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With festival season over, it's time we investigated a story that’s been on our minds all year: has the bubble burst? In March it was reported that 21 UK festivals had already cancelled, postponed or closed in 2024. By the end of summer that number had risen to over 50.
Industry bodies blame rising costs, which is doubtless a factor – but what else might be at play here? A small cluster of dominant companies contributing to an oversaturated festival landscape, perhaps? Or are festivals simply falling foul of the strategy they’ve employed for years: pushing up live fees to price out their competition?
More importantly, how many of these events are actually any good?
For positivity’s sake we also spend some time shouting out the festivals we loved this year. Turns out that with clever booking and some attention to detail, you can still put on events that offer an alternative to the homogeny.
If you enjoyed this episode of No Tags, we’d love you to spend a minute rating, reviewing and subscribing on your podcast app of choice. We’d also ask you to consider subscribing to our paid tier – cheaper than cheesy chips.
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We’ve not interviewed too many DJs so far on No Tags, so when we do, it’s a safe assumption that a) we’ve watched them play a few times, and b) they’re pretty tasty at it.
OK Williams falls into both categories. We’ve seen her DJ multiple times and have never failed to leave the dancefloor refreshed. But she’s also one of our favourite dance music personalities, as evidenced on her regular NTS show (and, OK, her Twitter account) where she exhibits the sort of energising but healthily realistic attitude that, frankly, more DJs could do with cultivating. Who knew there could be a link between having an engaging personality and making people dance?
We sat down with OK Williams for a solid 80 minutes to talk, well, a lot. Is this one of No Tags’ more forensic and focused interviews? No. Is a it a lot of fun? Undoubtably. But OK Williams offers as much insight as entertainment. We talked through her formative raving years, the musical awakening she found in queer clubs, her secret background in journalism (awkward!), her relationship with Andrew Weatherall, and some big picture questions on DJs as public figures and their responsibilities.
If you like what we’re doing at No Tags, please like, rate, review or subscribe to us on your podcast app of choice – in their own abstract ways, these things help. You can also support the show in a more literal way via our paid tier, which costs £5 a month and really helps us keep bringing you these podcasts and transcripts.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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Regular No Tags listeners will notice that we often talk about living through several revivals at once, but indie sleaze is one that doesn’t seem to be going away. So why indie sleaze, and why now? And what do people actually mean when they talk about an indie sleaze revival in 2024?
For this episode, Chal and Tom dug out their skinny ties and shutter shades (not to mention some brutal photos from the depths of their personal Facebook archives) to try and figure out whether this is a genuine musical revival or a cynical move from struggling millennial marketeers to reanimate an era when they were still relevant. And are we dealing with nostalgia for a genuine scene here, or simply a yearning for a time when city-focused alternative scenes were actually realistic and accessible? And is there actually a much more interesting scene from this era that we could and should be excavating instead?
In summary, this is an episode where we evoke both Mark Fisher and Agyness Deyn – a No Tags manifesto if ever there was one. Enjoy!
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On No Tags 25, we meet Jonny Banger: T-shirt hustler, avant-bootlegger, visionary rabble-rouser, DJ battle champ and bossman of the anarchic anti-fashion brand Sports Banger.
From a certain angle, it can seem like the clothes are the main event at Sports Banger, from the original Free Tulisa tee and bootlegged NHS logos to wearable inflatables and a Chanel toilet seat headpiece. Naturally, Jonny has been asked a lot of questions in previous interviews about his designs and his philosophical take on bootlegs and infringement. But there’s another side to the Banger story that hasn’t been excavated: obviously, the music.
Flipping through Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the Poor, Rich and Famous, the book that charts the first decade of the project, you can find musical references on almost every page: pilfered record label logos, Skepta in a postie’s hi-viz jacket, descriptions of his studio’s fine-tuned sound systems, playlists of tunes that inspired the Sports Banger runway shows, and even allusions to Jonny’s previous life in the UK rap scene.
