Quoted as a “textural, tangible, and touching experience” by The Line of Best Fit, queer music and performance artist Freddie Lewis is on the rise. In the summer of 2021, Freddie launched his career with his single Growing Pains which made a significant impact on the UK trans community. He’s also played at festivals such as Glastonbury, The Great Escape, and Iceland Airwaves.

Self-described as dreamy and introspective, when listening to Cuckoo Spit you enter into a daydream-like state. Starting as just Lottie, the band has already attracted venues like the Windmill in Brixton, headlined shows, and supported sold-out bands… Cuckoo Spit are quietly storming into the music scene. 

Soon to release her second EP, Eliza Oakes is embracing the messy and uncertain nature of personal growth, allowing us in on the process of evolving as a human and as an artist. Her latest single Green Light does exactly this, delving into the unknown, and contemplating the vulnerability, faith, and strength in embracing what we can't control.

Whilst there’s easy comparisons to make with Ahmed’s influences - MF Doom, Tyler, the Creator, MIKE - he’s undeniably genuine, both in his music and in person. There’s no bravado or fake sincerity about ‘WHATCHIMACALLIT.’ and whilst we chat, it becomes evident that Ahmend is a pretty multifaceted individual. He’s got a healthy sense of humour and manages to balance music, his pharmacy career, collaborations with other creatives, events…In his own words, he just ‘like[s] just knowing people’.

Ngaio may be based in Bristol but her music certainly shows she will not be pinned down. Her soulful vocals combined with jazz influences - all underpinned by African beats - create a sound all of its own. But it’s not just her music that’s eclectic, her career itself is eclectic too. Not only a recording artist, she is a spoken word artist, activist, DJ and founder of Booty Bass, a Black-led female/non-binary DJ crew. 

As I'm writing these words, we have just released our debut EP. It's called 'Welcome To The Family', and despite the song’s subject matter, this thing we've created is absolutely that – a family. 

Producer and DJ Michael Diamond blurs the boundaries between electronic and jazz, layering his productions with organic instrumentation that slips in cleanly with the crunching beats and shapeshifting synths. His new album Third Culture, released on June 24, is a seven-track cycle that slides gracefully between minimal, percussive atmospherics and scattered dancefloor rhythms. We caught up with Michael to chat about his new album, the Oxford scene and the many artistic intersections of his practice.

Poetry intertwined with popular music is something the world needs more of. Luckily, current poet laureate Simon Armitage is doing just that with his leftfield ambient post-rock band LYR. Alongside Armitage, LYR are comprised of singer-songwriter Richard Walters and producer Patrick J Pearson. Following the release of their acclaimed debut album Call in the Crash Team LYR have recently released a new EP, Firm as a Rock We Stand, which is part of a wider multi-disciplinary project including a documentary film inspired by the story of Durham’s Category D villages.

Twenty years ago Canadian performance artist and musician Merrill Nisker, better known as Peaches, released her seminal debut album The Teaches of Peaches. As well as paving the way for an explosion of electroclash dance-punk into the musical spotlight the album was a gamechanger in other ways too. In an era when female sexuality was in the main still only put on public display for consumption by male audiences (and even then it was kept neat and sanitised), gender identity was still an underground concept and body shaming was ingrained in popular culture, Peaches unashamedly tackled these issues head-on, both in her music and on stage.

With a big blues voice, a rock star energy on stage and a style that combines country and Irish folk music, Derby-based singer/songwriter Kezia Gill has transcended the narrow confines of musical genres to hone a sound that is truly inimitable.

The jazz/hip hop duo CoN&KwAkE are the latest artists to release on Shabaka Hutching’s label Native Rebel Recordings, but neither are strangers to the London music scene. Con, otherwise known as Confucius MC, has been a major name in UK hip hop since the early noughties, and Kwake Bass is a producer and current or recent Musical Director for big names like Sampha, Kae Tempest and Nightmares on Wax, as well as the drummer of choice for, amongst others, MF DOOM and Lianne La Havas.

