Hello and welcome to this week’s In Strict Tempo, which finds itself slap bang in the middle of a busy week in the world of music.

Soundcloud have recently purchased the Nina Protocol site, and are offering artists the chance to distribute their music via their platform instead. That seems about it really, there doesn’t seem to be any additional functionality, although users get a free Soundcloud account for a year. They’re also committing to preserving the editorial side of the site, but only as an archive.

Challenger DSP Subvert have launched their label focused offering - one big thing a lot of new music streaming/download platforms get wrong is that they only speak to artists, when it’s labels that ultimately own most of the catalogue - I digress. Subvert looks interesting, offering artists and labels ownership in the platform, which seems to be their USP, although in my opinion this complicates the running of it all somewhat. I’ll investigate more at a later date.

In reissue news, three things recently have caught my attention, with Numbers delving into the Chain Reaction back cat to give Hallucinator’s 1999 album Landlocked a fresh lease of life, Warp are putting out Aphex Twin’s Drukqs on vinyl again, including a £100 4LP boxset that apes the original release (there’s also a cheaper, ‘standard’ 4LP version), and Late Night Tales bringing Sasha & Digweed’s game-changing 1996 compilation Northern Exposure back to vinyl after 30 years. All three of these deserve deeper articles of their own, so look out for those in the forthcoming weeks.

Finally, Disco Pogo’s latest book has dropped, this time exploring the life and work of the Guvnor himself, Andrew Weatherall. It’s about three times the size of the previous Jockey Slut tribute that came out after his passing, and I’m only a few pages into it, but so far so good. You can revisit my tribute to Weatherall here too.

Anyway - anyone that tells you that music is all shit these days is speaking bollocks - there’s been some great albums released in 2026 so far, and I’ve decided to round up some favourites here. I’ve spoken about most of these before, but sometimes it’s nice to look back a while after release and see if they still stand up. So, in no particular order, here’s five of the best records of 2026 so far.

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Boards of Canada - Inferno [Warp]

Does familiarity breed contempt? Not in this case no. Inferno dropped earlier this year, and most BoC fans were pleased there was no radical departure from what they knew. If anything, Inferno took their body of work so far, and bought it up to date, creating almost a ‘greatest hits’ of sorts. At the time, I (rather hyperbolically) said it might go down as one of the best albums of the 2020’s, and after numerous listens since I’m doubling down on that.

Tara Clerkin Trio - Somewhere Good (World of Echo)

This album showed more than anything that trying to pigeonhole records into genre is just a waste of time. It’s a bit of everything that’s good, bringing to mind groups like Broadcast, The Durutti Column, Seefeel, Massive Attack, Hydroplane and basically anything else that plays with never quite fitting in to any one place. There’s as much here for the jazz heads as there is for the pop heads and electronica heads, and in a more just world this would be massive. It should come as no surprise that an album that sounds like Somewhere Good should come out on the World of Echo label, not only London’s best record shop, but one of the most interesting labels releasing music right now.

Carla Dal Forno - Confession [Kallista]

When this came out I immediately went back through Carla’s back catalogue, listening to her evolution as an artist from her earliest solo releases on Blackest a decade ago to her most recent albums on her own Kallista label. This stands up as the strongest of all of them, but also stands on it’s own feet as a fantastic record in it’s own right. Again, it’s criminal that she doesn’t have a bigger audience, and if you’re unaware of her all I can say is please, please, please check this out. Buy a copy for yourself, buy a copy for your friends. You won’t regret it.

Morgan Buckley & Ben Donohow - Sworx [Wah Wah Wino]

Wah Wah Wino has been the hottest label around for some time now, and it really seems to be the only one in our little world that can sell titles out almost immediately. In that respect it feels a little unfair putting something with no mainstream digital release in a best of roundup (although they have recently added the digital files for purchase on Bandcamp). Anyway - sometimes a record hits that’s so ‘out there’ it almost gives new meaning to the term. Some records are weird for weirds sake, but fall apart under closer listens - this isn’t one of those, it actually seems to get better on each spin, and becomes more cohesive with each session. It took me a few listens to really get it, but now I do, it comes together in a way that makes perfect sense.

Cancer House - The Moth [Motion Ward]

Sonically speaking this is the darker cousin of the TCT and Carla Dal Forno releases, it could fit in alongside all of them, but equally it’s a way apart in it’s own world, doing it’s own thing. It’s another one of those records that really defies categorisation, and really that’s all a record needs to do to stand out - not fit in. It’s slow and stoned, without resorting to the familiar haze that these kinds of records often has. You know that brain surgery they do when you’re still awake? This is that. It’s what I imagine that sounds like. Unlike some of the other albums in this roundup this won’t be for everyone, but it’s well worth a listen, even if it doesn’t grab you right away. I guarantee you’ll go back to it at least once.

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Hello and welcome to this weeks In Strict Tempo. Before I get into the main subject this week, a reminder that on Monday I published the latest Ceremony mix, a 45 minute recording of raw techno from Glasgow legend Mother. Check it out below, and share it round if you enjoyed it!

It seems that every few years a new contender pops up in the streaming industry, offering to “fix” the current model. Generally their mission statement seems to be ‘we’ll pay artists more’, which is a noble cause that I’m not sure anyone reading this disagrees with.

Let’s ignore the fact for a minute that ‘paying artists more’ actually means paying distributors and record labels more, with no control of how much of that money actually reaches an artists pocket - the thing that many of these challenger DSPs all seem to agree on is that the current streaming landscape needs fundamentally changing.

For most new DSPs they firmly have one target in their sights: Spotify. The big bad wolf of the music industry and subject to a recent takedown in Liz Pelly’s book (a consequence of which she recently complained about was that people were cancelling their subscriptions and moving to other streaming platforms- which was basically the entire message around the press campaign surrounding the book). Everyone wants to make the ‘new Spotify’, a DSP with the same breadth of catalogue, but one that pays artists significantly more - and all for the same ten quid a month.

I see it differently. Ask your local record shop owner why they opened their shop, and it won’t be ‘to become the new HMV’. No-one needs to have a shop in every city, and a full range of catalogue. The record shop prides itself on its curation, and the advice it can offer on what else a user might like, kind of like an algorithm, but better, I guess.

Is the future of the music industry a new Spotify? I don’t think so, nor do I think it needs to be. I think it’ll be a selection of smaller, curated, probably genre-specific streaming services. They might not pay loads better than the existing platforms, but you never really heard any customers complaining that HMV was able to buy records with a discount due to it’s size.

There’s already a few platforms beginning to get some attention, of which Cantilever is the most recent. For £4.99 a month you get a small, curated selection of albums with ‘sleeve notes’ to provide context around the release. New albums are added regularly, for a month at a time before cycling off. There’s some drawbacks to this model, namely you might not enjoy the selection that month, and you won’t be able to create playlists of favourites, but the idea is there as a start. It probably needs refining a little as the service hopefully grows, perhaps allowing users to select from a genre or a larger pool of releases to listen to, but with the backing from a whole load of credible Indies, it looks like a good start, and I’ll probably subscribe at some point, out of curiosity at first, but also because things like this won’t survive without our support.

There’s no reason that new DSPs can’t live alongside Spotify and Apple Music in the way that Indies have always existed alongside HMV. The main DSPs can aid broad discovery - something they’re reasonably good at, and if you’re lucky that will convert to a deeper fan. I know it’s a bit like a lottery win, but that was always the case anyway. For the thousands of CD’s racked in HMV, all it took was one staff member to get behind something and push it in order to shift a few, even just locally. More curated streaming services can then build upon that initial “oh that sounds good, who is it?” with deeper context around the artist, maybe even a line of contact to them, merch, tickets and a more meaningful fan-artist relationship. For me that’s where I feel Cantilever falls short a little bit, in that it presents the album as a one-off - I don’t know how it then encourages the user to access the rest of the artists catalogue, but it will be off-platform.

Of course, the biggest barrier in the way of all this is consumer apathy. We’re music fans, but there’s not as many of us as people like to think. Most subscribers to Spotify won’t be fully engaged music lovers, they’ll just want to hear music on their phone. This was illustrated by a report into the activities of the recently closed Nina Protocol. This started off as a challenger DSP, getting a load of press, some decent labels on it, and a weird crypto angle which was never really made clear. It ran for about five years, during which a total of $33,000 dollars was spent on the platform. In contrast, more than $600,000 is spent on Bandcamp each day, and Spotify brings in over $5,000,000 each day in subscription revenue, give or take.

Getting people to spend money on music is a huge hurdle, especially when they can already get it for ‘free’ or £10 a month anyway. Of course we live in a world where the only meaningful way to scale a business (especially one with the high startup costs of acquiring catalogue) is to take VC funding, and they never really look at the long-term. If they don’t have their millions back in a couple of years, you’re done for. Building a sustainable streaming platform will take years to grow an audience to a number that allows it to not only pay rights holders fairly, but to become profitable.

Rightsholders themselves are another hurdle in the road, and bear some responsibility. Although Cantilever has been backed by a number of Indies, back catalogues are quite rightly highly valued, meaning no-one can build anything new if you can’t afford to onboard labels. You wouldn’t sow a field of crops if a bag of seeds was millions of pounds would you? As an industry we need to look at providing access to catalogues without massive upfront advances, and ideally without taking loads of equity. Take a chance, back your catalogue to succeed on that platform.

Maybe this is all a pipe dream then, but dreams have always existed in music. I really believe that most of us who work in this industry do so from a position of genuine love of music, and that we all want things to be better for everyone. All this is way easier said than done, and I don’t have the answers, nor would I know where to start building something like this (not to mention the lack of cash), but someone out there does, and maybe they’re even reading this?

We don’t need to build the new Spotify, we need to build the new Rough Trade.

