ZOMBIE FEST 9 SET TO BECOME THE BIGGEST MUSIC EVENT EVER HOSTED BY CAMBRIDGE JUNCTION
More than 90 acts, six stages and 12 hours of music as Zombie Fest returns to Cambridge this Halloween
Cambridge is preparing for one of its biggest Halloween celebrations yet as Zombie Fest 9 returns to Cambridge Junction on Saturday 31 October 2026, with organisers expecting the event to become the biggest music event ever hosted at the venue.
Taking over the Cambridge Junction complex, Zombie Fest 9 will feature more than 90 acts across six stages, bringing together major names from 90s and 00s dance, jungle and drum & bass, house, hardcore, hardstyle, trance and breaks.
The extensive line-up includes N-Trance, Stanton Warriors, Jaguar Skills, Dub Pistols’ Barry Ashworth, Mr C, Ultrabeat, Ratpack, Dougal, Slipmatt, Grooverider, Logan D, Lisa Pin-Up, Rob Tissera, Alex P, Scott Garcia & MC Vapour, alongside dozens more DJs and live performers.
The event’s crossover line-up brings together artists from different eras and corners of British dance music. N-Trance will perform their iconic 90s anthem Set You Free, while Ultrabeat will bring the early-2000s favourite Pretty Green Eyes. Scott Garcia & MC Vapour will represent the UK Garage sound, while drum & bass pioneer Grooverider joins the bill alongside jungle and rave favourites including Ratpack, Dougal and Slipmatt.
Also appearing is Jaguar Skills, renowned for his high-energy megamixes and mash-ups, alongside Stanton Warriors, one of the best-known names in breakbeat.
FROM THE VOICE TO ZOMBIE FEST
ZF9 will also welcome artists who have recently been making waves on television.
With artists appearing across six stages, ZF9 promises a diverse musical journey throughout the day, bringing together established names, cult favourites and newer performers under one roof.
MORE THAN MUSIC
Zombie Fest is designed to be a complete Halloween experience, with interactive Halloween characters roaming throughout the venue, meet-and-greet opportunities and photo opportunities for attendees.
The event will also feature an exclusive VIP experience, including Q-Jump, a premium VIP bar, luxury sofas and private toilets, giving guests the option to experience ZF9 with an enhanced level of comfort.
With 12 hours of entertainment and six stages operating throughout the event, Zombie Fest 9 is expected to transform Cambridge Junction into a Halloween playground for music fans and festival-goers.
A DECADE OF ZOMBIE FEST
Zombie Fest first launched in 2015, originally taking place at Mildenhall Stadium as an all-night event running from 6pm until 6am. Over its early years, the festival grew to feature up to 10 stages and 150 artists, attracting audiences of up to 2,500 people.
The event moved to Hi Cambridge in 2023, evolving into a daytime-to-midnight format before relocating to Cambridge Junction in 2025.
Over the years, Zombie Fest has welcomed major names including Chase & Status, Pendulum, Andy C, Paul Oakenfold, Judge Jules, So Solid Crew, N-Trance, Baby D, Fabio & Grooverider, DJ Hype, Jaguar Skills and Ultrabeat, among many others.
The festival has also been recognised as a three-time UK Festival Awards finalist, receiving nominations for Best Small Festival in 2017 and 2018, as well as the Grassroots Festival Award in 2018.
Now, ZF9 marks another milestone for the brand, becoming the largest event Cambridge Junction has ever hosted.
And the story does not stop there. With Zombie Fest’s 10th edition already in discussion, the brand is looking towards its next chapter – ZF-X.
ZOMBIE FEST 9
96 Artists | 6 Stages | 12 Hours | One Massive Halloween Experience
For more information and event updates, visit zombie-fest.com and follow Zombie Fest on social media.
Previous Zombie Fest coverage:
East Anglia Daily Press – Zombie Fest
Cambridge News – Zombie Fest comes to Cambridge
Hi Cambridge – Zombie Fest: The Aftermath
Ely Standard – Judge Jules headlines Zombie Fest 8
Follow Zombie Fest
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/zombiefest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zombiefestuk
Website: https://zombie-fest.com
Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@zombiefest_uk
Noble Hops’ “Thinkin’ (‘Bout Drinkin’)” Is a Booze-Soaked Rock ’n’ Roll Reckoning That Refuses to Raise a Toast
By Leslie Banks
Rock ’n’ roll has always had a drinking problem. Hell, half its mythology was built on whiskey bottles, broken barstools, and the kind of decisions that sound fantastic at midnight and look like a police report by breakfast. From the swaggering excesses of the Stones to the beer-soaked lunacy of the Replacements, alcohol has been rock’s favorite accomplice, excuse, and occasional executioner. But Pittsburgh-area bruisers Noble Hops have decided to flip the bottle upside down and see what ugly little truths come spilling out.
Their new single, “Thinkin’ (‘Bout Drinkin’),” arriving October 10th, isn’t some fist-pumping celebration of Friday-night stupidity. It’s the morning after, the afternoon before, and the vicious little cycle that connects them. It’s a rock song about drinking that has the audacity to admit drinking sometimes sucks.
And there’s something wonderfully subversive about that.
Frontman Utah Burgess, who originally wrote the music nearly twenty years ago and collaborated on the lyrics with former B.U.M. bandmate Marty Roppolo, doesn’t bother dressing up the situation in metaphorical perfume. The opening image is a man drinking straight from the bottle because even the simple civilization of a glass seems like too much trouble. He’s already on his way to oblivion, and everybody knows it except, apparently, him.
Then comes the chorus, a gloriously circular piece of alcoholic logic:
“Now I’m thinkin’, ’bout drinkin’ / And I’m drinkin’, to keep from thinkin’.”
There it is. The whole damn tragedy in two lines.
Forget your twelve-step lectures and preachy television specials. That little lyrical merry-go-round tells you everything about the machinery of self-destruction. The bottle becomes both the problem and the proposed solution, a cruel practical joke that stops being funny somewhere between the third drink and the shattered relationship.
What makes “Thinkin’ (‘Bout Drinkin’)” particularly interesting is the contradiction at its center. Noble Hops, a band named after one of beer’s essential ingredients, is offering a song about the dangers lurking inside the very substance its identity cheerfully celebrates. That’s rock ’n’ roll irony with teeth.
Musically, the single represents the band’s harder-rock direction. Tony Villella’s electric guitar work, Burgess’s rhythm guitar, Johnny “Sleeves” Costa’s bass, and Brad Hurlburt’s drums provide the instrumental foundation for a story that demands something more confrontational than a polite acoustic confession. The material calls for grit rather than polish, aggression rather than sentimentality.
And Burgess knows the difference between singing about drinking and glorifying it. His narrator isn’t some glamorous outlaw staggering triumphantly toward another round. He’s a frightened, lonely bastard watching his life dissolve and wondering whether his true colors are uglier than he ever imagined.
The woman leaves. Sobriety arrives too late. The damage remains.
Released on World Mental Health Day, the song also raises a question rock music has spent decades avoiding: What happens when the party is actually somebody’s attempt to outrun despair?
