Features

with a little help from potheads, car stereos and tinny supermarket speakers, Kurt Wagner flips the lid and peers into the inner workings of ‘FLOTUS’, the magnificent new Lambchop album

Sleep-deprived – thanks to a flight that required getting out of bed at three in the morning – is probably the best way to discover a new city

Which may well be the case, but when Wire’s Colin Newman also claims he’s a rubbish solo artist we just have to step in. Exhibit A? the lovingly reissued trio of his extraordinary 80s solo albums…

The landscape of the north-west of England is at once rolling green hills and stark man-made skyline. Hailing from Widnes, Baltic Fleet draws Inspiration from these surroundings to create a different kind of escapism

Caught in the slipstream of a killer synth score for the TV event of the year, one half of S U R V I V E, A little-known synth band from Texas, and 100 per cent the ‘Stranger Things’ soundtrack composers, we communicate via fairy lights with Michael Stein and Kyle Dixon

An album of delicate synthpop? Just a female voice and a Buchla synth? Songs about space, washing machines, worms and electrons? Signed to Vince Clarke’s new record label? What’s not to like about Reed & Caroline?

Something of a best-kept secret, with her dazzling new album ‘Awake But Always Dreaming’ Hannah Peel is a star on the rise. We feel the increasing warmth of that limelight…