Three releases that sound one way at first, then reveal something else when you stay with them. Ballyhoo!, Cusk and Forget Them Wendy don't sound like obvious neighbors. One arrives with big guitars and a chorus made for shouting along, another turns fragility and unease into something almost hypnotic, while the third lets a summer afternoon drift by before quietly changing the mood. This week's Three Track Week 30 brings them together through that contrast - three releases t

A Space That Doesn’t Need to Explain Itself Located in Kreuzberg, SO36 is one of Berlin’s best-known spaces for punk, independent music and queer culture. Its history is visible in the room, but SO36 doesn't feel like a place living in the past. It feels used, active and completely at ease with what it has become. Photo by C. Fleig On the night we visit, the room is only half full. It doesn't feel empty. The audience is diverse, from casually dressed visitors to people whose

Five new releases about heartbreak, change, second chances and the things we carry with us. The five releases in this week's On This Track: Weekend Listening 9 move from a record that waited twenty years to be heard to new music about dating, heartbreak, old songs finding a new shape and everything that happens when life doesn't quite go as planned. They don't sound alike, but each one gave me a reason to listen again. FLEUR ROUGE - “Small Talk” Photo by Fleur Rouge I think m

Album Art by Dummy This week’s Artist of the Week is Dummy. The Los Angeles band are entering a new chapter with "do you love the color of the sky?" (out 16th of October), their first album for Polyvinyl Record Co. and their follow-up to 2024’s "Free Energy". Where that record drew from the optimism of Madchester and rave culture, the new album moves into a more uncertain space, bringing together post-rock, drone and bright pop influences without losing the restless character

Three songs about the space between what we expect and what we actually find. A signal might not mean what we think it does. Other people can start making choices for us. And sometimes the place we've dreamed about looks very different once we get there. This week's Three Track Week: Signals 12 brings Max MacReady, Still Insane and Jawdropped together around those very different versions of uncertainty. Listen to this week’s Three Track Week: Signals selection This week's tra

Distorted guitars, restless synths and a song that somehow manages to put everything in the same room. Artist Feature | New Release “Full Spectrum Dominance” doesn't ease you into Dummy's new era. It starts with distorted guitars, then immediately puts a synth pattern right at the front of the mix. The pattern keeps returning throughout the song, almost like an anchor, while everything around it continues to change. Site note: I initially heard far more synthesizers in this t