Let’s go on a small dream journey, shall we? Close your eyes, sit back. And imagine you’re twenty-three years young. You’re twenty-three years young and suddenly shoot, let’s say, Beyoncé for the cover of American Vogue. Imagine you’re the first Black photographer to ever do that. Imagine after that you’re regularly invited to the Met Gala, not to work in the background, but as a guest who walks the red carpet and who gets dressed by Wales Bonner and Prada. Imagine you’ve taken portraits of Virgil Abloh, Anok Yai, Harry Styles, and Kamala Harris, among many more. Now, imagine the time passed, and today you’re thirty. You get your first solo exhibition in Paris. It’s a crazy career, I know. Something that happens only to a very small percentage of creatives, let alone to Black creatives, but it’s exactly what Tyler Mitchell did. Exactly where he is right now. Until January 25th next year, you can visit Wish This Was Real at the MEP, his first ever solo exhibition in the city of love, lights, and fashion.

I would love to know how you felt during the short dream journey. What your thoughts were. Were you impressed? Inspired? Jealous, maybe? Understandable. This exhibition is about Mitchell being an artist, photographer, and filmmaker born in Atlanta. About him buying his first ever Canon camera in his teenage years and teaching himself to shoot skateboarding videos. About him creating a visual language that tells a story of beauty, style, and utopia. A visual language that is gentle, whimsical, and makes you wonder. And, most importantly, about him creating fictionalised moments of an imagined, paradisiacal future of Black life: empowerment and self-determination. 

Looking at his images, you can see that Mitchell’s work is often inspired by pastoral and domestic scenes. A garden, for example. A playground. Two women doing their hair. A group of people having a picnic on the bank of a small river. It’s dreamy, but somehow, it’s also everyday life. It’s a fictional future, set against the backdrop of historical elements. Alongside these images, the MEP now features works from the past ten years, showing the popular photographer’s artistic practice through, of course, photography, but also video and sculpture. Through portraits taken in the US, in Europe and in West Africa. Prints on fabrics and on mirrors. Brief interjection: The exhibition showcases works that were created when Mitchell was twenty… No pressure, but what did you do when you were twenty? 

It's probably better to not compare yourself so much, so let's not. I’m joking anyway. Mitchell deserves every piece of success he has and is a necessary figure in the public creative scene. Even if you didn’t know him before that much, the chance that you have seen some of his photography somewhere, on billboards, social media or magazines, is pretty high. For example, the catalogue photography project for this year’s Met exhibition—as you can see, he’s very close with Anna—for the theme Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. In this catalogue, there is a big variety of prominent Black figures featured. Law Roach, ASAP Rocky and Anok Yai, among others, all dressed and staged as stylish dandies. Or, if you watched the fourth season of The Bear, you probably saw two of his artworks appear as framed pieces in Sydney Adamu’s flat. Should I name more? I guess not.

To showcase Mitchell’s work from the past ten years in a logical way, the MEP, under the guidance of co-curators Brendan Embser, Sophia Greiff, and Clothilde Morette, decided to divide everything into three thematic sectors that follow the photographer’s artistic evolution. There’s Lives/Liberties, focused on early influences, immersion in skateboard culture, leisure, community, self-expression, and societal unrest at the same time. Then there’s Postcolonial/Pastoral, showing elaborate, blissful scenes in nature, inviting contemplation through vibrant landscapes and symbolic references and the idea of a paradise that is underscored by the complexities of social identity and history. The last sector after that is Family/Fraternity, a sector that celebrates the resilience and heritage of Black communities, showing family portraits and intimate scenes. Home as a sanctuary. 

That’s a lot of words to describe the exhibition, but in the end, you just have to go visit it yourself and remember one sentence: Wish This Was Real by Mitchell shows how portraiture can be rooted in the past, in history and experiences, while evoking imagined futures. He expands visions of Black life and creates a world in which Black creatives, personalities and everyday moments finally get their well-deserved space. Oops, that was two sentences. But all jokes aside. If you’re in Paris anytime until the end of January 2026, continue the dream journey and go to the MEP to celebrate one of the most successful and most talented photographers of our generation. To celebrate Tyler Mitchell.

Carrie Bradshaw is a really relatable character, and not because of her questionable taste in men, but because of her obsession with shoes. Because you can have a closet full of them and it never feels like enough. One pair of really nice shoes and you’ve basically signed the death sentence for your bank account for eternity. The biggest problem? Every day we are hit with new releases that are almost impossible to resist. The latest one? The new design of the Dior Men’s B30 sneakers.

I know, I know. You’re probably thinking you already have too many shoes, but hear me out, sneakerheads: these are different. Completing the silhouettes of the Dior Men Spring 2026 collection and inspired by the world of running, the B30 Countdown Tech sneakers have been redesigned into a completely new variation, lightweight yet impressively durable, promising a bold look for literally any occasion. In other words, they are the kind of everyday essential you will want. And the colour drop helps in that: five new shades (black, white, beige, green, and orange) basically engineered to tempt even the strongest willpower.

John Maus paces stages like a man possessed, tearing at his hair, striking himself with the microphone, embodying what he terms "the hysterical body”; a physical display of intensity meant to combat the play-acting inherent in staged music. Blood, sweat or tears, the wager for Maus is always the same: that unmediated emotional expression might pierce through the ambient irony of contemporary culture to reach something resembling truth.

But sincerity alone does not inoculate against catastrophe. In 2018, Maus's brother and bandmate Joe tragically died while on tour in Latvia from an undiagnosed heart condition. His uncle and aunt followed within months. Then January 6th, 2021: Maus attended the Capitol protests to discuss scoring a documentary, was photographed at the scene, and responded to the ensuing controversy by tweeting Pope Pius XI's 1937 encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge. The gesture was interpreted as evasive, coded, insufficient. Festival cancellations arrived. Ariel Pink, his oldest collaborator and "very first fan,” claimed publicly that Maus was "1001% on Team Trump.” For an artist who positions himself within radical leftist discourse, the accusations constituted a wholesale misreading of his political and aesthetic commitments.

Later Than You Think emerged a phoenix from this wreckage. Recorded in the Ozarks across twenty weeks, the album incorporates Latin hymns, references George Floyd's murder, and closes with pure Gregorian chant. It is an album about mourning, complicity, and the search for redemption through faith and artistic discipline. I spoke with Maus in Bristol on November 5th, 2025, hours before his performance at Simple Things festival, about monastic withdrawal, the co-optation of Christianity, and whether symbolic gestures can ever adequately communicate political position in an age of interpretive hysteria.

It’s a real pleasure to be meeting with you today! Firstly, how are you doing? You’re in the middle of what you call your “American Pilgrimage” tour; now extended to the UK and Europe. Tonight, is Simple Things in Bristol, you’ve sold out shows in London, New York, LA. How does it feel to be back on stage after so long?

It’s been wild. I mean, I’ve done a lot of shows these last few months. it’s actually pretty gruelling, man. But it feels good. It feels right. I don’t want to wait seven years again between records, you know? I want to stay at it. I’ve got ideas about pushing it further, getting more in touch with what’s happening now. But that’s never been my strength. I usually have to look under rocks, see what others aren’t doing. In any case, it’s great to feel this energy again. The fans have been amazing. I came into this thinking I might do a few small club dates, and then suddenly it’s a real tour. It’s humbling.

Let’s get right into your new album. The title Later Than You Think comes from that phrase carved into Orthodox monks’ skulls: “Hasten to do the work of God.” In our culture, artists are expected to feed the content machine endlessly. What does it mean to you to embrace memento mori? Are you advocating slowness and introspection?

Yeah, I mean... death is the limit, right? You can’t fit it into those systems. There’s a whole Heideggerian angle; that it’s authentic to keep death ever before your mind. Even if you’re secular, it’s a meditation worth doing. I remember the Romans had that old tombstone line, “Quid sumus, quid erimus” — “what you are, we once were; what we are, you shall be.” You can’t go wrong meditating on finitude. It keeps things grounded.

It’s kind of like being aware of the finite nature of everything, right?

Yeah, but also eternity. It’s more than just “life is short.” It’s “what you become, you always will have been,” once you think beyond our time. There’s something comforting in that, too.

The opening track references George Floyd’s murder and the Minneapolis unrest. You sing, “Because we built it, we can watch it go up in flames / Because we killed him, we will watch it go up in flames.” Who is the “we” in that lyric? You, the audience, the state, or everyone collectively?

It’s a collective we. As twisted as it sounds, we’re all complicit in how the world is structured. It’s not just me, not just the cops, not just “Them.” There’s a kind of untruth, call it Archons or dominions or just power structures, and we all play a part in it. Even if just by inertia. It’s the hardest thing: to do something truly different. So yeah, we means humanity in general.

I just want to clarify; when you say “we all play a part”, do you mean just those in the US specifically, or more so globally?

I mean, the problems are most acute in the US, sure. But really it applies everywhere. Any time people cooperate with the status quo, no matter what country, to some extent they’re complicit in the injustice. It’s hard work to break out of that. So, yeah; the lyric indicts structures of injustice in general.

You’ve consistently argued that your use of church modes isn’t just 80s nostalgia but an engagement with harmonies “associated with the divine.” On this new album you go even further back; you have a Gregorian chant on Adorabo. Are you mining these ancient forms as a rejection of modern sonic trends, or do you think synths and medieval modes simply offer more colour and possibility than today’s pop conventions?