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New Music

I’ve provided Bandcamp links below, but don’t forget all of these records will be available in your local independent record store too. Some In Strict Tempo-approved shops include Boomkat, World of Echo, Rubadub and All Night Flight.

emer & Ugne Uma - you and me [Stroom]

The Ugne Uma 7” on Shelter Press earlier this year remains a standout release for me, so I was excited to check this new collab with emer. It’s nice, perhaps a little bit too soulful for my own personal tastes, so I deffo preferred the solo 7”, but fans of that hazy electronic soul sound will find much to enjoy here.

Rezzett - Into The Boiling Darks [RZ]

21 new Rezzett tracks? In the hottest summer on record? How do you expect us to deal with this?

Sticky, fuzzy, sassy and a little bit off-kilter this is the sound of being stuck on the top deck of the 149 bus as it crawls it’s way up Dalston High Street, all of London laid out beneath you. The sights, the smells, the sounds and snippets of this flash in and out here and there, as the anticipation of a night out grows.

False Berries - Find The Gyres (Monks Hood)

Conor Kiley - OK Hotel (Monks Hood)

A couple of new ones that haven’t made it thru to the streamers yet (if indeed they ever will?) courtesy of the new Monks Hood imprint. Set up by Juho Toivonen and Cuneiform Tabs member Sterling McKinnon, it’s McKinnon who inaugurates things here with a record under the False Berries alias, a lightly Canterbury-esque record that recalls the likes of Syd Barrett & Flaming Tunes as it does the likes of Soft Machine.

The second release this week is the debut solo release from Conor Kiley. Kiley was once dubbed the future of rock n’ roll by the NME during the landfill indie. Don’t let that put you off though, as Kiley has since stepped free of his band Holy Ghost Revival (they actually split up back in 2008) and has now returned as a singer-songwriter, sitting on this album for the best part of a decade before finding a home on Monk’s Hood.

Quiet Husband - The Architecture of Perception [Industrial Coast]

Kicking off with 200mph techno before letting up the pace slightly Richie Culver returns to his Quiet Husband project, combining aspects of his more industrial noise work with fairground waltzer techno to create a relentless album that never gives the listener a minute to breathe.

Nuke Watch - Fusion [Sagome]

Improv free-jazz/electronixxx here from TTT alumnus Nuke Watch. Psych-drums & outsider weirdo gear from start to finish on this one. It won’t be for everyone, but for those that fuck with this kinda stuff it’ll be an enjoyable hour spent listening.

Regis - Power Is Neutral (Mark Broom Edits) [Blueprint]

Techno titans collide here as Mark Broom twists and teases a new life into some classic Brum techno slammers from Regis. About as subtle as a brick to the face, and none the worse for it.

Untold - False Vacuum EP [Hemlock]

Untold returns to his infrequent release schedule with five new tracks on the legendary Hemlock. Take me back to that exciting period of late 00’s/early 10’s London, when stuff like this was leaking out of every railway arch across the city from Elephant to Tottenham and beyond.

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Glasgow’s Mother Mark Maxwell really is the DJ’s DJ.

A longstanding part of the Rubadub crew, with the record collection and taste of someone who’s spent hard time behind the counter, anyone that’s heard one of his sets will agree he’s one of the finest in the game- including none other than the Wizard himself, Jeff Mills.

As part of Mills’ 30th Anniversary tour of Live At The Liquid Rooms last December, Maxwell played in between his two sets at Glasgows SWG3, and it’s this mix he’s kindly allowed me to share here. In his own words it’s a “warts & all room recording captured on the voice notes app, with a touch of added compression to complement the already brutal limiting”.

Forty-five minutes of the kind of balls-to-the-wall, relentless Techno-with-a-capital T that we love here at In Strict Tempo

Originally available over the weekend as a free download on his Instagram page, I’m delighted to be able to share it with a wider audience. Enjoy!

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The heatwave continues, as does the amount of new music landing in my inbox each week. I’ve not long been back from a restorative three nights in Ibiza. Although I’ve been numerous times for work and with my partner since, it was actually my first lads trip to the island since 2006 or so.

I first went to Ibiza as a wide-eyed teenager back in 2001 or 2002. We learned a few things the hard way, but still the island captivated me in a way few places have since. Those first few years were spent in the bars of San Antonio and Ibiza Town, as well as the big clubs: Amnesia, Eden, Privilege, Space & Pacha. Accommodation was always as cheap as possible, and for the first few years we never bothered paying extra for air conditioned rooms, preferring instead to save our money for drink, food and other Ibizan treats.

This time was different, the rooms were air conditioned, and although a few of our group went to Pacha, the main highlight was a trip to Pikes, which is always fun. There’s definitely something to be said for a solid door policy that tends to keep the dickheads away. They say Ibiza isn’t what it used to be, but they were saying that back in 2002 as well. It’ll never be what it used to be, and that’s what keeps people coming back. But that Ibiza magic is still there, from the incredible sunsets, to the beach bars and places like Pikes and 528 keeping the old-school vibes alive.

Outside of Ibiza it feels like the industry is quiet right now. It normally is in the summer. I think we’re probably in a bit of a state of flux right now, as everyone figures out not only how AI is going to affect things, but also what the future looks like beyond streaming. AI is only going to make the streaming DSPs worse unless they combat it, and they’ll need to decide fairly soon whether they want to be general music streaming platforms, or specialist platforms. The AI slop infecting DSPs might be accepted by the general listener, but music fans are going to want something better, something more curated and whatever that is will decide the direction of the music industry for the future. It’s probably actually a bigger thing than we think - this could be year zero for a new music industry, and it’s one I think we’ll all want to be a part of.

Anyway, enough from me - here’s the latest reviews!

GAS - November 89 [Kompakt]

My love of Wolfgang Voigt’s GAS alias is well documented, so to hear these early GAS tunes compiled onto one EP is a real treat. Heads will probably already know the majestic Tal 90, which was included on the Oktember reissue a while back, and whilst that’s undoubtably the highlight of the release (and indeed, a highlight in the entire history of record music full stop) the other tunes here are well worth a look in as they chart the evolution of one of the most visionary experimental musicians of our time.

Father Dionysus Tabakis - Paradise Metal [Heat Crimes]

I’m still not entirely sure this isn’t some kind of Dean Blunt side project, but everyone who’s everyone has been going on about it, so I thought I’d follow the hype and give it a listen. This is the kind of thing that I’d have probably sold 30 copies of back in the day in HMV to people who asked for something “cool” and were expecting me to give them a Mogwai or Jamie XX CD. There’s enough going on to keep it interesting, and I guess the backstory is interesting enough too, I’m gonna need some more time with it to really get into it.

Actress & CASiSDEAD - Live By You [Ninja Tune]

Is this ambient drill? It’s not Splaszh/RIP by any means. Not really sure on this one, sounds more like something you’d hear at an art installation down in the tanks of the Tate Modern

Uriel’s Bath - Uriel’s Bath EP [Felt Sense]

Nicely shimmering four tracker here starting out on an ambient drift but evolving into a more DIY electronic slant with mesmerising vocals reminding me of somewhere in the ether between Suzanne Vega and Hydroplane

Horse Lords - Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive [RVNG Intl]

This is basically just Battles isn’t it?

Panasonic - Muuntaja [Sahko]

Gritty early Vainio trax reissued and probably sold out already. Set the template for so much of what followed, mad to think this stuff is over 30 years old now, and still way better than most of the dub heavy techno that followed.

Adrian Rew - Slot Machine Music, Vol. 1 & 2: Field Recordings from Middle American Casinos [DINTE]

I once spent 48 hours in Las Vegas that culminated in me ending up backstage at a Skrillex show, drinking a light-up neon bottle of Dom Perignon champagne. The hangover the next day was a thing of nightmares. This album of field recordings from American casinos doesn’t feature Skrillex thankfully, but is equally as nightmarish, evoking the soundscape of a liminal space carefully designed to extract every penny possible from your pockets.

Two Shell - Thing About You [Young]

“I’m heartbroken… without your love… heartbroken… ‘cause I’ve had enough”

The Sprigs - For Red Riverbank [Discreet]

Wonderfully charming, Wind-In-The-Willows influenced DIY folk experiments from Rory Salter’s The Sprigs outfit. An album that reveals a little more on each listen, rewarding those who return to it time and time again, much like I have. Discreet really feels like a natural home for this.

Kryptic Minds - The Things The Left Behind [Osiris]

Simon Shreeve returns to his Kryptic Minds alias with this collection of remastered versions of older tunes. Sitting somewhere between broken techno and dubstep, sounding all the better for a bit of 2026 polish, and still fresh to this day

Lolina- Monopoly of Mistakes [Relaxin’]

For someone who’s label is called Relaxin’ Lolina has been responsible for some pretty intense music. This new one here continues her fine recent form, putting a unique touch to electro, what you would of called IDM if it was 2006, and the kind of stuff you think Charli XCX should be making, but doesn’t quite. Not really pop, and certainly nothing that you’d consider particularly radio friendly, but it could be, if only people were willing to take risks.

Morgan Buckley & Ben Donohoe - Sworx [Wah Wah Wino]

Not on any streamers so you’ll have to seek out the LP if you’re not too late already. Outta space electro-jams from two of the Wino crew. Maybe not the weirdest tunes on the label but there’s still plenty here to reward the adventurous.

The Fulmars - The Fulmars [Static Age]

Another one not on any streaming services, I’ve been a fan of the Fulmars since hearing them close the chapter on Blackest Ever Black a decade or so ago. This new one - incredibly their first debut album - continues that lo-fi DIY pop sound and is a low-key AOTY contender.

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How we all doing in this heat eh? Apologies for a lack of In Strict Tempo communications over the past couple of weeks - it’s just me that writes this thing, and at the moment the relentless march of the dance music industry means that work is pretty much non-stop right now as we push out more records into the summer clubs.

It’s all been a bit much over the past few weeks, but better things are coming and I’m off on holiday for a few days tomorrow, back to one of my favourite places: Ibiza. It’s actually been 20 or so years since I’ve been there on a trip with friends and I’m really looking forward to it.

As a result, it means it’s yet another week without any major hot-takes or music reviews from me, but there’s plenty I’ve got lined up for when I’m back.

