure what her summer plans are, though you know she is going to be pretty busy. A full diary looms I am sure. Do make sure that you follow sim0ne, as she is too good to miss out on:

“You’re completely self-taught when it comes to producing, singing, and DJing. What was it like to enter this scene without much formal knowledge and also with a lot of critical eyes watching, especially as a woman bringing feminine and “ridiculous, fun energy” into the space?

Honestly very scary, it’s intimidating to lay yourself bare in front of that many people. I came up through the clubs in a time where the DJ world had a lot of pretension and felt very gatekept so when I first started, I strove for perfection and would beat myself up over every mistake. You learn very quickly in front of that many people, though, and get a lot more comfortable which has allowed me to be a little more out-there. I’m more scared of not expressing myself properly than messing up a transition now and I can apply that mentality to the studio and creating music. Honestly, I find singing the most daunting now so that’s what I practice most. It would be cool to use less processed vocals in the future.

Can you tell us a bit about your club zer0 collective? What inspired you to create this and how do you assemble a lineup?

This might sound selfish but a lot of the time I’m just booking who I want to see. It feels important not to tie myself down to one genre or even just DJing. We had Coucou Chloe perform live at one of the London parties. We have more budget now than we did at the beginning, but I really enjoyed the process of finding local talent so that’s definitely a practice I want to continue.

How do you distinguish your roles of producer, artist, DJ, and now club curator?

They blur into one a lot, for better or worse, I don’t have a lot of separation between my work and personal life. I’m grateful to be booked and busy and this project was definitely made with the clubs in mind whenever I got a chance to be in the studio. Maybe it would be interesting to block off time to make a future project, but zer0 is definitely a love letter to the dance floor.

You’ve spoken about the importance of third spaces and being in contact with other people, with community and how that in itself is a political act. What does that look like in practice for you?

I always say I’ll fly anywhere for a good enough party but I’m probably a little extreme. Just being with people, moving your body, and knowing there’s some solidarity because you all enjoy the same thing is really good for the soul and that’s something you can do with friends or alone in a crowd.

It feels like there’s a bigger crowd of artists being open about clubbing, making going out cool again like in the 90s and 2000s. For DJs especially it’s important to stay in touch with the crowd’s experience. How do you model that?

I go out. I go out a lot. I think we’re all guilty to some extent of getting caught up in algorithms and metrics these days. Whenever I catch myself starting to think about crowd sizes or streaming numbers, that's when I know I need to go dance to music I’ve never heard before in a tiny club. Being on the dancefloor reminds me why I love music and pulls me out of the industry side which sometimes feels like a popularity contest.

The singles you’ve dropped thus far have an emotional, melodic yet upbeat outlook on different moments of a night at the club. What can people expect out of your upcoming EP?

A lot of 90s and early 2000s references sonically. Each track was made with the dancefloor in mind and I hope people can relate to each moment too”.

I have a lot of respect and love for the epic and truly awesome sim0ne. Everything about her upbringing, background and where she is now is awe-inspiring. A supernova who is going to go very far, I wanted to spotlight her here. A gem and treasure in the music scene, go and follow her now. Check out zer0, as it is one of the best E.P.s…

OF this year.

__________

Follow sim0ne

FEATURE: Spotlight: Slim Soledad

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Slim Soledad

__________

I am excited to…

introduce Slim Soledad. This artist is someone I am new to but want everyone else to find and cherish. I did want to start out with DJ Mag and their interview from November 2024. This was a crucial point in Slim Soledad’s career. Perhaps still coming through, you could feel this breakthrough happening. They write how “Brazilian DJ Slim Soledad has become an unstoppable force over the last five years. Her latest EP, ‘Space Manual for Those Who Cannot Swim’, is a testament to how far her sound has come, merging deep beats with futuristic sounds and her “travesti means resistance” narrative”:

“The full potential of Slim’s sound had not been achieved yet. Two things were crucial to its development: the first was creating her own party and collective, and the second was moving to Berlin in 2019. The collective in question is Chernobyl, which came to life when Slim and Brazilian producer and DJ, XD Eric, united two parties — Mil Grau and Baile em Chernoby — into one based on their shared goal of creating a safe space for LGBTQAI+ people in São Paulo. “We wanted a space where queer bodies would be seen,” says Slim, herself a trans woman.

“For me, travesti means resistance. I wear it to remind me of the strength I have, of where I came from. I have been very blessed by all the travestis that have been a part of my life.”

At the time, the baile funk party scene in São Paulo was somewhat coming down from a high. After blowing up at the start of the ’10s, with many events happening for free in the streets, they were getting swept off by city hall-directed gentrification. But the need for them was still there. “I had many friends who worked on the streets. We also had this [Chernobyl] so the girls could have some fun too,” she says. When the party became established as one of the staples of underground electronic music in São Paulo, Slim started to get opportunities elsewhere. In 2019, she was performing as a dancer for Linn da Quebrada at Berlin’s CTM Festival, followed by a small tour with Chernobyl as a DJ.

She says that she returned to Brazil only to say goodbye to her parents and friends. “I fell in love with the city. I just knew there was something for me to do there, even if I had not had any previous ideas of living in Europe,” says Slim. “It all happened organically, and it was all by chance.”

It was in Berlin that Slim Soledad really came into her own as a DJ. The accelerated BPM of the German capital left her dizzy and craving more for her sets. “I used to play everything at 130 BPM. Today, I go for 150 or more — I really think it’s become part of my language, of how I demonstrate what I want to convey to whoever’s on the dancefloor.”

And what is it she wants to convey? “I want you to have the urge to run away, screaming,” she laughs. “That’s my narrative, that’s the sensation I want people to have when they’re listening.” The change of BPM allows the baile funk and techno in her sets to blend in a contrasting way, matching each other’s intensity while going through the full spectrum of smooth and sharp sounds. Slim plays the kinds of sets that are impossible to pull yourself away from — they make you deeply involved. They’re the furthest possible thing from easy listening, but worth every minute.

After the pandemic, the desire to register this profusion of sound in a studio format came about. Since she was a kid, Slim dreamed about going to space — “I feel like it’s going to be possible in a few years” — and also had a strong fear of swimming. Exploring the sounds of the Roland TR-8, she built a narrative that displays all of her desires and fears, starting with these two symbols of the deep, the dark, the unknown: space and the sea.

The result is five hard techno tracks that showcase the depth and intensity of Slim’s sound, not losing one ounce of the edge she acquired between her many experiences and relocations (she’s now based in Paris) . The last track of ‘Space Manual for Those Who Cannot Swim’ is ‘T.E.T.A Intergalactica’, which features Venezuelan visual artist and writer Iki Yos. At the start of the song, you can hear Iki and Slim using the word “travesti”, a once-pejorative word that was reappropriated by Latin American trans women to define their identity. During our interview, Slim is wearing a shirt that has the term emblazoned across it. “For me, travesti means resistance,” she says. “I wear it to remind me of the strength I have, of where I came from. I have been very blessed by all the travestis that have been a part of my life.”

With her debut album planned for release in 2025, we can’t wait to see how Slim Soledad's deeply personal and boundary-pushing sound will evolve next”.

