No Tags

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...

Who’s on your Mount Rushmore of pop? That’s the question of the week. After welcoming Jeff Weiss back to London for a live show about his tremendous novel-slash-memoir, Waiting For Britney Spears , we got to thinking about our own pop album percies. 2007’s Blackout is certainly up there – ‘a lost weekend of one-more-gram indulgence’ that ‘embodied the hedonistic sleaze of the late Bush years,’ as...

It’s Glastonbury weekend, and we’re back with the Big Questions. Not a sentence we expected to be saying on No Tags, but we kick off by talking about Will Smith – specifically his recent appearance with London streamer du jour DJ AG. The Fresh Prince is in the middle of a generationally cringe promo run and we’ve been wanting to discuss AG’s streams for a while now, so these two forces colliding o...

We talk about festivals a lot on No Tags, and usually the negative stuff: monopolisation, bad owners, overpriced cheesy chips. But good can still prevail, and are hopes are pinned on Field Maneuvers: an LED beacon of hope in the darkness, and an event that puts the comfort and enjoyment of ravers first. Perish the thought! In this episode, FM organisers Henry, Ele and Leon explain how they’ve just...

What connects Adonis resident Grace Sands, the free party explosion of summer '91, Deleuzian dancefloor philosophy, and the annual Gloucestershire cheese-rolling competition? It's this episode of No Tags, obviously, but the connecting tissue goes much deeper, we promise. The last third of the show contains our recent conversation with Grace Sands – house DJ, free party originator, icon of London's...

Rave royalty on No Tags this week as we’re joined by Paul Woolford. We’re both drawn to artists who are driven by a compulsion to put art into the world at all costs – and 25 years into his career, Woolford (AKA Special Request) seems to be more driven than ever. In the last six years he’s released six albums and countless singles and remixes, and he still tours relentlessly – from seasons in Ibiz...

Tom and Chal emerge from a proper-large-’avin-it May bank holiday weekend with a desire to explain the perfect clubbing experience. Borrowing a few ideas from Friedrich Nietzsche, we sketch out two divergent tendencies in club culture and talk about the countless variables that accelerate our rave engines. Got feedback? Obviously please write in, DM or voicenote us with critiques of our emergent t...