No Tags

'The big beat defenders are incoming'. An ominous text message to receive moments before meeting Octo Octa and Eris Drew in the flesh, but a sure sign that this would be a very special No Tags conversation. As DJs and life partners, Eris and Maya are capable of making old music sound new, making new music sound timeless, and making even the most questionable retro styles sound cutting edge. Watchi...

For 20 years, Mantra and Double O have been running Rupture, the London-based party that’s become guiding light for 160-inclined ravers. As any promoter will tell you, that’s a damn good shift. Next month they celebrate two decades with a book – We Are Rupture: Signals From The Heart of the Rave – which gathers stories and reflections from their community, from international pilgrimages to process...

We need to talk about this event flyer , and not just because of how Big Beat Cinema -coded it is. Prospa , Josh Baker and Kettama have worked their way into the uppermost stratum of dance music – a rarefied zone which might seem a million miles away to No Tags listeners, but which has officially become too big to ignore. The massive Finsbury Park show that this photo shoot is advertising received...

Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel? Or just 20,000 people milling about at the White Claw gazebo? This summer Tom and Chal attended a LOT of different festivals, which got us thinking about not just what makes a festival good , but what makes a festival a festival . As well as rating and slating our 2026 jollies, we look back at the half-forgotten lifestyles that birthed British f...

Closing a hectic summer, we’re back with our regular report on the best music of the last three months. We’re joined as always by No Tags third Beatle and zillennial savant Henry Bruce-Jones to talk us through the more fried corners of his musical diet. Can he sell these stubborn uncs on DMV crime-rap, Ivorian plugg and people who simply refuse to rap on beat? Or will we just have to find our midd...

“Is this dubstep?” There was a time in the 2010s when approximately 23% of all YouTube comments were a variation of this question. One of the UK’s most influential yet misunderstood dance exports, dubstep is also one of those rare genres that can trace its origins to a handful of people working in a few rooms. That unusual origin story is definitively told in a new book, Aftershock: The Seismic Im...

Keep honking, piggies: I’m listening to whatever rockslop the algorithm just sicked up for me! So we’ve been circling a certain topic for a while now – in order to be fashionably off-cycle rather than just late to the party, of course – and we’ve finally done enough muck-raking to present you with our red-hot take. It’s verifiable: your favourite DJ is a psyop. We jest, mildly. But why is it so sa...

Why be seamless when you can go KLANGGG ? This week’s guest is living proof that doing things wrong, backwards, upside-down or simply not at all can reap creative dividends. We speak, of course, about Djrum . Recorded at our book launch at London’s ICA last December, our conversation with the Oxford-dwelling DJ-producer followed up on the wild acclaim for his 2025 maybe-opus, Under Tangled Silence...

Sheffield punches well above its weight when it comes to tunes. From #1 synth-pop hits to underground techno classics, clattering industrial funk to accidental Britpop icons, the Steel City might have produced more brilliant music per capita than any other world metropolis. And yet, no one has published the definitive book on the subject – until now! Daniel Dylan Wray is one of the UK’s best music...

The Q1 report is here and the charts are clear: buy underscores. 📈 On this episode of No Tags, we talk through our favourite releases of 2026 so far – not to mention some music that we’re more mixed on but felt like it was worthy of discussion regardless. Before we get into it, on 5th May we’ll be returning to 180 Studios for our second session at their audiophile listening room. Following March’...

We all know what sound is, but are we any good at describing it? This week’s guest is a musician, writer and one of independent music’s wisest observers. Damon Krukowski has been playing in bands since the ‘80s, drumming for dreampop originals Galaxie 500 and, for the past 30 years, fronting Damon & Naomi with his partner Naomi Yang. He’s also written three books about sound and its strange, intan...

So we had another idea for a movie canon. After blinking our way through The Moment – the recent mockumentary about Charli XCX by director Aidan Zamiri – we got thinking about a certain kind of music film that exists between the margins of biopic and rockdoc. Not real, not exactly fake… and all the more incisive for it. We came up with a handful of movies – some of them HIGHLY recommended! – which...

Some of the most exciting dance music around right now is coming out of Baltimore. Reenergised by a younger generation of artists putting a fresh spin on the Baltimore Club sound, the city is producing stacks of great new records – and we keep hearing dazzled on-the-ground reports from our cool DJ friends (yes, we have them!) about the shows they’ve played there. Kade Young and JIALING are two of...

