No Tags

We’re back! And booting off a busy season of No Tags content by speaking to 'professional music fan' Derrick Gee. You’ve likely come across Derrick on your feeds already. He’s a beacon of sophistication in the murky waters of social video, and a true enthusiast for music of all kinds – from audiophile sound systems to viral TikTok trends to his favourite bossa nova recordings. He’s racked up milli...

There was only one topic we could tackle this week. The argument boiling over around Boiler Room and the BDS movement is one of the most divisive and emotionally charged intra-scene disputes we’ve seen in a long time. There’s a lot being said in public and in the comments, with much of it relegated to Instagram Stories with a 24-hour timer. So in the spirit of our mission statement – chronicling u...

We’re pretty confident about slapping the “AOTY contender” badge on this one: aya’s second album hexed! is out on Hyperdub next week, and it has blown our tiny minds to pieces. The South London artiste joined us in the No Tags “studio” to reveal the pills, thrills and bellyaches behind the phenomenal follow-up to 2021’s im hole . We talked about shaking off the curse of drink and drugs, embracing...

No guest this week, but plenty of meat as we take our previous episode with Spotify chronicler Liz Pelly as a jumping off point to talk about the idea of independence. We use the word ‘independence’ a lot on No Tags without really investigating what we mean by it. In a era when the major labels are all stake-holders in the biggest streaming platform on Earth, and are hoovering up indie labels and...

No journalist has contributed more to our understanding of the streaming era than Liz Pelly. A contributing editor at The Baffler and a lifelong DIY scene participant, she’s been investigating the inner workings of Spotify since 2016, writing a series of increasingly alarming stories that exposed the streaming giant’s black box of profit-seeking operations: mood-based playlists filled with mysteri...

Still high off the fumes of January’s first Big Beat Cinema episode , we return to the scene of the crime this week for a follow-up film special with Finn, Manchester’s very own pope of trash. In this episode, we start by diving into your feedback, ranging from literary theory to eyewitness accounts from big beat OGs. We expand the official BBC canon with even more movies, including Go , Twin Town...

A jam-packed episode of No Tags this week, but we had a lot to catch up on. Central Cee ’s debut album  Can’t Rush Greatness  is out (02:56) and it’s UK drill’s biggest album to date, almost by default. Eusexua  (10:07) might be the record that finally sells us on FKA twigs ? And we talk about the grey zones of desire in Babygirl  over in film corner (18:32). But then onto the main event: we’re jo...

This week we kick off the first ever No Tags film season! Based on an original idea by DJ and NTS host Finn, Big Beat Cinema is our attempt to identify and decode a much-loved and entirely made-up micro-genre. We begin by outlining the core canon and basic tropes of BBC, paying particular attention to the ultra-stylish heist movies of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s – think Ocean’s Eleven , Mark Wahl...

Heaving ourselves into 2025 like a rebuilt BILLY with half its dowels missing, No Tags returns to its usual schedule. We kick off with a journey to the North Circular, where London’s biggest club is under investigation following two drug-related deaths and an alleged stabbing. Following the recent revelations about Drumsheds in Jim Waterson’s excellent London Centric newsletter , Tom and Chal ask:...

December comes but once a year, and sneaking in at the very last point we could probably get away with… it’s No Tags’ 2024 round-up! Joined by regular guest Henry Bruce-Jones in what’s becoming a bit of a list-making tradition, we run down our favourite music of the year and tackle some of the year’s big consensus releases – good and bad. Minimal intro required, really, but below is a timestamped...

What do The Simpsons , Dawn of the Dead and the Facebook page for Tom and Chal’s former employer have in common? They’re all overrun by zombies. Prompted by the publication of No Tags’ first physical book , in this episode we return to our long-held worry about disappearing archives. As older platforms fade away, can we be bothered to start again with the latest social media fads? Will gated micro...

We trailed ‘big things coming’ on our last episode, and would you look at that – the big thing has come. Or is available for pre-order, at least. That’s right, it’s our first ever book. Titled No Tags: Conversations on underground music culture and designed by All Purpose Studio, this hefty tome (350+ pages) compiles every interview to date on No Tags, edited transcripts of the best of Chal and To...