Yeah, all of the above. Modern popular music, especially post-war, has really narrowed. In a lot of post-80s pop, you don’t get key changes or adventurous harmony. It’s mostly stuck in one diatonic space, you know? That feels more like medieval polyphony, where multiple lines make triadic harmony without ever really “modulating” through keys like in Beethoven. It’s interesting, because if you look at it historically, Western harmony started with plainsong and organum; literally ancient chants. That’s the seed of all our harmonic adventure. So by going back, I’m tapping into the root, the germ of our harmonic language. There’s a direct line from Gregorian chant to, say, the Lydian mode in film music to modern synths. The origin carries invocations of prayer and the divine, and cinema taught us to associate certain modes with horror with the ethereal. I am riffing on that whole history when I bring those modes into modern synth practice.

Is the drift away from those modes related contextually to a drift away from church and spirituality?

There is a connection. Much of that old musical thinking is tied to ecclesial development. The way music was written down, the practices, the forms, they grew inside church life. Even if people forget that, the origin remains. It still haunts the music.

In the bio for Later Than You Think, there’s a line that your live persona has been described as a kind of “hysterical body” on stage; something you’ve said yourself as an antidote to play-acting. You have called that an attack on play-acting. After personal loss and public controversy over the past years, how has your relationship to radical sincerity changed? Is the hysterical body still an adequate vessel for truth?

It’s kind of the only move I know! I mean, what else am I going to do? I came up on late-punk stuff where part of the point was to smash expectations, to make something sound like nonsense at the limit of what music is. If you’re truly earnest or sincere these days, it does often come off as absurd or even comical. That’s just how it is now. Any heartfelt act looks a bit ridiculous in our ironic age. So yeah, I embrace that. The gamble is: if I go fully sincere, people might see past the absurdity to the meaning underneath. It’s a wager. I’ve done it in different forms, but basically if I’m on stage, raw sincerity wrapped in a bit of chaos is what I have.

You have returned to Catholicism after a lengthy lapse, while also critiquing the American-right for co-opting Christian imagery for the purpose of evangelical bigotry. How do you reconcile your faith with the political use of Christian symbols by forces you ostensibly oppose?

I actually don’t think they’re synonymous. Christianity is like any tool; it can be used in different ways. Sure, in the public eye it’s been painted by reactionaries, and that’s awful. But look at history: there have always been two sides. In any church you had some pushing with empire, and some like Dorothy Day working with the resistance. It’s not inherently one or the other. At its core, I think Christianity is meant to interrupt all worldly powers. It’s an announcement that there’s something beyond Caesar’s kingdom. The whole idea was to turn the pagan cosmos upside down; to spit on the “archons,” so to speak. Not to reinforce it. So yes, sure, some have used it to justify the status quo, but others used it to scream in protest. A religion that leaves no stone unturned, no power unjudged, that’s the original revolutionary idea. It has a subversive core, salvation through humility, not domination. That’s fundamentally anti-state. When people say “evangelical,” I say: if anything, the true Gospel is a call to question all states. It’s not a patriotic anthem, it’s an alternative sovereignty.

So you’d say the evangelists who use it are kind of in a dialectical prison of their own construction? Mastering one state but slaves to their logic?

Exactly. If Jesus came back, he’d call that out the same way he called out the Romans and the Pharisees. Honestly, if we’re talking evangelicals: I think the faith itself is supposed to judge “all the powers that be,” consign them to the fire. It’s not Reagan or any specific leader. But of course, in practice people are two-faced about it. Even progressives will parrot the right words while backing empire; “Oh we just elected an African-American president so everything’s fine.” It’s obfuscatory.

For sure; it reminds me of that meme "they say the next bombs will be sent by a woman"; the Democrats will enact policies reflecting American Imperialist ambitions just as much as Republican "war hawks", but will put a rainbow onto the plane to act as if that justifies the egregious violence and destabilisation.

Yeah, I know the one. I mean, I'm post-Marxist, a radical or whatever, but I have liberal friends. These guys always tell me “c'mon man you gotta be an adult”, but these are the same people who tried to recuperate Dick Cheney!
I mean, where I'm coming from is it's fundamentally just the good cop, bad cop thing, because whichever cop is on duty, Gaza is getting flattened either way. It's just the one side are sad about it and the other side are really happy about it. They’ll sing songs about it. Those are the two choices. And I’m told by my liberal friends to just be an adult and vote for the ones that are sad about it, you know?

I’d like to address the whole Capitol incident. You went to the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, to discuss scoring a film. You posted Pope Pius XI’s Mit Brennender Sorge as a response, which you now admit wasn’t clear enough. Looking back, do you believe referencing a papal encyclical was sufficient in ‘clearing your name’ by evidently illustrating your "anti- Trumpian" position? Or were you perhaps, as an academic and theorist, overestimating your audience’s capacity to decode your position?

No, it clearly wasn’t enough. (Laughs.) I mean, I immediately disavowed any political meaning. I’ve tried to clear the air on Reddit and elsewhere, but there’s always someone calling me a Nazi no matter what I do. Truth is, I wasn’t ready for the social media environment at the time. I was living in rural Minnesota, off-grid, not engaging in those circles. Once you’re in the internet machine you have to know how it decodes everything, what looks like what. In hindsight, I guess I should have thought more about the optics.

As a result of all that, you were dropped from an ElectroniCON festival in 2023, lost friendships, faced accusations of fascism. In a 2018 Wasted Talent interview you talked about the “hysterical pitch” of politics and how quick people are to label anyone alt-right. Having lived through your own cancellation, do you see it as a puritanical sect within the left failing to engage with complexity, or do you accept that your presence at the January 6th Capitol, cross-examined with other controversies such as your lack of publicly disavowing the politics of Sam Hyde and Million Dollar Extreme back in 2016, or donating $500.00 to Trump’s PAC in early 2020, warranted the conclusion of some of your sympathies towards the alt-right?

I mean, I disavowed Sam Hyde’s stuff immediately when people raised it, and I’m happy to have political disagreements with anybody as friends I hate that man! But people need black-and-white. They want a statement: “I condemn Sam, I condemn X.” But I don’t see it as quite like being either an enabler or a card-carrying anything. It just shows how zero nuance there is. Everyone’s in their trench. There’s no room to say, I donated to Bernie too, by the way! (laughs at the mix-up). I know on paper it looked messy, but people jump straight to conspiracies: “Oh, he’s alt-right.” No, it was a mix-up and a misunderstanding. I mean watching Bernie get screwed twice killed me. Anyway, I've made my peace with all of it.

Ariel Pink, you have described as your “very first fan,” you called him “the zeitgeist embodied”, claimed on the podcast Wrong Opinions that you’re “1001% on Team Trump.” How do you reconcile your anti-authoritarianism, made explicit on the track Tous Les Gens Qui Sont Ici Sont D’ici with Pink’s public characterisation of you? What’s your relationship like with him now?

Ariel and I have been friends since college. He’s been a huge influence on me, musically and otherwise. I actually saw him just in LA last month. We chatted, he knows where I stand. I told him outright, “I don’t support Trump or anything like that.” I won’t speak for him, you know? You’d have to ask him about why he says what he says. But he’s still my friend. I care about him, man. He’s been through the wringer too, in his own way. It’s sad all around, honestly. All I can do is keep talking to him and everyone else like humans. We’ll probably tease out that thread eventually. He’s still an incredible musician.

You talk a lot about monastic practice, the monks chanting the hours seven times a day, and you’ve connected it to this idea of “destituent power” (like Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to”). But those monks aren’t out there agitating in the streets; they’re in devotion. Is it really a revolutionary act, or is it just turning political action into an aesthetic? Is there something inherently subversive about that withdrawal?

Well, first, remember people like Dorothy Day; the Catholic Worker movement; they turned faith into activism. But let’s think about it philosophically. One could say those monks are simply adoring the transcendent seven times a day. To some revolutionary Marxists, maybe that’s just a passive stance, not political enough. But I don’t buy that entirely. What if the devotion is the point? Imagine: while the world is busy chasing power, these monks are turning their whole being toward the infinite. From one perspective, that’s as subversive as anything; it denies the legitimacy of every worldly power. It doesn’t collapse them, it eclipses them with something higher.

Switching gears a bit: You’ve spoken about creating sound through visual representation, literally drawing the sign of the cross in your spectrograph to generate the phasing effect on Disappears, and synthesising the jarring noise sequence in Losing Your Mind from scratch as pure data. You’re here essentially encoding religious iconography into the waveforms itself, invisible to the listener yet structurally determinative. I find this fascinating! I’d love to hear your reasonings behind this. How does this approach alter your relationship to composition as an art form?

I love this process! I want to keep doing more of it. One way to think about it is this: what feels more radical? You could write a thirty minute piece of synthesised sound with the usual pretence of serial technique, something in the spirit of Stockhausen, which ends up sounding like the music of technocratic bureaucrats. Or you could work inside an idiom and interrupt it with those synthesised forms. You cannot get a real surprise without an idiom to push against. That tension is what interests me.

You taught philosophy at the University of Hawaii, wrote a 338-page dissertation on communication technologies and social control, then seemingly abandoned academia. Do you miss teaching? There’s an almost didactical impulse in how you discuss your influences — Bach, Badiou, Bartleby — as if you’re trying to educate your audience out of their complacency. Has your music become a form of pedagogy by other means?

