Experimental music

New Cue the music: former Q editors join newsletter publishing boom
After the Bauer Media music title’s pandemic-triggered demise last July, Q’s former staff are launching a weekly direct-to-inbox publication
Laura Snapes
25, Feb, 2021 @10:28 AM

Archie Shepp on jazz, race and freedom: 'Institutions continue to abuse power'
At 83, the saxophonist has somewhat mellowed his funkily avant-garde music – but his anger at the racial injustice he has fought all his life remains undimmed
Lanre Bakare
24, Feb, 2021 @1:00 PM

No drone unturned: tracing the sound that unites ancient and modern
From primitive instruments and sacred chants to today’s minimalist electronica and metal, drone music has a long and mystical history. A new book investigates
Harry Sword
10, Feb, 2021 @9:00 AM

US toddler to release debut album recorded in the womb
Luca Yupanqui was recorded by her parents using ‘biosonic MIDI technology’
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
03, Feb, 2021 @9:37 AM

Sophie's triumphantly plastic music moulded a new world for trans people
The producer’s death is crushing, but we’re left with hyper-real music and an iconography that upends femininity and points to a new way of living
Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
02, Feb, 2021 @12:07 PM

Caroline Shaw: what next for the Pulitzer-winner who toured with Kanye? Opera – and Abba
She has scored films, played with rappers, starred in a TV comedy, and performed for the dying. As the classical sensation releases three new works, she talks about the shock of playing arenas – and making the leap into opera
Erica Jeal
02, Feb, 2021 @6:00 AM

Cult musician Emmanuelle Parrenin: 'I like to dive into the void and invent something'
The singer and instrumentalist caused a riot at a Clash gig, cured herself of deafness, and, decades on from her debut LP, is an icon to young French producers. ‘I love to discover,’ she explains
Philip Bloomfield
01, Feb, 2021 @12:02 PM

'His life is a rebuke to cynicism': what five years without David Bowie has taught us
In his song Five Years, Bowie imagined a dying Earth. Five years on from his death, it seems to have come true – yet he continues to uplift us
Lynsey Hanley
08, Jan, 2021 @11:00 AM

Irish drill, jazz violin and supermarket musicals: 30 new artists for 2021
From the ferocious hardcore punk of Nicolas Cage Fighter to the ultra-meditative ambient of KMRU, discover new music from right across the pop spectrum
Ben Beaumont-Thomas and Laura Snapes
01, Jan, 2021 @6:00 AM

Musician, heal thyself: how ambient music brought solace in 2020
With no clubs or gigs to go to and pandemic anxiety to quell, ambient music chimed more strongly in a year when artists reconsidered their sense of purpose
Kate Hutchinson
29, Dec, 2020 @2:00 PM

Aunt music: how the lost sounds of Great Aunt Mirry were unlocked
Musician Tom Fraser has reclaimed a late relative’s musical legacy, thanks to the chance find of a scratchy record on a doorstep
Laura Barton
24, Dec, 2020 @12:00 PM

The 10 best contemporary music albums of 2020
We survey the best albums from the experimental edges of classical, jazz and more, from ambient sludge to blissful electronica
John Lewis
24, Dec, 2020 @10:00 AM
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