In the meantime, there’s only one thing I suggest you listen to when the weather’s like this.

Hello and welcome to this weeks In Strict Tempo. There’s been lots going on in the IST extended universe, some of which will become clear very soon as a project myself and Luke Stonecirclesampler have been working on comes to fruition. More on that soon, but this week it’s just 100% music reviews. Dive in!

Tara Clerkin Trio - Somewhere Good [World of Echo]

This is really shaping up to be one of the albums of the year - moving seamlessly across influences and getting a lot of work done. Getting positive reviews across the board, but most importantly the coveted In Strict Tempo ‘TIP’ (okay, I just made that up, but this is good) it’s the sound of a band who’re making themselves one of the most exciting and experimental acts around. What can you expect from this? Well that would give away the surprise, but I guess it’s jazzy, but not Jazz-with-a-capital-J serious beard-stroking Jazz; It’s young, playful and fun and brings in elements of indie, folk and more electronic styles with a nod to their Bristol heritage. Ultimately, we can say what we want about it, but there’s no substitute for getting out there, sticking some headphones on and having a damn good listen to it.

Martyn - Music For Existing [3024]

Straight from the off this one’s gonna be a belter. Melding deep n’ bassy club sounds with live-sounding drums it’s almost like you’re getting two records at once, perfectly matched. The album then runs through trip-hop & electronica in fine style, making what should be a timeless release.

Function & Nastia Reigel - Devocion [Dekmantel]

A great double header here on Dekmantel combining off-the-wall techno and lysergic elements to create a trippy EP of tunes that made me wish I still got right on it…

Shed - Rave Echoes [Dekmantel]

The Killer still stands high as one of my favourite electronic albums of all time, almost perfectly capturing that sound of 2012/2013 when everything felt exciting. Things still sound exciting, even though I’m a lot more jaded now, so I’m hoping this new Shed LP will snap me out of my funk.

Delroy Edwards - It’s Happening (To Me) [LA Club Resource]

A nice housey roller this one, does everything you’d want it to do over a short 2 and a half minutes. Could be longer, should be longer, but either way nice to have him back.

Francesco Leali - Hexed 05 [Radio Raheem]

Okay it’s not a proper release, but this radio show from Milan based composer & producer Francesco Leali is a great primer of industrial and power electronics showcasing the best of a sometimes maligned genre. Check it out over at Radio Raheem.

JK Flesh / Monrella - SHOUTING THE ODDS [Give/Take]

Two heavyweight titans here coming together for an ungodly tribute to no-nonsense Brum-style techno. Big and bold, this stuff does exactly what it says on the tin.

Midland - Without Pause [Graded]

There was a time when people would have gone mad for this, it would have been the heater of the summer. It’s not bad, but feels stuck in a bit of a 2016 rut. I’m sure it still be mad popular with the Croatia festival crew though.

Quiet Husband - Gesture [Industrial Coast]

A new outing for Richie Culvers Quiet Husband alias, which leans towards the darker, heavier techno side of things. Proper powerful gear this, sitting comfortably above 180bpm so not for the faint-hearted. Album comes early July.

Trickfinger / John Frusciante - Tysch [Acid Test]

Probably better known as the guitarist in Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Frusciante is also a proper electronic music head working under his Trickfinger alias. This one takes the usual acid recipe and twists it on it’s head to create something mind-melting.

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Resident Advisor called it “dark and disquieting”, The Guardian have dubbed it a “big disappointment”, with dubious drum programming. The US Government have seen fit to use it to soundtrack a social media post about whatever war they’re fighting this week… but for me, it’s the album of the year.

It’s been thirteen years since Boards of Canada last released an album, and pretty much everything that’s getting thrown at Inferno was thrown at Tomorrow’s Harvest back in 2013. It was thrown at The Campfire Headphase eight years before that, and I’m sure some people found Geogaddi formulaic at the time of it’s release too. They were never going to rip the rulebook up with this album, and the highest praise I can give it is that it sounds exactly how you’d want a Boards of Canada album to sound. Some people might not think that’s enough, that the brothers should be pushing boundaries and re-inventing the wheel with each new release, especially after so long away, but that’s never been what they’ve been about.

Yes the album has moments of accessibility, but every LP before that has had those too, from Roygbiv to Reach for the Dead, Dayvan Cowboy to Music is Math. After listening to it on repeat for a week there’s still enough to challenge and surprise you with every new listen.

I’m not going to go track-by-track on it, part of the fun is discovering it for yourself and coming to your own conclusions. The standouts for me are definitely the more vocal tracks including Age of Capricorn, Father and Son and The Word Becomes Flesh, and you can spend hours on Reddit looking into the meanings and sources of all those samples if you want to really get down the rabbit hole. My favourite track on the album though? The penultimate track You Retreat in Time and Space. It’s like the whole album is leading up to this moment, lulling you into a sense of security before dropping this one track on you, hitting every emotion it was possible to feel all at once, utterly devastating, but euphoric all at the same time. I once read about a tribe somewhere that when punishing criminals would rest their head on a bent back tree before chopping it off, so the last thing they felt was ascending rapidly through the sky as the tree sprung back to it’s standing position - that’s probably exactly how this track feels.

Halfway through the year it’s not too bold a call to suggest this might be the album of the year, but I’d make a similar case for it even if it came out on January 1st. Slightly bolder, could this be in contention for album of the decade so far? It will certainly demand discussion, despite my obvious recency bias.

So yeah, I’m fanboying a little bit, but along with Aphex Twin and Squarepusher during that golden-era of Warp stuff in the mid/late 1990’s Boards of Canada were one of the first groups that made me understand that music could be weird and challenging and unsettling and incredible in all kinds of ways the teenage me couldn’t really understand. It was music that spoke it’s own language to me, and one that helped me find other people who spoke it too, and ultimately set me on the path to where I am now, 25+ years later. I’ll probably continue to fanboy over the album every time I speak to anyone in real life for the foreseeable future, so forgive me for that, and forgive me for not having listened to anything else this week either, so music reviews will be back next Friday.

You’ve probably pre-ordered it already, but you can get Inferno in all good record shops, and from Bandcamp.

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A couple of other things to mention quickly this week, Manchester/Salford’s The White Hotel has announced its closure. I’ve never been (in fact my only visit to Manchester was an in-and-out trip to Old Trafford for Cambridge’s FA Cup game back in 2014) but the programming of the club often had me tempted for a return visit. I know the reverence it holds for Manc music heads is up there with how London folk felt about Corsica so it’s a real blow to lose a community focussed experimental space like TWH, even if it was the owners decision to close.

Also closing in the near future is the Nina Protocol site. Launched back in 2021 it aimed to be a more equitable DSP for selling music, giving artists a fairer share of any income. Initially it had a confusing blockchain/crypto element to it which I don’t think did it any favours, but eventually operated like a more regular download/streaming website. Some decent labels got behind it, including AD93, Hyperdub and Stroom, but ultimately when your business model is built around paying out more in royalties than your competitors it’s always going to be tough to be a profitable concern. I still think there’s space for a new DSP, probably one with a more curated roster of artists and labels, and Nina was probably a bit too early to survive. Like Bandcamp, the site also featured editorial features, and the founders are looking for a way to keep this side of things archived and visible.

That’s all for this week. Thanks as always for reading/subscribing/telling me I’m being way over the top about this album. Regular service will resume next Friday!

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You’ll have seen a lot of articles over the past weeks about the band Geese and the marketing campaigns they’ve been running on social media. It feels like everyone has weighed in with hotter and hotter takes each week, so allow me to pour more fuel on the flames of discourse - every popular artist pays for promotion in one way or another. The game is stacked against upcoming artists, we know that’s been the case over the past few years of streaming at least. It’s always been the case, with radio plugging and retail promotion generally being the domain of the bigger indies and majors who could afford it. But you can throw as much money as you want at online promotion and unless the music’s good (or it at least resonates with people) it doesn’t mean anything. The numbers become meaningless, if everyone can buy a hundred thousand TikTok creations, then it doesn’t matter if your track gets that many.

I’ve not listened to Geese, I don’t know what they sound like, and I’m not sure I even care all that much. Are they meant to be like the new Strokes? But for one reason or another their music seems to be resonating with people, and it’s sprialling across social media. I’ve seen loads of artists put money into these ‘clipping’ campaigns trying to promote a song, and for the most part I’ve not seen a huge amount of success - certainly nothing you’d consider viral anyway. And it may well be that Geese haven’t either, it may well be that all the articles and hot takes are just an extension of the campaign, a clever way of spinning the narrative from something that people consider negative into a “all press is good press” situation. I’m not sure anyone’s thought of that have they?

I don’t want to say too much more on it right now, for a variety of reasons, the main one being no-one really needs another takedown of TikTok social media campaigns. Maybe I’ll expand on it one day in the future.

Anyway: There’s a new Andrew Weatherall book coming, from the folk at Disco Pogo. Their Aphex Twin and LCD Soundsystem books were both really good, an enjoyable mix of period articles and new writing. Jockey Slut put out a decent Weatherall book not long after he passed, and there’s more than plenty of good reading online about probably the most important figure in UK electronic music of the past 30 years. Of course, I did my own tribute to the Guv’nor too, and you can find that here.

Also, it’s Independent Label Market in London tomorrow. I’ll likely pop down if the weathers good, and there’s some top labels and distros selling their wares. There always feels like a bit more of a community and buzz around this than Record Store Day which is really dependendent on what shop you end up going to. I’ve been going to these for years and have some picked up some really nice titles along the way, including that really rare Loefah 12” on Swamp 81.

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New Music

This is the bit you came for, a bumper week to make up for the last couple.

Boards of Canada - Introit/Prophecy at 1420 Mhz [Warp]

Okay this is good. Was anyone expecting it to be anything other than really fucking good? Moves quickly through a few influences before settling into ‘typical’ BoC but none the worse for it. Think of every great Boards track and there’s a bit of the DNA of every single one of them in here. Can’t wait for the rest of it.