(Laughs) Oh man, maybe I sound like a pretentious asshole half the time, right? Look, I never really took to teaching. I co-taught a class here and there during my PhD, but it was always boring. I’d just read notes or the book chapters. I never found my stride on that. Once I got out of the University, I kind of dropped it completely. I got into music, touring, writing, and I drifted away from all that French theory and stuff. Now I’m going back and filling in the gaps; reading Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Plotinus, all that classical metaphysics stuff. It’s been interesting to see it side by side with Nietzsche and the modern theorists I used to love. Suddenly a lot of that stuff that seemed profound now just looks like it’s hiding being behind a veil of the sublime. Honestly, I think I’d get more clarity from all those medieval philosophers. They know how to talk about “being” without calling it “sublime mystery.” But yeah, no, I don’t miss the lectern. I think this is where I belong; performing, writing, thinking on the fly.

So you’re brushing up on the Neoplatonists, Scholastics, stuff you never had time for before?

Exactly. I just realised I never read Bonaventure or Nicholas of Cusa or even Aquinas when I was doing Derrida and Deleuze all day. So now I’m kind of doing my own curriculum. It’s fun. It helps me understand where the modern stuff might have gone sideways. Like, when Nietzsche talks about a “will to power” or Derrida about the “infinite text,” I can see the critique from the standpoint of, say, Aquinas’ transcendentals; that being is one, true, beautiful. That stuff matters. Without those anchors, everything just drifts into a chaotic plane of intensity.

You’ve long railed against lazy genre labels and comparisons. Still, critics keep lumping you in with hypnagogic pop, chillwave, baroque indie, whatever. How do you reconcile your dislike for genre with the reality that people will always put you in some context, for better or worse?

I mean, labels can be useful to a degree, insofar as they help people find new music. But honestly, I don’t care much what genre box I'm put in. If someone wants to write “hypnagogic pop” or “synth-baroque” or whatever else, then fine. It’s all just taxonomy. I guess I should sit down and learn Wikipedia genres if it’ll make people happy. At the end of the day, it doesn’t change the music itself. For me, it’s all one big thing. Every song is part of one long event, one artist’s conversation with the universe. As long as the work gets out there, it doesn’t matter what they call it.

In an interview with Stereogum, you said, “I thought my legacy would speak for itself.” You’ve now made seven albums over two decades, survived your brother’s death, nearly lost your marriage, been publicly crucified for your politics, withdrawn into monk-like isolation, rediscovered faith, and returned with what many call a masterpiece. Could one call this a Dostoevsky-esque redemption arc? Wouldn’t that make for a pretty decent legacy?

Well, thank you, that’s a nice way to put it. I don’t know if I’m ready to judge any of it as a “masterpiece” or think too much about my legacy. I just hope people end up listening and finding meaning in it. I do my best on each record, and after that, what happens happens. Maybe it looks heroic or tragic, I don’t know. I just hope people enjoy the music and performances. Time will tell if any of it lasts.

On a lighter note; I’ve noticed that you have TikTok now! How’ve you been finding the platform? How do you feel knowing that kids on TikTok are now discovering tracks like Hey Moon and Cop Killer sandwiched between viral 15-second dance trends and saccharine “hope-core” content-fodder?

Yeah, I’m on TikTok. I figured what, why not? Part of the point is kind of making fun of it anyway. Everything on TikTok is obviously part of what I critique: the imperative to “consume, communicate, enjoy” like I talked about in the dissertation. But since everyone’s on it, why not get my hands dirty? I just put up bits of songs or funny clips. It’s not me trying to subvert TikTok; it’s me using TikTok to point people at the music. If some kid sees my song on a dance video and then gets curious, hey, more power to it. At least they found the music, you know? If some Gen Z kid hears Hey Moon while making a dance or montage and decides to dig deeper, that’s awesome. I want my music to permeate through the younger generation, regardless of how they come across it.

Are there any artists of the new generation that you’d consider collaborating with in the near future?

I’d love to work with someone like Bladee. This guy’s the real deal. He’s what punk means for his generation; totally DIY, pushing boundaries. A collab with him would be amazing.

Finally; I want to ask about the “performative male” trend. You know the meme; men ostentatiously reading Intermezzo in coffee shops, curating Spotify playlists of Clairo and Mitski, photographing their tote bags filled with feminist literature. Whilst it might all be a psyop funded by a Big Bookstore/Big Coffee Shop coalition to sell more iced matcha and Sylvia Plath tote bags, there’s also a darker reading: that mocking young men for engaging with literature and introspective female artists is symptomatic of rising anti-intellectualism, a contempt for masculine vulnerability and intellectual curiosity. Where do you stand on the discourse?

(Laughs) I mean I can’t say I’m familiar with the term, but it sounds fun. Men enjoying feminist literature or music sounds good by me! I do think mocking introspection or discouraging reading is lame. Anti-intellectualism is definitely dangerous. If anyone has a tote bag full of books, feminist or otherwise, more power to you.

Outrun has been out for a few weeks, and its story captures the energy shaping Seoul’s underground. The track was born at the first lifestream party and finished in a single day after MAR VISTA and Club Angel finally met in Seoul, turning an online connection into a real creative exchange. The session moved quickly, shaped by the fast, bright intensity that has become central to the city’s evolving rave landscape.

What Outrun reveals is the scale of what he is building through Higher Ground and the growing lifestream ecosystem. The sound leans into Seoul’s joyful rave moment, where speed and warmth coexist and community comes first. As they shared on release day, “From internet friends to brothers… Outrun was one of those moments where everything just clicked and the track wrote itself within a day.” New releases in November and December and upcoming shows across Europe and Australia make this momentum feel only just beginning.

Where are you speaking to us from right now, and how are you feeling now that Outrun is out on Higher Ground?

I’m talking to you from my favourite café right in front of my place in Seoul. It’s a two-storey café—spacious, with lots of plugs, so I come here all the time. Now that Outrun is finally out in the world, I’m honestly thrilled. Releasing this track with Gabe, aka Club Angel, who’s not only a producer I deeply respect but also one of my favourite people, makes me incredibly happy.

Outrun started as a spontaneous moment at your lifestream party with Club Angel. When did you realise that night had turned into something worth releasing?

That’s true! A few months ago, when I launched lifestream—my first event brand and label—I really wanted to bring Club Angel to Korea. I think it was the second day of our session when we met in the studio, sharing ideas and playing each other’s favourite tracks. We both felt it right away; something special was going to happen that day. The track came together so fast. We finished it in a single day. After lunch, Gabe laid down the bassline first, and we both instantly loved it. I added my drums, we arranged them together, and before we knew it, Outrun was done. As soon as it was finished, I knew, this had to come out immediately.

You’ve said you’ve always been drawn to swing, groove, and punchy drums. How much of that early instinct still shapes Outrun?

Absolutely! I always pay so much attention to the punch, texture, and swing of the drums. In Outrun, you can really hear my influences, from old-school hard house to trance and UKG. Since I was a kid, I’ve always listened to drums first. I’d find myself thinking, This track’s melody is great, but I wish the kick hit harder, or The percussion could swing a bit more forward. Those thoughts eventually became second nature in how I produce today.

There’s a kind of “level design” logic in how the track unfolds. Do video games influence how you think about structure and pacing in music?

Definitely. When I’m not making music, I’m usually playing games or watching game-related content. For Outrun, I was listening nonstop to the opening song of Kingdom Hearts I—I was fully immersed in that vibe. Those mysterious, emotional atmospheres you find in JRPGs really influence my music. When I make a track, I don’t just jump into production; I visualise a world first. Games give me that synesthetic inspiration—the way sound, visuals, and emotion merge together. That’s a huge part of my creative process.

Seoul’s underground scene keeps evolving through small crews and off-grid parties. From your perspective, what’s the most vital thing young communities can do to keep that ecosystem alive and authentic?

I think the key is persistence, not giving up. The Seoul scene is much stronger and more forward-moving now than when I first started. There are so many talented artists and amazing parties popping up every week, but I know a lot of people still hit walls—financial, logistical, or emotional—and end up giving up. I always tell friends: try producing. A lot of parties here are run by DJs who don’t produce, and that’s fine, but producing helps you solidify your taste and identity. It’s a way to push what you love even further.

You’ve described parties as infrastructure rather than just events. How does that idea show up in the way you build something like lifestream?

To me, lifestream is literally part of the infrastructure. Making music, bringing artists, collaborating, releasing tracks, hosting parties and then watching people dance and connect to that energy—it all ties together. If even one person in the crowd thinks, “I want to make a track like this,” or “This vibe is incredible,” that’s already how the ecosystem grows. That’s what building infrastructure looks like to me: inspiring others to create.

Higher Ground has built a strong identity around forward-thinking club music. How did your connection with them start, and what made it feel right for Outrun?

I’ve loved Higher Ground since my house era. Gabe had a connection through Mad Decent and suggested we send the track over. There was no reason to say no; I’ve always admired the label, and Outrun just fit perfectly with their sound. It’s always a rush to release something with a label you’ve looked up to for so long.

You and Club Angel wrote, “From internet friends to brothers… the track wrote itself within a day.” What did that session actually feel like?

It was explosive, in the best way. Gabe and I had been chatting on Instagram, sending each other songs, but meeting in person for the first time was electric. We just clicked instantly. The structure and arrangement came together almost automatically. Gabe works super fast, and our visions lined up perfectly. By the time we finished, we were both dancing during the listening session; we literally couldn’t sit still.

You’ve moved through house, bass, and faster, harder sounds. What kind of sonic details help you keep 140 BPM emotional instead of mechanical?

