One night after arriving in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital, I was in a bare, concrete room listening to fresh electronic dance music. Dialled In, a leading South Asian contemporary music platform, was in town to host a fundraiser to help alleviate Cyclone Ditwah’s crippling aftermath. The opening performance by Paris-born Sri Lankan Da Ya…
On a street at the edge of downtown Amman, a small Radio Alhara decal on a glass door is the only hint that Turbo – a studio that helped shape the city’s independent visual culture – operates inside. Outside, downtown hums with its usual chaos – cars, shop signs and voices overlapping in the air. Inside,…
This weekend, one of London’s most influential club nights returns to mark its 18th anniversary with a birthday party in Camden and the launch of a limited-edition photobook and exhibition titled: These Are The Levels. Founded in 2007 by DJ, producer and broadcaster Benji B with host, curator and selector Judah Afriyie, Deviation established itself…
Over a video call on a late autumn afternoon, GOME are under the blankets of a hotel bed in Barcelona, recovering from the night before. They’ve just played at Tunnel, one of the city’s key underground spots – an exhilarating night midway through their latest European tour. GOME are Robin Townshend and Julian Marks, two…
Femi Adeyemi is one of the most important figures working in the U.K. music industry today. The London-based collector and DJ-turned-blogger founded the digital radio platform NTS in 2011, an evolution of the mixtapes he was collating and creating for the internet’s nascent music communities. Aimed at those whose interests he felt were underrepresented by…
October felt like a collision between beauty and unrest — a month where music refused to stand still. Voices rose from Beirut to Brooklyn, from protest to pure chaos: Yasmine Hamdan turned memory into resistance, Geese made rock sound dangerous again and Makaya McCraven stretched jazz into new shapes. Even The Weeknd and Giorgio Moroder…
A flood of new music landed this September, making it tough to choose what to spotlight. But between long-awaited returns, a fresh print magazine and a handful of new releases, there’s plenty to carry us past the post-holiday lull. So, back to school with what happened in the world of music this September. As always,…
“Sooraj has a uniform,” said the stylist Disha Pai, reflecting on styling the rapper Hanumankind, or Sooraj Cherukat, on some of his earliest projects. “It’s a baniyan and a pant.” Not much has changed since then, considering that’s exactly how the Bangalore-based rapper skrrted onto our screens last year in Big Dawgs. While his white…