Seefeel - Sol.Hz [Warp]

New Seefeel and New Boards of Canada? In the same week? What have we done to deserve this. I think this one is probably going to get unfairly overlooked, but like BoC it’s an example of a group doing what they do best and being supported by a great indie label to do it.

Batu & Donato Dozzy - Drift [!K7]

A bit of an unexpected collaboration here from Timedance man Batu and Donato Dozzy. Sometimes with collab tracks one person takes the lead to it’s detriment, and whilst you can deffo hear a lot of Dozzy’s sound design in this, there’s a fair bit of Batu’s influence too. If the rest of it is anything like this first single it’s going to be really good.

Carla Dal Forno - Confession [Kallista]

I’d already reviewed the first single from this a while back, but the full album moves the game on significantly. Regular readers will know Carla as part of the Blackest Ever Black/Low Company Cinematic Universe, but since returning to Australia she’s been releasing on her own Kallista album (who’s back cat is well worth investigating). Dark, brooding, off-kilter pop this album is one for the ages and deserves to sit alongside the best in the genre. Put simply? Don’t miss it.

Paperclip Minimiser - II [Peak Oil]

There was a time a few months back when it felt like Peak Oil were putting out fire releases every single week, so when this dropped recently it was at the top of my list to check out. Broken beats colliding with a dubby wobble sounding like this could have come out on Blackest in it’s heyday.

Ricardo Villalobos & goat (JP) - Orin (Ricardo Villalobos Variation)

Ricardo Villalobos and Japanese outfit goat teaming up for this remix project was unexpected, but probably not as unexpected as Ricky V turning in what is pretty much a straight up house track. Nine glorious minutes that could come straight from the Paradise Garage here. Phew.

The Caretaker - Patience After Sebald [History Always Favours The Winners]

A timely and much-needed repress of this Caretaker masterwork, soundtracking Grant Gee’s film about the author WG Sebald and his book The Rings of Saturn. It’s long been a favourite book of mine, tracing the author’s journey around the East Anglian countryside via tales of herring, miniature railways and matchstick cathedrals. It’s a book I’ve gifted to people many times, and return to every couple of years without fail. Highest possible recommendation, the same of which I can say for this album.

Anton Pearson - Tintinnabulation 1 [World of Echo]

Pearson is perhaps better known for his work with the band Squid, in which he plays guitar, but here he branches out solo for this album titled Driving Through Belgium. There’s something romantic about driving on the continent isn’t there? The long days behind the wheel, odd sights along the way, the sense of freedom as road signs point you towards destinations in other countries, something we don’t get in the UK. Belgium isn’t exactly the most picturesque of our European neighbours, and I can attest that driving there is pretty dreadful having spent hours on the motorway outside Antwerp en route to Amsterdam once but I digress, this album would make any journey through the Low Countries approximately thirty times more enjoyable.

Appleblim - Neolithic Leon [Sneaker Social Club]

Two Appleblim albums in as many weeks? Both completely different to one another. This one lands on label du jour Sneaker Social Club and is a road back to more familiar ground, treading the path of the UK bass continuum but in a fresh and interesting way.

Public Money - Inside/Love [Crane Operator]

I first discovered the music of Public Money last year with the release of her Amulets EP, and this follow-up builds upon that, these two charged, atmospheric tracks evolving into something with a more DIY slant, honing a unique edge on the world of blunted ambient music.

Underworld - Pearl’s Girl (r18_for2026) [Self-Released]

My one complaint from the Underworld shows earlier this year is that Pearl’s Girl didn’t go on for long enough, and neither does this. It’s an interesting new take on what is probably my favourite UW track, but it clocks in under five minutes, when the original is almost twice that.

Rene Wise - Johnsons Theme [Dekmantel]

I quite like this you know. Like a cross between The Knife and Mathew Jonson’s Marionette, it’s great to hear that progressive minimal sound keeping kicking it.

Welcome to this weeks In Strict Tempo. Apologies for no newsletter last week but I was at the International Music Summit conference in Ibiza, so didn’t find the time to get down my thoughts. Earlier this week a family funeral took me up to Scotland for three days, so apologies also for the lack of music reviews in this edition. Next week will be another bumper edition for sure.

IMS this year felt better than previous years. I’m still not too sold on the new location, but the food and drink offerings in the conference itself were more affordable and diverse, and the programming wasn’t just themed all around one flavour-of-the-month topic, although the overriding subject was on Reclaiming the Dancefloor (one question I overheard whilst passing a panel was ‘from whom?’, and that got me thinking although I wasn’t able to stick around for the answer).

It does make me wonder however, what happened to all the AI & NFT companies that sponsored the event heavily a few years ago - you don’t hear from those guys any more…

One highlight from me was making my IMS panel debut, discussing with colleagues about our labels recent purchase by Create Music Group. I hope that gave those listening plenty of food for thought, and it certainly opened a few discussions afterwards.

Anyway, overall a nice three days in the sun, a good chance to catch up with peers and friends and discuss issues, tips and tactics. Despite the pedestrian tech house, the finale at Dalt Vila remains an incredible location to reflect on it all, and I always come back from the event energised to be more creative in my own musical endeavours.

There aren’t really any hot-takes from IMS that I haven’t covered before, and sometimes it’s nice just to take something at face value for what it is.

One non-IMS bit of news from me this week: I was asked by the Association for Electronic Music for my thoughts on how artists and labels can make their music heard in a highly competitive marketplace. You might not agree with it all, but you can read the article here.

Next week I’ll be back with a lorry-load of new music reviews. Thanks for reading!

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Hello all, and apologies for the lack of In Strict Tempo Communications over the past couple of weeks. Things should be back to normal now.

The big news over the last week or so? Boards of Canada might be back. Mysterious posters, video tapes mailed out to people, thousands of posts on Reddit… all the ingredients are there. Is it time to reappraise Tomorrow’s Harvest? It’s up there with their best. Anyway, here’s a YouTube video which seems to be the first track from an upcoming album.

Record Store Day this Saturday. Your local shop will probably have some kind of event on, and a large queue of scalpers out the door. I haven’t noticed any gems in the list this year, but there’s probably a few okay titles in there (as well as a lot of dross).

Next week I’ll be at IMS. If you’re there too let me know. On Thursday I’m participating in a panel about life after an acquisition, wearing my label hat. Come say hi, I’m there Wednesday-Friday, and likely at Pikes one of the evenings…

New Music

Anyway, enough of that - there’s lots of cool stuff out, some of which I’ve missed since I last wrote, so here’s a chunky list of new music.

Appleblim - Liminal Tides [Quiet Details]

Appleblim goes ambient! Absolutely out-of-this-world soundscapes from the dubstep pioneer and Skull Disco co-founder. This is a bit more than just what you’d call ambient tbh, featuring the considered sound design you’d expect from someone who’s worked closely with the likes of Shackleton & co.

ex_libris - 003 [ex_libris]

Not streaming yet, but Bandcamp is your friend here. A third volume of cosmic techy leaning “house” from the one formerly known as A Made Up Sound. 10/10 as always.

Terrence Dixon - When Stars Remember [Tresor]

Proper hypnotic tackle from one of the best to ever do it. Take that first track and pitch it waaaay down and let him take u places you’ve never been before…

Cancer House - The Moth [Motion Ward]

Already being proclaimed by many as one of the albums of the year this one sold out pretty much as soon as it landed… there’s a repress en-route, but in the mean time make do with the digital. What do you call this? That’s up to you, but it sits somewhere around the slowcore/post-rock axis wistfully floating around the place with methodical precision and a DIY feel at the same time.

Iivana Mišukka & Arja Kastinen - Iivana Mišukka [Death Is Not The End]

Remember that Michael O’Shea reissue from a few years back? You know, the zither one. Yeah that. If you like that you’ll love this.

Shed - Everybody [Dekmantel]

Shed on Dekmantel? Didn’t see that one coming. It sounds lazy to say this sounds like typical Shed, but it does. If you’re this good at doing what you do then why change it?

Donato Dozzy - Hypno Trance [Spazio Disponible]

Again, just on Bandcamp for the time being… I was expecting more trance if I’m honest, but this is still pretty hypnotic so all good there.

Shinichi Atobe - Silent Way [Plastic & Sounds]

I’m told this is Atobe’s first self-released LP, after a run of records with DDS. On first thoughts it’s pretty decent, something that I think will reveal itself more with every new listen. Some tracks are deffo in the classic vein, others a little more pedestrian, but still better than 90% of what passes for house these days

Pan-American - Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane [kranky]

When I was younger we used to go on holiday to this one place in the south of France where they would do this big sandwich called a Pain American. Essentially it was a baguette filled with French fries, frankfurter and Dijon mustard, and it was probably one of the best things my fifteen year old appetite could have imagined. Tried one again a couple of years ago and it was fucking horrible. Anyway… nice album this, post-rock summer round two?

Raime - Can You Repeat That Please? [DDS]

Blink-and-you’ve-probably-missed-it-already mixtape from Raime diving deep into their UK roots backgrounds, reggae, dub, street soul and all things in that orbit. Hunt down the files if you missed the tape. Don’t ask me.

Index for Working Music - Bunker Imitations II [Tough Love]

I previewed this one a few weeks ago, now the full thing is available on digital and vinyl via World of Echo affiliated Tough Love. I loved the last one, this one’s great too.

Francesco Leali - To Dance Is To Resist [Until Riots]

One of the most innovative composers working in music today, Milan’s Francesco Leali returns to his Until Riots imprint with the score to the film of the same name, tracking a couple dealing with identity, homophobia and the effects of war in modern-day Ukraine.

Speedy J - Ctrssalms 17 (Cold Render) [STOOR]

These past few weeks have been full of suprpsies haven’t they? Boards of Canada, Untold, Appleblim and now Speedy J back with some new music, his first solo album in 20 years, and the first thing I’ve listened to since that collab with Surgeon a couple of years back.

aloisius - vernacular [life is beautiful]

Meandering calmly through gentle valleys of melodic pianos into the reflecting pools of shoegaze-heavy guitars this album wears its influences on it’s sleeve, but still keeps a few tricks hidden to reveal themselves to the adventurous listener.