What excites me about 140+ BPM is how limitless it feels. You can blend house, UKG, breaks, trance, even dubstep — there are no rules. The tempo itself carries so much energy that whatever you layer on top naturally feels alive and expressive.

You’ve also worked in more commercial, pop environments. What did that experience teach you that still shapes your club productions today?

I learnt a lot, especially about vocal editing. Even though pop music isn’t exactly my lane, I took so much from that world—how to sketch a song, how to add little “ear candy” moments that pull listeners in. Those details make a difference, even on a club track.

Collaboration seems central to how you work. Beyond credits and stems, what does that exchange actually look like day to day?

I’ve never liked being boxed in. Working with producers from different scenes or countries broadens my vision. I learn so much from them, and honestly, it’s just fun. Combining my sound with new techniques or textures to create something entirely fresh—that’s the most exciting part. Usually, when I’m in the studio with someone, we start by playing songs we love to match our vibe. Once that’s aligned, the ideas just start flowing naturally, and from there, we each play to our strengths. That’s collaboration to me.

There’s talk of a new “joyful rave” moment. Do you see Outrun as part of that?

Absolutely! That’s exactly where my heart is. Whenever I’m at a club or rave, there’s always a moment when I wish someone would play something bright and euphoric. That’s what I want Outrun and lifestream to bring: moments where people feel genuinely happy and free, where they can forget their worries for a while. That’s the true spirit of rave, in my eyes.

Is there a production detail in Outrun you’re secretly proud of, even if most listeners wouldn’t notice?

There’s an arpeggio that comes in during the post-drop into the break—I made it by tweaking one of my favourite synths. It has this strange, euphoric texture that I love. I also put a lot of care into the ambient layers throughout the track. The way they fade in and out, shaping the sense of space—that’s one of the details I’m most proud of.

What’s next for you after Outrun?

I’ve got new music coming out at the end of November and December. On November 15, I’m throwing the second lifestream party in Korea with the amazing Need2Freak crew—I’m so excited about it. And the track coming later this month is a collaboration with one of my favourite artists, so please look forward to it. Next year, I’ll be playing more shows in Europe and Australia too.

And if you had to name one dream you haven’t fulfilled yet, what would it be?

There are so many, but one of them is to create a track that I feel 100% satisfied with. I’m a perfectionist, so I’d love to make a song that I can truly call my masterpiece—maybe before I die, who knows (lol). Another dream is for everyone around me to be happy. This year was emotionally and mentally heavy at times, but when I think back to the moments that made me smile, I find my balance again. I just want to share that energy with the people I love.

“All eyes will be on you”, murmurs the portrait of Maria Theresa, mother of France’s last queen —words famously spoken to her fourteen-year-old daughter, Marie Antoinette, as she entered the court of Versailles as the wife of future king, Louis XVI. While a controversial figure to this day, however you view the teen queen; style icon, heartless fiend, victim to the system, she continues to irk a morbid curiosity within modern society. The V&A’s exhibition Marie Antoinette Style satiates our enduring fascination with an expansive collection of artefacts that tracks her stylistic journey from initiation to demise, musing over her everlasting impact.

We begin in the Hall of Mirrors. Home to many of the decadent balls held by the 18th century French aristocracy, it remains one of the most emblematic rooms in the Château de Versailles, Austrian-born Marie’s stomping ground once fulfilling her duties of a political marriage. Queen by the age of nineteen, she held no real authority within the French court, though she exercised her influence in the luxury trades, playing a significant role in the development of the popular Rococo fashion at the time. Now brought to South Kensington, the V&A recreates the luxe room in the first part of the exhibition, where it showcases some of the two-hundred and fifty objects never before seen beyond French borders. Soundtracked by a twinkling instrumental that seems to bounce off the reflective walls, Marie Antoinette Style begins by unraveling a tactile story through the artefacts held closest to the body, including Marie Antoinette’s clothes, jewellery, musical instruments, and furniture. 

Elaborate, opulent gowns of the robe à la française and robe à l'anglaise fashions take centre stage, characterised by their protruding skirts and delicate draping. Tautly encased in glass, a fragment from Marie’s own dress entailing embellished silk, adorned with intricately stitched sequins and gilded gemstones is displayed, along with her extensive jewellery collection that gives the phrase “diamonds are a girl’s best friend" a whole new meaning. Despite her aforementioned lack of political power, it could be said that she used her style of dress as an avenue of control amidst the complexities of court etiquette, leaning into the excess that made her an easy target for criticism within cultural discourse. From satin slippers to the tiniest of whalebone corsets, the exhibition enchants by painting a striking picture of the luxurious life lived by the ill-fated queen. 

After popularising Rococo’s more frivolous fashions such as skilfully painted hand-fans and the infamous pouf hairdos, the show moves to Marie Antoinette’s immortalisation. As Europe proceeded into the 19th century, she became a symbol of romanticised elegance, especially in the eyes of Empress Eugénie.  Though the second part of the exhibition is more pared-down, it still showcases brimming cabinets of ornate garments and painting-lined walls. Gauzy, diaphanous fabrics lived on in the same exaggerated silhouettes, morphing into costume and caricature, like the lingerie-style evening dress designed by Boué Soeurs. With jutting panniers and pink, silk roses, it presents an approach to the fashion of high-court fit for the 1920s amongst many other interpretations, from regal to gauche. Extending beyond clothes, a nook full of Art Deco artworks reference the late queen in a more modern epoch, such as George Barbier’s illustrations of a Marie-like sphynx. Whichever way you look at it, this is a woman who had influence.

Marie Antoinette’s mythology lends to her notoriety. Whether she prevails as a candescent fairytale or a cautionary allegory, both perpetuate our persisting obsession. In the exhibition’s finale, it steers us back to modern day with contemporary depictions of Marie. From Sofia Coppola’s legendary retelling of the young queen’s story to endless references amongst the world of high fashion, she never fails to evoke a poignant, daring image. 

Upon entrance, Kate Moss inhabits the role in Tim Walker’s portrayal at the Ritz, as she commits to languid splendour dressed in Alexander McQueen, complete with a towering, frilled headdress. The archival wardrobe of Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning movie Marie Antoinette is featured, including the iridescent pearl earrings Kirsten Dunst wore as the titular character. From Vivienne Westwood to John Galliano, many prolific designers have turned to Marie as their muse, lending to her status as a sumptuous style idol. In a room full of plush couture, her impact has proven to stay fiercely glamorous despite her pitiful end. 

Running until the 22nd of March 2026, Marie Antoinette Style is a show of decadence and rich history. “This is the design legacy of an early modern celebrity and the story of a woman whose power to fascinate has never ebbed.” says the exhibition curator, Sarah Grant. “Marie Antoinette’s story has been re-told and re-purposed by each successive generation to suit its own ends. The rare combination of glamour, spectacle and tragedy she presents remains as intoxicating today as it was in the eighteenth century.” No matter your stance on the divisive ruler, the exhibition is worth it purely as a feast for the eyes.

A month after the release of Comical Romance Vol. 1, Johnluke feels like an artist settling into a new chapter with quiet certainty. The EP arrived on October 24th and quickly deepened the promise behind Green Eyes and City Lovin’, two tracks that shaped the emotional world he’s building. What makes this moment stand out is how naturally the Irish artist connects vulnerability with melodic brightness. Reflecting on the EP, he admits, “Writing these songs became a coping mechanism for whatever I was feeling at the time,” a line that explains the pull behind What If I Told Ya? and the balance of tenderness and spark running through the project.

There is a steady confidence growing around him, fuelled by sold-out shows, national television moments and the quiet momentum of listeners who find something familiar in his storytelling. Everything suggests an artist learning to turn openness into movement, shaping a voice that feels grounded and already unmistakably his.

Welcome to METAL! 

Thank you for having me.

How does it feel to be speaking about Comical Romance Vol. 1 now that it’s been out for a while?

It’s great as it was nerve-wracking ahead of the release. I’m hoping it resonates with the audience, and I’m delighted it’s finally out and that people are enjoying listening to it as much as I did making it.

When you were shaping the record, did you begin with a clear emotional thread, or did the idea of ‘comical romance’ reveal itself slowly as the songs came together?

The emotional themes that feature in Comical Romance volumes are me genuinely humouring myself. I try to keep it light using a collection of songs that fit. From the get-go, I wanted to create an EP that shows both the harder and softer sides of a relationship. The love, the desire, the attraction, the happiness, the self-worth, and the heartbreak.

Comical Romance Vol. 1 moves through happiness, doubt, reflection and heartbreak without ever sinking into sadness. How intentional was that emotional rollercoaster?

Writing these songs became a coping mechanism for whatever I was feeling at the time. I never expected them to turn out as emotional or relatable as they did or for me to be that vulnerable. It’s become my way of connecting with my audience, letting them experience that full rollercoaster of emotions within all the different sides of relationships. It blends getting over someone, the love and the highlights, as well as the neglect and hurt that can come with them, along with maintaining the feeling of hope.

Your writing began as a way to navigate grief and personal shifts at sixteen. How much of that early vulnerability still guides your voice today, especially in tracks like Pretty or Lovin Me?

It’s guided me more than I realise, because it’s where I drop the veil and show real honesty. It gives everything a true, unfiltered meaning and lets me express myself in a way that’s therapeutic — the only way I know.

Green Eyes and City Lovin’ were already beloved before the EP dropped. How did having those songs so alive in the world influence your decisions on production, pacing and tone for the rest of the project?