I Used To Be Sam is the latest step in an ongoing creative journey. Songwriter and vocalist Annie Goodchild took the brave step of exploring tough questions of identity, family and belonging through their music under their most recent artist moniker, I Used To Be Sam. We had the great pleasure of chatting with I Used To Be Sam from their home in Basel, northern Switzerland, taking in everything from family connections to graphic novels and artist friends.

If you’re a fan of post-punk and / or Bristol music you really need to get to know the music of Maximum Joy, if you haven’t already. Sounding as fresh as they did when they formed, mixing punk, dub, funk, free jazz, Afrobeat and hip-hop with wild improvisation, seminal post-punk band Maximum Joy rose up from the fertile Bristol music scene of the late 70’s and early 80’s.

Lu.Re is a London-based producer, DJ and vocalist who began producing during lockdown and has already established a fanbase and a great deal of support from others in the field, including Radio 1extra’s DJ Target. Her debut EP, Ruminate, is set to drop on May 26. A classically trained viola player, Lu.Re interweaves spiralling breakbeats and thick, bendy basslines with viola and vocals, and she mixed and produced the entire EP in her London flat.

Meet Selbor, a London-based Andalusian artist, whose self-titled debut album came out on 1st April on AWAL. Selbor pushes synth pop boundaries in his very own way, exploring the duality of hedonism and introspection, and merging electronic infused pop with his flamenco roots.

Glasgow alt-rockers The Wife Guys of Reddit are on the up and up, fuelled by musical experimentation and a keen sense of the absurd. Originally formed as a duo by Arion Xenos and Niamh MacPhail, The Wife Guys have since been joined by Angus Fernie on keyboards and synths and Elise Atkinson on drums. Their latest single, Pig Fat, is raucous and thoroughly enjoyable, all murky bass and scratchy riffs, with a nicely surreal, rough-edged DIY video to match.

Meet Hembree - the sunniest, dreamiest sound to come from over The Atlantic in quite some time. The Kansas City-based indie rockers’ second album was released in February and finds the quintet pushing their established sound—first glimpsed on 2019’s debut House on Fire—to new, colourful zeniths.

London’s Nic Nell, better known as Casually Here, has been carving out experimental electronic soundscapes for over a decade. Described as a ‘multidisciplinary artist, composer, sound designer and record producer with a background in art and mathematics’, Casually Here has just released his second solo album, Possible Worlds, on his own Algebra label.

Meet REX, a queer Bristol-based DJ taking the local underground dance scene and making it theirs. After completing Saffron’s Mix Nights course in late 2019, REX has not held back in quickly becoming one of Bristol's most exciting DJs, blending everything from Grime and Dubstep to UK Funky and breaks.

It’s no secret that Bristol has a buzzing arts and culture scene, whether you’re into all-night raves, contemporary art, ballet or mosh pits. So it’s fantastic news that the Gig Buddies scheme has come to Bristol via the Exchange. Gig Buddies is a program for adults with autism, learning disabilities or neurodivergences of any kind. The scheme matches volunteers and participants in a “buddy” scheme, allowing them to get out and enjoy gigs and live music at venues across the city, with the security of their buddy by their side.

A thrum of excitement surrounding Salvation Jayne as a collective is necessary. The group create a boisterous and infectious sing-a-long racket evocative of pop-punk heavyweights Paramore, You Me At Six and even inflections of Fall Out Boy. With support from Kerrang! Radio and BBC introducing already under their belts, the five-piece are seeing their public profile set on a path to widespread acclaim.

In a world obsessed with stereotypes and genre pigeonholing, house & techno DJ, D&B DJ, broadcaster, presenter, writer and label head Charlie Tee’s no nonsense approach to music is that of any true aficionado; playing tracks that make her feel viscerally. From high energy house to gritty peak-time techno, or her more unhinged side rinsing some D&B and jungle, you’re always in for a ride.

If you haven’t come across Hen Ogledd yet but love the sound of wonky, folkloric, political, fluoro-pagan electro-pop you’re just going to love them, believe us. Following their latest release No Wood Accepted and their tour in December culture editor Kerry Mead caught up with them to talk about how they make music together, reclaiming the vocoder, and aural time-travelling.