Noble Hops doesn’t offer a tidy answer. Thank God.
Because great rock songs aren’t supposed to solve your problems. They’re supposed to grab you by the collar, shove you toward the mirror, and make you confront whatever’s staring back.
“Thinkin’ (‘Bout Drinkin’)” isn’t buying the next round.
It’s handing you the bill.
And brother, it’s a hell of a lot bigger than you thought.
Alysha Finds Common Ground Between Faith and Alternative Music on ‘Take It or Leave It’
London-based artist Alysha explores the intersection of faith and alternative music on her latest single, ‘Take It or Leave It’, a dark fusion of goth, new-wave and electronic influences. Co-produced with Matt Rist, the track pairs shadowy synths with a nocturnal atmosphere, challenging conventional expectations of Christian music through a distinctly alternative sound.
A Cuban-Indian musician raised in London, Alysha draws on an eclectic range of influences, from Beyoncé and Lauryn Hill to Siouxsie & The Banshees and gospel. Since releasing her debut single, ‘David Attenborough’, at 16, she has developed an increasingly adventurous sound, earning more than 3 million Spotify streams and performing at festivals including Wild Paths and Forwards.
With ‘Take It or Leave It’, Alysha continues to push beyond genre boundaries, bringing her spirituality into darker electronic territory. Fresh of supporting LANY across four stadium dates in Japan and South Korea, this single marks another step in the evolution of an artist unafraid to challenge expectations.
@skopemag Album Review: Rachael Sage
Last year’s ‘Canopy’ by NYC songwriter Rachael Sage was a big, bright, horn-assisted band record. She returns this year with ‘Under My Canopy’. This is the same set of songs, taken apart and rebuilt around acoustic guitar, cello, violin, accordion and harmonica, with two chamber-style bonus cuts bolted onto the end. It’s out today on MPress/Virgin/Universal, produced by Sage with Mikhail Pivovarov, who also mixed and mastered.
‘Under My Canopy’ earns its place for a practical reason: Sage’s lyrics were always the point, and the louder arrangements sometimes competed with them. Strip away the wah-guitar and brass and there’s nothing left to hide behind. Mostly, that’s to the songs’ advantage.
The case for the whole project rests on three songs, all in the back half. ‘Nexus’ is the most difficult to write about. Sage composed it after reading about Nex Benedict, the nonbinary Oklahoma teenager who died after a beating by classmates. The arrangement here, built on upright bass, harmonica and cello beneath her own guitar, keeps to a dignified middle register. It never swells for effect. Lines about wanting this “tide of torturousness” to mean something are delivered almost conversationally, which is exactly what makes them sting. It’s a song about mourning that refuses to wallow, and it knows the difference.
‘God Bless America’ is the album’s gamble, and Sage knows it; by her own account the idea met resistance from the people around her. Here, Irving Berlin’s standard is a deliberate set-up for what follows. Her argument is that caring enough about gun violence to demand policy change is the most patriotic thing a person can do, and the performance is sincere enough that it doesn’t read as irony or provocation. It plays as a held breath before ‘Underneath’.
‘Underneath’ then does what the title promises. Written the same day as a school shooting and first aired that night at Rockwood Music Hall, it’s the sparest thing here: Sage’s guitar, Cassandra Kubinski’s harmony, violin and cello, a touch of accordion from Rob Curto. The imagery is almost naive in its directness (guns that guard us, souls like stardust), and that’s the trick. There’s no clever angle, no attempt to be the smartest song about the subject. It just aches. The sad addendum is that, as Sage herself notes, the storyline keeps repeating, which gives a song that’s already heavy a grim permanence.
It would be easy to remember only the heavy material, but the record is smarter than that. ‘Canopy’, with Kristen Ford alongside Sage, is the mission statement and it’s a catchy one: slide guitar from James Mastro, Trina Hamlin’s harmonica, a chorus that begs to be sung back. Sage is a lifelong pacifist who has spent years being told she’s too idealistic, and the song is her answer. Its lyric about a world run by women ending war will raise eyebrows in some quarters. She expects that, and doesn’t flinch.
The production is warm and unfussy, the playing is first-rate, and the writing carries a conviction you can’t fake. It’s the sound of someone who has decided, after a long career, that being sincere is not the same as being naive. In a catalogue that has always put empathy first, this album simply says it with the lights turned down.
Tracklist:
Just Enough – Acoustic
Canopy Prelude
Canopy – Acoustic
Live It Up – Acoustic
Belong To You – Acoustic
The Best Version – Acoustic
Everyday – Acoustic
Colorized World – Acoustic
Kill The Clock – Acoustic
Nexus – Acoustic
Le Rêve
God Bless America
Underneath – Acoustic
Just Enough – Chamber Version
Everyday – Chamber Version
https://open.spotify.com/album/5jJyGuJpCEgGuKgVkvgGER?si=U8VgNhsvQ-CLGN2VLK92Mg
Mila Sidhu Moves Between Heritage and Desire on ‘One Night’
Mila Sidhu turns self-possession into a sound on ‘One Night’, a sleek collision of alternative pop and R&B built around desire, confidence and control. Crisp production and sultry vocals give the track a nocturnal pull, balancing polished pop sensibilities with a darker, more intimate edge. Rather than framing attraction as a question of validation, Sidhu approaches it as an exercise in agency: she is less concerned with being chosen than deciding who deserves her attention.
Created with producer Siloe, the track began with Sidhu’s desire to weave Indian musical influences into her sound. Her subsequent exploration of traditional scales adds another dimension to a production otherwise rooted in contemporary pop and alternative R&B. The cultural thread feels most compelling as part of a broader musical identity shaped by movement between places and influences, rather than as a decorative flourish. Sidhu’s strength lies in bringing these elements together without losing sight of the song’s immediate, physical appeal.
Where much of her songwriting draws on vulnerability and emotional uncertainty, ‘One Night’ finds Sidhu occupying a more assured position. Its sensuality is deliberate, its confidence uncomplicated, yet the track retains the atmospheric quality that runs through her wider artistic world. The result is a poised statement of intent from an artist exploring the relationship between heritage, femininity and self-definition on her own terms.
Some Memories Never Learn to Stay Gone: Lili Caseley Returns with “I Cry Again” on October 23rd, 2026
There is a particular kind of heartbreak that does not arrive with the ending. It comes later, on an ordinary afternoon, long after the brave face has become a habit, when a familiar street corner or a half-remembered melody undoes months of careful healing in a single breath. London singer-songwriter Lili Caseley has written the song for that moment. Her new single, “I Cry Again,” arrives worldwide on Friday, October 23, 2026.
“I Cry Again” lives in the space between being over something and being finished with it. Caseley turns her attention to the feelings that linger when a relationship, a memory or a moment simply refuses to fade, and to the humbling discovery that moving on is rarely a straight line. One recollection is all it takes, and every emotion she believed she had safely put away comes flooding back. Rather than disguise that relapse of the heart, she sings straight into it.
That is the quiet courage of this record. In a pop landscape that so often rewards the armor, the clapback and the triumphant exit, Caseley offers something far riskier: an admission. Strength and sorrow share the same breath here. The tears of the title are not a defeat. They are proof that something mattered. The result is intimate, unguarded and deeply human, the work of an artist willing to show the fragile side of love while her own identity and sound come into ever sharper focus.