Truly an artist who needs no introduction to the No Tags universe, Midland is also one of the nicest people we know in this bottomless viper pit called dance music. Harry Agius has been a constant presence on the dancefloor since we were first finding our feet as music writers, and we’ve followed him every step of the way – from his early run of steppy house records on Aus Music and Phonica, to ‘F...

A chunky episode, this, as we tackle the last fortnight of music news. We mull over Charli XCX ’s Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat , a star-studded remix album that reworks the original from the stems up. If these are Brat Summer’s dying embers, then it’s a flame that struggles to consistently flicker – but the bright spots are very bright indeed. We pay tribute to Ka , the B...

On October 2, Amy Lamé stepped down from her post as London’s first Night Czar. Lamé had faced constant scrutiny since taking the job in 2016, especially following her chunky pay rises – most recently she was earning £132,846 a year in a period when the city’s venues have been struggling to survive. But Lamé’s achievements have also been defended by people deeply involved in the city’s nightlife....

Vivian Host’s rave credentials go deep. Much deeper than we realised in fact, and we’ve been friends with her for over a decade. There are several entry-points through which you could have discovered Vivian. Maybe it’s her podcast, Rave to the Grave , where she interviews DJs, dancers and ‘freaks of all ages’, from legendary house vocalist Barbara Tucker to performance art pervert Kevin Carpet . I...

With festival season over, it's time we investigated a story that’s been on our minds all year: has the bubble burst? In March it was reported that 21 UK festivals had already cancelled, postponed or closed in 2024. By the end of summer that number had risen to over 50. Industry bodies blame rising costs, which is doubtless a factor – but what else might be at play here? A small cluster of dominan...

We’ve not interviewed too many DJs so far on No Tags, so when we do, it’s a safe assumption that a) we’ve watched them play a few times, and b) they’re pretty tasty at it. OK Williams falls into both categories. We’ve seen her DJ multiple times and have never failed to leave the dancefloor refreshed. But she’s also one of our favourite dance music personalities, as evidenced on her regular NTS sho...

Regular No Tags listeners will notice that we often talk about living through several revivals at once, but indie sleaze is one that doesn’t seem to be going away. So why indie sleaze, and why now? And what do people actually mean when they talk about an indie sleaze revival in 2024? For this episode, Chal and Tom dug out their skinny ties and shutter shades (not to mention some brutal photos from...

On No Tags 25, we meet Jonny Banger: T-shirt hustler, avant-bootlegger, visionary rabble-rouser, DJ battle champ and bossman of the anarchic anti-fashion brand Sports Banger. From a certain angle, it can seem like the clothes are the main event at Sports Banger, from the original Free Tulisa tee and bootlegged NHS logos to wearable inflatables and a Chanel toilet seat headpiece. Naturally, Jonny h...

If four generations make up a family, then how many podcast references to the early 2010s make up a revival? We confront the spectre of 2011 from a few different angles in this episode, but particularly via dance music, where it feels like the anthems of the early 2010s, not to mention the top tier of DJs, are yet to be replaced. Is that down to nostalgia for the music itself? A lack of inventiven...

This week, Henry Bruce-Jones joins us to run down the best music of 2024 so far. With the caveat that we didn't think it was worth revisiting the albums we've already discussed (and Brat summer's over anyway, babes), we start with the gaseous moods of Naemi, Bianca Scout and Chanel Beads. Are we in the midst of a brave new wave of shoegaze, or has the NTS early morning schedule pumped one too many...

We’ve become so accustomed to bad news that Labour’s landslide victory in the UK general election has been a hard one to process, despite it being a dead cert. The Tories are actually gone? Can it be real? So this week we decided to piece together our memories of the last 14 years of cuts, corruption and chaos, and see if we can identify the sound of Tory Britain.  We’ve spent most of our music ca...

This time we’re joined by Meaghan Garvey, author of America’s #1 vibes-based newsletter, SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE , and one of the best writers in the game. Meaghan started off as an illustrator, laundering a semi-successful weed-dealing operation through an Etsy empire before becoming better known as a music journalist. Whether writing pin-sharp profiles of megastars like Lana Del Rey and T-Pain or...

A fairly big topic this week, as Tom and Chal investigate the issue of payola in underground music. Does it exist? Well, kind of - but not in the way you might think. Some background: in our Fish56Octagon episode, Tom mentioned that he was pretty sure that Fish was being seeded and potentially paid to play people’s music. A couple of people got in touch to confirm that the first part of that at le...