Tara Clerkin Trio - Silently [World of Echo]

A second new single from Tara Clerkin Trio on World of Echo - on second thoughts, who even needs new Boards of Canada?

RJD2 & Supastition - According To… [RJ’s Electrical Connections]

RJD2 was part of that absolutely peerless era of stuff on Def Jux that sounded like almost nothing else on earth, but better than 99% of hip-hop that was floating round at the time. He’s been steadily putting stuff out since, but nothing’s grabbed me in the way of Deadringer, June or The Horror did back then. This is alright though, I’ll probably dive into his catalogue again and see what I’ve been missing.

You can get all these records from any reputable record shop, a few I recommend include Boomkat, World of Echo, Rubadub and All Night Flight but remember to support your local indie record shop too!

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A little roundup of bits this week, with Spotify especially being busy, launching their new Song DNA feature which uses “AI” to provide some additional context and information around the songs. So far this just seems to be scraping information off record company websites and the WhoSampled database (which Spotify bought last year). Is it a useful innovation? Potentially, although it seems like a bit of a lazy roll-out just getting AI to do the work. A properly curated selection of ‘sleeve notes’ on key releases however… that could be good.

Spotify have also announced this week that one of the ways they’re looking at combating streaming fraud is by allowing certain artists to ‘lock’ their profiles, and not allow new releases to go live without approval. Sounds good in theory, but with my label hat on I can only imagine the fuckery when an artist forgets to approve a track in time for release date… It seems Spotify have thought of that too, though, and will allow artists to grant labels/distros a ‘key’ that gives them pre-approval

RA have dropped a few interesting articles this past week, a look at songs named after clubs, which wasn’t really that great if I’m honest, and almost certainly prompted by someone listening to that Rosalia tune on repeat in the office, and a rundown of early electroclash, that was much better. They cut off the electroclash article at 2001, which was probably when it just started to really get as close as it could be to the mainstream. There’s still some incredible tunes in it though, hearing La Rock at Berghain will forever be one of my favourite clubbing memories. It prompted me to go back to that sensational Miss Kittin Live At Sonar 2005 album, show me a better run of tracks committed to CD than the Windowlicker-Dexter-The Difference It Makes section and I’ll show you a liar… Finally they’ve just published an oral history of Corsica Studios, which I haven’t read yet but am very much looking forward to reading. You can find my tribute the the Elephant nightclub here.

In Strict Tempo Book Club: I’ve just read Mark Ronson’s memoirs. Maybe not the typical artist covered on In Strict Tempo, but the book doesn’t really go into his time as a superstar producer/DJ, ending with him producing that Nikka Costa album at the start of the Millennium. No mention of Amy Winehouse, Ooh Wee or Uptown bloody Funk (a tune I absolutely cannot stand and would wipe from history given the chance). The story starts as Ronson, moves to New York as a teenager, learning to DJ and making his way in the cities club scene. One thing that does come through, is not only that is Ronson very aware of his privileged upbringing and the optics of white kids playing hip-hop to Black audiences, but also that he seems a genuine music nerd, with the knowledge to match his DJ chops. It’s pretty name-droppy in places, as you’d expect, but it’s an interesting enough read nonetheless.

Plus, if you missed it a couple of weeks ago, I uploaded a new Ceremony mix that’s well worth a listen.

New Music

DJ Gonz - Magical Negro Overdrive [SELN]

SELN co-founder DJ Gonz brings the highest levels of energy possible on his debut album, ticking off loads of boxes here, from BEB to Actress to Mika Vainio and everything in-between

Untold - HEK036 [Hemlock]

Bandcamp only for now, streaming fans, I’ll revisit the full release when it makes it way to DSPs. Untold drops two new tracks on his Hemlock label previewing a full EP in a couple of weeks. Prince Ruperts Drop is a slice of prime Untold, a roller in every sense of the word. It’s Not My Fault But It Is My Problem dials up the kicks and can only really be described as “chunky”. Looking forward to getting my ears round the rest of this.

Shed - Applications II EP [Illian Tape]

Did I have new Shed on my 2026 bingo card? Probably not, but I’m glad someone out there did. Typically progressive techno joints from the main man. Not on Spotify I’m afraid.

Mammo - Lateral [Short Span]

Yu Su - Foundry [Short Span]

Two new ones here from the label that can do no wrong. The Mammo album floats and meanders through an ever expanding space, crossing all aspects of the percussive spectrum, whilst the Yu Su album, of which only a couple of tracks are available at the moment, is quite simply one of the best things you’ll hear all year, with a stellar cast of collaborators including Dip In The Pool, Memotone and Seefeel. Can’t TIP! this one enough.

Alan Braxe & Fred Falke - Intro (25th Anniversary Mixes) [Smugglers Way]

Let’s face it, one of the most influential dance records of all time, and cornerstone of the whole ‘French touch’ movement. Anyway, both artists have remixed it fresh for ’26, neither of the new mixes really adding much to the OG, but it’s always nice to hear a new take on an old classic

Underworld - Kittens (r31_for2026) [Self-Released]

Speaking of which… As part of Underworld’s 2026 live shows (ultimately for the 30th anniversary of Born Slippy.NUXX) they’ve been playing in two parts, culminating with a second half of frantic, 150mph techno, including some edits and updates of old favourites. This is one of them, which they’ve been playing to close out the first part of recent shows, a Beaucoup Fish era staple given an update for a new era.

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Welcome to this weeks In Strict Tempo - work has been crazy this week, so it’s just a short & sweet one from me, but fear not: there’s still some good music below.

Have you listened to the latest Ceremony mix yet? This one’s a tribute to a much-missed night that happened in Reading in the early 00’s - but above that it’s just a really good mix full stop, from someone that’s been a big inspiration to me over the years.

Anyway, onto the music highlights this week…

Monic - You Can Rest Now [Osiris Music]

Once a producer of darkside D&B & techno, as well as forays into dubstep as Kryptic Minds - Simon Shreeve returns to his Monic alias for this collection of long-form ambient pieces. If I ever get a chance to wander around a nuclear power station, this will be in my headphones as I do.

Richard Skelton - Ixiolite [Corbert Stone Press]

Gourgeously open, yet melancholy piano pieces here from Richard Skelton, a real master of being able to evoke so much, with so little.

Olof Dreijer - Echoed Dafnino [Rabid Records]

The first track from the debut full length album from Olof Dreijer. Better known as part of The Knife and for his untouchable records as Oni Ayhun, Dreijer’s been using his real name recently for a slew of releases on AD93, Dekmantel and Hessle Audio. Upbeat, poppy, with elements of a Latin American street party, I can’t wait to hear the rest of this

Tara Clerkin Trio - Somewhere Good [World of Echo]

A new single from Bristol’s Tara Clerkin Trio, who over the course of one album and a handful of EPs have placed themselves as one of the most exciting new voices in UK jazz. This isn’t really jazz, not as you’d expect, but it obviously draws a lot of it’s power from the Trio’s format and instrumentation. Like jazz, don’t like jazz, whatever - you’ll find much to like about this.

VA - The Thinking Of The World Began Pounding In Our Ears The Moment We Hit Shore [Stroom]

What is this? Compilation? Artist project? Who knows. Ultimately a collection of tracks loosely held together by the guiding hand of Florian TM Zeisig most of them featuring additional artists plucked from the same pool, including More Eaze, Don Lyons & Cal Fish. Twelve tracks, covering many bases, RIYL Cocteau Twins, Pedastal, those comps from Time Is Away and A Colourful Storm, that kind of stuff.

Index for Working Music - Bunker Intimations II [Tough Love]

Sticking in that World of Echo extended universe, this new one from sister label Tough Love only has a couple of tracks available so far, but follows up from last years Which Direction Goes The Beam with another excursion into England’s Hidden Reverse, if that means anything to you, you know what you’re looking for. Come in.

When I interviewed Sandwell District at the start of last year Karl O’Connor said something that really resonated with me.

…this is the whole problem with the world now. Nothing can happen at a local level anymore, because you've been told to look globally. Well, no. It was great. Being local's great.

In a world where we can reach anyone, anywhere at the tap of a screen it often means artists and labels are expected to have a global vision, after all - why constrain yourself to just your local area when the world is your oyster? But things don’t work like that, and pretty much any artist would have started off in their local scene, playing clubs and bars nearby to them, building an audience in the surrounding area.

Sometimes that audience grows outwards, from one town to the next, to a bigger city, to national and continental popularity, but sometimes it doesn’t - sometimes a local scene stays that way, burning brightly and inspiring people to do their own thing, to make their own tunes, start their own labels and put on their own nights.

This Ceremony mix comes from Amsterdam-based DJ Foggy Snares, and pays tribute to the Kraked night that took place in Reading in the early 2000’s. You probably won’t have heard of it unless you happened to live there in that time, and even then it might have passed you by. But the importance of Kraked to those who attended still resonates to this day, and there’ll be a thousand other scenes across the country that were just as influential on a local level.

In his own words…

Foggy Snares is the ghost of a former resident DJ at Kraked - a monthly event (in fucking Reading of all places) of live electronics and lazy DJing. Fuelled by hash cakes, real ale, and a lot of goodwill from the friends and volunteers, the night ran in it’s original form from 2001-2004. The locals were joined by the likes of V/VM (pictured here in pig mask), Venetian Snares, Duplo Remote, Shitmat, Wrong Music, Mira Calix, Wevie Stonder, Team Doyobi, Jason Forest, DJ Scotch Egg, Mike Teknoist, The Producer, μ-Ziq, Global Goon, and a host of other guests. All of this went down at the Rising Sun Arts centre, which still stubbornly sits there amongst new-build flats for transient professionals, designed to fall apart in next to no time.

