The Fat Angel Sings

The new issue of UNCUT magazine looks like a good one! “SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES: In her first major interview for more than a decade, Siouxsie Sioux joins First Banshee Steven Severin to trace their band’s evolution from abrasive punk outsiders to one of Britain’s most singular and influential groups. Along the way: hidden gems, inner demons and the challenges of starting over. ‘It’s got that black magic thing’.

Bound together by a love for Cocteau Twins and the Jesus and Mary Chain, the members of the short-lived band Chapterhouse laid down an early and enduring model of shoegaze with their 1991 release, “Whirlpool”. On their debut, the young group stood at the center of all the trends happening with British alternative music at the time. It had the effects-driven guitar lines and mystique of early My Bloody Valentine, the acid-tinged danceability of the Stone Roses, and touches of electronic elements in line with the fast-developing electronic scenes popping up on the island at the time.

Highlights include ‘Pearl’, featuring Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, while the album later earned a place among Pitchfork’s 50 best shoegaze records. Dreamy, melodic and danceable, ‘Whirlpool’ remains one of the era’s distinctive albums.

That’s not to say there’s a lack of furious stringed explosions that define shoegaze. On “Autosleeper,” the group ramps up into barrages of noise and drum fills with an electronic freakout happening simultaneously. Later, on “Something More,” the chorus is propelled by a powerful, distorted guitar riff that swallows the vocals and floods the speakers.

For all their glory, though, Chapterhouse only released one other album, “Blood Music” in 1993, a more polished record that didn’t hold as much underground cred as its predecessor. Still, like the heyday of the genre, they burned fast, but they burned bright.

Gnoomes reshape their sound on “Losey”, a record born from upheaval, migration and creative reinvention. After leaving Russia and settling in Slovenia, Sasha Piankov and Masha Piankova channel personal and political turbulence into music full of momentum and possibility.

Moving beyond the skygazing psych textures of earlier work, the duo embrace motorik rhythms, electronic experimentation and club-driven intensity. Opener ‘Foreign Agent’ tackles the pressures of the Russian state through hypnotic grooves and psychedelic colour, while ‘Satan’s Ball’ twists EBM and acid textures into something strange and compelling.

Described by the band as “rave as therapy, pop as resistance”, “Losey” is a bold, shape-shifting record that turns dislocation into possibility and finds light in uncertain times.

Confronting 2026, hope can seem in short supply, as the most divisive and toxic voices worldwide are amplified amidst an ever-rising temperature of conflict and alienation, yet hope is abundant in “Losey”, the latest release on Rocket Recordings from the mercurial duo Gnoomes. Just as this couple have taken a bold step into the unknown by leaving Russia and moving to Slovenia, so their music has thrown off all shackles to flourish in a defiant show of vibrant and revivifying colour.

“The life of an immigrant is a strange thing.” says the bands Sasha Piankov “But luckily, that glow music brings us has never faded, even though the emotional landscape has definitely shifted.” Yet whilst the music that Sasha and his creative and life partner Masha Piankova came up with is testimony to a liberating triumph against oppression and adversity, it also goes beyond.

What has emerged is a kaleidoscopic collision of styles which sends the ‘skygazing’ realm of their previous work spinning into electronic orbit. Whilst the opener ‘Foreign Agent’ explicitly tackles the pressures of the Russian state, it also throws a Stereolab-style motorik meditation through an in-the-red psychedelic prism. Elsewhere we can behold Bulgakov and Chris and Cosey as bedfellows amidst the mesmeric, 303-fried EBM of ‘Satan’s Ball’.
“Rave as therapy. Pop as resistance.

Love as endurance. ADHD as a production technique.” These are the primary ingredients of “Losey”, by the reckoning of the band themselves. This is an album that exists purely on its own distinct frequency, driven by defiance and positivity. “Losey” is a soundtrack to set fire to the old order, the better to dance in the glow.

Taken from the album ‘Losey’ (Launch440) which is released on 4th September 2026

Born from Jack Ogborne (aka Bingo Fury), with help from Naima Bock, Finlay Burrows and members of Belishas, The Cindys chase surrealist imagery and irresistible hooks at breakneck speed. Their self-titled debut album,, tracked between Falmouth, Rockfield and Bristol’s Louisiana cellar, arrived via Breakfast Records and Ruination, earning tours with Shame and Getdown Services.

Bristolian outfit The Cindys united through a shared love of Alex Chilton, The Clean and Beat Happening. Birth child of Jack Ogborne (aka Bingo Fury) and with help from Naima Bock, Finlay Burrows and members of Belishas, the group fronts surrealist imagery and infectious hooks at a pace that’ll give you butterflies.

Their debut album was recorded across the west country, between the vault of the Cornish Bank in Falmouth, Rockfield studios in Wales and the cellar of legendary venue The Louisiana in Bristol throughout 2024. The album includes production and engineering contributions from Joe Jones (Aldous Harding, The Cure, Teenage Fanclub) and Sam Stackpool of Holiday Ghosts, who also features on 12 String.

Tony Iommi, founding member of Black Sabbath and the godfather of heavy metal, is back with his first new solo music in 21 years. It is also his first full-length studio release since Black Sabbath‘s final album, “13”.