Let’s move to Metal Magazine and their interview from this year. Soleadad talks about her D.J. work and path into music in addition to the dangers of being a queer Black artist. Every interview with her is amazing, and this chat is no exception:

“Berlin-based DJ and producer Slim Soledad, has lived many lives. Scrolling through her Instagram, you can find her in Switzerland, France, Spain, and more. Beyond DJing, she sings and mixes and also has an extensive background in contemporary dance. When she’s not wowing audiences with her energised beats like she did at Primavera Sound’s Boiler Room, she can be found modelling for brands like Burberry or facilitating safe spaces for queer folk across Brazil and Europe.

For those who are not familiar with you or your work, could you tell me a little about yourself?

My name is Slina, aka Slim Soledad, I am an artist working as a DJ, music producer, and performer. I started DJing about 6 years ago when I was still living in São Paulo. Before that, I already was in contact with music because I had studied contemporary dance and, in a certain way, there is a big influence coming from my parents since I was a little girl. I believe I have been diving into the world of music for a long time, and also experienced it in several layers – like producing, mixing, performing, singing – and I want to be able to continue working as an artist, but trusting without the fear of making mistakes and embracing chaos.

You seem to travel a lot for work – in the last few months you've been to Germany, France, Switzerland and Spain, for example. Do your travels influence your sound? What keeps you grounded?

Yes, it does. I've been to many countries (laughs), but my travels influence the sound I create a lot. Every trip I feel like I get some kind of boost and inspiration to keep doing what I'm doing. I think what keeps me grounded is to rest well, eat well, understand the things in my surroundings that make me feel good and discard the things that make me sick and keep doing it because I'm passionate about it.

You are the co-founder of Chernobyl, a collective that creates safe spaces for queer people in Brazil. Since you have been in Berlin, how have you continued this work? Have you found opportunities to create safe spaces for queer folk in the city?

We've been doing parties and events in Brazil, but we slowed down because of some turbulence that one of our members went through, but now we are with the founder of the collective here in Europe. Unfortunately, we only did one edition of an event that was very special in 2020 in Berlin, but we have the idea of planning something out in Paris in the future.

Can you tell us about any future projects of yours? What are you currently working on?

I've been working on a few projects at the moment, both related to dance and music, but other than that, I've been putting energy into some songs that I intend to release early next year. In the meantime, I'll release some surprises that I've been working on over the last few months, which consist of finding more power and noise from the voice to build beats. I'm looking forward to it and I've been doing it with a lot of love and making sure I enjoy every moment and part of the process”.

I do want to end with Mixmag and their chat with Slim Soledad from March. She was preparing to release her debut album, Noches Calientes De La Soledad, a surprise drop that came out on Headroom Records. Speaking in London at an event to mark a decade of the Herrensauna label, we do get this sense of excitement for someone who is embarking on this new chapter:

“Can you tell us about the music scene in São Paulo when you were growing up? What were your formative experiences with dance music in the city?

When I was in my teenage years in São Paulo, I started to have this desire for music and dance. My first parties in Brazil were these big streetside reggae parties, and after my first experience where I danced all night long with my friends, I started discovering more about the nightlife in Brazil. I really had this love for dance – I started to get into the nightlife scene when I was 17 or 18, and I’d go to more in the centre of São Paulo and discover all these underground parties.

What kind of music styles were popular at the time?

There were so many parties on the street, we don’t have those as much anymore except on certain holidays, but there would be all kinds of techno or reggaeton events, because that was really trendy in São Paulo at the time. But it was very mixed, you would even see people from the punk movement come and join those parties.

You mix a lot of Latin American styles like Brazilian funk and bass in your music – since moving to Europe, have you noticed an increased appetite for those styles on this side of the world? How does it differ from back home?

I think so. Everyone's really into Latin sounds now, but there are so many different styles. The stuff that comes here is the more mainstream stuff which is cool as well, but if you go to baile funks in the neighbourhoods of Brazil, you're gonna see that the music is so much more raw, unpolished in production, and so loud. That’s the real beauty of it. There are cars with speakers and DJs playing loads of unreleased music that you’ll probably never hear again. It’s a very unique experience.

You often use your own vocals on your tracks, does it feel liberating to be able to work on music entirely yourself without relying too heavily on samples and other vocalists?

It feels so liberating because I was really shy before and I didn't like to hear my own voice. It takes a little time when you're producing to get used to your own vocals, and I think the lyrics that I wrote I was ashamed to share with other people – I thought the music wasn’t good enough. I decided that I just have to be a little bit more gentle with myself, and if I don't do this for me right now, when am I going to do it? That's why it feels so liberating, because it feels like a page being turned – I'm being much more gentle with myself.

Your debut album ‘Noches Calientes De La Soledad’ is landing in a few days. How are you feeling about it?

I'm so excited. This is actually a gift that I'm giving to my teenage self, especially because of the pressure I was putting on myself about using my own vocals and thinking so much about how people would see me. I'm so proud of myself. I was thinking that it would take so many years to do something like this, you know? So, yeah, I’m super happy.

Can you talk me through some of the themes and ideas on this record? What were you expressing lyrically?

The theme of my new album is ‘hot nights’. All the music is very related to how I have experienced the night, and how a lot of us have the same kind of experiences like coming back from the club alone or being super drunk and not knowing who you're gonna meet. But so much of it is about shame, too – about relationships with other people or talking about drugs openly. I thought that if I said this out loud, people would judge me so bad, and maybe I’m trying to project someone that I really am. I really wanted to show to people this true picture of myself rather than just hiding it, so I think this music is a really good way to communicate what I'm feeling.

You’ve helped to create safe spaces for queer people both back home in Brazil and in Europe with your events while championing LGTBQ+ artists from your home. What inspired you to make this move and forge a community in nightlife?

I always want to have a space where I feel comfortable and where there is no judgment, no sexism, and you can have a relationship with the people around you. Sometimes you just want to hug someone or give a little kiss on the cheek, and feel that everything is alright. Me and my friends wanted to have a space to exercise freedom. I know that we are not free when there are other people in chains, but we can at least try. Just for a few hours, we can feel free and that everything is okay”.

Go and follow the incredible Slim Soledad. I am dropping in some music and D.J. sets to show just what she is about, though I wonder if that can do full justice to her talents. I wonder what the rest of the year holds in store for Soledad. A talent that everyone should know, this internationally acclaimed D.J. and artist is…

A true powerhouse.

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Follow Slim Soledad

FEATURE: Spotlight: Donna Dafi

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

  

Donna Dafi

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I am spending some time…

with the music of the tremendous Donna Dafi. There are some interviews I want to get to. I am starting out with Mystic Sons and their conversation from January. Speaking about her single, Primadonna, we learn more about this incredible artist:

“Shaped by her German, Nigerian, and Albanian heritage, and backed by a master’s degree in architecture, Donna weaves emotion, elegance, and empowerment into every line she sings.

At the heart of 'Primadonna' lies a tension many know well: the high of new affection and the fear of losing yourself in it. With cinematic production and vocals that balance vulnerability with strength, the track is a hypnotic blend of modern power-pop, soul-infused textures, and uncompromising honesty.

What kind of music did you love when you were younger?

I grew up listening to a lot of pop and R&B, with artists like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Sade, Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Toni Braxton. At the same time, my mum introduced me to a lot of Afro and soul artists like Fela Kuti and Erykah Badu, which really shaped my taste.

What was the first album you remember owning?