Editions followed elsewhere (somewhat illegally) - on small beaches along the Thames in central London, in backrooms of Tekno parties and on countryside rave sites. It all culminated in the now legendary in ‘The BIG Dirty Squat Party’ (Acton) , where the majority of the crew and other hangers on were arrested and carted off in a rozzer hired coach just after sunrise.

The mix here was recorded live during a Big Toilet event at W139 Gallery, Amsterdam a few years ago. It was meant as a tribute to those silly times. It was originally broadcast on Big Toilet Radio. https://www.bigtoilet.radio/.

Foggy doubts anybody in Amsterdam that afternoon would have given a much of a shit about all of the above... but they seemed to be getting into the beats.

Shout to Mikerak, Tizz and the B.Y.O.S. crew...

Not much going on this week so we’ll crack straight on with the music, but first:

Someone’s uploaded a whole pile of tracks to Soulseek using AI Homer Simpson vocals. Luckily I haven’t heard any of them yet, other than what was reported in RA/Mixmag but it doesn’t do anything to convince me that AI is anything other than a pile of shite. Hopefully they don’t infect Soulseek to the degree that the fake/glitched uploads from major labels fucked up Kazaa & Limewire back in the day. That video of Homer doing Born Slippy in front of a crowd of dancing animated characters will be the last thing my mind sees as I die of thirst in a barren desert next to an AI data centre…

Anyway. Monday sees the first Ceremony mix of the year from… well, you’ll have to wait and see. It’s quite a special mix, and something that really fits in with what I’ve been trying to say via In Strict Tempo for a while now. It’s pretty wild, so keep your ears peeled for that one. If you fancy a refresher, the previous instalments are on Soundcloud.

New Music

Seefeel - Ever No Way [Warp]

The first single from the upcoming Seefeel album, their first since 2011. After a fairly comprehensive recent reissue campaign across their early Too Pure stuff as well as the bits on Warp it’s nice to hear some new material from Mark Clifford & co.

Carla Dal Forno - Going Out [Kallista]

Ah now this is special. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Carla, her last album coming back in 2022 and only a single track on a A Colourful Storm compilation has kept us going so far. Whether you know her as part of the dearly missed Blackest Ever Black/Low Company cinematic universe, or are just discovering her music for the first time you’ll be sure to enjoy this.

KAKUHAN - KAK [Nakid]

Sparse elemental electronix here - a good example of a producer doing what they can with space as much as they can a chunky kick drum. There seems to be a real resurgence of this IDM-type stuff coming about at the moment, and I’m here for it.

Dagmar Zuniga - in filth your mystery is kingdom / far smile peasant in yellow music [AD93]

Originally released on tape last year, AD93 continue their run as *the* record label of these times, quietly releasing some of the most interesting, beguiling and damn near essential music to soothe us into oblivion as the world ends. If this is what is playing as the rapture comes, then we can all be contented that we’ve had a good run of it…

Rustie -AMENTET [Records DK]

He’s back, and he’s noisier. Some of that usual Rustie sound palate is here, but there’s an edge to this, razor sharp and jagged.

Low Jack - Market [Bambe]

Metallic techno here, only the most adventurous DJs will get the best out of this, but deployed right, will induce all kinds of madness in the dance.

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The discourse about streaming has been going on almost as long as streaming itself, and although the main DSPs continue to add users at a steady rate, streaming already seems like it’s past it’s golden era, if it ever truly had one. The download hangs in there, kept alive by a hard core of people who wish to maintain an archive of music, but it’s heyday is long gone.

But one format persists, and by most metrics, continues to grow. If there’s one thing that can teach us any lessons, it’s the format that’s always been there - the humble vinyl LP. People buy LPs for all sorts of reasons - the audio fidelity, which many claim is superior to digital (a whole other discussion, and one I’m not going anywhere near!), the collectibility, the financial support for the artist, the artwork, the convenience of having to put them all into a cardboard box and carry them to the car every time you move house, but no-one advocates for digital releases in the same way.

So why does physical endure even as the digital narrative continue to evolve? Already the LP has outlasted the cassette tape, CD, minidisc, digital download and is currently undergoing a long-running resurgence even in an age of unlimited access to music via streaming. One of the things I’ve often thought about physical music is that it’s already curated before you even get to it - the artist has already had to decide to press it to vinyl, a label has already had to back it, a distributor has already had to support and sell it, and a shop buyer has already had to allocate money to buy copies in. That’s four or five people who’ve already co-signed the record as being something that’s worth listening to.

Counter that with digital music, and whilst those roles of label and distributor still exist and are still important, it’s all too easy for an artist to bypass them, and put out a record without anyone else hearing it. The odds against said record getting any kind of traction are huge, but the dream of release still exists for many, even if there’s no real demand for it.

Then there’s the scarcity of it - in this age of constant access people are always searching out what others don’t have. We’ve seen this across society, in ever-rising prices for artworks, vintage trainers, classic cars and all sorts. Anything finite is coveted, and vinyl records are amongst them. Whatever the rights or wrongs of ‘vinyl culture’ people want to have something unique and the increase in special editions, coloured vinyl variants etc plays into that. On top of that, these editions can offer something a digital stream cannot, in that there’s a pile of context around the record, in artwork and sleeve notes etc.

Of course, you can apply most of these things to the CD and cassette too, and they’re both again growing in popularity after years of decline, but it’s the vinyl record that really captures the imagination.

So how does digital music take these lessons and apply them? They already tried the ‘digital scarcity’ thing with NFT’s which was a colossal waste of everyones time, money and energy, so how do we try and get that ‘must have’ ownership desire into digital products? Maybe we delete music from DSP’s after a given time, or only put it up for certain release windows, a bit like how the Video & DVD market used to operate? Some labels have experimented with making digital releases available for a certain period then pricing the download (on Bandcamp at least, where this is easily possible) at hundreds (or thousands) of pounds. That obviously relies on the music not being available on any other digital platform though.

Maybe the answer is that we don’t, that we don’t need to project some kind of rarity on a digital release when a physical product can exist alongside it. Maybe it is that there is simply just too much music being released at the moment and we need to gatekeep access in some way that still allows for DIY and up-coming artists to reach an audience whilst also blocking out all the AI-generated shite, but also providing a home for catalogue. It’s quite a challenge, and I’m not sure any one answer is correct.

I’m not advocating for one minute a return to a purely physical marketplace - for one it’d be impossible, but it would also discount a whole slew of great music that only exists in the digital realm. Perhaps we need those four or five people - call them curators if you wish - to co-sign a record before it makes an impact. What I’m suggesting is that maybe we apply some of the aspects of physical music to our digital strategies - and whilst it would take a brave artist to do so, sometimes fortune favours the bold.

I’m always interested in digging into various release strategies, especially at the DIY end when it’s not always possible to spend a lot of money engaging pluggers and agencies, and I’m always happy to chat to anyone wanting to push their own music - if that’s you then reach out!

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New Music

Bim Sherman - Ghetto Dub [Week-End Records]

Killer ’88 dub reissue with Sherwood, Jammy & Tubby at the controls. Part of a wider reissue programme, this one takes it deep into outer space into new worlds of echo.

Nashpaints - Everyone Good is Called Molly [Mirrorworld]

Early AOTY contender from Nashpaints covering pretty much every base from Spiritualized to MBV to 60’s jangle-pop and everything in between, unmistakably 2026 but honestly, could have been any time from 1950 until now. It’ll make sense when u hear it…

Quelza - Above The Clouds I Finally Found Peace [Ostgut]

I’ve got friend of the newsletter Jack Murphy to thank for the heads up on this one - there was a time when I’d be all over anything and everything Ostgut, but I’ve slacked a little on that front. Anyway. Heavy pressure is the name of the game here, initially I was minded to think of Burial, but the pace soon ups into something I’d be head nodding along to in the corner of Cable circa 2011.

Squarepusher - K2 Central [Warp]

New ‘pusher, and from what I’ve heard he’s back in his solo electric bass era… looking forward to hearing a bit more of this

James Blake - Trying Times [Self-Released]

First outing for JB in a few years and it sounds like he’s going back to the tried and tested methods that made him blow up back in the early 10’s. On first listen, it’s not blowing me away, not like those first singles did.

re:ni & Biggabush - Bass Is The Space [Ilian Tape]

Multi-generational dub-tinged spaced-out techno here from re:ni & her father, Rockers Hi-Fi man Biggabush. re:ni’s one of the best out there and this is a release well deserving of your ears

Ben Vince - Street Druid [AD93]

There’s a case to be made that AD93 is possibly the best label operating at the moment, at least from a consistency & originality point of view. Never quite sure what they’ll put out next, this month sees saxophonist Ben Vince (former collaborator with Rat Heart, Joy Orbison & Cucina Povera amongst others) release this stunning, evolving album of organic sounds, the instrument expertly treated and combined with other samples, field recordings and loops to create something that rewards repeated listens.

Fred Again / Underworld / The Streets - Born Slippy/Weak Become Heroes [Live]

If I had a pound for everyone who’d sent me this over the past week I’d have enough to treat myself to a couple of pints, at least. Not really sure what’s going on here or what’s willed this mashup into being, but Mike Skinner goes it alone over Born Slippy before Karl Hyde takes over. Shouldn’t work, kind of does, now let’s move on and just go back to enjoying the originals can we?

Mark Vernon - Sounds of the Modern Hospital [Death Is Not The End]

I pity the poor guy at Boomkat who’s got to come up with 500 words about this - it’s essentially a collection of field recordings recorded in a Scottish hospital a decade or so ago. Some hums, some drones, a lot of bleeps, the real highlight is “MRI Scanner”, which I can imagine would be fun to play at peak time in a rave.

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The hot streaming topic this week (when is there ever not one?) is that Spotify want to allow users to be able to ‘remix’ songs within the platform. At a time when there’s already millions of new releases going onto the platform every month, and the fact that the vast majority of stuff on there won’t ever attract more than a handful of streams, I’m unsure of why anyone - most of all Spotify who’ll have to host all these remixes - thinks it’s a good idea.

