Issue 42
Winter 2026
Ten dispatches from the loud, the quiet and the in-between — reviews, interviews, features and live reports from the independent scene.
Reviews
Larkhouse
Priya Sundaram
A second record that trades the debut's digital sheen for tape hiss, room tone and songs that sound like they have been lived in.
The Ash Compilers
Dmitri Vane
Eleven songs of immaculate folk-rock gloom, produced with the kind of analog warmth most studios have forgotten how to buy.
Marrow Hymn
Inez Calloway
A debut that arrives fully formed: nine songs of slow-building guitar noise, recorded live to two-inch tape in a single week.
Interviews
The Half-Lit City
We Recorded in the Basement on Purpose
Noor Al-Farsi
The duo behind the year's murkiest synth record explain why fidelity was never the point.
Velora Thane
Marcus Feld
The experimental vocalist on drone, discipline and the two-hour show she almost didn't play.
Features
The Bedroom Symphony
Field Notes from a Year of Home Recording
Elise Martel
One laptop, one microphone, one room that is never quiet. The working diary of a record made between 9 p.m. and midnight.
Tape & Glass
How a Broken Reel Made Their Best Record
Jonas Whitfield
A snapped transport belt, a borrowed splice block and the accident that became the album's defining sound.
North Circuit
The Last Independent Venue on Meridian Street
Rosa Lindqvist
Three hundred capacity, one working smoke machine, zero corporate sponsorship. A night inside the room the city forgot to close.
Live
Echo & the Measured Quiet
A Church Basement, Four Sets, No Soundcheck
Bea Okonkwo
An evening of solo sets in a room with perfect reverb and no monitor mix — a live report from the quietest gig of the winter.
Colony Dusk
Live at the Foundry: Two Hundred People, One Long Feedback Loop
Tomás Reyes
The noise quintet's legendary hometown show, reconstructed from setlist, memory and a bootleg that refuses to die.