Probably Bad by Michael Jackson. I remember being completely obsessed with it and playing it over and over.

What is the one song you wished you could have written yourself?

“I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston. It’s timeless, emotional and joyful all at once, perfect songwriting.

Do you have any habits or rituals you go through when trying to write new music?

I like to start by talking, sharing stories, feelings or moments from life. Once the conversation feels honest, the music usually follows. I also love late night sessions when things feel more intimate and unfiltered.

Who are your favourite artists you have found yourself listening to at the moment?

I’m always revisiting classics but I also love discovering new artists. I’ve been listening to a mix of old-school R&B and pop, it really depends on my mood.

If you could open a show for anyone in the world, who would it be?

Beyoncé. She’s fearless, iconic and constantly evolving. Opening for her would be surreal.

What do you find is the most rewarding part about being a musician?

Connecting with people. Knowing that a song you wrote can help someone feel understood or empowered is incredibly special.

And what is the most frustrating part?

The waiting. So much of this industry is out of your control and patience is something you constantly have to learn.

And what is the best piece of advice you have received as a musician?

Stay true to yourself. Trends come and go but authenticity is what lasts”.

One of her newest singles is ManGo. Metal Magazine shared their impressions on a song from an artist who very much has her own voice and vibe. Such a distinct and strong voice in Pop music, I cannot wait to see where her career takes her, as Dafi is an absolutely wonderful songwriter:

“There’s a lightness to the song that makes everything hit harder. ManGo never forces emotion into huge dramatic moments, even though the idea behind it is deeply personal. Donna moves through the track with a calm kind of confidence, letting the groove carry the tension naturally while the lyrics slowly reveal what’s really sitting underneath it.

As Donna explains herself: “ManGo is about seeing through charm and manipulation — that moment when you fully realise your worth and decide you’re no longer playing along. There’s a playful twist to it: I was always being called sweet, compared to sugar, even to a mango... his favourite fruit. But instead of falling for it again, I flipped it. I took the word he used for me and turned it into my power.”

Born in Stuttgart with German, Nigerian and Albanian roots, Donna has been slowly building her world over the last few years through releases that blend early-2000s pop energy with more current R&B and rhythm-led influences. There’s something very direct about the way she writes. Even when the songs lean sensual or playful, there’s usually a sharper emotional layer underneath them.

Barcelona also seems to have become part of Donna’s universe. Much of her recent music has been recorded there, including the ManGo music video. Alongside the single, she also shared small behind-the-scenes moments from the shoot: kitchen spaces turned into improvised film sets, glam teams rushing between takes, long hours running on adrenaline, and, as she puts it herself, “a full room of amazing people trying to make movie magic happen.”

I am new to Donna Dafi. I am not sure whether she has any gigs coming up. There are a lot of people in the U.K. who would love to see her perform. Such a respected and accomplished songwriter, I do hope that she comes to see us at some point. This year has been quite a busy one for Donna Dafi. In another interview around Primadonna, we do get even more insight into Dafi. Someone I am a big fan of. Stanisland Magazine caught up with her in February:

“You have a master’s in architecture. Do you bring anything from that into your music?

“Absolutely. Architecture taught me structure, balance and how emotion lives in space. I think about songs the same way… tension, release, flow. PrimaDonna is very intentional: the intro sets the scene, the verses build the illusion and the chorus is where the truth stands tall. Just like a building.”

In 2026, the music scene is tough with algorithms in the way. How do you stay connected to your fans?

“I stay human. Algorithms don’t feel, people do. I share moments, not just content… the process, the doubts, the excitement. If someone sees themselves in the story, the connection lasts longer than any trend.”

There’s a lot of power dynamics in the Prima Donna video. How long was the visual concept in the works?

“Almost as long as the song itself. The visuals were never about glamour for the sake of it, they’re about contrast. Luxury versus control. Attention versus autonomy. The power shifts quietly throughout and by the end, you know exactly who’s in charge.

It was really fun to work on and I had the best team by my side, which I’m incredibly thankful for. And I can already share that we’re working on the next on, so stay tuned.”

Who are the people behind your music you’re most thankful for, and why?

“The people who let me evolve. My amazing team, who truly listen to my story, see who I am and help turn that into something special. My friends, who always tell me the truth. My family, I’m endlessly thankful for their love and support and for doing this journey with me.

I’m also grateful for collaborators who don’t try to polish the edges off me and for the women around me who remind me who I am when the world gets loud. And of course, YOU! All the beautiful people out there showing me so much love. That support is everything!”

How long did it take to hit your stride before things started to take off?

“Longer than most people think. There’s a lot of invisible work before momentum shows. The entire project, with all the songs, feels like the first moment where everything truly came together…my voice, my confidence, my perspective.”

It’s only the start of the year and you’ve hit the ground running. What can we expect from you in the next 11 months?

“This is just the beginning. More music, more stories, more visuals and going on tour. Everything is expanding the world of PrimaDonna, and I’m excited to keep evolving and sharing what’s coming next”.

Donna Dafi has released some incredible singles since Primadonna. Trouble is her most recent. I do want to end with another interview from earlier in the year, as I cannot find any later ones. If you are new to Donna Dafi then do make sure that you follow her, as she is definitely going places:

“We love your brand of ‘power pop’, who inspires you?

I’m inspired by strong women who own their narrative, artists who balance confidence with emotional honesty. I love music that feels powerful but still very human and I’m deeply inspired by real-life experiences and conversations.

What was the exact emotional moment or experience that sparked the song?

The song came from a very specific experience of being swept into someone else’s world, the glamour, the attention, the fantasy and slowly realizing it wasn’t really about me at all. It was that moment of clarity where you step back and choose yourself.

When you’re writing, do lyrics or melody usually come first for you?

For me, it usually starts with a feeling and a melody. Once I understand the emotion, the lyrics almost write themselves. Prima Donna was very story-driven. The words mattered just as much as the mood.

How do your multicultural roots shape your musical instincts or sonic choices?

Growing up between cultures has taught me contrast. My mother is Nigerian-German and my father is Kosovar Albanian, so I grew up with both softness and strength, intimacy and boldness. That duality naturally shows up in my music, especially in rhythm, emotion and storytelling.

What do you think defines “modern pop” in 2026?

Modern pop is about authenticity. It’s confident, genre-fluid and personal. It’s less about perfection and more about perspective, creating something that feels real but still elevated”.

I am going to finish here. There is no doubt that Donna Dafi is autunitic and herself. Not trying to be another artist. That comes through in her music. A big reason why it has resonated with so many people. With a strong of amazing singles under her belt, I guess there will be that demands for an E.P. or album at some point. I am sure that will happen, but for now, enjoy these incredible tracks Dafi is offering up. She is an artist that you…

TRULY cannot live without.

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Follow Donna Dafi

FEATURE: Spotlight: Lia Kali

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Lia Kali

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I do want to get…

to some interviews with the amazing Lia Kali. She released her new album, Kaelis, last year. It is an amazing release that announces this phenomenal talent. Collaborating with Toni Anzis on the tracks, if you have not heard this album and this artist, then do go and seek it out. Let’s start out with MME Awards and their introduction of the incredible Lia Kali:

“Craziest thing that happened on tour?