DSP’s are already fairly poor in supporting official remixes from labels - their thinking (and I agree with them on this to a point) being that pushing remixes on the platform will just encourage labels to flood each release with remixes in order to boost release radar popularity and game the charts. We already saw something similar in the 1990’s when major labels would commission loads of remixes of the most unlikely songs (Armand Van Helden’s remix of Cotton Eye Joe, anybody?) in order to push tracks higher up the charts. Remixes delivered to DSPs tend not to get anywhere near the same amount of support in playlists even if they’re a genuinely original new version of the track.

Looking deeper at the announcement, it looks as if Spotify are going to use “AI” too allow users to remix content on the platform. Quite how this going to work remains to be seen, and this just gives more credence to the viewpoint that AI is just attempting to answer questions nobody is asking. From a rights holder perspective, who gets the final approval on these remixes, and more importantly who gets paid? The user who types “Beatles day in the life techno remix” into whatever shitty AI tool they’ll use to power this? Spotify themselves? I mean they’re not going to implement this tech for free are they?

I saw an interesting viewpoint the other day in that the proliferation of AI slop we’re seeing all over the internet is actually because most people aren’t actually that creative. AI tools only shit out as good as they get put into them, and most peoples prompts just aren’t that good. I’m sure a decent musician or graphic designer could use an AI model to enhance their work if wanted, but if someone like me - someone who isn’t a musician - wanted to make something good then I’m not going to be able to. Could I have the vision to remix a track the same way the best artists can? Not a chance.

I still think we’re due an AI reckoning, when eventually there’ll just be so much crap flooding platforms that actual good music will be completely lost and impossible to surface. How these platforms deal with that is what’s going to define the ones who survive and the ones who drown in a sea of terrible AI remixes.

Personally, I love a good remix, and enjoy hearing them, especially if they’ve been crafted with the intention of adding a new twist to an old favourite. There’s definitely a home for remixes in the streaming landscape, and they’re still an important part of release plans, as well a crucial tool to drive a record in the clubs. But allowing anybody to create a remix based off a prompt? I’m not sure that’s going to add much to anything, for anyone.

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This Week’s Music

VA - The Black Hill, The Glass Sky [Somewhere Press]

Dreamlike, ethereal compilation of new music from the always-excellent Somewhere Press. One of those comps that will go on to prove timeless, no doubt.

Quiet Husband - Lands [N3Wlow]

Another selection of fragmented, nightmarish techno from Richie Culver’s Quiet Husband alias. There’s a strong dreamlike thread running through this weeks In Strict Tempo, and this one fits the bill perfectly, Culver’s considered approach to sound design lifting this above the raft of 4/4 that passes for techno these days.

Velv.93 - Lobelia [Stroom]

Scandi ambient recalling the mid-90’s heyday (Biosphere, etc.) of the genre via Sweden’s Velv.93. Slowly evolving like a deep fog rolling across icy plains, let this one encompass you.

Intertoto - Siccar Point [What About Never]

Remember the Intertoto cup? Even 90’s football die-hards will not-so-fondly remember the weird tournament that was a pathway for qualification for the more prestigous UEFA cup, and was won by such giants as Guingamp, Malaga and err… Fulham. Anyway. This is nothing to do with that, but instead an album of broadly dubby techno, the likes of which is enjoying a bit of a resurgence right about now.

Asher Levitas & Margaret Fiedler McGinnis - Through These Red Windows [Beyond The Valley]

Four foggy, drifting pieces from sound artist and Old Apparatus member Asher Levitas, joining multi-instrumentalist Margaret Fiedler McGinnis for this short EP of haunting tracks. The tracks recall a recurring nightmare suffered by Levitas and I reckon it would spook me hearing this kind of stuff in my dreams.

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This weeks In Strict Tempo is going to get straight into it, matey, and dispense with the usual music news - in truth, there’s not all that much going on that I can be bothered to comment on right now. Behind the scenes I’m busy and should have a new Ceremony mix ready in the next couple of weeks, plus some more ready to go over the next few months.

Before we get to the tunes - a quick question: How do you listen to the playlists I share here?

Now that’s out the way here’s this weeks music.

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New Music

Jeff Sova - Belvedere Point [Athens Of The North]

Athens dig deeper than pretty much anyone else, and here they find some lost music from 90’s Detroit that sounds like nothing else the City was offering at the time. Sure there’s a debt to Mills & Co, but it owes as much to the likes of Tangerine Dream and Japanese new-wave as it does proper techno.

Shackleton - Euphoria Bound [AD93]

I’m only three tracks into this but it’s already reset my brain for what I want to hear in 2026. More on this once I’ve given it a couple more listens

Xterea - I’ll call you later [5Gate Temple]

Proper head-screwing IDM business, this. Never really liked the term IDM, but it seems to have stuck for this kinda gear. Fuck-yer-earholes drums, soundsystem destroying tackle from minute one.

John T. Gast - Infant [5Gate Temple]

A 5GT double header this week with label honcho John T Gast coming correct with this furious, mesmerising trip through the dark fantastic. Anyone else getting a bit of Muslimgauze from this one?

RIP Magic - 5words [DFA]

I got that LCD Soundsystem book for Christmas, I’m currently reading through it. Hate them or love them, in my eyes they’re a fucking fantastic band. This one has been produced by James Murphy and could well have been a LCD B-Side. Comes backed with a Maurice Fulton mix too.

Sternpost - unworld.afterpop [Concentric Circles]

The best kind of weirdo gear here, from the master of archival business Concentric Circles… Hard to put a name on what you’d broadly call a folk-pop album, but the sum being so much more than that.

Rhythm & Sound & Paul St Hilaire - Showcase [Rhythm & Sound]

No need to say anything about this that hasn’t been said already. Just go and bliss out to it.

Beck - Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime [Capitol]

An interesting collection of covers from Beck - an artist I’ve not thought about in a while. Downtempo takes on the likes of The Korgis, Elvis & John Lennon, Midnite Vultures this isn’t.

Larrison - Connectors Vol. 1 [Freedom To Spend]

There’s only a couple of tracks of this one streaming right now, made from a solo copy of a cassette tape that found it’s way to Jed Bindemann & Pete Swanson. Could easily be a library LP, I’m minded to recall the C4 Schools theme from those old videos they made you watch when the teachers didn’t have a lesson planned.

Annie Hogan - Death Rituals [Downwards]

Two new ones from Goth Goddess Annie Hogan, on her new spiritual home of Downwards. This has been a pretty fruitful partnership between Hogan and label boss Regis so far, and long may it continue. These two new ones are dark in the extreme, swallowing all light yet somehow reflecting back to the listener exposing Hogan’s vulnerabilities, and strength as a singer. New album coming soon!

Sintaro- Looking for Her Denim [All Centre]

Sitting somewhere on the Deep Medi/2010’s Planet Mu axis Kyoto based Sintaro melds body rattling dubstep with glitch & grime elements. One of the most original things I’ve heard in some time.

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Welcome to this week’s In Strict Tempo, there’s not much happening on the news front right now - Aphex Twin has become the most listened-to artist on YouTube, overtaking Taylor Swift… kind of. Swift is still the most listened to artist on YouTube, and probably all other DSP’s, but AFX is currently riding a wave of virality which has bumped his audience up recently which has bumped his listener stats up.

Pitchfork has decided to hide its infamous numerical scores behind a paywall. For a fiver a month you’ll be able to not only see what their writers think an album scores on a 10 point scale, but also assign your own score and comments to the release.

Anna’s Archive - the activist group who scraped a load of metadata and audio files from Spotify before Xmas are now being sued by Spotify. Remember when the RIAA used to sue people for downloads by assuming each download had the value of a $20 CD? Wonder if Spotify will assign a similar monetary value to each MP3 and if it will be a fraction of a penny…

Anyway, on to the new music - here’s what’s been filling my ears this week.

New Music

Ugne & Maria - Zotasphere [Hands in The Dark]

A new collection of downtempo electronica from Lithuania via Belgium duo Ugne & Maria here - just pure bliss, this, floating around between ambient & dub all in the name of aural exploration.

David Shea - Meditations [Room40]

Is 2026 shaping up to be the year of ambient? David Shea beams down to Room40 with this 8 track album that serves as the perfect anditode for all the shit going on in the world right now.

Surface Access - Transfer [Other People]

Or is 2026 gonna be the year of Dub Techno? I sure hope so. Nicolas Jaar turns his hand to the genre once again under his Surface Access alias. Chain Reaction, Basic Channel, Scion… all the usual Dub Techno reference points are here, and this sits nicely amongst the best of them.

Picture - Eeeeeeeeee [Short Span]

VA - Short Tracks [Short Span]

One new one, one that dropped on CD just before Xmas from Matthew Kent’s Short Span. Basically everything Matt touches sounds like gold, and you probably know that already so drop what you’re doing and ‘av a listen. Bandcamp only.

The Dengie Hundred & Gemma Blackshaw - Songs For Isserley [Somewhere Press]

Somewhere press follow up that amazing Ugne Uma 7” that sold out in a flash with this digital-only long-form piece that recalls being stalked across the misty highlands by a spectre, the theme of which was taken from the book that inspired Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin.

Thought Leadership - IV of Cups [Be With]

Have you ever wished there were more bands like the Durutti Column? Then your prayers have been answered. Thought Leadership originally released this as a limited tape and now Be With have pressed it to a just-as-limited LP, which drops in March. Don’t miss this one.

Picture of Health - Average Glow [Trillion Media]

Debut single from Cambridge band Picture of Health here, nice n’ scuzzy just how we like it. Turn it up to 11. They’re playing the Blue Moon tonight, see you there.

Anthony Child - of the Beginning [Old Technology]

One from late last year from Anthony Child, back in his synth noodling guise. This stuff’s pretty good, but if I’m honest I prefer him when he’s in balls-to-the-wall techno mode. Last year’s Surgeon album was one of the best in many years.

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Hello all, welcome to this weeks In Strict Tempo. As usual at the start of January, music consultancy firm Luminate put out their annual industry report, and as usual it generates a tonne of debate and attention-grabbing headlines. This week, it was the turn of the United Musicians & Allied Workers Union, who dropped a post on Bluesky saying that Spotify have de-monetized 88% of music on the platform.