The single’s artwork mirrors that mood. It finds Caseley alone in a private, contemplative moment, elegant and still, the visual equivalent of a held breath before the feeling breaks.
Raised in Camden, North London, the daughter of a Portuguese mother who grew up in France and an English father, Caseley has built a catalog of soulful pop shaped by that heritage, by the poets she loves and by the contemporary pop she grew up on. Since debuting with “Have I Ever” in 2018, she has released a run of singles including “C’est La Vie,” “Badoom,” “Hotel Du Palais” with Nick Vyner and “Al Pacino,” earning support from Clash, Notion, Music Week and the Official Charts, along with airplay on BBC Radio 1Xtra and BBC Introducing. She has named Stromae, Billie Holiday and Nelly Furtado among her inspirations, and all three can be felt in the way she balances rhythm, storytelling and soul.
Caseley is also an official FENIX360 Ambassador, representing the artist-first platform built to connect independent musicians directly with their fans. “I Cry Again” follows her acoustic release of “Face Each Other” this past August and marks another confident step forward for an artist whose audience continues to grow on both sides of the Atlantic.
Some songs help you forget. This one sits beside you while you remember.
Lili Caseley’s “I Cry Again” will be released worldwide on Friday, October 23, 2026.
Follow Lili Caseley on Instagram @lilicaseley_ and online at linktr.ee/lilicaseley.
Pre-Save “I Cry Again” by Lili Caseley here:
https://bfan.link/i-cry-again
Esosa Gabrielle Gets Real About Love, Lies, and Heartbreak on Powerful New Single “Guilty”
Out now, the emotionally charged release finds the rising artist turning betrayal and personal heartbreak into a fearless musical statement
Some of the most powerful music comes from the moments we’d rather forget. The broken promises. The sleepless nights. The uncomfortable truths that change everything. For rising recording artist Esosa Gabrielle, those experiences become the emotional foundation of her compelling new single, “Guilty,” officially released today and available now on Spotify.
Unfiltered, deeply personal, and emotionally fearless, “Guilty” explores the complicated aftermath of love gone wrong. Infidelity, divorce, shattered trust, and the struggle to reclaim one’s identity all find their place in a song that isn’t afraid to venture into uncomfortable emotional territory.
But Gabrielle isn’t simply revisiting heartbreak. She’s taking ownership of her story.
And that distinction makes all the difference.
When Love Becomes the Hardest Lesson
There’s something universally relatable about discovering that a relationship wasn’t what you believed it to be. The realization can be devastating, particularly when years of love, commitment, and shared dreams are suddenly called into question.
“Guilty” captures that emotional collision, examining what happens when devotion meets deception and the future you imagined begins to disappear.
Rather than reducing the experience to a simple story of right and wrong, Gabrielle explores the complicated emotions that accompany betrayal. There’s disappointment, confusion, vulnerability, and the difficult process of accepting that some relationships cannot be repaired.
It’s the kind of subject matter that demands emotional honesty, and Gabrielle embraces it.
What emerges is a song that speaks not only to those who have experienced infidelity, but to anyone who has ever been forced to rebuild after losing something they believed would last forever.
That emotional accessibility is what gives “Guilty” its strength. Listeners don’t need to know Gabrielle’s personal history to recognize the feelings behind the music.
They simply need to have loved someone.
No Perfect Love Stories Here
In an industry where romantic relationships are frequently packaged as glamorous fantasies, Gabrielle takes a refreshingly different approach.
Her music acknowledges that love can be messy, complicated, and occasionally devastating. People make mistakes. Trust gets broken. Feelings change. And sometimes the hardest part of moving forward is accepting what happened in the first place.
“Guilty” doesn’t attempt to wrap those realities in a neat, comfortable conclusion.
Instead, it confronts them.
For Gabrielle, that willingness to explore emotional complexity is becoming an important part of her artistic identity. She’s interested in the stories people recognize from their own lives, particularly the experiences that rarely make it into everyday conversation.
There’s a vulnerability to that approach, but there’s also considerable strength.
After all, sharing a painful experience with the world requires a different kind of courage than simply keeping it hidden.
From Personal Confession to Cinematic Storytelling
The release of “Guilty” is accompanied by a music video produced by Day Nine Films, extending the song’s emotional narrative into the visual world.
The collaboration brings a cinematic perspective to Gabrielle’s exploration of love, betrayal, and personal transformation, adding another layer to the storytelling behind the single.
For an artist whose work is rooted in human emotion, the visual component offers another way for audiences to connect with the themes driving the music.
It’s an approach that reflects Gabrielle’s desire to create experiences rather than simply release songs.
The Woman Behind “Guilty”
Gabrielle recently opened up about the personal experiences surrounding the single during an appearance on The Andrew Eborn Show.
The revealing conversation explored the difficult subjects of divorce, infidelity, and the emotional circumstances that helped inspire “Guilty.”
It was an opportunity for audiences to discover more about the person behind the music and understand why the song carries such personal significance.
For Gabrielle, speaking publicly about painful experiences represents another extension of her commitment to authenticity.
Rather than allowing difficult chapters of her life to remain unspoken, she’s using them as creative material, turning vulnerability into a source of connection with listeners.
That willingness to be open could become one of her most compelling qualities as her musical career continues to develop.
An Artist Finding Strength in the Truth
With the arrival of “Guilty,” Esosa Gabrielle is introducing audiences to an artist who understands that meaningful music doesn’t always come from happy endings.
Sometimes it comes from disappointment. Sometimes from loss. And sometimes from the moment you finally recognize that walking away is the beginning of something better.
Her latest release is a statement about emotional accountability, self-discovery, and the complicated process of healing.
More importantly, it reflects an artist determined to tell stories that matter to her, regardless of how uncomfortable those stories might be.
For listeners who have experienced the devastation of broken trust, “Guilty” offers recognition and understanding. For those still navigating the emotional aftermath of a difficult relationship, it provides a reminder that pain can eventually give way to resilience.
And for Esosa Gabrielle, it represents another step toward establishing a musical identity built on honesty rather than illusion.
Because sometimes the most powerful thing an artist can do is stop pretending everything is fine and tell the truth.
Esosa Gabrielle’s new single “Guilty” is available worldwide now.
Stream Esosa Gabrielle – “Guilty”
Artist: Esosa Gabrielle
Single: Guilty
Release Date: October 8, 2026
Music Video: Produced by Day Nine Films
Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/track/7eDIrd0cGjVl0UvS3Gij28?si=e530d2e960b8451e
Clarity Liao Turns Romantic Anxiety Into Upbeat Pop On ‘Lose’
Clarity Liao turns jealousy into something unexpectedly buoyant on ‘Lose’, the focus track from her forthcoming debut EP Dear…. Built around upbeat drums, electric guitar and a bright pop arrangement, the song deliberately rubs against its subject matter: insecurity, comparison and the fear of watching someone you want choose somebody else. What could have been a stripped-back confession instead becomes a lively study in emotional contradiction.