The reaction they had gave me a strong foundation for the EP. They confirmed the way I wanted to build a comical heartbreak and romance rollercoaster theme where you can dive into both the happiness and the sadness that come with relationships. Volume 1 kicks off lightly.

Your latest single, What If I Told Ya?, adds a more playful, upbeat layer to the record while still carrying emotional weight. What made this song essential to the first chapter of Comical Romance?

It brought together all the songs in a way that perfectly reflects that bittersweet innocent space between wondering how things could have been and realising that you can’t change the past. It’s that tension between hope and acceptance while recognising what’s out of your hands, but also potentially what could have been in your hands. The instant thought: Agghhh! Why didn’t I bloody act on that!

You brought new collaborators, including drums, synths, and a lead guitar. What did stepping into a more collaborative space unlock for you creatively?

I truly loved collaborating with a variety of musicians. I thrive on making the guitar talk, it pushed me creatively, inspiring new melodies and helping me discover different angles of writing music.

Which track on Comical Romance Vol. 1 feels like the clearest entry point into your world right now?

Lovin Me because it’s a song that shows how low I’ve been, while also highlighting how far I’ve come and revealing my most vulnerable self.

A few weeks ago, you posted about selling out your first-ever headline show, calling it the biggest moment of your life. How did that milestone reshape the way you see your audience and your own trajectory?

It made me truly believe that my dreams are possible because of the support of my fans. This has filled me with deep gratitude for how much they’ve stood by me so far.

Looking back at 2025, from the EP release to the sold-out shows and the TV debut, what moment feels like the real turning point of your year?

What a question, David. While I’m so grateful for the opportunities with radio, press and TV, they have been all massive highlights and amazing moments. But I have to say seeing City Lovin’ hitting a hundred thousand streams, which was the first song to do so, made me reflect and be assured with an amazing feeling that I’m doing things right. It also earned me the nickname The City Lovin’ Guy whenever I’m out and about. Fans of City Lovin’ often sing the lyrics back to me, and that feeling of connection is something I hope never fades.

What are you listening to on repeat these days?

Everything from Ed Sheeran and Noah Kahan to Paolo Nutini.

With Comical Romance Vol. 2 already underway and a debut album on the horizon, what’s the bigger dream that keeps you moving through each new chapter?

Ultimately, making music is my dream. It’s honestly a huge part of who I am. It’s my soul. The bigger vision is to share that with a more global audience, to see the songs reach millions upon millions of streams and to one day sell out my first arena show. Achieving that would feel like stepping into a dream I’d never want to wake up from. And should I be lucky enough to live it, I won’t take a single moment for granted.

Chris Grey enters the week with a new milestone in motion: DEATH WON’T DO US PART, his single with Ari Abdul released last Friday. We spoke with him just days before the drop, right in the middle of the countdown, as he crossed a billion streams and approached ten million monthly listeners. Even without traditional promo, the Toronto-based artist has built impressive momentum through a sharp digital strategy and a sound that connects fast with his audience.

“Once I wrote down that first line, a whole world sort of opened up,” he says of the new single, pointing to a clearer direction for what comes next. The conversation comes at a key moment: he returns to London this Friday for a sold-out show at The Dome, a major step leading into the rollout of his sophomore album early next year. What sets Chris apart is the framework behind his music. Raised between two Kingstons — Jamaican on his father’s side, Canadian on his mother’s — he blends R&B, reggae, disco, and rock into a dark pop style he writes and produces himself entirely. “I’m drawn to emotions that feel too big,” he explains.

Chris, we’re just days away from the release of DEATH WON’T DO US PART. Where’s your head at as everything starts to shift from private to public?

I’m always somewhere between excited and nervous on release day. The whole process of making the song is all pretty private, and then all of a sudden millions of people are listening. But I’m very proud of this song: it’s dramatic, romantic, and maybe a little unhinged in the best way, but it sounds like me.

The track carries a sort of emotional voltage that doesn’t pretend to resolve anything. What was the first spark that pulled you into the world of this song?

Most of my songs start with the production. I made this very dark, beautiful, cinematic instrumental, and I wanted to write something that captured the emotion in it. Once I wrote down that first line, “Death won’t do us part,” a whole world sort of opened up. The lyrics tell a story of an unconditional, immortal kind of love. The whole song feels like sitting in those feelings and letting them be intense.

Ari Abdul joins you on this one. Rather than asking about chemistry, we want to know: what changed the moment her voice entered the demo?

This is our second song together, and we’ve known each other for so long now. I’ve always heard a second voice on this track and knew she would be a great fit. She understood the vibe instantly, and her voice added this haunting softness that made everything so much more emotional. After that, I couldn’t imagine hearing the song without her on it.

When you start something new, are you following a mood, a visual, or a sentence that refuses to behave?

Honestly, it changes every time. Sometimes it’s a feeling, sometimes it’s a visual, and sometimes it’s an idea for a story I want to write. I love creating songs that feel like you just walked into the middle of a movie scene. If I can see the cover art and the music video in my head when I’m making the song, that’s when I know I’m onto something.

“I love creating songs that feel like you just walked into the middle of a movie scene.”

You come from two Kingstons in two different countries. How does that dual origin move through your work in ways you notice only when you look back?

My dad was a DJ born in Kingston, Jamaica, so I grew up with music playing all of the time, especially soul, reggae and disco records. My dad wasn’t the type to put on Wheels On The Bus ten times in a row. When he used to pick me up from school, I remember I could always hear his music blasting before I could even see his car. And then my mom was born in Kingston, Canada, and was more into the rock and pop staples. Those early influences have somehow found their way into my sound. Visually, my next album is definitely inspired by my Jamaican heritage.

Your partnership with Rebellion Records has become its own narrative thread. What made you recognise that their model could hold the world you were building?

The first thing that drew me to Rebellion is the fact that it is artist-owned. Michael, the founder, and I clicked right when we met, both as musicians and as people. What I thought was a two-day meeting in NYC turned into the start of an amazing partnership and friendship. Michael and I align on a lot of things when it comes to the music industry, and I’m very grateful that we met when we did. It’s been surreal to see my career and the label grow so much together over the last two years.

Rebellion operates outside traditional industry playbooks. What have you learned from a digital-first environment that you don’t think a classic label setup would ever have taught you?

I’ve learned how fast things can move when you’re not stuck in a traditional system. Today, people find so much music through edits and various communities online. I think fandoms and subcultures are driving the future of entertainment. Other labels are starting to catch on to that, but Rebellion got there first. It’s truly amazing to see how much digital marketing can move a song or a whole project.

When did it hit you that your relationship with Rebellion wasn’t just supportive but symbiotic, that you were shaping the ecosystem as much as inhabiting it?

The response to my song LET THE WORLD BURN grew my career and the label side by side. We built every strategy and initiative together, and it was amazing to see our hard work pay off. That’s how I knew I wasn’t just an artist on a label, I was in a true partnership.

There’s always a tension in your work: devotion pressed against destruction, softness against spectacle. Do you chase contrasts intentionally, or do they surface once you’re deep into the process?

I think the contrasts show up on their own. I’m drawn to the intensity of an emotion, love that feels too big, feelings that get too messy. I tend to write in that space where things feel both beautiful and chaotic, which naturally creates tension in my music.

“Today, people find so much music through edits and various communities online. I think fandoms and subcultures are driving the future of entertainment.” 

Your catalogue feels cohesive but restless. What’s the element you always return to to keep the centre from drifting?

Sonically, I always come back to dark, cinematic production and concepts that feel dramatic or romantic. The emotion behind the song could be longing, obsession, heartbreak, whatever, but it has to hit you in that gut-level way. Even when I’m experimenting with different sounds, I need that intensity to be there so the world still feels like mine.

You’ve got a sold-out show at The Dome right after the release. What part of DEATH WON’T DO US PART feels designed to hit differently in a room rather than in headphones?

I already know that the chorus is going to hit completely differently in a room. It’s going to turn into this big, dramatic moment everyone can scream together. The production is super cinematic too, so it’ll just fill the space in a way you can’t recreate anywhere else. The song was meant for that release of energy.

Toronto seems to anchor you creatively. What does the city give you that you can’t access anywhere else?

Toronto keeps me grounded. There’s something comforting about seeing the same streets I grew up on and being near the people who knew me before any of this. No matter how crazy things get, being home helps me reconnect with why I started making music in the first place. The city also keeps me inspired. The sound of Toronto was a strong influence when I started making music. So many incredible artists have come from this city in the past few decades, and I hope that I can continue that legacy.

Your sophomore album is already in the works. Without revealing too much, what question or tension is currently guiding you as you shape it?

The new album is leaning into questions that feel a little quieter but deeper. It’s still dark and emotional and dramatic, but it’s a lot more about figuring out where you’re meant to be and who you’re meant to be with when everything settles. I keep thinking about love in a larger, almost timeless sense.

And finally, when someone presses play on DEATH WON’T DO US PART, what’s the first physical sensation you hope arises before any lyric even registers?

I want people to feel that sense of longing and passion right away. The production is intense and cinematic from the start and feels emotional before you even know why. At the end of the day, it is a love song, and I want people to think of that ‘one person’ when they listen.

The Paris-based DJ/producer Belaria has just announced her new EP Dynamic State and has unveiled its lead single Losing Control, a track served with a visually arresting music video directed by Roso. It’s a metallic dreamworld where every sonic element becomes a mechanised gesture, articulated by gleaming, hyper muscular bodies. On these bodies, Belaria’s own face appears, singing the mantra-like line “Life’s a mess when I lose control,” grounding the futuristic scene in something intimate and human. The result is a hypnotic ode to movement, not just as choreography, but as a psychological force that shapes body, mind and soul.

