Song of the Day: Maruja - Trenches

August 30, 2025 Peter Kimpton

Maruja’s single Trenches is the latest to herald their debut album *Pain To Power*

Song of the Day: Influenced by Rage Against The Machine, a seething, menacing new track by the Manchester jazz-punk band, one they describe as “a call for revolution in the face of the oppressive,” with searing, combative lyrics by vocalist Harry Wilkinson and interweaving sax by Joseph Carroll, heralding their debut album Pain to Power, out on 12 September via Music For Nations

Song of the Day: Yussef Dayes - Black Classical Music

May 2, 2023 Peter Kimpton

The cover of Yussef Dayes’ forthcoming album, Black Classical Music

Song of the Day: A whirlwind of brilliant dynamism, energy and invention by the British jazz drummer with the title track of his forthcoming debut solo album, out on Brownswood Recordings, Warners and Cashmere Thoughts Recordings

Song of the Day: Nubya Garcia - The Message Continues (Mark de Clive-Lowe Remix)

March 23, 2021 Peter Kimpton

Cover art for Nubya Garcia’s album – Source

Song of the Day: With a brilliantly bold melody, added developed rhythm and carefully crafted keyboards, an addictive new arrangement of the original instrumental from 2020 album Source by the Camden-born jazz saxophonist, composer and bandleader

Song of the Day: GoGo Penguin - Atomised (and Machinedrum remix)

March 16, 2021 Peter Kimpton

Machinedrum, aka Travis Stewart, left, remixes Manchester trio GoGo Penguin

Song of the Day: Intricate, pace-changing and with beautiful narrative arcs, two versions of the recent piece by the Manchester experimental jazz trio of pianist Chris Illingworth, bassist Nick Blacka, and drummer Rob Turner with a new dance remix by American producer Travis Stewart

Billy Taylor Trio / Nina Simone – I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free

October 10, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: Moving on to another TV theme, best known for the original Barry Norman BBC TV film review programme that began in 1972, this wonderful jazz piano piece was originally associated with the 1950s civil rights movement

Roy Budd – Get Carter theme

October 7, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Get Carter (1971) starring Michael Caine, with soundtrack by Roy Budd

Song of the Day: Resuming a thread of film soundtrack music that transcends their original source - this time the classic thriller starring Michael Caine and directed by Mike Hodges from 1971

Clara Smith – It's Tight Like That

September 5, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: After yesterday's sprinkling of tragic and dirty songs by Bessie Smith, let's get a little filthier courtesy of the so-called Queen of the Moaners from South Carolina who actually had a chirpy, perky, high voice

Bessie Smith – Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out / Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl / Blue Spirit Blues

September 4, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Bessie Smith, carrying more than weight on her famous shoulders

Song of the Day: After a series of early bluesmen, it's time to sprinkle some attention on the first true star of of the blues crossing into jazz, who not only mixed a little dirt into her powerful voice, but also into her lyrics

Rotary Connection – I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun

March 27, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Rotary Connection, featuring Minnie Riperton and Charles Stepney (right).

Song of the Day: How to move from bluesy road tunes to this elaborate jazz-soul number at the peak of the psychedelic movement? Partly because this band also backed Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters

Funny Valentine? Chet Baker – Let's Get Lost

February 14, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: The world wide web will be awash with Valentine's songs today, so here's one too - a jazz standard but with a darker edge, embellished with extraordinarily beautiful trumpet and voice of Chet Baker

J Dilla – Two Can Win / The Sylvers – Only One Can Win

February 3, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Maybe nine can win? Fabulous family band The Sylvers

Song of the Day: After yesterday's Ty Segall/Hot Chocolate cover comparison, more material playing on the topic of who or may not be the winner in a relationship from the brilliant hip hop and jazz producer and the 70s funk and soul family group

Moondog – Lament I, Bird's Lament / Moondog Monologue

January 28, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: After Captain Beefheart, could there be any musical figure more influential, eccentric, strange and innovative? Louis Thomas Hardin, aka the Viking figure who for years silently stalked New York's 6th Avenue, is a strong contender

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band – Moonlight On Vermont / Tropical Hot Dog Night

January 26, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet – musician, artist, visionary.