The first single from the new album, “World Alone”, is a fast-paced, guitar-driven track packed with Tony‘s signature monster riffs. Heavy but catchy, it gets an uplifting edge from lyricist and vocalist Jorn Lande.

This is classic Iommi, with all the hallmarks of his legendary guitar work and a contemporary twist. Available on 7″ vinyl single, with the instrumental version on the B-side.

My new single, “World Alone,” featuring Jorn Lande, is available now

It’s probably not too soon to call Kai Slater a generational talent. In 2025 alone, his post-punk trio Lifeguard properly took off with their Matador-released debut album “Ripped and Torn” meanwhile, he continued garnering buzz around his solo project Sharp Pins with the one-two punch of LPs “Radio DDR” and “Balloon Balloon Balloon“.

But before all that, in 2023, an 18-year-old Slater made an album called “Mod Mayday 23” on an 8-track recorder, self-releasing it in a very limited run of about 50 cassettes. The record is a tribute to Mods Mayday ‘79, a 1979 compilation featuring various bands of London’s underground punk scene that would, decades later, inform Sharp Pins’ sound.

Now with a new wide release via K Records imprint Perennial, “Mod Mayday 23” documents Slater using these existing songs to hone in on his own artistic voice in real time. Catchy, spunky, and about as lo-fi as you can get, this batch of brilliant cover songs will likely soon serve as an artifact of a modern rock and roll star in the making.

I’ve spent the last few months telling friends about Lily Seabird’s music. Anytime I think I have the young Vermont artist pegged, she releases a new batch of songs that blows my prior conceptions of her music to smithereens. So, for my own ego’s sake, let’s skip the indie rock and singer-songwriter labels this time.

Seabird’s third full-length, “Lightspheres On Their Way”, defies simple categorization. It’s the kind of record that breathes and moves to a rhythm all its own. It adopts a unique mythology (the idea of “lightspheres”), allows its songs to pick their own pain, and wonders and reckons in its own language and time about the deeply personal in a way that feels strikingly universal. Seabird’s emotions run the gamut from fear and awe to disappointment and frustration as she seeks answers for how we’re expected to endure all the difficult circumstances she sings about across “Lightspheres”.

When the heavens remain mum to Seabird’s earnest inquiries, the harmonium and guitars linger before finally making their departure, the reality setting in that there might be as much illumination gained from looking within as above.

Dexys Midnight Runners have announced their new album ‘Love’ with the wistful single ‘My Life In England Pt. 1’ – along with releasing more UK and European tour dates.

The group will join forces for what might be their final album, set to be released on September 4th via Heavenly Recordings. It’s the band’s first record under the name Dexys Midnight Runners since 1985’s ‘Don’t Stand Me Down’. The record has been produced by David Holmes (Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds).

‘Love’ is set to touch on frontman Kevin Rowland‘s life, “from his 2nd generation Irish childhood and family relationships to late-life romance, loss and reconciliation”. Lead single ‘My Life In England Pt. 1’ follows this thread by reworking the band’s original version for their 2003 ‘Let’s Make This Precious’ compilation album.

Rowland explained: “It’s all memories of my own experiences. Pete, that’s my brother. In my book [Bless Me Father], I changed his name to Pat. There’s quite a lot of overlap with the book in this one. We were in England dreaming of America: it was pre-Beatles, so it was Elvis, it was Sonny Liston, Cassius Clay, clothes, all of it was America.

“In the second verse, I’m remembering being in a social club listening to everyone singing Kevin Barry,” he continued, referencing the Wolfe Tones song about the 18-year-old medical student and IRA soldier executed by the British government on November 1920.

He went on to recall “my mum telling me ‘This song’s not allowed in England’. It was daytime, and all the curtains were drawn, everyone drinking, singing an illegal song. I remember thinking, Wow, yes, exciting! My childhood memories, I just wrote them down.

“You can’t really write on behalf of anybody else,” Rowland concluded. “Though I realised later that when I was growing up in north-west London, loads of the kids around there were second generation Irish. All obsessed with being up the front with the best clothes, with dancing to the new records.”

They’ll also embark on an intimate in-store tour, where fans can have the chance to have their vinyls signed and catch the band in stripped-back performances.

 “Love”, Dexys Midnight Runners’ latest (and possibly last) album, is a luminous collection of scenes and reckonings. Stories of family and friends, tales from past and present. All drawn from Kevin Rowland’s life, each an individual jewel, threaded together with love.

Songs begun three decades ago sit alongside those written in the last year. A vivid depiction of Rowland’s Irish immigrant childhood; a moving letter to his grandchildren; a wistful moment at the start of a love affair; a pin-perfect portrait of time spent with a dying parent; the difficulties of relationships when you’re older. All deeply personal, all true, all here; the full human span of relationships, family and intimate emotion. The theme of this album — Kevin’s ninth, Dexys’ seventh — gradually emerged as the songs progressed. “I don’t remember when it happened, but I just thought, ‘Hang on, these are all love songs, of different kinds’,” he says. “I knew then: Call it “Love.” These are love songs, but not of the usual pop style.

Not will-she-won’t-she romance, but something more emotional and all-encompassing. Those small moments that illustrate a rollercoaster sweep. “Everyone came at this project with love,” he says. To tell a lifetime of different loves. A love life.”