That tension gives ‘Lose’ its character. Liao originally conceived the song as a sparse piano ballad, but the finished production finds greater depth in its refusal to wallow. Her candid vocal delivery moves through infatuation, obsession and self-doubt without overplaying any of them, while touches of indie pop, R&B, bedroom pop and modern doo-wop give the track a loose, genre-fluid quality. The result feels less like a conventional breakup song than a snapshot of the irrationality that precedes acceptance.
As the track progresses, Liao gradually shifts her perspective from projection towards release. It is this movement that makes ‘Lose’ more than a song about romantic jealousy: beneath its polished pop surface is a portrait of someone confronting the limits of their own fantasy. As an introduction to her solo work, it establishes Liao as a songwriter more interested in following an emotion wherever it leads than fitting neatly into a predetermined sound.
DALE CORNELIUS ANNOUNCES; WHAT IS CARRIED. WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND? A HAUNTING NEW CHAMBER WORK INSPIRED BY MEMORY, PLACE & RENEWAL
What Is Carried, What Is Left Behind? Streaming Link
Award-winning Australian composer explores memory, grief and renewal through an immersive new chamber work featuring ‘Eclective Strings’.
Due for release in October 2026, the six-track album brings together string quartet, synthesizers and found sound in an immersive production mixed in Dolby Atmos Spatial Audio. Created with Melbourne-based string collective Eclective Strings, the project represents a major new chapter for Cornelius, moving beyond his celebrated career in screen composition into a more intimate and personal musical world.
The album began with a chance recording made late at night in Montalcino, Italy. While walking past the Concattedrale di San Salvatore, Cornelius captured the sound of a metal door moving in the wind. The strange, percussive sound became the central sonic motif of the title track and ultimately inspired the wider concept of the album.
Using Dolby Atmos, Cornelius has recreated the spatial experience of that original recording, placing the listener inside the soundscape with the string quartet and synthesizers arranged around them.
At the emotional heart of the album is ‘A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby)’, a string quartet composition originally written in 1999 during an extraordinarily difficult period in Cornelius’s life. His first-born son, Spencer, nearly died before and after childbirth. One of the first infants in Australia to undergo an operation in utero, Spencer was born at just 27 weeks and spent three months in neonatal intensive care, with doctors uncertain whether he would survive.
During this frightening period, Cornelius wrote A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby). The composition was never recorded and remained only as a manuscript for 26 years. Now, alongside the new material on What is Carried, What is Left Behind?, the piece finally receives its first recording.
For Cornelius, returning to the composition more than two decades later represents an act of reclamation — bringing together the fear and uncertainty of that moment with the perspective gained over the years since.
“Recording it now, alongside music written from that more honest place, is an act of reclamation. It’s the answer that piece has been waiting on for twenty-six years.”
Its inclusion gives the album a powerful sense of continuity, bringing together music from two very different points in Cornelius’s life and creating an emotional journey from uncertainty and memory towards hope and renewal.
“Recording it now, alongside music written from that more honest place, is an act of reclamation. It’s the answer that piece has been waiting on for twenty-six years.”
The album’s opening track, ‘In This Moment, What Matters Most?’, is similarly rooted in Cornelius’s personal experience. The phrase became an important reminder during a period of caring for his mother and dealing with anxiety, eventually becoming both a tattoo and the title of the album’s opening composition.
FROM MARY & MAX TO THE CONCERT HALL
Cornelius brings more than two decades of experience to What is Carried, What is Left Behind? His extensive screen-composition career includes more than 90 international productions, including Mary & Max, Backtrack, Till Human Voices Wake Us and five seasons of The Doctor Blake Mysteries.
He has also composed music for major IMAX documentaries including Hidden Universe and The Great Barrier Reef, as well as creating site-specific immersive works for the Australian Pavilions at the Shanghai and Nagoya World Expos.
His work has earned 18 major international awards and nominations, including AACTA and APRA/AMCOS recognition.
The new album has already received strong reactions from leading figures in the music industry, including Deutsche Grammophon’s Senior Manager A&R Anusch Alimirzaie, who described Cornelius’s music as “truly beautiful.”
Christian Kellersman, Executive Producer of Deutsche Grammophon’s Recomposed series, also praised the new work, saying: “I listened to your new album and it’s beautiful.”
London-based Major Tom Music Supervisor Marina Guy described the music as “truly stunning.”
A 55-MINUTE IMMERSIVE LIVE EXPERIENCE
Alongside the album, Cornelius is developing a 55-minute continuous live concert experience, transforming the record into one uninterrupted performance.
The production combines live string quartet, keyboards and sample manipulation with spoken word, bespoke lighting and video projection. Designed with festivals and curated concert series in mind, the performance can also incorporate local string quartets and language-specific spoken-word performers for international presentations.
TRACKLIST
- In This Moment, What Matters Most? – 5:06
- What is Carried, What is Left Behind? – 6:41
- Innocence – 3:46
- A Whispered Dawn (Spencer’s Lullaby) – 6:50
- Under an Impersonal Sky There is Hope – 4:57
- Bloom – 3:12
ABOUT DALE CORNELIUS
Dale Cornelius is an award-winning Australian composer based in Melbourne, with a career spanning more than two decades in screen scoring. His work has appeared across film, television, documentary and immersive projects, including Mary & Max, Backtrack, Till Human Voices Wake Us, The Doctor Blake Mysteries, Hidden Universe and The Great Barrier Reef.
With What is Carried, What is Left Behind?, Cornelius steps outside the demands of screen composition to create a work where memory, place and personal experience become the story itself.
ABOUT ECLECTIVE STRINGS
Eclective Strings is a Melbourne-based string collective featuring members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the Partridge String Quartet. Co-director Amy You has performed as a featured soloist on the Hans Zimmer Live world tour and collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma. The ensemble’s wider credits include work with Sigur Rós, Nai Palm of Hiatus Kaiyote, Lior and Wafia.
Follow Dale Cornelius
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dalecornelius_composer/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaleCorneliusOfficial/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/dalecornelius
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/dalecornelius
Website: https://dalecornelius.com.au/
TG_angel Turns Digital Frustration Into Pop Inspiration With New Single “MacOS!”
The UK artist brings technology nostalgia and interpersonal tension into their world of hyperpop, electronic music and “Cyber Angel” imagery.
UNITED KINGDOM: Hyperpop and electronic pop artist TG_angel has released “MacOS!”, a new single inspired by the unexpected connection between struggling with technology and becoming frustrated with another person. Released October 4th, the track introduces listeners to an artist whose creative universe brings together cyber aesthetics, religious imagery and LGBTQ+ identity.
The inspiration for “MacOS!” began with an attempt to recreate an older computer experience. While trying to emulate an old version of Mac OS on their everyday Windows computer, TG_angel encountered confusing downloads and mounting frustration. Their eventual solution was to purchase an old MacBook on Vinted, but the experience also sparked an idea for a song.
“The idea for MacOS! came from when I was trying to emulate an old version of Mac OS on my main Windows computer that I use for everything,” TG_angel explains. “I found it really frustrating, and I didn’t know how any of the downloads worked, so I just gave up and bought an actual old MacBook on Vinted, and I thought it’d be really interesting to use that idea of getting frustrated with downloading something and combine that with being frustrated with a person.”