Back in 2023, when we launched the first album 'Contra Todo Pronóstico', one of the very first shows was in Berlin. Those days I was really afraid of flying, but we planned to travel by plane to Berlin from BCN to make this show. We had already boarded, plane started moving, on its way to the take-off runway and I started to panic so much that we had to stop the plane, so I could get out of the plane. The very first moment I touched land I said to my tour manager: "OK, now I'm fine, let's rent a car and we go straight to Berlin". Even though it took us 15h, I arrived on time to make a line-check and play the show.

Which song of your own means the most to you and why?

Very difficult to say, depends on the moment. Right now I would say "Contra Todo Pronóstico", "Cantaré" or "Niño". These songs touch me when I sing or hear them at the moment.

What do people like to do if they like you?

You will love LIA KALI if you love true people and true music, you will love LIA KALI if you never judge a book by it's cover. no matter where you come from or the language you speak

What is something (almost) nobody knows about you?

I'm a super fan of Christmas and Halloween decos!

Dream collab for your art or music:

Lauryn Hill. Or Nathy Peluso. Or ROSALÍA.

Leave a message here for your fans:

I LOVE YOU TO THE MAX! THANKS FOR ALWAYS BEING THERE!

Lastly, give us a random inspirational quote!

Imagination has no limits. The physical world does. Art exists in both”.

There are a couple of chats from last year that I want to come to. Kaelis is an extraordinary album from a singular artist. This interview with the Barcelona-born singer is interesting. How she reflects on this new album. Her best work to date. I really love the music she is making and am excited to see what comes next:

“Does the album meet your expectations?

— I love it. And the feedback from people who've heard it is much better than the previous one, so I feel very, very satisfied with the work done.

Kaelis It's a concept album. When did you decide it would have a common thread?

— From the beginning, I was very clear about what I wanted the narrative to be. Because of everything I was experiencing at the time, because of everything that had happened with the first album, because of the vertigo and fears I'd felt following the success that had come my way.

Were you so surprised by the success?

— A lot, yes. I've been doing bars, weddings, and baptisms for sixteen years. And suddenly I make my first album, have a thousand people at Apolo, everyone singing the songs... And I do eighty concerts in a year. All of this changes my life a lot. It changes how people around you see you and how people who don't know you see you. Things are happening very fast.

Speaking of relationships, two songs are two opposite sides: With you necklace and I will sing. Because each one is sung from a different place. Who are you singing to?

— They are very different, yes. With you necklace, to a betrayal and a loss I suffered. When things are going well for you, sometimes the people around you, unfortunately, don't take it well, and suddenly you lose someone you loved very much, because they can't process it. And I will singAlthough it seems like a love song, I write to music, as a song of gratitude for all the positive things that music has given me.

With your first album, when people asked you about your influences, you mentioned soul singers and female rappers. Have you added any others?

— Yes, I've discovered people. Luz Gaggi, for example, an incredible Argentinian, and Milo Jota. And Eladio Carrión, who I hadn't listened to much until he asked me to collaborate with him. I listened to him and said wow, I like the way he makes music. And, of course, there are always the influences that are never lacking: Amy Winehouse, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Ray Charles, Etta James...

Unlike other singers of your generation and younger, you have influences that go way back. Do you think it shows in your singing?

— Yes, it's very noticeable. Sometimes people tell me, "What a strange voice." They're people who've never heard soul music. I think soul music has helped me because it's given me that identity. I come from mothers that most people in urban music don't have.

What is your best memory related to music and what memory would you like to forget?

— One of the best, especially the first times. Over the years, you lose the sensations you experienced with your first kiss, those things that happen when you're a child and you're just beginning to discover the world. And music has given them back to me. For example, the prospect of making the first WiZink [now Movistar Arena] is giving me butterflies again. Like the first time I went up to the Palau Sant Jordi with Kase.O and did that collaboration with an artist I'd listened to for so many years. The best thing music has given me is being able to somehow return to that childhood or innocence, to those beautiful things you feel the first time you do it”.

Let’s finish off with The Line of Best Fit. Lia Kali does have a solid fanbase in the U.K. I would love to see her perform live, as I can imagine she brings life to these songs and creates a spectacle. Right now, she is touring Europe:

“I connected my fear of flying with the panic I felt when things started going well for me,” she says, explaining the conceptual backbone of her latest record Kaelis. “It was about learning how to place success in my life without it consuming me.” It's the kind of admission that feels slightly off-limits, like listening in on a thought still being worked through.

That sense of exposure is not new to Kali’s career, but it has evolved. Raised on the outskirts of Barcelona, her first moments of visibility came through breakout performances on Spanish talent shows Operación Triunfo and La Voz, environments built to spotlight voices before context. For many artists, that format becomes the story.

For Kali, it was a temporary stage. What preceded this was slower and more deliberate: street performances, jam sessions in once legendary local spots like Marula Café and Jazz Sí, long nights playing soul, jazz and blues, and eventually her debut album Contra Todo Pronóstico – a record born out of urgency rather than strategy.

“It’s an album I love and hate," she tells me. "It was very hard to make because I was carrying a lot of stress and anxiety. I love it because it came out and it cost me a lot. I hate it because I felt there was pressure, like you have to release something now. I was working as a waitress in two places at the same time. The only thing that made life worthwhile was making music.”

There was no expectation of reach or recognition: “I wanted to give my dad a physical record and say, ‘Here it is,’ and give one to my grandmother too. I didn’t care what happened after.”

What happened after changed everything for Kail. Her brand of soulful trap struck a chord with a scene of urban music that's proving to be one of the most provocative proving grounds in the world. Nurturing artists like fellow Barcelona local Nathy Peluso as well as el madrileño himself, C. Tangana, and global sensation Bad Gyal, Spain’s urban music scene is breeding some of the most genre-bending artists in the world right now. Lia Kali is no exception to this and her musical progression over her short career is a testament to her innate ability to adapt, innovate, and keep moving.

With growing audiences and a second album comes touring, visibility, and the unromantic realities of success. Sophomore record Kaelis was written while playing close to eighty shows, built under pressure and time constraints, and shaped by a life suddenly in motion. It's an album that documents that shift without celebrating it, asking how an artist can grow without surrendering the conditions that made the work possible in the first place.

By the time Kali began working on her second album, the circumstances around her music had shifted completely. What once lived in spare hours and borrowed energy had become a full-time reality. “With the second album, that other part comes in,” she says. “Like, shit, people liked it, now this is my job. This has become my work, thank God it feeds me and my family.”

The record was written and recorded in fragments, stitched together between flights, hotels, and stages. There was no retreat from the noise of it. “I had no life,” she explains. “Monday to Friday I was in the studio, and on weekends I was touring around the world and around Spain.”

Kali does not frame success as a triumphal arc but speaks openly about its psychological cost. “It brought an external pressure that I hadn’t had before,” she says. “Stress and anxiety were part of it.”

Visibility changes how she moves through the world, too: “When people start to recognise you, you feel more awkward going to the street,” she admits. “Videos appear that you don’t control. You can’t relax the same way anymore.”

The street offered something different. It was less polished, less controlled, and more honest. “My jam sessions ended up being more on the street," she explains. "Anyone who passes by and wants to make music is welcome to join.”

That camaraderie left a lasting imprint: “The street taught me openness,” she says. "My friends are my family.”