Taganistas may know Lil Internet from his music videos ( Beyoncé , Diplo ), his high-concept DJ mixes , or his ever-present voice on Twitter. Since 2017 his main focus has been New Models – a website, podcast and active Discord. But the reason we asked Lil Internet to join us on No Tags is his latest music project – a brand new, rule-based genre he’s calling gencore. Showcased across two mixes rel...

Reports of the death of nightlife may be greatly exaggerated. In recent months we’ve heard of new clubs opening in Peckham and Brixton, an audio upgrade at Tola and plans for a DIY venue in Catford . Even the Old Blue Last is good again ! Yet the official figures paint a depressing picture, with hundreds of venues lost, and thousands of jobs. So which story is right? To inspect the situation, Part...

A stack of new interviews are coming down the No Tags pipes right now, but first we return to a conversation from our sold-out event at the ICA last month. If you couldn’t make it down, or if you were there but forgot to take notes, this episode is a keeper. London-based rave researcher Anjali Prashar-Savoie set out her vision of a ‘club commons’ – a radical, positive and participatory kind of nig...

Sneaking in at the last possible moment, it's the No Tags best of 2025 show! As is tradition, we’re joined by Henry Bruce-Jones to look back on the year in tunes and spotlight some lesser-feted records that you need to hear. We tried to avoid going over the same releases that we covered on the Best Music of 2025 So Far episode from July, so if you’re wondering where the love is for Smerz, aya, Jim...

First off, we’re plugging. The second No Tags book is here – and it looks great. ‘ Conversations on underground music culture, Volume 2 ’ compiles the best interviews and conversations we’ve had on the second year of No Tags, plus five exclusive pieces with Emma Garland , Shaad D’Souza , Mattie Colquhoun , Nono Gigsta and Yu Su . You can order it here , and it will ship from the 10th December. Spe...

…And we’re back! Yes, first episode of No Tags for a few weeks, and while we do appreciate the concern, it’s just the two of us running this show, we both have jobs that we do it around, and sometimes we get really busy. Also Tom was in Asia for three weeks and most importantly, we were making a book. That’s right: the second No Tags book is here! Titled ‘ Conversations on underground music cultur...

First, news: our new book is almost at the printers ahead of launching it at the No Tags live show in London on 11th December! We’ll be announcing our guests very soon, and you can grab tickets now from the ICA website . This week’s guest is a revered member of the UK blognoscenti: Dan Hancox . Dan has written extensively on grime (including its definitive history, Inner City Pressure ), crowds, t...

First, a plug: tickets are now on general sale for No Tags live at the ICA in London on 11th December! There will be special guests, and there will be a new book for sale: Vol 2 is in production now. On this week’s episode we drive headfirst – Modelos in hand – into the discourse around One Battle After Another, the designated cinema event of the year. Is it PTA’s masterpiece, or has he bitten off...

Lots to cover today, but first off: we’re going live again! We’ll be bringing No Tags live to the ICA in London – yep, that one – on the evening of 11th December. If you are based enough to subscribe to our paid tier, then you now have early access to discounted tickets via the link in this email’s header (and in the paywalled section at the bottom of the email). These early access tickets will be...

We all know that hardcore will never die – but do we really know what hardcore is? As a music journalist for 15 years and raver for much longer, Holly Dicker is no stranger to documenting dance music’s heaviest, gnarliest and speediest niches – but in Dance or Die: A History of Hardcore , she attempts to finally answer that big question. From the pioneering hardware assault developed in Frankfurt...

We all know what happened to the sorcerer’s apprentice, right? Mickey Mouse got hold of a spell book before he was smart enough to use it, conjured a broom that just wouldn’t quit, and nearly got sucked into a whirlpool. Yet, tragically, no one can remember what the moral of this story was supposed to be! This week we batten down the hatches in preparation for the #slopwave – at least, that was th...

And they said music journalism was dead. It’s list time, losers! When it comes to round-up episodes we like to draft in No Tags’ very own fifth Beatle, Henry Bruce-Jones . Minimal intro required here: we discuss our favourite music of 2025 so far, from the new wave of weird UK rappers to the changing faces of mainstream pop – plus rap oldheads, surveillance electro, minimal techno reboots and more...