Losing Control is an awesome introduction. After three years of releasing singles and remixes across the electronic scene, shaping its future with a raw, driven sound, Belaria makes a grand return to her label, Binding System. This time with Dynamic State, a conceptual EP due January 16th designed to serve as “an exploration of the benefits of body movement on the mind, psyche, and emotional well-being”, weaving in a sonic journey that evolves with the resurgence of both physical and mental energy. 

Over the past years, she has carved out a reputation as one of France’s most exciting new electronic artists, being a resident on Rinse France and sharing club booths with scene heavyweights such as Boys Noize, Laurent Garnier, Audrey Danza and Djedjotronic. Her rising profile has taken her from Dour to Positive Education, Piknic Electronik to Listen Festival, a trajectory that signals both underground credibility and global momentum.

With Losing Control, she doesn’t just offer a track, she offers a taste of Dynamic State’s audiovisual world. Think Eusexua meets breaky electro registers and heavy bass sounds suitable for a techno rave. It pushes further into her own sonic identity, one that blurs raw movement with sleek futurism. It’s techno engineered for the mind-body feedback loop, built to move you long before you even realise you’ve started moving with the most mesmerising visuals alongside, showcasing the versatility in movement of the human body: dancing, stretching, posing and more carried by shiny, muscular bodies and blue bob wig all set in a futuristic electronic atmosphere. 

This track is an ode to movement and its stronghold on the mind and soul, reflecting inner turbulence. It opens the upcoming EP like a muffled cry, a rhythmic wander that mirrors mental disarray and a portrait of restriction. The tracks that follow allow the body’s momentum to extend and the rhythms become more refined and centred, signalling a mind reconnecting through the body. This solo EP on Binding System, and this video release, confirms her bold vision and uncompromising energy soon to be heard across dance floors worldwide. The French underground revolution is here, and she’s everything we could have wanted and more.

Falling in love is a snowflake on your tongue, when cold dissolves into heat. Ephemeral traces that story — icy angelic vocals meet strings that soar and undulate like a body. Sonic waves mirror movement. Ephemeral is Alto Aria’s new album, self-released on their Copenhagen-based label Rhizome. It doesn’t shy away from romance whilst remaining alternative.

Fleeting beauty is still beauty, like the last of springtime blossom holding on in the fall. Ephemeral approaches the inevitable changes in life with pop music and heart. Track two, Fall Blossom, features chattering clicks and what sounds like a creaking door that is part ASMR, part folk love song. It’s easy to get infatuated with this track. On the release, Alto Aria shares, “Ephemeral is about falling in love. To stay open even when you have a porous heart, even though some things are not meant to hold. Made from a poem, all the songs are threads reaching back to the same moment in time. An ephemeral moment that, for me, will last forever.”

Music is inevitably wrapped up with our experience of time, too. We can go back to it, hopefully forever, but there’s also metre, and a specific time period you spend together as the record spins or stream runs. Ephemeral manipulates time as the rising and falling strings that run through the album give way to a club beat on Porous Heart, which raises the tempo and our heartbeats. Eclipse is another dance-y track in the ambient soundscape with an insistent beat. Some moments are more intense than others. Lyrics taken from the poem echo throughout the release map out their romance.

Alto Aria tells METAL, “Lyrically, I’ve been inspired by using a limited amount of words, creating one poem, which all the songs refer back to. Letting the words change their meaning throughout the album.” Meanwhile, “Sonically, I’ve been interested in repetition and renewal, electronic and acoustic, song and sound. Weaving these together, the album explores many different inspirations and genres that I’m inspired by.”

It makes a lot of sense for an album on love to avoid creative isolation. Alto Aria explains, “The album has a very collaborative nature to it, a sort of shared emotional vocabulary. With features from Croatian Amor, Space Afrika, Dimming, Yan Higa and Skarv, the songs unfold. It has been a pleasure to open up my musical practice with the collaborators, sharing thoughts and ideas on the album, as well as getting their perspectives and sounds on the theme. Apart from the features, a cover of Olive’s You’re Not Alone evolves and dissolves on the album.”

Corporeality is a theme that is key to the release. ”The idea of body memory has informed my process of working with this album. I believe so many memories are stored in the body, like an archive, and can bring forward emotions when finding yourself in a specific setting. I’m very interested in how these feelings unfold, how the body is a carrier bag of earlier experiences, and how memories are passed down from generation to generation.” Their grandmother’s painting from 1985 is the album cover. It’s a thread between experiences and bodies.

KIK enter release week with their debut album, NIGHTSHIFT, landing this Friday, November 28th, via Horror Vector. The project brings together Jonathan Uliel Saldanha and João Pais Filipe, two key figures in Portugal’s experimental scene whose work with HHY & The Macumbas channelled intensity through collective force. With Smoke Machine as the only single shared ahead of the album, KIK now unveil Proff exclusively on METAL; a premiere that offers a new angle on a record built inward, stripped back, and centred on rhythm as its core material.

If the first glimpses into NIGHTSHIFT showed the duo’s shift toward synthetic percussion and controlled tension, Proff introduces a different layer of their approach. The pulse moves more slowly, stretched across a subdued register that feels deliberate rather than softened. Instead of aiming for impact, Proff explores how rhythm can transform without leaving its core. As the artists note, the record grew from a process of sustained routine and shared discipline: “NIGHTSHIFT grew out of an odd sort of routine between us, stretches where we were in the studio almost every day with a simple aim: just make something. Anything. That steady repetition, even when it felt a bit monotonous, became the groundwork for what eventually turned into KIK.”

“KIK sit at the meeting point of two forces: rhythm and sound. One is an irregular pulse that bends your sense of time. The other is a restricted palette; each rhythm gets its own small world of sounds that evolve slowly as the track moves forward. Sometimes a kick will eventually turn into a synth or a wooden clave. The rhythm stays the same, but the elements inside it shift. The pattern holds, yet the sound keeps mutating, so there’s this feeling of a phase change, of something persisting but never totally fixed,” they add.

To explain how their rhythms shift without collapsing, KIK frame the idea through a striking musical analogy. “It’s a bit like playing a piano piece where, as it unfolds, the notes slowly take on new identities: a C becomes an A, a G becomes an E. The motif is still there, but the material keeps slipping. It changes how you hear it, and how you feel it. That tension — between staying the same and constantly becoming something else — is basically the heart of KIK: a rhythm that seems stable, but is always on the move.”

Proff embodies that principle with clarity. It maintains its structure while shifting from the inside out, offering one of the clearest windows into the logic driving NIGHTSHIFT, mastered by Frédéric Alstadt, designed by Dayana Lucas, with cover imagery by HMMIXPRO.

“I can’t help but smile when we’re together / Outside it’s always warm no matter the weather.” With this feel-good introduction, Namira presents Forever, her debut single as a recording artist. But the Korean-American producer is not here to play to established genre lines. This new track is less a gentle pivot from her viral EDM remixes and more a meticulously engineered statement of intent.

With Forever, Namira steps out from behind the remix decks and finally lets us hear her own voice. And it lands with the kind of clarity that feels both overdue and completely self-assured. Known until now as the Korean-American producer responsible for those emotionally supercharged edits of Arctic Monkeys’ I Wanna Be Yours and Apologize (feat. SimplyRich), she’s built an audience that knows how to feel on the dance floor. But Forever is something different: a debut single that swaps algorithm-fed virality for genuine self-exposure.

What’s immediately striking is how confidently she leans into folktronica, one of those hybrid genres that’s easy to gesture towards but hard to execute. Here, it just works. Korean, Spanish and American folk textures glide against glistening electronic production, giving the track a cross-cultural pulse that mirrors her own biography. “This song led me to rediscover my identity as a Korean American woman and the innocence of wanting to be loved — by a boy, by the industry, by your country,” she says. That tension is easily recognisable: the tug between belonging and reinvention, tradition and future.

The interpolation of Arirang in the bridge is a beautiful flex — less a sample, more a memory resurfacing. It’s a reminder that Namira’s musical instincts are grounded in something older and deeper than remix culture, even as the production nods cheekily to Calvin Harris, Avicii and Beyoncé. Visually, she doubles down on that duality: the cover art reimagines Sly and the Family Stone’s American flag through the lens of the mugunghwa flower, a symbol of eternity. It’s a clever gesture. Forever isn’t just a debut; it’s a quiet manifesto.

Good news: Glen Luchford’s Atlas exhibition at 10 Corso Como is being extended until December 3rd, so if you were worried about not making it before the 23rd of November, you can finally relax and breathe again.

Luchford’s first-ever solo show doesn’t feel like a retrospective so much as a brain scan, or like walking into someone’s subconscious: images taped raw to the wall, prints overlapping, memories arranged like a film reel that someone forgot to edit. No chronology, no clean timeline, just instinct. It’s messy in a way that makes sense, like opening a drawer that’s been closed for a while, with fragments of a personal archive spilling out.

His origin story starts in Brighton in ’86, when Luchford gets a camera for his 18th birthday, not out of destiny, but because his dad wanted him to share his same hobbies. Usually, that kind of parental persuasion backfires; they love something, so of course you hate it. Music, sport, hobbies, you name it. But photography? For Luchford that was different, it was like a backstage pass, suddenly he could be at the top of skate ramps only because of his camera.