We invited Jonny to go deep into the musical side of his story, from tape packs to free parties to the “shit mix jar” that collected fines in the first Sports Banger studio. He told us about his teenage years as a scratch DJ, his previous life as a club booker on Brick Lane, his ravey links with Swamp 81, School Records, Shangri-La and his own Heras label, and how he finally fell in love with free parties. And, most exciting for our resident KLF dweeb, he gave us a hint of what to expect from Sports Banger’s forthcoming collaboration with K2 on the People’s Pyramid.
It’s been a wild ride, and he’s got the stories to prove it.
If you enjoyed this big fat interview episode of No Tags then we implore you to press all the buttons and like, rate, review or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. You can also support us in a material manner via our paid tier. It’s £5 a month, and it helps us keep doing whatever it is we’re doing.
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If four generations make up a family, then how many podcast references to the early 2010s make up a revival?
We confront the spectre of 2011 from a few different angles in this episode, but particularly via dance music, where it feels like the anthems of the early 2010s, not to mention the top tier of DJs, are yet to be replaced. Is that down to nostalgia for the music itself? A lack of inventiveness plaguing the decade since? Or have we entered a period in history where we’re living through multiple revivals at once?
We also talk about something genuinely brand new: Hit Em, the internet’s genre-of-the-moment. This absurdist microgenre was invented on Twitter last Monday, discussed in our recording on Wednesday, and has since been covered in The Fader, NPR and The Guardian. Maybe it’ll all be over by next week. Twitter being used for good? Now that does feel like a throwback to 2011.
We also chat about Jane Schoenbrun’s new film I Saw The TV Glow, and particularly its staggering musical moments. We doubt anyone’s 2024 bingo card had Alex G, Yeule, Phoebe Bridgers and Fred Durst in the same room, let alone coalescing into some of the year’s most must-see cinema.
As ever, if you like what we’re doing on No Tags then please like, rate, review or subscribe on your podcast app of choice, and if you really like what we’re doing, consider supporting us via our paid tier. It’s only £5 a month, and seriously helps us keep doing what we’re doing.
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This week, Henry Bruce-Jones joins us to run down the best music of 2024 so far.
With the caveat that we didn't think it was worth revisiting the albums we've already discussed (and Brat summer's over anyway, babes), we start with the gaseous moods of Naemi, Bianca Scout and Chanel Beads. Are we in the midst of a brave new wave of shoegaze, or has the NTS early morning schedule pumped one too many Cocteau Twins songs into the water supply?
We compare and contrast Erika de Casier and Clara La San’s throwback R&B styles, and dive into some of the year’s most interesting hip-hop records with both feet: They Hate Change, Jawnino, and Cooper B. Handy & Surf Gang.
In club corner we celebrate recent releases by Facta, Parris, Emma dj, Verraco, Less-O, Jabes, SOPHIE and Actress (his best album in years?). We get into the various sides of Mica Levi and Henry goes deep on recent efforts by Nudo, Hafeez and NMNL.
Finally, we close on some of our most bonkers Bandcamp discoveries of the year. Unfamiliar with Lust$ickPuppy, FIN and Phil Geraldi? No matter – these are the sort of discoveries that, in Chal’s words, are a reminder that we love music. Jaded insiders? Us? Never!
If you like what we’re doing on No Tags then please like, rate, review or subscribe on your podcast app of choice, and if you really like what we’re doing, consider supporting us via our paid tier. It’s only £5 a month, and seriously helps us keep doing what we’re doing. Enjoy!
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We’ve become so accustomed to bad news that Labour’s landslide victory in the UK general election has been a hard one to process, despite it being a dead cert. The Tories are actually gone? Can it be real? So this week we decided to piece together our memories of the last 14 years of cuts, corruption and chaos, and see if we can identify the sound of Tory Britain.