Song of the Day: With the recent passing of The Fall's Mark E Smith, and all the songs, tributes and stories that have followed, it now seems only appropriate to follow up with music Smith loved by one of his major influences

Hugh Masekela - Grazing In The Grass / Khauleza / Soweto Blues

January 23, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: A triple tribute to the sadly departed but hugely influential South African trumpeter, composer, singer, cornet and flugelhorn player, and leading anti-apartheid campaigner

Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own / Back to Black

January 13, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: The voice, the lyrics and the timing – tears don't get much more moving than this – a double from the much missed singer who had many downs, but undoubtedly hit the heights with her Back to Black album of 2006

Weather Report – Birdland

January 6, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: The opening track to the jazz-funk fusion band's 1977 album Heavy Weather is not only a tribute to the legendary New York jazz club inspired by Charlie Parker, but a wonderfully evocative instrumental conjuring up sights and sounds of the city streets

Frank Zappa – Peaches en Regalia

January 5, 2018 Peter Kimpton

Frank Zappa: masterful, mischievous invention

Song of the Day: How could there a more joyful, eccentric, evocative and infinitely inventive opener than this, on album described by Zappa as "a movie for the ears" – 1969's Hot Rats?

Mel Tormé – Comin' Home Baby

December 27, 2017 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: For those facing what is often an arduous, weather-affected journey, travelling home after a Christmas visit, or waiting for their beloved to return with this 1962 classic

RJD2 – A Beautiful Mine (Mad Men theme) / 1976 / Let There Be Horns

November 8, 2017 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: Echoing yesterday's great drum break, let's now celebrate the work of the Ohio multi-instrumentalist and hip-hop artist, who is behind the theme tune to Mad Men, and so much more

Nat King Cole – Nature Boy

October 30, 2017 Peter Kimpton

Song of the Day: The opening vocals and style of yesterday's 3WW by alt-J, "There was a wayward lad" may spark a musical echo, this beautiful 1948 recording by the jazz pianist and singer, written by the original 'hippie' eden ahbez

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1990s alcopops

  
    SNACK OF THE WEEK
doritos, skittles snack mashup

New Albums …

Featured

June 13, 2026

Kelsey Lu: So Help Me God

June 13, 2026

New album: Luxuriant, ethereal, dramatic and passionate experimental and chamber dream pop by the American singer-songwriter and cellist, with their second LP, seven years since 2019 debut Blood, with guests including Sampha, Kamasi Washington, Kim Gordon, and co-producer Jack Antonoff

June 13, 2026

June 10, 2026

Vince Staples: Cry Baby

June 10, 2026

New album: The Compton/ Long Beach, Californian rapper returns with a potent, punchy, overtly political rock-hip hop seventh LP that heavily critiques American society and power, racism, police violence, gun culture, media and the music industry, largely accompanied by a tight, riff-heavy electric guitars, bass and drums

June 10, 2026

June 9, 2026

Liz Lawrence: Vespers

June 9, 2026

New album: More acoustic, stripped back and lo-fi than her previous four albums, yet with deeply powerful and moving songwriting and performance, the British artist’s latest is suffused with grief, reflection and devotion for the premature loss of her sister Jessie, capturing life and death, poetically expressing devotion and reflection

June 9, 2026

June 9, 2026

Bedouine: Neon Summer Skin

June 9, 2026

New album: A serenely beautiful, but also nostalgically sorrowful fourth LP by American singer-songwriter Azniv Korkejian who has Armenian-Syrian heritage, with songs about displacement and identity, very mindful of Middle Eastern conflicts, atrocities and her family history, while broadening her sound into the lush mould of 1970s Carole King and Laurel Canyon

June 9, 2026

Spatial, No Problem. by Lee %22Scratch%22 Perry & Mouse on Mars.jpeg

June 8, 2026

Lee "Scratch" Perry and Mouse on Mars: Spatial, No Problem

June 8, 2026

New album: This wondrously eclectic and entertaining final official album project by the legendary Jamaican producer and artist, made before his passing in 2021, is a collaboration with the German electronic duo Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, mixing reggae, krautrock, ambient, dub, jazz, New Orleans brass and more, alongside Perry’s distinctive voice

June 8, 2026

June 7, 2026

Jalen Ngonda: Doctrine of Love

June 7, 2026

New album: Following his acclaimed 2023 debut Come Around And Love Me, the American UK-based impressive soul singer’s second LP is another classy collection of beautifully uplifting, sublime Northern soul and Motown-era love songs

June 7, 2026

Death Cab For Cutie: I Built You A Tower

June 7, 2026

New album: Elegantly expressed emotional turmoil unfolds across 11 cleverly crafted songs in this 11th album by the Seattle indie rock band fronted by Ben Gibbard and produced by the brilliant John Congleton around a metaphor for post-marriage grief

