Talking soul, faith and Billie Eilish with London’s multi-hyphenate music maverick — A condensed version of this interview was originally published in Brick №9 A bona fide son of a preacher man, North London drummer Femi Koleoso talks with such passion and poise that it often seems like he’s sermonising at his father’s Jubilee Church. If you’ve ever seen him onstage, you’ll…

An conversation about psychedelics, politics and policy — This piece was originally published in Buffalo №11 . It seems psychedelic drugs are having a moment. Historically the stuff of successive subcultures, psychedelics have typically figured in the popular imagination through a surreal smorgasbord of signifiers; bell-bottoms, flower power, Day-Glo, field raves, hippies, tie-dyed trippers, Bez, nudists, Martin Sharp…

The easiest shortcut to knowing my father, because you can’t, is Robin Williams. Picturing him gets you three-quarters of the way there; a brilliant, effervescent and erudite man with so much body hair it covers his knuckles, wrists, back and toes. An instant familiarity and ease with anyone from the…

Dazzling musical moments of an otherwise terrible year. — Nobody had a good 2020, but if you want to know who had it really bad, talk to a working musician. Already squeezed to the limits by a combination of pernicious forces, artists had their primary revenue stream cut off at the knees this year. …

Genre implosion, teenage devotion. — You hear it first at a house party. It’s that liquid dusk of adolescence, where cliques coalesce quickly. Binge drinkers on the balcony, smokers in the backyard. In the parents’ study, the early adopters are figuring out how to fashion a bong from a Gatorade bottle. …

Our uncertain future of self-curation — I have a recurring nightmare in which all of my Spotify playlists have been deleted. As someone who’s been fanatic about recorded music since he could request CD singles for his 9th birthday, this makes some semblance of sense. Music fans of my generation have witnessed more seismic changes to…

‘Blood makes you related. Loyalty makes you family.’ Sacred texts are really just stories we tell each other, codified through conversation over thousands of years, so there’s no reason to believe the same won’t happen with Fast & Furious. In Judaism, the Old Testament is roughly diced up into…

One thing I enjoy about being someone that works with musicians is that this is an industry could innovate its way out of a paper bag. It’s been at the forefront of digital disruption for decades, faced multiple threats to its entire existence and still managed to survive. …

Finding home with Africa’s ARIA-winning first lady of hip-hop — The vast multitudes of Sampa The Great sit cross-legged in a meeting room at Ninja Tune’s South London office, sipping lemon tea to preserve her voice. Formerly known as Sampa Tembo, this swarm of spirits has become many things to many people since leaving her native Botswana. …