We’ve spent most of our music careers toiling under the long shadow of George Osborne’s turbo-cuts to public spending – not to mention Brexit batshittery, the crazy days of Corbynism, the aftermath of the Grenfell disaster and Black Lives Matter, and of course the lockdown years and attendant Covid conspiracies.
But the politics of austerity Britain also changed the nation’s musical culture, and in this episode we talk about the dominance of festivals at the expense of clubbing, the sound of the student protest movement, the emergence of drill in the hollowed out communities of South London, and the political backlash to the five-headed monster of Cameron, May, Boris, Truss (lol) and Sunak.
We also have a think about why Keir Starmer seems to have forgotten his musical roots, and what we might expect from a Labour government that’s appointed Lisa “Towns” Nandy as culture minister.
Remember that this Saturday 20th July we’ll be in Glasgow for a live No Tags experience, hosted by Feena and Wheelman at Glasgow University Chapel! Tickets are available on the door, or you can sign up for membership of the Events Research Programme for just £3.50.
If you like what we’re doing on No Tags then please like, rate, review or subscribe on your podcast app of choice, and if you really like what we’re doing, consider supporting us via our paid tier.
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This time we’re joined by Meaghan Garvey, author of America’s #1 vibes-based newsletter, SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE, and one of the best writers in the game.
Meaghan started off as an illustrator, laundering a semi-successful weed-dealing operation through an Etsy empire before becoming better known as a music journalist. Whether writing pin-sharp profiles of megastars like Lana Del Rey and T-Pain or getting deep in the DIY weeds, Meaghan has long been a BS-free voice in a sea of mediocrity. And ahead of the curve, too – she broke up with Drake in 2015.
In 2020 Meaghan launched SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE, a Substack that’s somewhere between a confessional travel diary and a photo album of nostalgic Americana. Recent editions include a rundown of Milwaukee’s oldest dive bars, a crash course in train-hopping and a visit to House on the Rock, “Wisconsin's tweaked-out Graceland.”
When she returned to Pitchfork for a flagship review of Charli XCX’s Brat, we knew the timing was right for a No Tags interview. We talked about stan culture, the pantomime of vulnerability in modern pop music, nostalgia for 2011, learning how to write about yourself, and searching for honesty while fleeing from the discourse.
Plus, Tom and Chal report on more examples of payola in underground music and get into the Glastonbury debate: should people be losing money to play it? Why is it so crowded? Is Glasto finally… cooked?
Hit that like, smash that share, bosh that review, and be free.
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A fairly big topic this week, as Tom and Chal investigate the issue of payola in underground music. Does it exist? Well, kind of - but not in the way you might think.
Some background: in our Fish56Octagon episode, Tom mentioned that he was pretty sure that Fish was being seeded and potentially paid to play people’s music. A couple of people got in touch to confirm that the first part of that at least was true, and it got us thinking: accusations of money changing hands for coverage are still pretty rife in dance music discourse, and we’ve not really seen this publicly investigated before.
Given that we’ve both offered quite a lot of our adult lives to cultivating the content farm, we figured we were in a good position to talk about this topic: notable examples of it we’ve seen in our careers, how prevalent it is or isn’t in the music press, and what it tells us about both the current climate of music media and its uncomfortable relationships with advertising and creative agencies. Plus: the story of a certain disgraced record label once pulling its advertising from FACT over a middling album review.
Elsewhere, we address recent accusations of a No Tags anti-baldness agenda, talk the first music from SOPHIE’s forthcoming posthumous album and celebrate an all-timer of a victory lap in the form of Kendrick Lamar’s Pop Out concert. Cool underground dance recommendations? Who needs those when you have a roomful of NBA players and California gang leaders dancing on the grave of Drake’s reputation.
As ever, if you like what we’re doing on No Tags then please do like, rate, review or subscribe on your podcast app of choice, and if you really like what we’re doing, consider supporting us via our paid tier.
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We're back with the second part of our conversation with GG Albuquerque, our expert guide to the new-new wave of Brazilian funk.
