After a decade of fluctuating commercial fortunes and sonic wandering, is Oscar Powell ready to start firing out club bangers again? He discusses a time of transition, hedonism and fatherhood with Luke Turner

Portrait by John Cronin

"I've had 10 years in the wilderness as an artist," says Oscar Powell, backlit from the evening light of West London through the window of his studio, which doubles up as the headquarters of his record label, Diagonal. "I ran away from my own success and I feel out of time with everything, but I've reached a point where I don't really care, that's just who I am." Powell's latest album We Do Recover, and the follow-up WDREP1 that came out at the end of of 2025,...

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Many membered South London group drag the capital's post-punk scene into strange and scrappy new realms, restlessly documenting England's deep reserves of residual weirdness

In the beginning, there was This Heat. Charles Hayward and co traversed the disused pie factories and damp warehouses that suffused South London, and the resultant music was something seriously challenging: dread-laden, perversely fun, janky, dancey, genre-collapsing. Some believed it encompassed post-punk.

I'm not sure if Hayward cast a spell on South London, but, if you haven't been in a 50-year-long hibernation, you might have noticed that the badlands below the Thames have now long been the reactor core for some of the UK's most interesting guitar music. Even young bands from further afield, like Crewe's University, Manchester's...

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Michael Moorcock and The Deep Fix

The New Worlds Fair

A brand new deluxe and remastered edition of the SF author's album with Steve Gilmore and Graham Charnock sounds dolorous and kaleidoscopic, finds Jeremy Allen

Michael Moorcock isn't particularly well known for his musicianship, despite deep associations with space rock figureheads Hawkwind. In the 60s and 70s, the British science fiction and fantasy author headed up the influential New Worlds magazine, which helped precipitate a new wave of sci-fi that coincided with the emergence of writers like J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin. Moorcock, for what it's worth, apparently introduced Peter Green to his first guitar chords before the British blues rock explosion of the mid-60s, and in 1975,...

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The band's former guitarist passed away earlier this month after "a long battle with his mental health"

Screenshot

Geordie Greep has paid tribute to fellow Black Midi co-founder Matt Kwasniewski-Kelvin following his death earlier this month.

Writing on Instagram, Greep said: "It goes without saying that it's been a really tricky week. Really, really sad and shit. But I think that it's important I say something here just to have some record of this time and these feelings."It's really such a sad thing that's happened. But I have been trying to focus on what a great person he was, what a force for positivity and goodwill, and how much better he made the lives of everyone who knew him. We all loved him...

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Lightning Bolt have also shared lead track 'Cloud Core'

Lightning Bolt and OOIOO have joined forces for a new split LP, titled The Horizon Spirals / The Horizon Viral.

Spanning seven tracks, the record takes in two songs from OOIOO, the project of Boredoms drummer YoshimiO, and five further cuts by Rhode Island noise duo Lightning Bolt. The latter have shared lead track 'Cloud Core' alongside the album's announcement, and you can listen to it below.

In a press statement, Lightning Bolt drummer-vocalist Brian Chippendale said: "OOIOO set the tone with The Horizon Spiral but we didn't really roll with the spiral theme. We're more Viral than Spiral though they both can dump you in a rabbit hole and we definitely like rabbit holes."

The new...

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Harry Gorski-Brown, Abul Mogard, Rafael Anton Irisarri and more will play across Cafe OTO and IKLECTIK this May

Able Noise

Dig That Treasure! Festival has announced its return to London this May.

Running across four days at the start of May, the opening night at Cafe OTO hosts the acclaimed Kurdish bouzouki player Mohammad Syfkhan, as well as a rare live appearance from Somali pop singer Canab Marwo.

The following evening sees performances from experimental pop duo Able Noise and enigmatic minimalist project Jemima, as well as DNA? AND?, a group comprised of young people with Down Syndrome and professional musicians from Oslo's improv scene.

The third day features the much-loved guitarist Eric Chenaux, joined by the Scottish folk musician Harry Górski-Brown - among the...

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Finely turned-out rambunctious industrial no wave folk outfit unveil their Sod In Heaven long player at the Windmill on Saturday

One of the capitol's most exciting young live prospects, My Pussy Tastes Like Microplastics, are releasing their debut LP, Sod In Heaven, this month (watch this space for a review) and to celebrate they are throwing a shindig at Brixton's Windmill. And you are cordially invited.

Tickets are the price of a (fancy) pint and as well as the ecstatic MPTL deluge, the bill also includes (effervescent young team) Doom Club, (student nurse with wound x zoomer Pastels) Daltons Fen, and (handmade industrial experimentalist) Ellis Berwick, with DJs Melanie Moof and tQ's John Doran.

Get your tickets here! ...

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The Amsterdam festival returns this summer with aya, Underground Resistance and lots more

Photo by Jesse Wensing

Dekmantel has shared the full lineup for its 2026 edition, which takes place across five days this summer.

Returning once again to a number of locations across Amsterdam, the programming will, as ever, cover a series of opening concerts in the city centre followed by a weekend of DJ and live sets at the forest surroundings of Amsterdamse Bos.

Among the live acts involved in the opening concerts are Space Afrika, DARKSIDE, Death In Vegas, Juan Atkins (who will present a set under his Infiniti alias) and Speedy J's STOOR project, which will see him collaborate live with the likes of Clark, Barker, Aurora Halal and Azu...

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Darran Anderson offers ten points of entry into the inimitable work of David Berman in Silver Jews and Purple Mountains, and as a poet. Portrait by Bobbi Fabian

There are few gateway drugs as effective as the one-liner. All the opening sentence Ishmaels and electrocuted Rosenbergs, invisible men and exploding grandmothers that hook the reader and pull them in. Some have made their entire careers on the backs of such clever tricks and witticisms. Like any drug, there's a cost. You can lose track of what matters, the real substance, or sustenance of things. Take a writer like Oscar Wilde, whose deepest work (De Profundis, The Ballad Of Reading Gaol, The Soul Of Man Under Socialism etc.) is often lost in...

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