Ammar Kalia

T he past five years have been punishing for Isaac Borquaye, AKA the British rapper Guvna B. In 2021, he was left without sight in one eye for several months after being targeted in an unprovoked racist attack at his local coffee shop in east London. It left him shaken, but also motivated him to write his searing 2023 album The Village Is on Fire, which questioned structural racism. The album’s cover featured a closeup image of his bloodied eye. In the opening track, the 36-y

S ince their formation in 1979, Tuareg guitar band Tinariwen have been constantly moving. Based variously in Mali, Libya and Algeria, the Grammy-winning group have used their desert blues music as a lament for a wandering refugee status that continues to this day. Co-founder Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni says the group are currently in Algeria , after band members had to flee their homes in Mali in October 2024. “The Malian military and the Russian mercenary group Wagner have been

Simo Cell and Abdullah Miniawy – Dying Is the Internet E gyptian singer Abdullah Miniawy has spent the past decade lending his melismatic voice and Arabic classical maqam melodies to a fascinating range of experimental music, and. Alongside French trumpeter Erik Truffaz he released the 2023 jazz-inflected album Le Cri du Caire ; in his ongoing collaboration with German trio Carl Gari, his vocals are paired with sparse electronic atmospherics; and his trio features two trombon

I n 2022, everything changed for Tom Misch. The London-based singer-songwriter had been at the height of his powers: his easygoing blend of hip-hop-influenced beat-making with soulful guitar melodies and yearning vocals led his self-released and self-produced 2018 debut album Geography to chart at No 8 in the UK, while 2020’s collaborative record with the jazz drummer Yussef Dayes reached No 4 and earned them both an Ivor Novello award nomination. In 2022, riding high from

Fabiano Do Nascimento & Vittor Santos Orquestra – Vila O ver the past decade, Brazilian guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento has honed a sound so muscular and expansive it may make you think the prolific soloist and collaborator had four hands playing his instrument’s six strings. His 14 records since 2015’s debut Dança do Tempo include everything from a tender duets album with saxophonist Sam Gendel, The Room , to the electronic-influenced Aquàticos with producer E Ruscha V, and

T he architect of the bestselling jazz album of all time, 1959’s Kind of Blue, trumpeter Miles Davis is a towering figure in the history of the genre. Possessed of a piercing tone, innate melodic sensibility and a singularly uncompromising approach on the bandstand, Davis spent his five-decade career presiding over numerous stylistic shifts: bebop to “cool” jazz, modal jazz, electronic fusion, jazz funk and even hip-hop. Always honing his ear for fresh talent, he turned his b

Toni Geitani – Wahj A rabic electronic experimentalism is thriving. In recent years, diaspora artists such as Egyptian producer Abdullah Miniawy, singer Nadah El Shazly and Lebanese singer-songwriter Mayssa Jallad have each released records that combine the Arabic musical tradition of maqam and its slippery melodies with granular electronic sound design, rumbling bass and metallic drum programming to create a dramatic new proposition. Beirut-born and Amsterdam-based composer

10. Sarathy Korwar – There Is Beauty, There Already A 40-minute suite of continuous, repetitive drumming might not sound like the most accessible music but south Asian percussionist and producer Sarathy Korwar’s latest album, There Is Beauty, There Already, turns this concept of insistent rhythm into strangely alluring work. Leading an ensemble of three drummers, Korwar develops a dense percussive language throughout the record’s 10 movements, channelling Steve Reich’s phasin

Between the ages of 16 and 21, the big night out wasn’t just a hobby, it was a calling. Getting together with friends, getting drunk, being blasted by music, meeting new friends in the smoking area, getting more drunk, somehow making it home eight hours later – these were things I excelled at, the precious moments where I could try to lose myself and avoid the anxiety that inevitably came with daybreak. The escapism wasn’t just selfish fun. It felt like a necessary avoidance

“We’re always trying to make the most interesting thing we can,” Doug McCombs says. “We figure if it’s interesting to us, it will probably be interesting to someone else. That’s the only thing we think about when we write and play as a group.” Since co-founding the instrumental quintet Tortoise in Chicago in 1990, McCombs and his band have attracted a slew of descriptors – “interesting” among them – for their genre-hopping, amorphous sound. Variously labelled “pioneers of pos