This time we find out about how bailes operate inside the favelas, Brazil’s love-hate relationship with funk, oppressive policing, grime connections, regional DJ cultures and more.
We also carve out the minimum possible amount of time to discuss Brat, once again, and GG has put together a funk playlist of personal favourites and hidden gems. Bosh.
Remember you can find the full transcripts in the newsletter if you subscribe to notagspodcast.substack.com!
And if you like what we’re doing on No Tags, it's time to follow, rate and review, and have a think about joining our paid tier.
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We’re witnessing a breakthrough moment (again) for Brazil's funk scene, an ever-expanding universe of bone-shaking low-end, CDJ theatrics, synesthetic drug cocktails, barking MCs, extreme production choices and a fuckton of wraparound sunglasses.
It's incredible music, but it's not always easy to keep up with what's going on, so in this episode – the first of a two-part interview – we speak to GG Albuquerque, a journalist and researcher from Recife, who last year accompanied São Paulo’s DJ K on tour in Europe.
We begin with a dive into the trajectory of funk over the past decade, from KondZilla to 150 to bruxaria, with detours into music distribution, DJ culture, the pacification of the favelas and the real favourite tipple of funkeiras.
Tom and Chal also get into the Warhammer mailbag with internet thinker Jay Springett and, inevitably, take a moment for Brat.
If you like what we’re doing on No Tags, please do all the good things: follow, rate and review on your podcast app of choice, correspond with us on Substack, and consider subscribing to our paid tier.
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Some say that algorithmic content has fragmented our social media feeds to the point that we no longer exist in a shared culture. Others say, ‘Has anybody else noticed that bald dude in a dressing gown all over Instagram suddenly?’ We think you know who we mean, but either way, let us introduce you to the one-man DJ phenomenon that is Fish56Octagon.
Who is the Fish? What does he want? And what can he tell us about music in 2024? In this episode, Tom and Chal talk about the sudden rise of the country’s biggest DJ-influencer, how club culture has become dependent on social-first Moments™, and how Fred Again walked so Fish96Octagon could… swim.
Plus, Tom recommends Danish producer Astrid Sonne, Chal reports back on cult classic movie Party Girl, and we have further thoughts on Billie Eilish’s SoundCloud takeover.
We’re still gathering your communiques for our mailbag episode, so send any feedback, questions or topics you’d like us to talk about via email or the Substack comments section.
As ever, if you enjoy what we’re doing on No Tags, please do follow, rate and review us and consider subscribing to our paid tier to help keep this show on the road.
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As if we hadn’t gorged enough on lore last week, this time we welcome one of electronic music’s boldest world-builders, Iglooghost.
Iglooghost’s new album Tidal Memory Exo takes place in a punk-dystopian vision of a British seaside town that’s been cut off from the rest of society. It even comes accompanied by an online forum where users debate the politics and micro-genres of the local “tidal scene” (sporestyle, tektonikore, foamtek) and an online marketplace where people sell mysterious sea creatures and offer theories about their origins, among many other diversions.
Something else that interested us about the project is that while Iglooghost’s early releases took place in full-on fantasy world, recently he’s started creating parallel universes based in Britain, bringing his lore-making closer to his own reality. Prior to Tidal Memory Exo, he created a whole world around “Lei Music” – a supposedly ancient musical style performed to summon “strange, squeaking entities” in rural Dorset, the part of south-west England where he grew up.
Naturally we spoke to him about all that and about lore in general, as well as getting his insights on the ever-changing nature of the online experience, his obsessive fans, TikTok as a ghost town, and the risk of world-building becoming too cynical. Never go full Marvel, basically.
As ever, if you enjoy what we’re doing on No Tags, please do follow, rate and review on your podcast app of choice, correspond with us on Substack, and consider subscribing to our paid tier. Now that we’re weekly, £5 a month works out to less than £1.20 per episode, which is basically a bag of crisps these days – and it really does help us out. Thanks for listening/reading!