The moment that really made her sound unignorable was "La Cruz" a track that marked a clear departure from expectation. “It’s a very dark, techno track, with very electronic roots. That’s where there was a big change," she tells me.

The shift came from curiosity rather than strategy. Working with new people mattered less for the outcome than for what it unlocked internally. “By experimenting with more people I discovered that it motivates you to get into things and places you don’t know,” she says. “It’s like you become a bit of a child again. I realised that I really enjoy searching for my sound in new places and exploring new genres.”

For Kali, experimentation is a way of staying honest. She is careful to separate instinct from calculation. “I don’t go into the studio thinking, ‘Now I’m going to add this style,’” she says. “It comes from what I feel. There’s a part of respect for music and respect for my way of understanding and living it.”

That philosophy carries through to how her music exists beyond the studio. Despite being associated with contemporary urban sounds, Kali has remained committed to playing with a live band. It is not the simplest route, nor the cheapest but the one that reflects where she comes from. “I always came from soul, blues, jazz,” she says. “I always played with a band, earning fifty euros per gig, playing shows where nobody wanted to listen.”

Her live show is electric and completely reimagines her hits with a more soulful and jam-focused approach that’s rooted in her musical history. The next chance to catch her will be at January's Eurosonic Noorderslag showcase where she’ll be part of a group of artists highlighting the next generation of Catalan talent, along with LLUM, Sofía Gabbana and CLARAGUILAR.

As her audience has grown, so has her insistence on drawing lines – not just between honesty and performance, but between what belongs to the work and what belongs to her. “Generally, I don’t talk much about my life publicly,” she says. “My private life is my refuge. I protect my intimacy.”

This does not mean her songs are emotionally guarded: “I talk about [people I love] in my songs,” she admits. “But nobody knows. Music comes first.”

Kaelis is chaptered by personal voice notes that she sends to her mother. She talks about how much her family means to her, that she met a guy she thinks she likes, and how all this success can feel heavier than people might think. Each of these notes are titled by coordinates in the album’s tracklist; each one pointing out important locations in her life such as Plaza Castilla where she first began jamming in the street”.

Let’s end with a review of the staggering Kaelis. Even though it is a Spanish-language album, it achieved worldwide success. If you have not yet fallen under the spell of this tremendous Spanish artist, then do make sure that you get Lia Kali…

INTO your life.

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Follow Lia Kali

FEATURE: You Are Cordially Invited… Reacting to Olivia Wilde’s Comments About a Lack of Comedies in Cinemas

FEATURE:

 

 

You Are Cordially Invited…

IN THIS PHOTO: Olivia Wilde directs and co-stars in the new A24 film, The Invite/PHOTO CREDIT: Chloe Chippendale for The Cut

 

Reacting to Olivia Wilde’s Comments About a Lack of Comedies in Cinemas

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THERE is a lot of rightful…

IN THIS PHOTO: Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde in The Invite/PHOTO CREDIT: Landmark Media/Alamy

celebration around Olivia Wilde’s new film, The Invite. She co-stars alongside Penelope Cruz, Edward Norton and Seth Rogan. Wilde directed the film and has been the recipient of some glowing reviews. I think she is a phenomenal director, and one that is at her peak when it comes to these smaller and more intimate films. Normally, when a director is acclaimed and win awards, the budgets increase and they make bigger films. When it comes to Olivia Wilde, you want her to direct these more independent films rather than huge-budget superhero films and massive productions. The Invite is a film that is an English-language adaptation of a Spanish film. A comedy about two couples that live in the same apartment block and the couple above (Edwards Norton and Penelope Cruz) are invited down. Most of the action takes place in a single room. It is a comedy where the dialogue is natural too. My favourite film is Frances Ha. A Mumblecore film, characters talk over one another and there is natural rhythm. There are pauses and natural speech rhythms. Most films read like plays. Actors finishing their lines and someone delivering theirs. That is not how people converse! The Invite is almost like a filmed play, only one with a more natural-feeling aesthetic. It is a film that will win awards and I would love to see Olivia Wilde nominated for director awards, as she takes this script and these characters and has created something so engaging and lauded. She has been promoting the film heavily and has spoken about comedies and how there are not so many in cinemas. In fact, I am including a video near the end where she spoke with Rolling Stone and asked why there are so few comedises at the moment.

I mean, there are film comedies being made, though they are a mixed bag. I talked about this in a recent feature. One where I asked why comedy output has declined and there are few modern classics. Olivia Wilde’s The Invite is a rare modern comedy that has received glowing reviews and has been a box office success. It is an old-fashioned type of comedy. One where you have reliance on the dialogue and the relationships between the characters. No huge set pieces and action taking us to different locations. Things centralised and focused. It is hard to make something like that really pop and resonate, yet she has. One suspects there was improvisation and some flexibility in terms of the dialogue. Wilde is a fascinating and incredible director who I am interested to see what she does next., For Rolling Stone, she talked about comedy in general. How there are few where people can converge in a cinema and enjoy this collective experience. Comedy in 2026 is in a sorry state. A few good comedy films, yet so many that have missed the mark and shot wide. The Invite successes because of the actors, that great script, and Wilde’s direction. It has this feel of a classic comedy. A French Arthouse film or something from the 1950s or 1960s. Given the success of The Invite, Wilde can direct a massive film or something on a larger scale. Though I feel she is at her very best when scaled back and on a smaller budget. I feel her direction on The Invite will win her awards and kudos. It did get me thinking about comedy and why there seems to be little discussion. Horror, thrillers and suspense films are great, thought comedy offers this catharsis, release and collective joy. The greatest cinematic experience is laughing in the cinema. The most powerful cinematic memory I have of recent years is seeing Barbie in 2023 and there being this outpouring of joy and love. People coming out of the screening laughing and quoting lines. This does not happen often. Not that The Invite will kick-start a comedic tidal wave. Though Wilde discussing comedy and an absence in cinemas did get me thinking. I feel she is a masterful comedic director. A phenomenal comedic actor. I do want to come to an interview with Time, as Wilde talks about turning her pain into The Invite:

“What she made was The Invite, an independently financed marital comedy that jump-started a bidding war at the Sundance Film Festival in January. A24, which emerged triumphant, is releasing the film on limited screens on June 26 before opening nationwide July 10. In the movie, Wilde and Seth Rogen play a couple on the rocks, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton their intriguing upstairs neighbors who venture down for a last-minute dinner party. Wilde and Rogen’s characters have conflicting motivations for the evening: She hopes to befriend them, and he wants to complain about their noisy sex. The neighbors have their own agenda. The chamber piece plays like a comic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, if the couple at the center were not master manipulators but depleted parents fumbling to explain why they have grown so far apart.

The filmmaking process was quick, unusual, and exactly the type of production Wilde had always dreamed of. After reading a script by longtime writing partners Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, she pitched the writers and cast on workshopping it together. Sitting around a table in the soundstage where the pilot for I Love Lucy was filmed, the six of them tailored the roles to the actors and infused the script with arguments, embarrassments, and confessions from their own relationships. Wilde brought in renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel to work with Cruz, who plays a therapist, and to offer advice on the marital ups and downs of the story. Wilde then shot the film sequentially—rare for small films and logistically impossible for larger ones—in just 21 days on a set designed to mimic a labyrinthian San Francisco apartment.