June 7, 2026

June 6, 2026

Zoh Amba: Eyes Full

June 6, 2026

New album: The NY-scene free jazz saxophonist forms an indie-folk-country-rock-muddy-blues trio with fabulously strong results in this passionate, raw, free-flowing debut as guitarist-singer-songwriter, lyrics themed around their original hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee, and coloured by Appalachian roots

June 6, 2026

June 5, 2026

ear: Rumspringa

June 5, 2026

New album: Minimalistic, introverted, nuanced quirky laptop experimental electronica by the New York duo Jonah Paz and Yaelle Avtan, following last year’s debut The Most Dear and the Future, this one named after a a rite of passage for Amish adolescents translated as "running around" in Pennsylvania German

June 5, 2026

June 3, 2026

Greg Mendez: Beauty Land

June 3, 2026

New album: A gently ironic title, but no doubting beauty of the sound, reminiscent of the late, great Elliott Smith, this new gem of a lo-fi LP is full of mildly tragic, sensitive, thoughtful 14 short numbers by the Philadelphia high falsetto singer-songwriter

June 3, 2026

For Love of Grace & the Hereafter by Iceage.jpeg

June 3, 2026

Iceage: For Love of Grace & The Hereafter

June 3, 2026

New album: A stylishly ramshackle, brilliantly brash’n’breezy punk-shoegaze feral sixth studio LP, streamlining sounds from 50s rock’n’roll through to early 00s indie by the Copenhagen band fronted by Elias Rønnenfelt, successfully fulfilling their aim on this to be “immediate, urgent, raw and fast” across themes of romantic devotion with violent chaos and nihilism

June 3, 2026

June 2, 2026

Boards of Canada: Inferno

June 2, 2026

New album: Scotland’s hugely influential electronic experimental sibling duo Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin return 13 years after their last LP, Tomorrow’s Harvest, with an epic 18-track collection that dissects the psychology of religion with distorted vocal samples and cut-ups across landscapes of dystopian synth textures and beats

June 2, 2026

Philadelphia's been good to me by Kurt Vile.jpeg

June 2, 2026

Kurt Vile: Philadelphia's Been Good To Me

June 2, 2026

New album: A selection of fond love-letter songs to the city where he was raised and has remained by the 46-year-ld American singer-songwriter, in this deliciously laid back 10th LP of songs of interweaving guitars, folk, rock, country and psychedelia, all with his inimitably relaxed vocal delivery

June 2, 2026

The Boys of Dungeon Lane by Paul McCartney.jpeg

June 1, 2026

Paul McCartney: The Boys of Dungeon Lane

June 1, 2026

New album: His voice now may be thinner and weaker, yet his genius for melody remains in this warm, tender LP, inspired by vivid childhood reminiscences in the Speke area of Liverpool and beyond, with references to friends, parents, girlfriends, his bandmates, and includes a duet with Ringo Starr

June 1, 2026

new songs …

Featured

June 13, 2026

Song of the Day: Interpol - See Out Loud

June 13, 2026

Song of the Day: Pulsating indie rock by the seasoned New York band fronted by singer Paul Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler, heralding their upcoming eighth album This Mirror Weighs a Ton, out on 28 August, and newly signed to Partisan Records

June 13, 2026

June 12, 2026

Song of the Day: Jack White - Dollar Bill

June 12, 2026

Song of the Day: The White Stripes man returns with a blistering, bluesy rock guitar, Led Zeppelin-ish single, heralding his upcoming seventh solo album, Frozen Charlotte, out on 10 July via Third Man Records

June 12, 2026

June 11, 2026

Song of the Day: Sylvan Esso - Hot Slob

June 11, 2026

Song of the Day: A proudly messy, rowdy, pointed and punchy new indie rock single embracing the spirit and chaos of living in the glitch by the North Carolina duo of Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn, here featuring Jenn Wasner and TJ Maiani and out on Psychic Hotline

June 11, 2026

June 10, 2026

Song of the Day: Rodrigo y Gabriela - Monster

June 10, 2026

Song of the Day: The hugely popular and Grammy-winning Mexico City-raised guitar duo return with a dextrously brilliant new single mixing acoustic and rock styles, heralding their new upcoming new album OurHome out 18 September via ATO Records