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We’re still reeling from last week’s Reynoldsmania, but in the wake of our conversation with the great music scribe about the past and future of electronic music, this time we’re firmly in the present.
First, Chal puts forward a thesis about the genre trend of the moment – a movement that brings together Taylor Swift, Disney Adults, A. G. Cook and Warhammer freaks. Welcome to the lorecore era.
Next, we wade knee-deep into the sludgy waters of NYC band Couch Slut’s new album You Could Do It Tonight, a must-listen for fans of metal and hardcore’s scuzzier side, equal parts uncomfortable and funny. We chat about why bands like Couch Slut feel so refreshing compared to so much of the extreme music that came before them.
Speaking of humour, is Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess the messy pop masterpiece we so desperately need in 2024? Maybe not, considering it actually came out last year, but we only just discovered it and we’re both obsessed. Old school FACT fans might remember our love for Miley’s Bangerz era and Sky Ferreira’s Night Time, My Time, and this LP is in that lineage, offering ridiculous tunes and modern dating advice to boot.
Thanks for listening to No Tags. If you like what we do, consider following us on Substack and social media (we’re @notagspodcast everywhere) or rating and reviewing us on your podcast app of choice.
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For millennial music journos like us, Simon Reynolds is one of the Goats.
He’s a writer best known for his era-defining book on dance music, Energy Flash and the ultimate history of post-punk, Rip It Up And Start Again. But there’s barely a genre that Simon hasn’t touched, from hip-hop, shoegaze and glam rock to pivotal essays on Auto-Tune, “conceptronica” and the hardcore continuum.
Reynolds’ newest book is a collection of essays, interviews and reviews on the idea of “futuromania” –his word for electronic music’s obsession with the manifesting the future. Futuromania kicks off in 1977 with Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ and sweeps up half a century of electronic genius, with writing on household names (Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, Future), underground icons (Acen, The Mover, Omni Trio) and nebulous trends like the ambient revival.
Unsurprisingly, we couldn’t squeeze all of that in a single episode. But we did talk to Simon about the lure of accelerationism, dance music’s middle-aged desires, Daft Punk’s yearning for the “mass synchrony” of the ‘70s, the uncanniness of Boards of Canada, and how he learned to stop worrying about retromania and start loving Dry Cleaning. Plus: he gave us the scoop on his next book! We think it’s an exclusive!!
Thanks for listening to No Tags. If you like what we do, consider following us on Substack and social media (we’re @notagspodcast everywhere) or rating and reviewing us on your podcast app of choice.
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No Tags is going weekly!
Since launching last year we’ve managed to stick to an episode every fortnight, but the time feels right to try and make things more frequent. So in that spirit, we’re going to be recording more regular Tom-and-Chal-only episodes. Anything you particularly want us to tackle in these? Email, comment or DM us.
This week: we tackle Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee and the revelation that Pitchfork isn’t only still going, is still able to break albums! Is it the best long-player since Fetch the Bolt Cutters, or is its success simply nostalgia for the last embers of the pre-streaming age?
We bed-rot with claire rousay and her new album sentiment, perhaps the most 2024 album of 2024 so far. It all boils down to porn bots and the numb, over-scrolled horniness of existing online in 2024.
There’s also thoughts on Coachella, the haunted nostalgia of the modern-day festival circuit, and why there might be more DJ sets like that Grimes disaster-class to come.
Thanks for listening to No Tags. If you like what we do, consider following us on Substack and social media (we’re @notagspodcast everywhere) or rating and reviewing us on your podcast app of choice.
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Without Jamaican sound system culture, much of the electronic music we love wouldn't even exist. So why is it so often underrepresented when we talk about dance music history?
To tackle this and more, we brought in author Marvin Sparks, one of the UK’s preeminent experts on reggae and dancehall.