Though she always intended to direct the film, Wilde had to be talked into starring in it too. She only agreed after the rest of the cast insisted she take the role of anxious Angela. “I had imposter syndrome,” she says. “The prospect of acting opposite Edward Norton was not something I felt was in the cards for me. Until The Invite, I had more confidence as a director than as an actor. But through this process, I’ve kind of fallen in love with acting again.”

Born in New York City and raised, mostly in D.C., by journalist parents, Wilde broke out in Hollywood as an icon of millennial television with roles on The O.C. and House. She tended to play elusive women who communicated with withering looks rather than words, a stark contrast to the bubbly and talkative artist who pauses on our walk to compliment several muddy-pawed dogs. In hopes of finding more control on set, she made her foray into directing feature films with the 2019 high school graduation comedy Booksmart. A sort of spiritual sister to the 2000s comedies Rogen made with Evan Goldberg, like Superbad, the raunchy and heartfelt film positioned her alongside peers like Greta Gerwig, Jordan Peele, and John Krasinski as a successful actor-to-filmmaker crossover story.

Her follow-up, Don’t Worry Darling, a thriller in the vein of The Stepford Wives, caused a media craze, to put it mildly. It began when Wilde was linked romantically with Styles, one of the movie’s stars; accelerated when she was served custody papers in her legal dispute with Sudeikis while onstage at CinemaCon; took another turn when she and Shia LaBeouf presented different narratives about his departure from the project; reached an apex when leading lady Florence Pugh skipped press opportunities; and came to a bizarre conclusion with internet sleuths analyzing a video of Styles allegedly spitting on costar Chris Pine at the Venice Film Festival. (Both actors deny this ever happened.) The movie itself was full of ideas, about the manosphere and (a few years ahead of its time) tradwives, that didn’t quite align with some of its promotion as an alluring romance between Pugh and Styles’ characters.

Still, the word “comeback” popped up repeatedly in reviews of The Invite from Sundance (where Wilde also appeared in Gregg Araki’s comedy I Want Your Sex, out this summer, in a role opposite in every way to Angela: a callous, domineering, leather-clad sex fiend). After The Invite’s premiere, the director pulled two all-nighters listening to presentations from different studios vying to distribute the film. “It’s like speed dating,” she says, adding that the producers let her choose the distributor. She insisted on a theatrical release, a rarity for a comedy these days, and now feels vindicated as she watches with audiences who laugh and cringe in recognition together.

Wilde recognizes that people will inevitably draw parallels between her public breakups and the decisions made by characters in the movie. “If people sense it looks like maybe she has been through the dissolution of a relationship and heartbreak, yeah, I have, and I think that’s what gives me the muscle memory to represent this character fairly,” she says. “I don’t think I would have been able to play Angela if I hadn’t really f-cking felt myself tossed around by life and relationships. And I’m very open to the risk of confession. This sounds so pretentious, but they say great art is confession and should feel risky—that if it doesn’t feel risky then you’re not doing something worthwhile.”

Wilde cites as inspiration not only Perel’s book but her famous TED Talk on infidelity that ends with the widely cited idea that many people today have several key romantic relationships in their lives, sometimes with the same person: “Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create a second one together?” It’s a notion that inspired debate during the making of The Invite. The cast sparred over why this miserable couple had stayed together and whether they would survive. Most at odds were Rogen and Wilde themselves. “When we shot it, Seth and I had two very different opinions about what would happen to this couple,” she says. “There was a real romantic optimism that Seth brought to it. The assumptions that everyone could make about their characters was revealing about their perspective on love.”

If Rogen was the optimist, did that make Wilde the pessimist? “I would say, ‘cynic,’” she corrects. “The more time you spend being alive, I think the more cynical you get.” It’s why she chose to open the movie with an Oscar Wilde quote: “One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.” (Olivia Wilde, it should be noted, was born Olivia Cockburn and changed her name to Wilde in honor of the Irish playwright.) “I wanted to contextualize for the audience the film through my perspective on it,” she says”.

I do think that the world needs The Invite right now. It is a great modern comedy that is contemporary but feels nostalgic. Something we do not really get these days. Oliva Wilde will no doubt invite conversation around film comedies and a lack of contemporary examples on the big screen. Or ones that unify and are acclaimed. Most filmic comedy output from his year has received mixed press. The Invite has unified critics and delighted cinema-goers. I think that it is that relief of laughing and being together at a screening and sharing this experience. The Invite offers awkward moments and tensions. Audiences reacting to these four characters spark off of one another. The dynamics and differences. What we have learned from The Invite and reaction to it is that there’s an appetite and desire to see comedy in cinemas and share in this experience. Though studios do not back them and larger budgets are not available. Directors and writers forced to work on s smaller scale and restricted budgets. That is not a bad thing, though there needs to be more faith in the potential and power of comedy. A genre that has not enjoyed the same resurgence, upswing and brilliance as modern Horror. I do wonder if The Invite is a one-off and it will not lead to a revival, though we cannot be too hasty. What I predict is that studios will see the success it has accrued and take a chance on comedy. A tense film or something scary can grip an audience and there is that experience. Though people sitting in a cinema and laughing together feels altogether more powerful and important. The joy of seeing a terrific comedy and everyone bonded in laughter is…

LIKE nothing else.

FEATURE: Trying Times: The Decline and Uncertainty of Independent Music Journalism

FEATURE:

 

 

Trying Times

PHOTO CREDIT: Zaid Ahmed/Pexels

 

The Decline and Uncertainty of Independent Music Journalism

__________

I am still a bit angry…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

about comments James Blake made about independent journalism. He said you can’t trust bloggers and reviewers because they stopped making money and now get paid by labels to write positive reviews. Drowned in Sound, an independent music site, extended an invite to James Blake to retract his comments . Something that rightly drew a lot of backlash and condemnation. The ignorance displayed is an insult to independent music journalists. The truth is that, in a decade or so, I feel independent journalism will not exist. I am one of very few journalists who have their own site and do things without a team. I am, at the moment, the most prolific journalist in the world. I have published a feature every day for over a decade. Not missing a single day, the reason I have done this is to get my work seen. James Blake suggesting labels pay bloggers to write positive reviews is an insult to all music journalists. Tone-deaf and dismissive, we will wait collectively for his next album to come out so that we can unanimously bash it. A deserving revenge on someone who unwisely has attached and dismissed music journalism. The truth is that we are all struggling. Drowned in Sound are going to publish a print magazine and have a team working for them. I feel they will be around in years to come. However, blogs like mind do not exist anymore. Very few are starting out. When I started in 2011, there were quite a few music blogs sprouting up. They have since ceased posting. The trouble is the cost and demands of running a blog. It costs money reviewing gigs and running a blog. I can only afford to run a blog because I have a full-time job and keep things pretty simple. I do not have any videos or do a podcast. I feel the appetite for music journalism is waning. It is hard to sustain a website and get that engagement. One of the most annoying things I find is that I publish something every day, but so much of it gets overlooked and ignored.