That connection gives “MacOS!” a relatable starting point: the moment when something, or someone, refuses to work the way you hoped. By drawing a parallel between digital obstacles and personal friction, TG_angel turns an everyday annoyance into a playful creative premise that fits naturally within their technology-inspired world.
Pronounced “TG Underscore Angel,” TG_angel blends experimental electronic production with bouncy, high-energy pop. Their broader artistic approach moves between the cute, the futuristic and the unsettling, drawing on synth-driven sounds and the nostalgia of 2010s-era technology.
At the center of the project is the “Cyber Angel,” a character and evolving fictional universe shaped by digital culture, heavenly imagery, identity and spirituality. Music, fashion and visual art each contribute to that universe, with glowing interfaces, synthetic textures and angelic imagery forming its visual language.
“MacOS!” offers a new entry point into that world, pairing a distinctly personal origin story with TG_angel’s imaginative approach to pop. An accompanying music video adds another dimension to the release.
Follow TG_angel:
YouTube | TikTok | Spotify | SoundCloud
ARGYRO Turns Los Angeles Into a State of Mind on “She’s So LA”
By John Parker
Los Angeles is a place, a brand and, for generations of songwriters, a particularly durable fantasy. On “She’s So LA,” the Denver-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist ARGYRO (Scott Argiro) treats it primarily as the last of those: a collection of attitudes and images condensed into one magnetic woman.
The title says plenty. She isn’t simply from Los Angeles; she’s “so LA,” as though the city were a personality type. ARGYRO approaches her with equal parts attraction and fascination, turning her into a character who belongs to the same world of carefully constructed identities that runs throughout his Glitterati project.
“She’s So LA” is streamlined pop-rock, built for immediacy without sounding impatient. Argiro performed all of the studio instruments and vocals except the lead and rhythm guitars, which were played by Damon Wood. That largely self-contained recording process gives the track cohesion: rhythm, melody and vocal phrasing seem to move toward the same destination.
Wood’s guitars provide an important counterweight. They bring rock texture to a song that could easily have leaned entirely into polished pop, giving the arrangement some grit beneath its California sheen.
The record was mixed and mastered in Denver by Jesse O’Brien, and there is an amusing geographical contradiction at its center. A song devoted to Los Angeles mythology was created hundreds of miles away in Colorado. Perhaps that’s appropriate. Cities often loom largest in popular culture when viewed from a distance.
ARGYRO is also an actor, and “She’s So LA” demonstrates how readily he thinks in scenes. The song doesn’t need to explain its central character exhaustively. Instead, it establishes an atmosphere and lets listeners fill in the missing details. She becomes simultaneously a woman and an idea of a woman, inseparable from the city being projected onto her.
That visual instinct carries naturally into the accompanying music video, directed by Denver filmmaker Elgin Cahill. The collaboration reinforces something increasingly apparent in ARGYRO’s work: he isn’t treating songs and visuals as unrelated promotional products. They’re different parts of the same storytelling impulse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-pURYEiHqo
Within Glitterati, “She’s So LA” also sharpens one of Argiro’s recurring interests: the distance between identity and presentation. The album has repeatedly circled celebrity, glamour, ego, romance and authenticity. Here those concerns become lighter and flirtier without disappearing.
The song enjoys its fantasy too much to dismantle it.
That’s an important distinction. ARGYRO isn’t standing outside Los Angeles culture wagging a finger at superficiality. He’s intrigued by the spectacle. He recognizes its absurdities while remaining susceptible to its pleasures.
And “She’s So LA” succeeds because it understands that attraction rarely begins with careful investigation. Sometimes a gesture, an attitude or an image is enough.
We see someone.
We invent everything else.
Then, if the pop song is good enough, we fall for the invention.
Ashes Awaken Turn the Devil’s Favorite Phrase Inside Out on “We Sold Our Souls to Heaven”
There is something gloriously perverse about naming a Christian metal song “We Sold Our Souls to Heaven.”
For fifty years, heavy metal has been accused of selling souls in precisely the opposite direction. Parents panicked, preachers burned records, politicians held hearings, and somewhere in every suburban basement a kid discovered that a distorted guitar sounded considerably more convincing than whatever the adults were yelling about upstairs.
Michael Stover understands the joke.
More importantly, he understands that a good rock song needs something sharper than a sermon. “We Sold Our Souls to Heaven,” the new single from his Christian metal project Ashes Awaken, (October 23rd) takes one of rock mythology’s oldest clichés—the Faustian bargain—and hijacks it for the other side.
“It was a deal that changed my life / The day I let my savior take control.”
There’s your thesis. No coy metaphors. No spiritual hide-and-seek. Stover walks through the front door carrying the cross in one hand and an amplifier in the other.
That kind of directness could easily become unbearable. Christian rock has spent decades proving that good intentions do not automatically produce good records. Too often faith-based music feels afraid of dirt, contradiction or desperation—the very things that made rock and roll necessary in the first place.
Ashes Awaken is more interesting when it embraces them.
The central hook, “We sold our souls to heaven,” works because it sounds almost wrong. You hear the phrase and instinctively expect sulfur, crossroads and bad decisions. Instead, Stover turns surrender into liberation. The transaction here isn’t about losing yourself. It’s about unloading the baggage that was killing you.
That tension gives the song its pulse.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/22GJudYpAkGjF4e8dPHbh5
“When you are lost what will you do?” Stover asks, before answering with Jesus, healing and guidance through darkness. There is nothing ambiguous about the theology, but ambiguity isn’t always the point. Sometimes a song exists because somebody climbed out of a hole and feels compelled to yell back down to the people still trapped there.
There’s another wrinkle worth discussing: the performance is AI-generated under Stover’s creative direction. The lyrics, composition and concept are his; artificial intelligence provides the musical performance.
Cue the inevitable arguments about authenticity.
Fine. Have them.
Rock music has always had an uneasy relationship with technology, right up until yesterday’s sacrilege becomes tomorrow’s standard equipment. Distortion was noise. Synthesizers were cheating. Drum machines were soulless. Pro Tools was supposedly going to murder humanity.
Now here comes another machine through the door.
Whether listeners embrace that aspect of “We Sold Our Souls to Heaven” will depend largely on what they believe a recording is supposed to represent. But the song’s central idea remains stubbornly human: despair, surrender, faith, second chances.
And that is the peculiar charm of Ashes Awaken.
This is a song created with decidedly twenty-first-century machinery delivering a message approximately two thousand years old.
Somewhere between those extremes, the guitars roar, the title smirks and Michael Stover makes his bargain.
The devil, apparently, doesn’t get this one.
LONGBOAT CELEBRATES BRITAIN AND LONDON ON NEW ELECTRONIC ALBUM PROUD OF MY POSTCODE
Seattle-born, UK-based band Longboat explores Britain, London and everyday life on forthcoming electronic album, set for release in September
Longboat announces the forthcoming release of Proud of My Postcode, a new all-electronic album inspired by Britain, London and the experience of seeing the country through the eyes of an American musician who has made the UK an increasingly important part of his life.