Soulful and intricate, yet aggressive and pulsating, Rarelyalways is an artist whose genre-straddling has seen him embark on a meteoric rise from the streets of Hackney to collaborating with renowned fusion musician Hanni El-Khatib. Music editor Emma Doyle was caught up to speed on most-recently released ‘Manic’ EP, and what’s in store for the future.

Concocting a delicious mixture of sunshine pop, psychedelia and self-confessed sarcastic lyricism, Greatest Hits are the newest Anglo-Australian music talent you’ve been missing out on up until now.

Bristol-based DJ and producer Sean McCabe has had plenty of time to develop his own sound within the house music scene. Famously, he released his first tracks in 2003 at the tender age of 17 and has spent the last two decades fine-tuning a trademark sound that is effortlessly soulful. As a DJ, he forged a reputation at the legendary Southport Weekender, playing as far afield as Asia and South Africa, as well as regular appearances across Europe and the UK.

One half of the duo Try Me, Miles is a singer, songwriter and producer based in Bristol. With time to slow down and reevaluate in lockdown, Miles decided to turn to solo work while him and Bendy Wendy were unable to create music together. From this, Hector Who Lived was born!

The bisexual vegan shitpunks, Joe & The Shitboys, formed with the intention of ‘calling out shitty behaviour in the conservative Faroe Islands’, where, they say, the rock scene is filled with ‘boneless homophobes and meat-eating misogynists’. After seeing them perform one of the best live sets we’ve seen in a long time, and then spending some time chatting with them back in September at Dot to Dot festival in Bristol, we basically fell hard for the lot of them.

The Italian producer, DJ and stalwart of Ransom Note Records Bawrut is a central part of European club culture. His debut album In The Middle is released on 11th November. Bawrut delves deeper with us into how the album came to be, the political issues it explores, the important role art plays in society, and why its time for club culture to reclaim it’s conscious and political roots.

The more I explored Hannah Diamond’s music, the more I realised that it was the sincerity behind the cutesy sound and style that set Diamond apart from her peers, creating this uncanny valley effect that is both superficial and achingly real. In a world where irony and cynicism are all too prevalent, the sincerity of her lyrics feels oddly refreshing. Perfect Picture picks apart the layers in the Photoshopped world of Miss HD and allows us to see her as she really is. 

Following the release of their swaggering and introspective new album Reason Enough, London four-piece Crows have embarked on a highly anticipated European tour. The band, known for their intense live shows and post-punk sound, have received support from the like of 6 Music, Radio 1 and The Observer, so it’s no surprise The Exchange is packed for their first gig in Bristol in over two years. 

Love Saves The Day is now a firm staple on the yearly festival calendar, holding the crown of Bristol’s biggest music festival, pulling in crowds from all over the UK. For its tenth year, Love Saves The Day made the ambitious leap up to Ashton Court Estate on the western edges of Bristol, with the capacity to hold 60,000 partygoers over the jubilee weekend.

Love Saves The Day is now a firm staple on the yearly festival calendar, holding the crown of Bristol’s biggest music festival, pulling in crowds from all over the UK. For its tenth year, Love Saves The Day made the ambitious leap up to Ashton Court Estate on the western edges of Bristol, with the capacity to hold 60,000 partygoers over the jubilee weekend.

Two underground French rappers Still Fresh and Yaro bring addictive concoctions of colorful production, melodic rhythms, fluid flows and catchy melodies, reinforcing the diversity of the world's largest hip hop market after the United States.

Saturday, March 12 saw the inaugural CrossTalk event from Noods Levels. Created by and for young people, this full-day event at Bristol’s Arnolfini featured talks by three renowned professionals in the creative industries: musician, producer and Portishead member Geoff Barrow; photographer and videographer Ashleigh Jadee; and No Signal Radio producer Jojo Sonubi. The Everyday’s Music Section had the great pleasure of going along to hear them. Inclusive, dynamic and brimming with industry wisdom, all three talks left us inspired and enlightened.

Lady of The House is a Bristol-based women-led collective with the mission to champion, celebrate, give voice and honour women and non-binary people in the dance music industry. Last week we joined the Lady of The House team for their inaugural Cultural Exhibition at Lost Horizon in Bristol - three days of inspiring talks, panels, masterclasses, and, of course, parties, from and for women who are passionate about the dance music industry.

