A monthly musical diary, so I can look back in future on what was going on in my musical world. Music i’ve enjoyed, gigs I’ve been to and general stuff in the musical world.
It’s been a pretty quiet month for me, musically speaking. No gigs, and since the start of the school summer holidays, not as much time for music listening either. I’ve still somehow discovered a decent amount of new stuff, with pop to the forefront.
When Charli XCX came out with Rock Music as the first single from her new album, I admit I was concerned, but no fear. Wink Wink is very different from Brat, but has her back on top form. It’s fun and funny and plays with her public persona in a way that feels very her. Shame she thinks it’s coll to appear on magazine covers smoking, but you can’t have everything.
FKA Twigs rarely fails to make good and interesting work. On Your Mind, a one off single with Little Yachty is no exception, and is one of my favourites of the year so far.
Less well know (to me at least – this song has over 1 million streams on Youtube so it’s hardly obscure), but equally excellent is Brainchem by Emjay. She’s a Mexican artist I know little about (and confusingly not the only musician called Emjay). This song is an absolute banger though, and deserves to be better known. I’ll certainly be exploring more of her work.
On a completely different note, I was not expecting a ska/death metal crossover to be on my bingo card for this, or indeed any, year. This collaboration between veterans Reel Big Fish and the new to me Nekrogoblikon is just insanely catchy though, great fun, and I think can appeal to fans of either genre or neither. Excellent video too.
Finally for this month, two tracks that combine dub and electronic music in very different but equally interesting ways, one old, one new. Firstly, Conducta by Soundboy Johnny, which came out back in May and continues the long influence of dub on Drum n Bass to excellent effect.
The other is Steve Osborne’s remix of Bim Sherman’s Solid As A Rock, which stretches out the single by the reggae veteran into a ten minute epic, giving it the space and time it deserves to breathe.
There was a surprising lack of discourse around the Mercury Music Prize nominations which were announced this month, showing perhaps its decreasing cultural relevance. I would say that if Suede and Paul McCartney are making two of the best albums of the year in 2026, it’s a sad state of affairs. The McCartney inclusion in particular seems aimed at publicity as much as anything else (for the prize that is, he doesn’t really need it). Still it is very easy for me to criticise, but I don’t honestly have a huge amount of alternative suggestions for great UK albums released in the relevant time period, so perhaps I should just shut up.
Linked is my playlist of the month, on Apple Music, but you can use Tunemymusic.com to convert to a streaming service of your choice should you wish.