Set for release at the end of September, Proud of My Postcode was recorded at Strongroom Studios in Shoreditch, with Will Davies engineering. Across the album, Longboat moves between Britain’s past and present, creating an observational portrait shaped by history, everyday life and a deep affection for the country.
Formed in Seattle in 2011, Longboat is a prolific, genre-fluid band led by its founding musician, an original jazz tenor saxophonist and songwriter. Although Longboat is often a solo operation in the studio, the band can expand to include live rock and jazz musicians, strings, horns and backing singers, depending on what each piece of music demands.
Proud of My Postcode is the 37th album in Longboat’s extensive catalogue.
An American Perspective on Britain
The album grew out of a long-standing fascination with Britain and the contrasts between life in the UK and Longboat’s founder’s original home of Seattle.
Seattle is surrounded by mountains, forests and wildlife, while Britain offers something entirely different: thousands of years of history embedded into its cities, towns and landscapes. For Longboat, that history provides an endless supply of subjects to observe and transform into music.
But Proud of My Postcode isn’t intended to be a comprehensive portrait of Britain. Instead, it reflects one musician’s personal relationship with the country and the details that have caught his attention along the way.
“Proud of My Postcode doesn’t draw a complete picture of the UK, but I hope it helps to convey my affection for this country,” says Longboat’s founder.
That affection extends beyond Britain’s famous landmarks and historical moments. Longboat is particularly interested in the everyday — the ordinary moments, habits and observations that make life in Britain distinctive.
“I particularly like the way people celebrate the mundane here between various and sundry political and economic crises,” he says.
Rather than writing traditional love songs, Longboat approaches songwriting as a form of observation. Freed from the conventions of romantic songwriting, the music can focus on the world immediately around it: people, places, history, culture and the contradictions of modern life.
“It’s pretty liberating,” he explains.
From Seattle to Clerkenwell
Longboat’s connection with the UK has also increasingly moved beyond the recording studio.
The band’s founder currently spends time between Britain and Seattle while putting longer-term plans into place, with the intention of making the UK his permanent home in the future. In London, he has also begun performing piano-only versions of around 100 songs from Longboat’s extensive repertoire around Clerkenwell and hopes to take these performances further afield.
This emphasis on direct, human performance reflects Longboat’s independent approach to music. The band is committed to songwriting, recording and performance without the use of artificial intelligence, placing human creativity and musical agency at the heart of its work.
With Proud of My Postcode, Longboat turns that philosophy towards Britain itself, creating an electronic album that captures the perspective of an American-born musician increasingly drawn to the history, character and everyday life of his adopted home.
About Longboat
Formed in Seattle in 2011, Longboat is a prolific, genre-fluid band led by its founding musician, an original jazz tenor saxophonist and songwriter. While often operating as a solo studio outfit, Longboat can expand to incorporate live rock and jazz musicians, strings, horns and backing singers according to the demands of the music. With more than 500 songs written and 39 albums recorded, Longboat has built an extensive catalogue driven by observation, experimentation and a fascination with the world around it.
Follow Longboat
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/longboatmusic/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longboatmusic
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/longboat
Bandcamp: https://longboat.bandcamp.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@longboatmusic4410
Light On The Hill release the official music video “Angels and Saints”
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Amana Melome’ Returns Recalibrated the Remixes: Soul, Jazz and Global Rhythms Collide on New Remix Album
Recalibrated The Remixes Streaming Link
“RECALIBRATED The Remixes” arrives 25 September 2026, marking the final chapter of an extraordinary journey of self-discovery
Multidisciplinary artist Amana Melome’ is set to release RECALIBRATED THE REMIXES on 25 September 2026, bringing the journey that began with her acclaimed RECALIBRATION album to a powerful and celebratory conclusion.
RECALIBRATED: is about what happens when the searching is over and the lessons have been absorbed. It is a musical celebration of returning to an authentic self, embracing personal strength and stepping into a new chapter with confidence.
“I created this album of remixes because I wanted to rejoice and dance in celebration of the journey of ‘coming home to my authentic self’ through recalibration,” says Amana Melome’. “I wanted to rejoice in the affirmations of strength, embracing every aspect of who I am and my inner magic in these songs.”
The album takes listeners on a genre-spanning journey, bringing together producers from across the world to reinterpret Amana’s music through Dub Reggae, Funk/Disco, Jazz-House and Soulful/Deep House, alongside unexpected jazz influences.
A Celebration of Becoming
The collection focuses on the songs ‘Con C.ALMA’, ‘Recalibration’ and ‘SO DONE!’, with the latter opening the album as an unapologetic statement of personal liberation.
“Done with playing small, done with playing it safe,” Amana explains, describing the track as a farewell to limiting beliefs and outdated versions of herself.
Featuring Joel Holmes and Cee Elassaad, SO DONE! transforms that declaration into a celebration of strength, freedom and renewed energy.
The Song That Brings Everything Full Circle
The album’s most powerful moment comes with ‘Space Age Mama Jama RECALIBRATED’, a reimagining of the very first song Amana ever recorded, originally featured on her debut album Indigo Red! more than ten years ago.
For the new version, Amana returned to the same producer who worked on the original, Saverio ‘Sage’ Principini, creating a remarkable musical full circle. Acclaimed pianist Deron Johnson, known for touring with artists including Miles Davis and Stanley Clarke, also contributes to the new arrangement.
“Same song, totally different ME!” says Amana. “Giving myself permission to shine at full volume!”
The track captures the transformation at the centre of the entire Recalibration story: a woman finally embodying the fierce, playful, powerful character she imagined when she first wrote the song.
“Here I am RECALIBRATED!”
Motherhood, Identity and Finding Her Way Back
Amana’s return to music has been deeply connected to motherhood. After becoming a mother, she stepped back from her musical career to focus on raising her daughter. Now, as her daughter has grown older, Amana has found the freedom to reconnect with her music and creative identity.
Her creative journey has always been surrounded by music. Her grandfather was jazz musician Jimmy Woode, while her grandmother was a jazz singer and dancer and her parents were musicians. Amana herself works across music, writing, painting, ceramics and dance, creating an artistic world that refuses to fit neatly into one category.
Her multicultural upbringing – with connections to Italy, the United States, Spain, Sweden and the Caribbean – has further shaped her distinctive approach to music and storytelling.
Her work has already received praise from music publications, with All About Jazz highlighting its “cross-cultural spirit and jazz subtlety”, while Independent Artist Buzz praised her ability to combine soul, folk and cinematic storytelling.