June 10, 2026

June 9, 2026

Song of the Day: JJerome87 - Mr. Alligator

June 9, 2026

Song of the Day: A bluesy, smooth, luxuriantly produced Americana number about a dubious authority figure by the British songwriter and musician Joe Newman, frontman of the Mercury winning band alt-J, in this latest single from his debut solo album, The Canyon, out on 26 June via Mushroom Music/ Virgin

June 9, 2026

June 8, 2026

Song of the Day: Baalti & Lapgan - Romance / Ipa Ma

June 8, 2026

Song of the Day: Vibrant, rhythmic, experimental electronica and dance music sampling Bollywood, Bengali disco, Hindustani classical and Gujarati folk by the NY-based pair Jaiveer Singh, Mihir Chauhan, joined by producer Gaurav Nagpa, from their recent album, Threads, out on Azal/FADER

June 8, 2026

June 7, 2026

Song of the Day: Margaret Glaspy - Michigan

June 7, 2026

Song of the Day: A beautiful finger-picked acoustic single by New York-based Californian singer-songwriter about escaping the big city post breakup, heralding her upcoming album I Am Both out on 7 August via ATO

June 7, 2026

June 6, 2026

Song of the Day: LA Priest - Into The Sky

June 6, 2026

Song of the Day: High-octane electronica and euphoric, dance music by the eccentric, eclectic US artist Sam Eastgate with his first music for two years, and a highly entertaining video, out on Domino Records

June 6, 2026

June 5, 2026

Song of the Day: Ibeyi - Aset / Offerings

June 5, 2026

Song of the Day: A pair of sensual, soulfully vivid new singles partly sung in Spanish, and the first new music for four years from the French-Cuban twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz, heralding their upcoming fourth album, Offering, out on 26 June via AWAL Recordings

June 5, 2026

Seasick Steve - The Last Season of America.jpeg

June 4, 2026

Song of the Day: Seasick Steve - The Last Season of America

June 4, 2026

Song of the Day: A poignant, powerfully gentle folk-blues-Americana protest number by the veteran Calfornian singer-songwriter with an extended metaphor about the state of his country in this title track heralding his upcoming album out on 18 September via Steve’s new label Eastcote Recordings

June 4, 2026

June 3, 2026

Song of the Day: Kristin Hersh - Dark Eyed Junco

June 3, 2026

Song of the Day: Following 2023’s Clear Pond Road, the Rhode Island-raised former Throwing Muses artist returns with a powerful, dark, resonant number about her and her brother’s childhood, heralding a 12th solo LP, Sugar On Blackstone, out on 18 August via Fire Records

June 3, 2026

June 2, 2026

Song of the Day: Dead Pioneers - The Worst Among Us (featuring Jason Williamson)

June 2, 2026

Song of the Day: Sharply identifying sources of much of the world’s problems with this catchy, punchy new track, the Pyramid Lake Paiute artist and activist Gregg Deal and his indie-punk Denver, Colorado band are joined here by the Sleaford Mods’ rapper, heralding the upcoming new album Wagon Burner, out on 26 June via Hassle Records

June 2, 2026

Word of the week

Featured

June 11, 2026

Word of the week: phialiform

June 11, 2026

Word of the week: This rare but oddly beautiful rare adjective means "saucer-shaped" or having the form of a small, shallow cup or vessel, from the Latin root phiala (a shallow bowl or phial) and the suffix -iform, meaning shape

June 11, 2026

June 4, 2026

Word of the week: quamoclit

June 4, 2026

Word of the week: Also known as cypress vine, cardinal creeper, cardinal vine, star glory, star of Bethlehem or hummingbird vine, this striking climbing flower, Ipomoea quamoclit, is native tropical regions of the Americas and has a distinctive trumpet with five-point star-shaped petals

June 4, 2026

May 21, 2026

Word of the week: riqq

May 21, 2026

Word of the week: An appropriately onomatopoeic noun for name for Middle Eastern tambourine, able to produce a range of percussive sounds, and commonly heard in traditional Egyptian, Arab, Greek and Turkish music

May 21, 2026

May 7, 2026

Word of the week: salpinx

May 7, 2026

Word of the week: This very imposing, loud, resonant noun is an ancient Greek, trumpet-like instrument used as a tactical signal on the battle field, as well as to signal the beginnings of gatherings, or of races in sport

May 7, 2026

April 23, 2026

Word of the week: throstle

April 23, 2026

Word of the week: An archaic, evocative noun with two connected meanings, originally for the song thrush, then later a textiles industrial frame for spinning, twisting and winding machine for cotton, wool, and other fibres simultaneously

April 23, 2026