Category: Sound and Vison
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Lady of the Moon – Kailan McGee
Kailan McGee’s Lady of the Moon drifts in like a silver-lit fable. An immersive song-cycle that follows the eight phases of the moon as they wax and wane over Germany’s Black Forest. Within this shadow-dappled realm, McGee conjures a living mythos. Threading together whispered lore, wandering figures, and moon-touched landscapes, each piece illuminated by a…
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Never Enough – Max Marginal
With Never Enough, Algerian independent musician Max Marginal continues to carve out a distinct space within the alternative landscape. Known for moving between extremes, from the technical intensity of his band work with Silent Obsession to the restrained, introspective tone of his solo catalogue, Marginal brings that same emotional precision to this latest release. The…
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Teenage Cancer Trust at the Royal Albert Hall: Placebo and Garbage 28/03/26
Teenage Cancer Trust has been fundraising at the iconic Royal Albert Hall since 2000, raising over £36 million to help create vital spaces for teenagers with cancer. The Who frontman Sir Roger Daltrey, who founded the concerts, passed the baton to The Cure’s Robert Smith for 2026. As ‘Cureator’, Smith put together a legendary week…
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Lily Allen – West End Girl London Palladium 22/03/26
Princess Diana, Lily Allen, and I all share a common experience: men have cheated on us. Lily Allen took the world by storm last year when she released West End Girl, recounting the breakdown of her marriage with actor David Harbour. Off the back of this success, Allen has embarked on a UK tour. I…
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Peter Capaldi – 100 Club 08/03/26
Producer, actor, rockstar. Embarking on his first tour with a rock band, Peter Capaldi is a testament that it’s never too late to follow your dreams. Dubbing it his ‘Farewell Tour’ due to his age and ‘dicky heart’, he took to the intimate stage of Oxford Street’s legendary 100 Club with the vigour of a…
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I’ll Be So Good For… Scottish Plays – Legendary TV Theme Tunes
Why are theme tunes important? A show’s theme tune is the first thing to reach an audience’s ears, making it a huge factor in their first impression of what they’re about to watch. The best themes become synonymous with a show’s identity and often go down in history as iconic pieces of music in their…
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Songs of the Month – January 2026
Here are five songs that have been in heavy rotation to help kickstarted my 2026. Violet – Hole Released on the highly praised 1994 album Live Through This, “Violet” features many interpolations. As the first album released after the death of lead singer Courtney Love’s husband, Nirvana legend Kurt Cobain, some lyrics likely reference him.…
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Iconic Music Moments
Nostalgia is a powerful thing, especially when it comes to music. So, I thought I’d share some music moments that have rocked my world and cemented themselves into my mind forever. “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” – Johnny Rotten By the time Sex Pistols adorned the stage of Winterland Ballroom in 1978, they’d…
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Have a Holly, Melancholy Christmas
Christmas songs, by the time the big day rolls around, we’re sick of them. Mariah Carey makes an estimated $2.5 million in annual royalties, and it’s the only time we hear Michael Bublé crooning over the radio. But Christmas doesn’t always bring warmth and cheer. This year, I’ll be exploring five festive songs that break…
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In Conversation with Wuzy Bambussy: The Heart of “Little Lion”
“This tune is influenced by the proto era of synth pop, I was aiming – musically as least – to go for that sort of Adamski’s ‘Killer’, ‘West End Girls’, Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’ etc. That was the goal, to try and write something that stood up to those great songs.” – Nikolai Jones, Wuzy Bambussy.…
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Queerbaiting Queens – The Problematic Story of t.A.T.u
Queerbaiting Definition The incorporation of apparently LGBTQ characters or relationships into a film, television show, etc. as a means of appealing to LGBTQ audiences while maintaining ambiguity about the characters’ sexuality. This includes kissing others of the same gender, posting false coming-out narratives, or falsely claiming to be in a same-sex relationship. Going for Greatness…
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Songs That Go Bump in the Night – Halloween 2025
It could be argued that music’s main purpose is to make us feel something. Many times, this is split into the categories of happy (major) and sad (minor). However, it often creates the entire spectrum of feelings, sometimes without us even noticing. I was recently listening to a certain musical (I’ll reveal all later) and…
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Protest Songs Through Time -Free Palestine; Protest in the Present
A 75 Year War A violent power struggle between Israel and Palestine has unfolded since as far back as 17,000 BC, when the region was called The Holy Land. More recent events in modern history, such as the signing of the Balfour Declaration—in which Britain promised to create a Jewish National Homeland, renamed part of…
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Protest Songs Through Time P7 – Why Do They Always Send the Poor? – 21st Century
System of a Down In 1994, four Armenian-Americans—Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, Shavo Odadjian, and John Dolmayan—formed the neo-metal band System of a Down, who went on to pioneer the nu-metal genre. Armenian history is marked by violence: between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman Empire forced Christian Armenians from their homes en masse, exposing them to…
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Protest Songs P6 -LGBTQ+ Rights in Song: A Punk Anthem Against Injustice
The Winter of Discontent—and Ongoing LGBTQ+ Struggles The Winter of Discontent, from 1978 to 1979, saw widespread strikes across private and public sector unions as they demanded pay rises that exceeded the limits set by Prime Minister James Callaghan. But this wasn’t the only unrest during the period—especially for the LGBTQ+ community. Although homosexuality had…
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Protest Songs P5 -Women’s Rights in Song: A Century of Defiance and Change
The Suffragette Anthem: “The March of the Women” The UK’s suffragette movement had its own anthem, The March of the Women, written in 1910 by composer and activist Ethel Smyth. The lyrics reflected the movement’s readiness for militant action: “Comrades – ye who dared first in battle to strive and sorrow!” Sung during marches and…
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Everyone Makes Their Barbies Kiss Each Other, Right? – Dreaming Soda – Kissing Stacey
We all had our own way of playing with dolls as kids—whether it was full-blown soap opera drama or Ken and Barbie playing house. With their new single Kissing Stacey, Dreaming Soda— Sydney duo Ella Sterland and Renee Stein—pull us back to those glittery, plastic worlds, only this time with a dose of grown-up hindsight.…
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Protest Songs P4 – The Civil Rights Movement
The Terror of Lynching and the Birth of “Strange Fruit” Between 1900 and 1939, the United States witnessed 2,805 reported lynchings. In 1937, a Jewish teacher named Abel Meeropol came across a photograph of Black men who had been lynched—bodies hanging from tree branches. Such images were disturbingly common in the South, often displayed publicly…
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Protest Songs P3 -Songs of War – The 20th Century.
America and WW1 By the time America considered joining the First World War in 1915, the conflict was already in full swing. The idea sparked backlash—most of the public wanted to remain neutral and avoid fighting. That same year, Alfred Bryan and Albert Piantadosi wrote I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier. Performed…
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Protest Songs – P2 Spirituals
Roots in Resistance When enslavers stole African people from their homeland and brought them to America, they forbade them from speaking their native languages or practising their religions. However, this didn’t stop them. They organised secret meetings, where they sometimes performed Ring Shouts. In these gatherings, they formed a circle and moved counterclockwise while singing,…