RECALIBRATED: THE REMIXES – Tracklisting
- LET’S GLOW [Intro]
- SO DONE – Cee Elassaad & Joel Holmes Remix
- CON C.ALMA (DUB REMIX) – Somos Animales
- RECALIBRATION – Opolopo Remix
- CON C.ALMA – Eli Anai Remix
- RECALIBRATION – GodBlessComputers Remix
- RECALIBRATION – Saverio ‘Sage’ Principini Remix
- RECALIBRATED [Interlude]
- SPACE AGE MAMA JAMA RECALIBRATED – Deron Johnson & Saverio ‘Sage’ Principini Remake
- SPACE AGE MAMA JAMA RECALIBRATED – Saverio ‘Sage’ Principini Fire Remix
Live Dates
3 October 2026 – Teatro Niccolini, Florence, Italy
10 October 2026 – Malaga, Spain
About Amana Melome’
Amana Melome’ is a multicultural and multidisciplinary artist whose music blends soul, jazz, folk, world music and cinematic storytelling. Based in Marbella, Spain, she draws on a life shaped by multiple cultures, creative disciplines and a deep connection to personal expression.
Follow Amana Melome’
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amanamelome/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmanaMusic/
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/amanamelome
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/amanamelome
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Amana.Melome
Website: www.amanamelome.com
Vicious Kitty Chase a Fresh Start on Rock Single “Bangkok City,” Available Now
Vicious Kitty Chase a Fresh Start on Rock Single “Bangkok City,” Available Now
The Seattle band turns heartbreak and everyday frustration into a spirited invitation to escape.
SEATTLE, WA: Seattle rock band Vicious Kitty invite listeners to leave their troubles behind with “Bangkok City,” a single featured on their self-titled debut album. Bringing together the band’s blend of rock, grunge and pop, the song explores the hope that somewhere beyond familiar surroundings, a better life might be waiting.
At the heart of “Bangkok City” is a character whose life has come apart. Thrown out by his girlfriend, carrying his belongings in garbage bags and wearing boots with holes in the soles, he begins imagining a destination where he can shake off his blues and start again. Bangkok becomes the promise of possibility, a place far removed from the disappointments he knows.
The premise taps into a familiar feeling: wanting to be somewhere else when daily life stops resembling the life you hoped for. By pairing that frustration with the dream of escape, Vicious Kitty give the story both humor and an emotional center. Beneath the invitation to adventure lies a relatable desire to regain control and find something worth looking forward to.
Vicious Kitty’s approach brings that story into a musical world built around rock energy and pop accessibility. The band describes its sound as an edgy mix of rock, grunge and pop, shaped by years of performing throughout Seattle and along the West Coast. That experience also informs its emphasis on engaging, energetic live shows.
The trio features founder, guitarist and songwriter Matt Tantrum, drummer Chris “Stixx” Gartland, and bassist Tony Terlicker. Together, they bring decades of live and studio experience to a project centered on original music, personality and a shared love of rock.
“Bangkok City” is available now. Fans can listen on Apple Music, watch the Official Music Video, and visit viciouskitty.band for music, band information and upcoming performances.
Band Contact: viciouskittyband@gmail.com
Booking: matbat40@yahoo.com
For press inquiries or interview requests please contact:
For more on Vicious Kitty, follow them on social media:
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Spotify
Fanny Alexandra Knows How To Give A Song A World Of Its Own
Good songwriting often depends on knowing when to stop explaining.
Fanny Alexandra’s “Black Pearl Summer” is a useful example. The subject matter is personal, but the song does not require a detailed account of every event behind it. Instead, Alexandra gives the listener a collection of recurring objects and locations and allows those details to carry some of the emotional weight.
The result is a lyric with its own internal geography.
A highway, tourists, fishermen, saltwater, tides, treasure and shipwrecks all belong to the same setting. That consistency matters. Once the listener understands the environment, Alexandra can move between personal recollection and larger observations without having to keep resetting the scene.
It is a particularly effective way of handling autobiographical material. The song looks back at Alexandra at 19 and at a period when survival had become more familiar than actually living, but she does not turn the track into a chronological account of those years. Instead, the past is filtered through a set of images that can be revisited from different directions.
The songwriting becomes more interesting as a result.
Consider the people introduced in the second verse. Alexandra describes one woman who presents herself as confident while using that confidence as protection, then another who can fill a room before disappearing from it. These are brief sketches rather than fully explained characters, but they broaden the song beyond autobiography.
The same thing happens with the recurring language of taking, returning and disappearing. The lyric keeps finding different ways to describe movement without losing its central environment.
Then comes the line, “Some things become beautiful / Some things become true / Very few become both.”
It is one of the song’s clearest lyrical moments, and it works because Alexandra has spent the preceding sections building towards it. The statement would have less impact without all the imagery around it.
The chorus follows a similar principle. The black pearl is not introduced merely as a striking title. It becomes a way of joining the song’s different strands: hardship, survival, appearance and the value attached to something after it has emerged from difficult circumstances.
That is what makes the lyric feel constructed rather than simply expressive. The images have jobs to perform.
Even the final return to the opening scene is structurally useful. The song comes back to the same view of the ocean, but the meaning has changed because the listener now knows what Alexandra has placed underneath it.
There is a lesson here for anyone interested in songwriting. A metaphor does not have to be complicated to carry an entire track. It needs to be flexible enough to develop.
Alexandra gives herself that flexibility by building “Black Pearl Summer” around one coherent environment and then letting different parts of her story move through it.
The technique is easy to overlook because the finished song feels natural. That is usually a good sign. The architecture is there, but it does not get in the way of the song.
Michael St. Over’s “Crave” Is Rock ’n’ Roll With Its Teeth in Your Neck
By Leslie Banks
There are love songs, there are lust songs, and then there are songs that sound like somebody kicked open the medicine cabinet, swallowed the whole damn pharmacy, and decided romance was the only antidote left.
Michael St. Over’s “Crave” belongs to that third category.
This isn’t candlelight and roses. It isn’t polite longing delivered over tasteful acoustic guitar while somebody stares meaningfully through a rain-streaked window. “Crave” is about desire as addiction—the kind that rattles your bones, hijacks your common sense, and leaves you wondering whether the thing keeping you alive might also be slowly killing you.
Which, when you think about it, is about as rock ’n’ roll as romance gets.
From the opening declaration—“I was born to love you baby / You were born to drive me crazy”—St. Over dispenses with subtlety. Good. Rock music has spent far too many years apologizing for wanting something. “Crave” doesn’t apologize. It grabs desire by the collar and drags it straight into the spotlight.
The song’s central metaphor is gloriously excessive: love as drug, lover as addiction, passion as monkey-on-your-back compulsion. St. Over sings about needing another person like a fix, and the language is intentionally dangerous. This isn’t some soft-focus Hallmark version of devotion. It’s bodily. Desperate. Slightly unhealthy. Maybe very unhealthy.
And that’s precisely why it works.
Great rock songs have rarely been instruction manuals for sensible living. Chuck Berry wasn’t writing tax advice. The Stones didn’t build a career around emotional moderation. Rock ’n’ roll is supposed to exaggerate feelings until they become enormous enough to shake the speakers.
“Crave” understands that.
Musically, St. Over plants the song firmly in muscular modern rock territory, built around an immediate hook and the kind of chorus designed to stick after one pass. The lead and rhythm guitars give the track its bite, while St. Over handles the vocals himself. There’s a satisfying self-contained quality to the recording—less committee-built product, more somebody locking themselves in a room until the thing in their head finally comes roaring out.