Luchford never cared about belonging to a scene, but he watched everything: Brighton skate ramps, British post-punk, London’s indie editorial scene—Dazed, i-D, The Face—and turned them into a visual language that felt accidental but precise. Even when he shoots high fashion, the photos never look posed; they look like someone caught a moment that wasn’t supposed to be photographed. You see it in Kate Moss throwing a punch in New York, 1994. You see it in Björk stripped and mythic. You see it in Amber Valletta wandering through Cinecittà, lost in a snow labyrinth or adrift on the Tiber at sunset.

But why choose Milan for his first solo exhibition? Well, Italy is where Luchford reshaped fashion twice: first with his Prada campaigns in the mid-90s that feel like outtakes from Tarkovsky or Lynch and then, of course, with Alessandro Michele’s Gucci. You probably remember the Gucci Cruise 2019, where Noah’s Ark came to life with animals wandering among models, or the F/W 2015 with those androgynous muses drifting through Los Angeles buses. Italy is like the place that, in a way, amplified his vision.

What stops the show from feeling like legacy-building is the fact that Luchford doesn’t mythologise himself. He barely shoots outside of work. He doesn’t fantasise about exhibitions or archives. The archive exists because it needs to, not because he worships it. Selecting work for Atlas wasn’t about defining what matters; it was just choosing what felt good in the moment. And that's what makes it real. Atlas is about a career captured instinctively, unpolished and still in motion.

When you think about minimalism, you probably think about digital detox and an incredibly cool, modern and expensive interior style. You know, the one you see in movies. In Parasite (2019) for example. Or American Psycho (2000). You probably think about a life philosophy that preaches quality over quantity. Quiet luxury. Thinking about brands like The Row, Phoebe Philo, and Jil Sander. But also, about a life philosophy that wants you to travel the world with nothing more than just a small backpack. Minimalism is basically everywhere. Some people like it. Maximalists definitely don’t. But what now has become kind of a mainstream term to use, once started as a global shift in art that introduced a completely new, radical approach — a shift in art that is the centre of Pinault Collection’s latest exhibition, Minimal, on display until January 19th, 2026.

So, as you can see, Minimal, which is hosted by the Bourse de Commerce, the former building of the Paris Stock exchange, is definitely not built just to do fashionable Instagram pics (although you could, of course). And it also doesn’t matter at all if you consider yourself a minimalist, a maximalist, or a somewhere-in-between-ist, to enjoy it. No, you just have to allow yourself to immerse into the more than a hundred major artworks that the French entrepreneur and art collector François Pinault started assembling over fifty years ago. Works that mirror and explore how artists from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s, mainly independently from one another, started to rethink the definition of the art object all over the world — Asia, Europe, North, South and Central America. All connected through the three original characteristics of Minimal Art: the economy of the means, pared-down aesthetics, and the reconsideration of the artwork’s placement in relation to the viewer.

And this concept of an exhibition that embraces minimalism as a global movement is long overdue. Because let’s be real, so far, the narrative of this type of art definitely has been dominated by the American counter-movement to Abstract Expressionism. Famous through Mary Corse’s white light paintings. Through Donald Judd’s strictly geometrical sculptures. Through Robert Morris and Carl Andre. Some of them are of course also represented in Pinault Collection’s exhibition. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be complete. But, there is so much more to Minimal Art you can discover in the rooms of the Bourse de Commerce. Finally. 

There’s the Mono-ha movement from Japan, showcased through works of Lee Ufan, Kishio Suga, Jiro Takamatsu, and Nobuo Sekine among others. A movement that focuses on the encounter and relationships between natural and industrial materials in mostly unaltered states. Unaltered, that means arrangements of stone, steel, glass, wood. A reflection on the industrialisation of the East Asian island nation, and a renewed awareness of existence and nature. There is Zero, the avant-garde artist group from Germany that sought a new beginning in art as a reaction to the post-war cultural devastation. A new beginning that included purist aesthetics, monochrome or bright colours, and geometric forms. There is the Italian Arte Povera and there are the Brazilian neo-concrete artists who are known for their sensual abstraction that countered the rigid visual language of concrete art by creating an intimate connection to the viewer. 

One highlight of the exhibition is definitely the installation by San Francisco-born artist Meg Webster in the building’s Rotunda: Here, there are five different sculptural works exhibited that explore themes like ecology, climate change, humankind’s admiration for nature and our desire to control and contain all of it at the same time. The sculptures were created from locally sourced soil, twigs, salt, clay, and wax. Mound (1988) being constructed from yellow ochre clay mixed with sand and pressed into shape, while Mother Mound (1990) was made from red earth that echoes the curvature of the Rotunda’s glass dome. A fun fact for you: All of Webster’s pieces make her more of an engineer and gardener, kind of. Because her artworks require care, watering, pruning, raking and are in a way treated as living beings.

Now, we have to come back to the beginning, to the three characteristics of Minimal Art that you remember for sure. But to refresh your memory, we’re talking about the economy of the means, pared-down aesthetics, and a reconsideration of the artwork’s placement in relation to the viewer. Why do we have to come back to that? Because this is the most important and most fun part of this exhibition: As this last characteristic demands, Pinault Collection’s exhibition challenges traditional methods of display. Pieces are, just like in the shift of the 60s and 70s, not presented on pedestals or against walls at a discrete distance from the viewer. Instead, the artworks purposely enter the space of the visitors. And through that, inviting them to experience everything through a more direct, bodily interaction that integrates the viewer as well as environment into the artwork itself. 

It's hard to explain. I know. Very abstract. But everything in this exhibition is abstract. So, if you don’t get it, just go to the Bourse de Commerce, and walk through Webster’s captivating installation path in the Rotunda. And while you do that, ask yourself, are you becoming a part of the installation? In the end, you are the one who is allowed to change perspective. To compare shapes and details. Experiencing everything through your own senses: Sight, smell, touch, and hearing. Because if you weren’t in there, in between the sharply defined volumes, the sculptures wouldn’t make sense. Webster’s work and message wouldn’t exist in a way. And while you’re in it, try to forget about quiet luxury, digital detox, Jil Sander and Parasite. Try to forget this idea that Minimalism is just an Instagrammable and fancy lifestyle. It’s passion. It’s zeitgeist. Critique. Immersion and experience. Just like Minimal shows. So, do yourself a favour and just try to enjoy it.

The exhibition Minimalism is on view through January 19, 2026, at Pinault Collection | Bourse de Commerce, 2 rue de Viarmes, Paris.

Fashion is much more than just garments—it’s a rich, multifaceted phenomenon. It’s a cultural system, a form of communication, an economic force, and a creative language. What sets it apart from most artistic disciplines, however, is its community-orientated, collaborative ethos. The FashionClash Festival knows this well, which is why its 17th edition once again brought together art directors, writers, filmmakers, performers, designers, and even researchers for three days of inspiring, captivating events to demonstrate the true power of fashion: building an artistic collective.

Most importantly, the Maastricht–based festival gives artists what we so often forget is the most important: a voice and a space to communicate. Talent can be found everywhere—not only in Paris, London, Milan, or New York, as we are often led to believe—but opportunities are not. That’s why events like the Fashionclash Festival should be applauded and cherished, as they showcase the richness of creativity beyond the usual fashion capitals while celebrating the bold, diverse visions that might otherwise go unseen.

On a—thankfully—not-so-cold Friday evening, we first immersed ourselves in this thrilling edition of the festival at Bureau Europa, with the opening of the New Fashion Narratives exhibition. As its name suggested, the exhibition questioned conventional fashion narratives and invited audiences into a wider dialogue about social concerns. It was, indeed, a strong and stylish start to the festival: four talented fashion makers —Jonas Zitter, Paula Dischinger, Rafael Kouto, and Tjerre Lucas Bijker, who had previously collaborated during a residency week in Maastricht— curated an exhibition focused on collective action and the intersection of fashion, activism, and community-based practices.

At first, it felt like an information overload; then, after looking more closely, everything made sense. The entire exhibition emphasized questioning the industry’s current landscape, co-creation, and community involvement: from projects like Alessandro Santi & Brankica Sanadrovic’s The Memory of Skin, which highlighted the “interdependence between microbial cultures and human relationships”, to others like mare mito’s A Sewing Machine of One’s Own, which celebrated garments passed down through generations and created with women from a social sewing workshop in Naples.

CIMO from Croatia presented more than a hundred embroidered pieces made in therapeutic workshops with asylum seekers, refugees, and elderly locals, showcasing the often overlooked work of women’s handcrafts. Other standout works included interactive pieces that challenged traditional fashion systems, such as Hannah Smith’s The Gentle Frame, which explored disability through wearable art. The whole exhibition was a resonant proof that fashion can be a powerful tool for community building, memory preservation, and imagining alternative futures.

Then, it was, you guessed it, dinner time! So we headed to our next stop: Lumière Cinema. This alluring cultural gem of the city is housed in a beautiful historical building that was originally a textile factory, now repurposed as a restaurant and, most importantly, a cinema for independent and arthouse films. In this cozy venue, we enjoyed not only dinner, but also one of the most memorable events of the festival: the Fashion Film Program Award showcase, which revealed the six finalists. A truly insightful showcase, we dare say. Defying all expectations of what a “fashion film” might be, these short movies included, yes, fashion, but this was never the main focus. Instead, they explored broader stories, ideas, and emotions, with garments serving as co-stars, or even as a lens through which the narrative unfolded—never the main character. 