We’re back at it again with our November live music roundup. This month, we’ve barely had a pause for thought as we’ve bounced from one show to the next, but had such a good time in the process that we’re bringing you a double bill. Perhaps second time really is the charm…

We’re back at it again with our November live music roundup. Here at The Everyday, we’re sending out our most music-obsessed writers to a club, pub, basement, field or… church? Near you to unearth the UK’s newest gems.

We’re bringing you the best live music venues across the UK with what our amazing music scene has been offering up lately.

We’re bringing you the best live music venues across the UK with what our amazing music scene has been offering up lately.

We’re bringing you the best live music venues across the UK with what our amazing music scene has been offering up lately.

I was first introduced to the duo Giant Swan through their single 55 Year Old Daughter, which off the bat embodies this urgent energy. The song changed when I saw it live, my body pressed against strangers’, surging and compacting as one. Their intensely energetic live performances are a dialogue with the audience, allowing tracks to expand beyond their minutes.

On Thursday the 2nd of April, Jonatan Leandoer Håstad (Yung Lean) emerged from the darkness at Stockholm’s Frihamnen harbour and beckoned the audience to follow him towards the back of a truck, parked up next to a Russian freight ship. Lean opened the door and revealed the interior, laden with burning candelabras, wall hangings, a dead tree decorated with dream catchers and various statues of animals.

Where were you when Thursday’s exit poll was announced? I was in a mosh pit. It was a good place to be at that point in time, believe me, but I am old and it started to hurt, so I made my way to the side to check the news on my phone. I should have stayed in that mosh pit.

It feels like every summer we are faced with a seeming abundance of festivals, but the reality is, it is harder than ever before to organise a festival. For as new festivals open, a number of older ones close forever. 

Music is a powerful art form. It has the ability to connect us to other people, surpass language barriers, resurface emotions, and impact upon brain waves. So, why do we take away its power by feeling the need to judge others for their music taste?

So many celebrity deaths seem to arise from years of alcohol and drug battles. Some indirectly, some more absolute. For many fame is the flame that lights the fire, for others a safehouse for the dysfunction of addiction.

The word imposter has some rather duplicitous connotations. On one hand, it conjures images of caricature villains from cheesy pantomimes, TV shows and films, revealed in a hyper exaggerated manner. You know the kind of thing: "I'd have got away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids", et cetera. The other side of the coin is a mental health issue that has only entered the public consciousness in recent memory.

I have been a fan of Madonna for years, since 1985 and Crazy for You hit the charts. I wanted to be Madonna, she was trendy, fearless and beautiful. I would wear lace gloves with tens of bangles, mini skirts and lace leggings, anything that my young teenage hands could grab a hold of. I still love the 80’s now, I think many of us do. It was a fun decade for many of us growing up then.

At a festival, you’re almost guaranteed to have something outrageous happen either to you, your friend, or your friend’s friend. When you combine a myriad of different, excitable people from around the country (or world!) who may or may not be on drugs, what else do you expect?

An audiophile; an individual that is deeply passionate, exacting, and even obsessed with high fidelity audio. These notoriously pedantic creatures can often be found snuffling for truffles in the darkest corners of record shops the world over, uttering phrases such as "oh that's a first pressing" and "Led Zeppelin 1! Oh, but it's not got the original purple label".

If your room was covered wall to wall in pull out posters from the latest issue of Kerrang!, this one’s for you.

I’m sure we’ve all heard someone say “music saved my life” at some point, and whilst it might sound like something of a cliché it is actually true. Music has several positive effects on our mental wellbeing; helping to alleviate stress, enhance memory, stimulate emotion and soothe the soul.

When I fell in love with my spouse over ten years ago, despite already knowing I was polyamourous, I didn’t expect to fall in love that hard again.

I won’t bore you with the gory details of my ‘un-love’ life, suffice it to say that the pattern of falling for boys, uniformed or otherwise, continued into my teens…I had unrequited love down like a pro and could have written a book or vlogged about it if the internet had been invented.