The chorus is where the song earns its title. “Your love’s a drug I jones to take,” St. Over sings, doubling down on imagery that would collapse under its own weight if he delivered it timidly. He doesn’t. The performance sells the obsession because there’s conviction behind it.
Then comes the bridge, where the craving gets even more physical: skin, breath, touch, proximity. By this point the song has stopped pretending love is primarily an intellectual exercise.
Thank God.
There’s something refreshingly unfashionable about “Crave.” It believes in big emotion. It believes guitars should sound like guitars. It believes a chorus ought to announce itself instead of politely requesting admission.
Most importantly, it believes desire should feel dangerous.
Maybe that’s the secret hiding underneath all the addiction metaphors. “Crave” isn’t really celebrating dependency. It’s describing that terrifying moment when another human being gets close enough to become necessary.
That’s romance without the greeting card.
That’s obsession plugged into an amplifier.
And that’s rock ’n’ roll.
Reduce repeated addiction imageryReplace the placeholder byline
Pre-save “Crave” at http://tunelink.to/michael-st-over_crave
Sufia Giza Carries the Dub-Poetry Tradition Forward on New Roots Reggae Album “Echoes of Freedom”
Produced by Jah-Eye and featuring veteran reggae musicians Carlton “Santa” Davis and Lesterfari Simbarashe, the nine-track set begins its rollout on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Indigenous author, historical researcher and dub-poetess Sufia Giza first entered the media spotlight with her 2018 book, Moundbuilders of Ancient America: A Legacy Reclaimed, which explored her ancestral roots and the legacy of ancient mound-building cultures. Now, Giza will mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day with the October 12 premiere of her “Quantum Nonsense” video trailer, launching the multi-stage rollout for her forthcoming nine-track roots reggae album, Echoes of Freedom, extending her historical and cultural work through poetry and music while creating space for intergenerational conversations about identity, remembrance, resistance and healing.
The video trailer draws from the album track ‘Quantum Nonsense,’ which examines the complex history of Black people in Indian Country and invites a deeper conversation about the intersections of Indigenous and African American history.
Following the trailer premiere, Giza will pre-release one album track, the ethereal “I Went to Church Today,” on November 2, the Day of the Dead. Written while she was grieving her mother’s death, the song opens the campaign on a day associated with remembrance and honoring those who have passed. The complete digital album is scheduled for release December 31, 2026, on Unity Works Music, coinciding with Kuumba, the Kwanzaa principle of creativity. CDs will follow in 2027, with a vinyl edition also under consideration.
“Echoes of Freedom is my way of bringing the voices of the past into the conversations we are having right now. Releasing the ‘Quantum Nonsense’ trailer on Indigenous Peoples’ Day is a way of honoring Indigenous history while setting the tone for an album rooted in reverence and restoration,” said Giza.
Of Muskogee Creek and Gullah-Geechee heritage, Giza lives between Charleston, South Carolina, and Tobago, Trinidad’s sister island. Her work as a spoken word artist follows the dub-poetry tradition of artists who place politically and culturally conscious verse over music, including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Nikki Giovanni, the Watts Prophets, the Last Poets and Mutabaruka. With Echoes of Freedom, she pairs positive, reflective lyrics with a mellow roots reggae foundation, using song as a bridge between lived memory and contemporary questions.
The album is produced by Jah-Eye and features veteran musicians including drummer Carlton “Santa” Davis of Soul Syndicate, whose credits include work with Peter Tosh and Ziggy Marley, and guitarist Lesterfari Simbarashe of King’s Music. Their instrumentation supports Giza’s measured vocal delivery across a collection recorded over a period of years.
Echoes of Freedom includes work that has already reached audiences through film and publishing. “Cape Fear Massacre” appeared on the soundtrack to Christopher Everett’s award-winning 2015 documentary Wilmington on Fire, while “Softly Walking” was published in the 2016 Routledge anthology Emergent Possibilities for Global Sustainability: Intersections of Race, Class and Gender.
Other selections explore grief, consciousness, perseverance and self-worth. Alongside “I Went to Church Today,” the album includes “Indigo Moods” and the inspirational “Keep It Movin’.” “Reflection of Love” examines low self-esteem, while “Quantum Nonsense,” the visual entry point for the campaign, considers the history of anti-Blackness in Indian Country.
“Dub poetry allows me to place history inside rhythm, where it can be felt as well as heard. I want this music to open conversations between generations and encourage people to look more deeply at the stories that have shaped us,” Giza added.
The “Quantum Nonsense” trailer combines desert drone footage with photography edited by Giza. It premieres October 12, 2026, in observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day and can be viewed at https://youtu.be/ov9IyUT7L6g .
Additional music and album details will be announced at https://sufiagiza.com .
About Sufia Giza
Sufia Giza is an Indigenous Muskogee Creek and Gullah-Geechee spoken word artist, dub-poetess, author and documentary filmmaker whose work explores history, culture, identity and the African diaspora. She is the author of the 2018 book Moundbuilders of Ancient America: A Legacy Reclaimed, which documents her decades-long exploration of her family’s Indigenous ancestry and the ancient mound-building cultures of the Americas.
A native of Riverside, California, with roots in South Carolina and the Caribbean, she holds three degrees, including a master’s degree in bilingual and cross-cultural educational counseling. Her creative catalog also includes two poetry chapbooks and five documentaries, among them REGGAE MILITIS The Bizness of Reggae Music and ethnobotanical films examining medicinal plant traditions across the African diaspora. Echoes of Freedom is her second release on Unity Works Music.
Visit https://sufiagiza.com and reconnect to your roots!
Mila Sidhu Blends Alt-Pop and R&B on Empowering New Single ‘One Night’
Mila Sidhu steps into a more assured side of her artistry with One Night, a sultry alt-pop and R&B single built around sensuality, rhythm and self-possession. The London-born singer-songwriter delivers a track that feels designed for the late-night hours, pairing sleek production with an understated intensity that gives its confidence plenty of room to breathe.
At the heart of One Night is Sidhu’s commanding vocal presence. Her delivery moves effortlessly between intimate and seductive, while the production maintains a crisp, atmospheric pulse that places the track somewhere between alternative R&B and darker pop. Rather than portraying desire through uncertainty, Sidhu approaches it from a position of control, capturing the thrill of being wanted while retaining the power to decide what happens next.
The track also introduces an Indian influence into Sidhu’s musical palette. Developed with producer Siloe, the song began with Sidhu’s desire to incorporate elements of her heritage, later drawing on her exploration of traditional Indian scales while working with a singer in India. These influences add another layer to an already distinctive production without overpowering the song’s contemporary pop and R&B foundations.
That balance reflects Sidhu’s broader musical identity, which draws from R&B, jazz, hip-hop and darker pop. Yet One Night feels particularly direct: where some of her songwriting explores heartbreak, vulnerability and emotional uncertainty, this single is centred on confidence and self-definition. It is sensual without losing its edge, and polished without sacrificing personality.
With its sleek production, assured vocals and subtle cultural detail, One Night marks a compelling shift in emphasis for Mila Sidhu. It is a track built around presence, the kind of song that enters quietly, establishes its atmosphere, and makes sure it holds the room.