We also had topical news to cover: Vybz Kartel, currently serving a life sentence in prison, had his murder conviction overturned last month. As is often the case, press coverage of the appeal has been meagre, so we asked Marvin to explain just why this ruling is so important, and how Vybz Kartel became the most important dancehall artist of the 21st century.
Marvin’s also on form when it comes to the big picture stuff: dancehall’s influence on all the music you love, the problems with its press coverage in and out of Jamaica, and his expertise in a genre that, as he puts it, music fans don’t care nearly enough about.
Thanks for listening to No Tags. If you like what we do, consider following us on Substack and social media (we’re @notagspodcast everywhere) or rating and reviewing No Tags on your podcast app.
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It’s a question that crops up a lot: how do musicians move into video game soundtracking?
Lena Raine is one of the most respected game composers on the circuit, capturing the imagination of millions with her work for Minecraft and Celeste, one of the key indie games of the last decade.
Often with No Tags, we try to focus on people who haven’t had their story adequately told. That’s not the case with Lena. She’s given many interviews, and she’s always an excellent subject. But we wanted to ask some practical questions: just how does a musician enter the world of video games? And what do they need to know about pitching, contracts, copyright and the difference in process between releasing recorded music and working for video games?
It’s an interview of two halves: the first serves as a practical resource for musicians, but in classic No Tags style, the second half goes somewhere else entirely, with Lena on fine form tackling Gamergate, the evolution of the modern internet (not familiar with the theory of the Cozy Web? You soon will be) and the sale of Bandcamp. She saves her most righteous response for the coming of AI, though – that’s worth the price of admission alone.
Thanks for listening to No Tags. If you like what we do, consider following us on Substack and social media (we’re @notagspodcast everywhere) or rating and reviewing No Tags on your podcast app.
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Dr Robin James is a philosopher of sound studies whose Twitter presence and blog, It’s Her Factory, are reliable sources of galaxy-brain takes on the discourse, from Taylor Swift Studies to “Brexit techno”.
We asked Robin to share some of her latest thinking on the forces that are changing how we listen to music, from vibes-based listening and the secrets of the Spotify algorithm to the connection between ‘90s alt-rock and the 2020s manosphere, as well as her recent book on American radio, The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence. Oh, and Dude Wipes.
Thanks for listening to No Tags. If you like what we do, consider following us on Substack and social media (we’re @notagspodcast everywhere) or rating and reviewing No Tags on your podcast app.
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Look – chances are you’ve never heard of Gavin Douglas.
But if you’ve had even one ear to what’s been going on in UK radio over the last decade, you’ve definitely felt his impact – as a curator, radio programmer, trainer and mentor. Snoochie Shy, Jeremiah Asiamah, Jamz Supernova, Tash LC, JK & Bempah, Reece Parkinson and CassKid are just a handful of the country’s prominent radio hosts that he’s had a role in developing, and that’s before getting into his wider roles as Reprezent Radio’s former Head of Music and Radar Radio’s former Director of Radio. Put simply, the contemporary UK radio landscape looks very different without him.
So where did Gavin’s journey start, and how did he get here? As we find out on this episode, it’s one heck of a redemption story – from scoring interviews with Destiny's Child and Mariah Carey and becoming the golden boy of Birmingham's '90s pirate radio scene, to reinventing himself after being let go by the BBC in the late 2000s.
Gavin has given very few interviews in his life, so we jumped at the opportunity to tell his story on No Tags. We get into a lot of big picture questions – what is the future of Black British radio? Should radio playlists exist? Does radio still even matter? – while getting the inside scoop on his time at the BBC, Reprezent and Radar. There’s also some great insight into the history of Birmingham’s pirate radio scene and its political impact on the city in the 1980s and 1990s, which is really worth sticking around for.
Thanks for listening to No Tags. If you like what we do, consider following us on Substack and social media (we’re @notagspodcast everywhere) or rating and reviewing No Tags on your podcast app.
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