The ever expanding world of music genres can be, to the uninitiated, a baffling experience. Over recent years, the trend amongst journalists seems to be to create increasingly ridiculous genres (and sub genres) for new artists, rather than attempt to define them within the existing musical spectrum. Is it simply lazy journalism? Well no, not necessarily.

Nostalgia is a part of life. And so is music, especially if you are an arts and music lover like myself. Have you ever thought back to a time when one specific album changed your life in ways you never would have expected?

I sometimes find myself at a gig thinking...jeez, who told them they sounded good!? And this is why I wouldn’t make a very good critic. The trouble is, I have too many opinions and not all of them are kind. I think to be a critic it’s good to be neutral to a degree, take an overview and be objective. But I love music so much; so I’m passionate, opinionated and subjective.

What is the point of spending £50 on a limited edition vinyl when that artist will only be charging £12.99 for that same album in MP3 format? Is it just trendy to reject the mainstream? Is Vinyl a fad, or is this the second coming of The Record?

A night at the theatre, a recorded live album from one of America’s best-loved soul bands, a dive into cultural surroundings and musical differences, and some plastic tapes. For one person, they all add up to a musical awakening.

Trigger Warning - this article openly discusses suicide and suicidial ideation

Suicidal ideation isn’t really openly discussed in any social setting that I’m aware of. I’ve talked about it briefly with my mental health friends, but it rarely gets past the point of acknowledging that we both aren’t that adverse to dying, and then swiftly moving on. Let’s face it, talking about suicide and suicidal ideation is rarely an enjoyable or comfortable conversation, so why bring it up (outside of therapy) at all?

Attacking an independent store merely because they want to target a wider demographic is unjustified. If Demi truly wanted to attack diet culture, she should have called out the large corporations who produce these items rather than small local businesses who have had enough economic losses due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Cringe itself is a clash of two things: self perception and the perception of others. There is more than one type of this clash though. Melissa Dahl talks about this duality in Cringeworthy: A Theory of Awkwardness, where she explores compassionate cringe and contemptuous cringe.

But festival sets are another thing. They are not just the music, they are everything else in between. Conjuring up memories of the whole weekend and where it fits into the story of your life - who you were with, the weather, the sets you missed, the people you met, the journey there and the journey home, the comedown.

Festivals aren’t always just about the music. Your make-shift campsite, the people you camp with, the people you meet and the things you share are all part of the experience too. However, watching live music and discovering new bands are definitely what makes a festival memorable.

I was trying to cook and needed something to listen to but for all the marvels of the modern world, with every song ever written at my fingertips, I could not choose. Did I want something sad, or would that make it worse? Happy, or would that feel false? Could I cope with new music, or would that exhaust me? The answer was simple: radio.

Music allows me a special kind of freedom, it unlocks a deep corner of my imagination and gives me physical symptoms for just how much I love it - I’m talking goosebumps, shivers and smiling ear to ear. The kind of things that if you did them on a public bus people would move very far away. A lot further than two metres I’m telling you. (Not that I know from experience or anything.)

When I say to think of a drummer, I guarantee you that the image of them will be a white male. Your inner feminist will fight it but you’re not to blame, we can blame the patriarchal society we all live in.

Tom Cox sums this aspect of guilty pleasures up perfectly in his tweet: ‘What people mean by the term “guilty pleasure” 99.5% of the time is “something genuinely joyous pretentious dickheads told me not to like’’.

So, it seems that the idea that politics has a place in music is pretty undeniable. However, where the debate about the place of politics in music has become particularly controversial and difficult to navigate is with regards to cultural appropriation.

Since the 60s, when Beatlemania infected the world with sold-out stadiums and screaming young girls, we have put boybands on a particularly high pedestal – actually more like a poster-painted shrine covered in hand-drawn hearts.

There’s just something about hearing a womxn making strange, boundary-breaking, eerie sounds that made me want to sob deeply and simultaneously screech in excitement without explanation. And it still does.

On a chilly February evening, I went to see Big Thief at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith and had no idea how momentous that night would later become. Gigs have been a consistent source of joy throughout my life, and I never imagined I’d go a whole year without one.