Experimental music

‘It was ridiculous. It was amazing’: the lost pop of 80s Yugoslavia

Pre-civil war, Yugoslavian musicians defied the limitations of technology to make superb electro-pop in an apparent socialist utopia

Tamlin Magee

12, Oct, 2021 @1:39 PM

Maurice Louca: Saet El-Hazz review – transcendent beauty in an unholy racket

The Egyptian guitarist teams up with an extraordinary Lebanese trio for a colourful tangle of sounds resembling a steampunk synth band

John Lewis

24, Sep, 2021 @7:30 AM

Richard H Kirk was prolific, hungry, angry and funky to the end

The Cabaret Voltaire musician exemplified Sheffield’s experimental mindset and transformed British club music

Joe Muggs

21, Sep, 2021 @5:07 PM

Mercury prize 2021: Arlo Parks wins for Collapsed in Sunbeams

21-year-old singer-songwriter adds to Brit award win earlier in the year

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

09, Sep, 2021 @9:13 PM

Low: Hey What review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The veteran group continue the scorched digital manipulations of 2018 masterpiece Double Negative, but their vocals are left pristine and beautiful

Alexis Petridis

09, Sep, 2021 @10:30 AM

‘I’m worshipping anger as a holy force’: dub, dancehall and destruction with the Bug

For three decades Kevin Martin has detonated the British music scene with various apocalyptically noisy projects – all as a way to ‘get over the crushing tyranny of existence’

John Doran

01, Sep, 2021 @5:00 PM

Bendik Giske: Cracks review | John Lewis's contemporary album of the month

The Norwegian musician mics the whole studio, influenced by everything from techno to queer theory, on his hypnotic second album

John Lewis

27, Aug, 2021 @8:00 AM

How John Cage, the great disrupter, had the last laugh - by writing beautiful music

Late in life, maverick composer Cage decided to stop finding ‘alternatives to harmony’. The results have been rediscovered by a new generation of musicians

Andrew Male

25, Aug, 2021 @1:54 PM

‘You’re in on someone’s secret’: DIY community radio offers solace to locked-down Melbourne

New stations are helping the city cope – and keeping its creative communities alive

Shaad D'Souza

21, Aug, 2021 @8:00 PM

‘Come on this journey with me’: Elaine Mitchener, Britain’s boldest vocalist

Classically trained with a three-octave range, the genre-exploding performer dissolves her voice into astonishing gasps and stutters to confront the horror of colonial history

Jennifer Lucy Allan

20, Aug, 2021 @9:00 AM

‘Rawness, freedom, experimentation’: the Brit jazz boom of the 60s and 70s

Swinging London’s cultural melting pot was channelled into vibrant jazz by John Surman, Alan Skidmore and others – and it has inspired the resurgent scene of today