PHOTO CREDIT: AI25.Studio AI GENERATIVE/Pexels

I am not expecting major artists to reply to my posts and share then. Though I am writing about newer artists and spotlighting them. The posts do not get any reaction from there so, more often than not, hat feature dies and does not reach a wider audience. I do think that it is good manners for artists to share a feature or engage with it. Having gone to the trouble to write about them, research, include their music and promote what they do, they are then seeing it and choosing not to share the feature. If it was NME or The Guardian then that feature would be shared. As I am a smaller blog with a small audience, artists feel it is not worth the trouble to share what I do. It does get to me. I do think independent music journalism will die in a decade. The reason I would stop is not financial or anything to do with money. It is simply the lack of appreciation and value that people place on it. I do think that if we lose independent journalists and sites then that will cause a big blow to the industry. Artists who rely on journalists like me will lose out. If all we have left is major sites and magazines then that is going to create issues. It may sound a bit bleak saying that independent music journalism will disappear, but I think that it is true. I am one of very few music blogs left. Ones that are run by a single person. I am not sure whether I will keep going decades from now. I would love to, though I am disheartened by so many features not being shared or acknowledged. I have a small following on Instagram and Twitter. Most of the engagement I get relates to my Kate Bush features. I love that, though the majority of what I do is not related to Kate Bush. I think that I have published upwards of six-thousand features. Over six-hundred a year. Major journalists like Laura Snapes and Alexis Petridis (The Guardian) are more established and have probably written more than me, yet it is easier for them to get their work read and shared because of that prestige and status. The Guardian will continue to exist decades from now. Though I worry a lot of sites will end. So many essential websites and blogs that are an invaluable source of guidance, reviews and features. I was riled and annoyed with James Blake when he unwisely took a shot at blogs and music journalists.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jeremy Li/Pexels

It brought to the conversation the importance of independent journalism and how we would support it. I am genuinely worried I will stop blogging very soon because my work is not being seen and shared. I feel it is incumbent on artists to do more and support journalism. If I write about them and take the time to publish a future, why ignore it and feel it is not worth sharing?! It does upset me. We are in danger of seeing independent journalism die years from now. I hope I am wrong, though I feel like there is this crucial moment when we need to protect music journalism. Venues have the Music Venue Trust, which is there to protect grassroots venues. They are so essential and important. Ensuring that venues stay open and provide a platform for rising artists to shine. I do think we need something there trio protect journalism. I think we are as important as venues when it comes to new music and discovering new acts. If we see blogs and websites like mine dwindle and die then that is going to impact the industry. I disagree that we do not need music journalists. Social media does not replace journalists. What you get from music journalism is nuance and passion that you cannot get from message boards and social media. Now more than ever, there are so many great new acts coming through. They all rely on independent journalists to review and write about them. However, if we see artists like James Blake come out and say bloggers are in the pay of labels, that is then sending out a message that independent music journalism is corrupt and irrelevant. I am unique in the sense that I am the most prolific journalist in the world right now. I need to keep going and reach as many people as possible, yet so little of what I write gets shared and spread.

PHOTO CREDIT: AI25.Studio AI GENERATIVE/Pexels

Maybe I need to change my tactics. I will start a podcast one day. I think people have little patience and appetite for long-form pieces which I write. Most of what I publish is over 1,500 words. Substack is a way of getting revenue, but I do not want to charge people to read my blog. I feel if I do then that risks it reaching fewer people and northing being seen. There have been occasions when artists have shared features and been very kind. It gives me a boost and encourages me to keep going. I look around and see websites and blogs stopping. The scene shrinking and narrowing. I want to keep going for decades more, though I am depressed and annoyed that only a few people like and comment on my stuff. I am aware that artists are busy and might miss notifications, though I suspect that they are seeing my feature and not doing anything with it. In the same way David Bowie spoke to Jeremy Paxman in the 1990s and predicted the danger and rise of the Internet and was proven right, I do think that music journalism is in real danger. Whilst there are print magazines and sites continuing, there are fewer and fewer independent sites and journalists. It is paramount that we talk about how important and vital independent journalism is and how we should support sites like mine. When James Blake came out with that unwise comment, he smeared all music journalists. An attack on all of us. This was what Drowned in Sound said in their view on James Blake’s post:

“That's a bit of an eye roll after the declarative first point of his first post, isn't it? Not all journalists? (Please don't NOT ALL MENS!!! us, James)

Which reviews can't people trust and why? The ones on bloggers and playlisters that get a few quid from SubmitHub to spend time listening to hours of music in order to find something to post about whilst offering feedback to everything they hear? Or the coverage in fancy fashion magazines with 200 pages of adverts and 100 pages of editorial, whose publishers may charge the artist for the photo shoot that they can then use as part of their campaign? Or the publications that offer a package where they'll turn the magazine cover into a billboard or poster campaign across the streets of major cities? Outside of advertorials, these are some of the only examples I've caught wind of that involve any financial back and forth between labels and the media in all my years working in music. Never for reviews.

Without any clarification about who music fans can and can't trust, this is a plague on all our houses.

A Quick Open Letter To Mr Blake

James, I'm sure you understand the role media has played in your career and you admit how much it has changed. If you look around, you will also see there's a big push back against the slop era we're living through. Even magazines are popping up again (we're even launching one this autumn) and it feels as if the alg0-free print medium is likely to have a similar moment to what vinyl has had in the past decade.

If you genuinely feel bad for mispeaking and truly want to mend some bridges that are currently aflame, why not encourage your fans to follow some independent publications, radio and creators that you know people can trust? Maybe add a links page to your website? Or how about starting a trend of artists with big followings amplifying publications' social media posts about music? You could simply signal-boost music recommendations with some reposts?

Going a step further, maybe take out some adverts to directly support us and promote your latest tour or album or Patreon-like fan experiment?

If I were you, I'd take out a paid subscription to some magazines and music newsletters. Not only would it be £100-200 well spent to support media outlets but it would get a regularly delivered sense of the passion and pride most publications take in building a trusted relationship with our audiences. You would also find a pile of trusted reviews, recommending some music you might not hear otherwise.

Until we hit pause on our main website in 2019, we used to get a big arena audience of music lovers on DiS every single day, and over 2 million people on the site across the year (3 million when major artists linked to our coverage).

People like you, the music fan, reading this now, who've followed us for years, are the people that artists like Blake have been a beneficiary of reaching either because you loved his music or maybe recommended it to a friend or just supported the labels and festivals and outlets that cover him. That's how ecosystems works.

It would be overstating it to say the 50+ passionate music titles like DiS that exist around the world are the sole reason for his success (his great music did most of the heavy lifting, obvs!), but we're a cog in the system that has led to his hugely successful career that keeps him in those wide-leg designer trousers.

It's sad (in a slightly melancholic but never fully miserable kinda way... like with many of his songs) to see James Blake become a shadow of the man we thought he was (and the man Jameela Jamil often tells us he is amongst her many brilliant appearances on podcasts reminding us that together we can, collectively, overcome inequalities and that a better world is possible)”.

I will continue on and ensure that I share something every day. No other journalist is doing that. I feel I need to grind and post a lot to get the site seen and discussed. So many artists ignore what I put out and it really gets to me. I would implore them to show greater consideration and respect. It works in their favour too. It shows that they are not just concerned with what major sites and players are saying. The more press they get then the better for them. I am determined to…

KEEP going in years to come.