Now, while that’s a headline-grabbing message, it’s simply not true. For one, the Luminate data only looks at 2025 releases, as in things that have been released that year. Nothing that already exists on the platform that has over 1000 streams has been ‘de-monetized’. Spotify announced their new royalty threshold in 2024, so anyone releasing music in 2025 should have been well aware of the new rules.

Do I agree with the policy? Not really, but I can see why they’ve done it. The royalty generated from 1000 streams isn’t going to make much of a difference to anyone, although we have to appreciate that Spotify is just one income source of many for musicians. We also need to take into account how Spotify pay rightsholders. They have a set pool of money that gets divided up based on track popularity. You’re getting paid from the same pool as Taylor Swift, and the more releases that are eligible for that pool the less there is to go round for everyone, from Swift downwards. This policy (rightly or wrongly) means that of 253 million tracks on Spotify, only the top 26.5 million have been paid out on. That means for mid-tier artists, who are getting 1000-100,000 streams they should be looking at a bigger payout than they would have previously.

Of those 253m tracks on Spotify over 120 million of them have under 10 streams. This is stuff that even the artist & their friends can’t be bothered to listen to (although I’d wager a lot of it is AI slop). You have to ask yourself, really what’s the value of this stuff being on Spotify? A further 60 million (so 180m out of 253m, almost 70%) has under 100 streams, again a fairly tiny amount, although one that probably starts to affect niche and DIY musicians. Add on the next 40-odd million that has done between 101 and 1000 streams, and it certainly begins to look like there’s simply too much music that isn’t getting listened to out there. This is all 2025 releases, by the way, not what’s already been uploaded previously.

What’s the answer to all this? I saw someone suggest Spotify raising the royalty threshold to 250k streams, which would certainly increase payments significantly for anyone streaming above that number, but it would also exclude a huge amount of musicians from ever earning money from the platform. Unsurprisingly the suggestion did not go down well with the usual suspects. I don’t have an answer, but it’s clear that something needs to be done about the sheer amount of AI crap on streaming services. Bandcamp this week announced they would be banning AI created music from their platform (although how they’ll identify and police this remains to be seen). My suggestion would be for the major DSPs to tighten up the list of approved distributors they work with, and stop the DIY distro platforms from having access. Of course this isn’t without it’s own issues (many rappers, as well as pop stars like Ed Sheeran have used these platforms to host their early tracks, some probably still do), but it was never the case that you could get your releases in a record shop without a distributor, so maybe more curation is what’s needed, even if it’s a sledgehammer style use of the term.

I spent a nice couple of hours speaking with Matt Anniss, author of the excellent Join The Future this week about his PhD looking at the rave culture in East Anglia. I was too young to really experience the big outdoor raves in the area, but around the turn of the millennium was a regular party-goer at a number of unlicenced and semi-legit parties in local village halls and backrooms of pubs & restaurants which I thought it would be interesting to share as a kind of ‘alternative’ to the traditional rave narrative. It was a very interesting and enlightening chat learning about Matt’s links with the area, the differences between Norfolk & Suffolk, and the area’s impact of dance music in general.

Work (and life) has been manic this past week, so I haven’t really had much chance to listen to new music. I haven’t listened to a huge amount of anything this week tbh, just some old Weatherall mixes, and this new one from my colleague Rupert Ellis, playing B2B in Valencia which fits that kinda vibe. I’ll make up for it next week for sure, but enjoy the mix below in the meantime.

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Hello. Happy New Year! It’s not too late to say that is it? Anyway, I hope you all had lovely festive breaks, and wild/calm New Years Eves depending on your desires. Me? Mine was nice thanks, saw lots of family and friends, caught a chest infection, eat and drunk way too much. New Years resolutions? Not really - try and get out a bit more I guess, thirteen months of working exclusively from home has taken a bit of a toll on me, so that’s something I’m gonna try and change.

Anyway, lots has gone on since the last In Strict Tempo, so let’s have a brief catch-up before I make some guesses at what might happen in the upcoming year.

It kind of passed me by, but the end of 2025 marked the end of the first quarter-century since the new Millennium. That’s kind of mad when you look at it, in December 1999 I’d not long left school, and was working in a DIY shop, I couldn’t drive, couldn’t drink (legally) and really had no idea how things were gonna pan out from there. To mark it a few of the dance music publications did “tracks of the century” type lists, I’ve already briefly mentioned the Quietus’ list, but RA and Mixmag added to the festivities with their own selections. I was kinda proud to see that I’d had a hand in (one way or another, label or distro-wise) in three of their top 25, not that I would take any credit for it. I thought about doing my own list, but you can probably guess a lot of it (Top 3: Transition, Marionette, Two Months Off).

Some sad news over Xmas in that Phonica’s Nick Williams lost his battle with cancer. I doubt there’s many people reading this that haven’t bought records off Nick at some point. We weren’t close, but I’ve bought plenty of records from him and always found him a helpful and knowledgable person to deal with. Love to his family and friends.

The big news you probably saw was that an activist group have scraped Spotify and managed to extract terabytes of data including audio, artwork & metadata. I guess in theory anyone could use that to build their own free (and obviously unlicensed) streaming service, albeit one that doesn’t feature anything released after July 2025. I suppose the point was to show they could, rather than to actually do anything meaningful with the assets. Who’s going to store that much stuff on a HD? More interesting was their admission that they only managed to archive around 37% of audio files from the service, but that those 37% accounted for something like 97% of streams on the platform. So much stuff on DSPs just doesn’t get listened to, and with the growth of AI that’s only going to increase.

This newsletter marks the 100th edition of In Strict Tempo, which is pretty amazing when I think about it. I did a gratuitous back-slapping post just before the break so I won’t bang on about it, but I’m looking forward to seeing what 2026 holds for the newsletter. I’ve already got some nice mixes lined up for the Ceremony series.

Anyway, enough of that - onto the main subject. 2026. What’s gonna happen, what’s not? I might well be wrong about all of this, and a lot of it is probably wishful thinking, but hey ho…

The Streaming Discourse Will Continue

Of course it will. If I’m honest, I’m trying to use Apple Music a bit more this year, but Spotify is still the main player in the streaming landscape for good or ill. I can see a ‘big’ artist (or two) removing their catalogue from streaming DSPs (not just Spotify) this year, but I don’t think that’ll be enough to move the dial completely. That said, I think there’s a future away from streaming, but I don’t think it’ll happen this year. Last year saw some interesting start-ups come out of the woodwork, but I’m not sure any of them are just right, right now. The biggest problem we face is the public’s general apathy towards music, something you could say is a symptom of the streaming era and algorithims only playing us what we like. What’s the point in discovering new music when all of our favourites are just a click (or voice request) away?

Scenes Will Start To Compartmentalise

Whatever does eventually challenge the main DSPs probably won’t be a full catalogue ‘all-you-can-eat’ type service, but something aimed more at individual scenes and genres. Like it or not, the subscription economy is hear to stay, so whatever does come about needs to have a really good value proposition to 1) pay artists and labels fairly and 2) be cheap enough to be an add-on to the full catalogue services. There’s a way to figure this out, I’m sure of it, and whoever does will be on to a winner, but we need to remember, we don’t need to build a new Spotify, we need to build a new digital record shop, with curation at the forefront.

Independence Will Disappear…

It’s no secret that lots of independent labels and distribution companies have been bought up by the majors, or at least major-affiliated firms. More Indies will go this way in 2026, as the Industry doubles down on catalogue acquisition.

But Independents Will Grow

But down at the grassroots level, truly, genuinely exciting music will continue to be made. Communities will foster, scenes will grow. New artists will release music, new labels will start, new club nights will crop up, even though it’s really fucking tough out there. It’s not all doom and gloom.

We’ll See Something Really Original

What was the last truly new music movement? Dubstep? PC Music/Hyper-pop? It’s been some time since something new broke through, something like we’ve never heard before. I don’t know where it’s gonna come from, I don’t know what it’s gonna sound like, but I live in hope.

AI Will Continue to Dominate Our Feeds

And it will continue to be really, really shit.

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New Music

A few bits that have caught my ear recently

Daniel Lopatin - Marty Supreme OST [A24]

Here’s a hot take: film scores only work in the context of the film you’re watching. I can’t think of a single one - possibly with the exception of Blade Runner - that I’d listen to separately. Anyway, I’ve no interest in this film, no interest in it’s soundtrack, and no interest in matey pretending to be a Scouse rapper or whatever he is.

Shackleton - Crushing Realities [AD93]

Label of the moment AD93 call on Shackleton to deliver a typically weighty slice of murk in advance of a new album coming later this year.

Monolake - Hong Kong (Reissued)

Basically Ground Zero for Dub Techno. Reissued in a limited yellow vinyl edition by Boomkat

The Other People Place - Lifestyles of the Laptop Cafe [Warp]

Regularly voted as one of the best electronic albums of the 2000’s, it was out of print for years before Warp reissued it a decade or so ago. If you missed it then, get it now.

Old Saw - The Wringing Cloth [Lobby Art Editions]

When I eventually retreat to a cabin in the woods to see out my days in a hermit-like existence this will be the only kind of stuff I’ll listen to. Could easily be from the 1920’s as much as the 2020’s. I don’t know much about this but it’s not left the speakers since I first heard it.

Field Commander Ali - She Was Picking Flowers [World of Echo]

World of Echo dip back into the rich vein of the Aussie underground with this lo-fi treat. Straight Outta New South Wales, this’ll be one of those records that captures your soul.

James Pants - Night Guard [Not on Label]

Cassette only release of unreleased beats and pieces from US producer/beatmaker/multi-instrumentalist James Pants. We’ve not heard much from him in a while, so to get a new mixtape (lovingly mixed by the Cologne via Amsterdam duo of TBZ & Pissflaps) is a real treat. Available via Rush Hour and other good record shops!