FEATURE: Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow: Agent Orange: Never for Ever to The Dreaming…

FEATURE:

 

 

Exploring John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow

ALL PHOTOS: John Carder Bush

 

Agent Orange: Never for Ever to The Dreaming…

__________

THIS is a point…

in John Carder Bush’s Kate: Inside the Rainbow where there are a lot of photographs and not a lot of text. So we are going from Never for Ever to Hounds of Love in this section. I will cover five more sections of the book before finishing off. We have reached the ‘orange’ of the rainbow. This is where he began photographing his sister more extensively. This would continue up until 2011. That professional relationship lasting to her most recent album. I do think that what we get from page seventy-one onwards is a section of photographs that people have not seen. We pick up from the Army Dreamers video. You can see the single cover for Army Dreamers. Kate Bush drinking a cup of tea in one image. She is sort of dressed like a force’s sweetheart. This cross between a pin-up and a soldier. John Carder Bush notes how, like all of her videos, Army Dreamers was rehearsed extensively. The soldiers in the video were her band and friends. Paddy Bush, her brother, appears as one of the soldiers. There were run-through at their parents’ house. How the neighbours must have been shocked and confused to see these people dressed as soldiers running through the street. I did not know that they bought toy rifles from Harrods. Laurence Corner in Camden supplied the uniforms. Creating this authentic-looking feel. I do think that Army Dreamers is one of Kate Bush’s best videos. One that she rightly feels very proud of. What John Carder Bush observes is how it was important that the soldiers did not look like British soldiers as at the time (1980), The Troubles in Northern Ireland had its strongest profile. It would have caused controversy if Bush was in a video dressed as a British soldier. In the song, Bush does adopt an Irish accent. I get the feeling that there was this nod to The Troubles. Young men who were murdered. However, there were conflicts happening around the world, so Bush was not necessarily referring to one particular war.

John Carder Bush writes how the unforms were Eastern European surplus. “To set the right concentrated attitude to the video, Paddy and two other musicians in army unfirm set up a roadblock to the entrance to the site and stopped all the crew cars going into get them to show their identity papers. This was done very professionally and it did not seem like a joke. The crew’s revenge was the constant repetition of some of thew takes, especially when the soldiers had to run forward and roll over in helmets”. I did love these insights into the rehearsal and video. I did not know any of this. There was also this counter-revenge from the cast, as these guns from Harrods had a loud and irritating ‘clickety-click’ when the triggers were squeezed. How there was this sense of fun and joking on the set. Almost like two factions warring, the cast and crew pitted against one another. What you get from the video is real tension, power and horror. I don’t think it could have been a jokey video. You feel this sense of seriousness. A single – the third and final from Never for Ever – where Bush was proving she was a ‘serious artist. Press and critics still very much defining her as this parody-worthy artist who was not as deep and important as artists around her. Someone who could not engage with politics and world events. The shoot seemed quite intense. The sun noises and this sense of irritation. Although Keith Macmillan (Keef) directed the video, Kate Bush was also assisting. Bush was also helping. Getting a taste of directing, she would direct solo during the Hounds of Love period. One of the most powerful images of the video is the ‘jerk jacket’ shot. That was completed just as it was getting dark. The harness that Kate Bush wore came with risks. It was a harness that pulled Bush backwards quickly and was not the safest thing. Even if there is a chirpiness in Army Dreamers, Bush wanted the video to be heavy.

John Carder Bushy recalls how it was getting dark and in a clearing in Black Park, next to Pinewood Studios, Kate Bush got the shot she wanted. That was the one depicting Bush being blown up. That caused issues. The video was going to be shown on BBC during a children’s show. However, as it showed Bush being blown up, the BBC said they could not show it. John Carder Bush noted how the show came just after the news, which often depicted people being killed and blown up. The argument did not work on them, as it was not common for Pop videos to be this explicit. This beautiful young singer being blown up was quite dark. It was very uncommon. I do love the book and all the photographs that were taken during the Never for Ever section. A lot of the behind-the-scenes images from the Army Dreamers video. The Babooshka video and the images taken there. It was a busy and important year for Kate Bush. What we see if this blooming and blossoming relationship. John Carder Bush much more involved in her career. If there was a slow and building portfolio up to 1980, by the time Never for Ever arrived, there were a lot more collaborations. So many incredible images that you can enjoy in the book. Let’s move to The Dreaming. John Carder Bush took the cover photo for the album. A slightly cloudy day  outside in the kitchen garden behind their parents’ house, “Apart from Kate looking very beautiful, the ivy behind her is wonderfully textured and full of hidden spaces and shadows amongst the glossy leaves themselves”. In ancient times, as John Carder Bush writes, a poet’s crown was made of ivy. It strangles trees that it lives on. However, there is a romance to it. Buhs wrote a song called Under the Ivy. That was the B-side of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). We learn that, “Because there was so much white involved in the cover of ‘Sat in Your Lap’,. We went for natural evening light through a big, east-facing window”. It is harder to shoot objects rather than people, John Carder notes. Hard surfaces reflect rather than absorb. The single cover for The Dreaming (the title track from the 1982 album) is a stone that Del Palmer painted very convincingly in the style of native Australian art. There was resistance when it came to the video for The Dreaming. It was a headache for the record company. “The album was a shock for those hoping for another The Kick Inside, yet for the many true connoisseurs of her music, it ranks as one of the most artistically daring”. I do love how beautiful the cover shot is for Ne T’Enfuis Pas. John Carder Bush said how these shots were fitted in after The Dreaming cover session.

“We used our mother’s washing line with white bed sheets on it of the background, with the sun going down, so that the light on Kate’s face was parallel to the earth, like the greatest spotlight ever”. The cover shoot for Night of the Swallow is where I want to end up. John Carder Bush  regrets not learning how to play the  uilleann pipes and not the accordion, concertina and guitar. These days, the world is getting a bit tired of these pipes popping up to evoke  sadness and longing in Celtic films and shows. That cliché association with anything Irish. The shot that we see on that cover utilises the polystyrene rocks from The Dreaming’s video to go at the top of the waterfall. The waterfall itself was a shot he took of a mountain waterfall in Wales. “The printing was tricky (again, pre-digital) and took hours to get right so that the transition from waterfall to rock and Kate was seamless. Again, we were playing in the Celtic twilight of Cathy, but this time the tools were so much more sophisticated”. I am going to come to the Hounds of Love cover and period for the ‘yellow’ part of the spectrum. It was quite an intense period for Kate Bush between 19780 and 1982. John Carder Bush seeing his sister take control of her work and push further away from her early sound. It was also stressful and exhausting for her, so he would have seen her stressed and low a lot. Quite a challenge to balance the professional and personal. His sister pushing herself to the limit and working around the clock. Things would change for Hounds of Love. We will explore that more in the next section. From the video for Army Dreamers and how it was quite a challenge right through to the single covers, so many beautiful and brilliant shots of Kate Bush. In full glory through the book. I would advise people to buy a copy so that they can see these incredible photographs. Even if a copy of Kate: Inside the Rainbow costs about £50, I think that the investment is worth it, as you get these photos that you cannot see anywhere else. From candid and behind-the-scenes shots to these very beautidul compositions, we see that transition period for Bush. Going from her third to fourth studio albums. A big step in terms of sound and ambition. Hounds of Love is perhaps her happiest period. John Carder Bush capturing his sister for the album cover and a lot of photos he took in 1985. We can discuss that soon. For now, let’s reflect on the brilliant photos he took between 1980 and 1982. A master…

IN full flight.