The Feminine Urge, directed by Lilian Brade, Phuong An Phi, and Niclas Hasemann, received the Kaltblut Magazine Award. The film powerfully explored female rage and the monstrous feminine, presenting it as not only a visual but also a physical experience. Intense, dramatic, and sometimes too gut-wrenching (as the female experience can be), the film delivered—fashion included. On the other hand, the Fashionclash Festival 2025 Fashion Film Award went to Do I? Salt Murphy Fashion Film, directed by James Nolan. Set against the symbolic backdrop of a wedding day, the film explored modern love, balancing the longing for stability with the dopamine that uncertainty can bring, all brought to life through stunning couture bridal gowns, and with a cast that seemed sculpted by the gods themselves. 

As for our favourites? We dare say Motherfocking Art by Marloes IJpelaar / Club Lam, which also received an honorary mention from the jury. As the title suggests, it was campy, bucolic, and fairly funny (I admit I giggled, which is almost the highest compliment possible nowadays), offering a sharp critique of beauty standards in the fashion industry. Hangman & CO. by Birsu Tamer, Hedzer Seffinga, and Matti Paffen of the two short movies produced by Fashionclash Festival—also deserves a mention: a critique of the loss of analogue labour in a fast-paced, online world, told through the story of a recently retired house painter lost without his old, paint-stained uniform. 

To close the evening, we headed to the Social Hub Maastricht for the Essence showcase. Curated by Marlon Claessen, it featured a vibrant fashion show with designers from Brazil, including Kistaku's Carrousel and Thear's Ánima, among others. We had to bid farewell to the infectious energy of Brazilian funk, but no worries; the Fashionclash Festival was back in full swing the next morning.

We kicked off a pleasantly warm—again, thankfully!—Saturday with a visit that reminded us of a side of fashion that’s often overlooked but incredibly important: scientific research. The Future Materials Bank once again opened our eyes: fashion is undeniably beautiful and powerful, but what about its impact on the environment? This isn’t a critique; it’s an invitation to explore more ecologically conscious practices in art and design.

Collecting samples and information from makers around the globe, the Future Materials Bank is a treasure trove of inspiration and knowledge about sustainable materials. You might be surprised: from human hair spun into yarn to paints made from avocado, the collection raises questions about how many materials could be repurposed as valuable resources. 

A seamless fusion of art and science, the project is part of the Jan van Eyck Academie, which examines the role of creative practices in addressing the climate crisis, environmental breakdown, and their far-reaching effects. The programme also provides residencies for artists, designers, writers, curators, and architects from around the world, giving each participant the time, space, and support necessary to fully develop their creative practice.

In the Jan van Eyck building, we were invited to experience a series of installations and performances presented by the Amarte Fund, offering fashion designers the chance to collaborate with other artists in creating and presenting new works. Natálie Kulina × Alyne Li unveiled Numina, a performative installation that immersed visitors in an unfamiliar world. The artists greeted the audience with a striking set, a sculptural gown, and a captivating performance—while also prompting reflection with questions like, “Should our worlds remain separate, sacred, and untouched, or should we seek a common language? Do we give in to curiosity? How entitled do we feel to others’ spaces, cultures, and traditions?”

Before heading to the next event, we wandered through Maastricht, while discovering fashion in all its forms—exhibitions, installations, and workshops—spread across various spots throughout the city. From a charming selection of independent fashion publications at Limestone Books, to an art exhibition featuring a remarkable selection of archive pieces at S.A.C, the city was a lively reminder of art and fashion in everyday life.

Later that evening, we boarded a boat to make a stylish trip along the river toward the location of the main event: The Clash House. Held in a striking, massive industrial building—the Peutz Hall at the ENCI site in Maastricht—the event served as a platform for six designers: Ultra Ora, Rakee Chen, Thibault Villard & Maxence Guenin, POViS, Emirhakin × David Siepman, and Clashlab—Lioba Benold, Shu Jantje & Jelle Huizinga—to join forces with performers and develop alternative ways to present fashion. Across the six performances, one thing was undeniably present: a heavy feeling, almost like a muted critique of society.

With Après Nous, Ultra Ora explored hierarchical structures and social classes through a storytelling lens. Rakee Chen blended music-generated garments and movement in Melody Atlas to guide us through human life as an emotional journey. Thibault Villard & Maxence Guenin examined imperfection by presenting a poem through sound—generated by playing a bass with a strip of fabric. POViS delivered a powerful performance critiquing today’s society, its fast-paced rhythm full of stimuli, and the depression some people face when trying to carve their own path while still yearning for traditional social validation. The performance concluded with a simple, yet very accurate statement: “I hid from depression and corporate capitalism and made a collection about cats.” And we felt that.

Emirhakin × David Siepman performed a choreography that felt like a sensory exploration of memory, desire, and the refusal of closure, and Clashlab offered a performance merging three disciplines: fashion, dance, and music. The whole event provided a much-needed space for artists to co-create, grow, and share their own vision and voice—a reminder that fashion can be presented in a myriad of ways while still keeping its message intact.

In just three days, the FashionClash Festival reaffirmed once again that fashion is not just clothing but a platform for experimentation, dialogue, and storytelling. By stepping away from conventional runway formats and embracing immersive performances, installations, and collaborations, it opened a space where creativity could flourish freely.

We catch up with Australian masters of reinvention, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, for their rare rave show, a high-octane electronic set with modular synthesizers replacing guitars, at the finale of a tour oscillating between Eurorack raves and twenty-eight-piece orchestra shows built around their latest release, Phantom Island (p(doom) Records, 2025). We sit down with frontman Stu Mackenzie to discuss navigating these musical poles, the band’s signature genre-hopping approach built on deliberately chasing fear, and their principled decision to pull their music from Spotify, setting an example they hope other artists will follow.

Fresh off an epic orchestral performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall just days prior, Mackenzie is quick to point out that despite fifteen years together, the band’s improvisational instincts remain constant, whether wielding guitars or voltage-controlled oscillators, reading orchestral charts or freestyling in front of thousands.

You've been touring heavily for about fifteen years now. As we start this conversation, what's your main takeaway looking back on it all?

When we started we had a MySpace. A lot of things that seemed important at that time are different. But the through line or the thing that we have come back to is trying to make connections with people in real life. We have prioritised playing shows.

Tonight’s show was a high-energy electronic set, but you're also touring with a twenty-eight-piece orchestra. How do you balance those two extremes?

It’s yin and yang. It feels good to do this and then it feels exciting to go and do the orchestra show because it’s so different. This is about being loose and free and in the moment, being improvisational and trying to feel what to do and listen to each other, watch, be one with the crowd and feel the music. The orchestra thing is about discipline. It's academic. But it's a really good challenge too. Even though I like to be loose and free like this—this feels much more at home—I am interested in the challenge of the orchestra thing too and that satisfies a different need.

The orchestra shows are built around Phantom Island. Can you walk us through the setup and what makes those performances special?

The orchestra show is very hard to pull off. You have to find a venue that will accommodate it, find a local orchestra that is willing to do a show with a rock band, and then you have to make it make sense economically.

So you perform with a different orchestra each time?

Yes, each city has a different local orchestra, they don’t tour with us. We don’t rehearse beforehand either. We have a soundcheck, usually a long one. You spend three or four hours rehearsing with the orchestra, then you have a sandwich, and then you go play the show. It’s a big fucking day. It comes down to having a very good conductor, he’s the link between us. Chad Kelly conducts these shows in Europe and he’s the guy who wrote the album arrangements. The show is very hard to pull off, as I’ve said. Doing a tour, a whole tour for three weeks of that, would be impossible for a band of our size. We could make four shows that make sense in Europe — one in Poland, one in the Netherlands, one in Paris, and one in London.

“You want to feel good about what you’re doing. You want to feel like you're part of something positive.”

The Royal Albert Hall in London had to be incredible.

Yes, it was special because it’s such a famous spot. It’s like a Creedence Clearwater Revival concert I used to watch when I was a teenager. Hendrix played there too. It’s a famous spot and it’s cool to be there. But all of the shows were special in their own way. I know how much work goes into making it happen, to pull the show off is a miracle.

When putting together set lists, what are the opportunities and limitations when touring with both concepts?

For the orchestral shows, we have charts for two fifty-minute halves. The orchestra takes a twenty-minute break in the middle, so we do a fifty-minute set, the orchestra takes a break, and we just jam — we play something and decide on the spot what we’re gonna play, maybe an hour or two before the show. We’ve been trying to do something different in that break for all of the orchestral shows. I think we've done twelve of them now and we have maybe another five or six coming in Australia.
It was so much work to make the charts and to get them rock solid. I have so much appreciation for people in that world now.
With the rave shows it's different. It's a different set every night and we can figure it out as we go. We write a set list right before the show, maybe an hour before. Sometimes in soundcheck we'll try something new. A lot of bands that play the rooms that we play don't soundcheck — they have their crew do it, they just play the show. But we need to soundcheck because we're sort of practicing every day and trying something new. Tonight we played a song that we've never played live before.

Your audience is excited about what you’ll do next. After this diverse tour experience, what could be next for you?

We need to explore this more. This feels like there is a lot more to do. I want to do everything all the time. If you ask me what I want, that’s what I want. I see my role in the group as listening to everybody and getting a temperature check of what everyone is interested in, because I’m sort of trying to make everyone happy.

How does your writing process work, and has it changed over time?

The writing process has changed a lot. I would like to go into a record and not feel confident; I want to feel scared and challenged. For that reason, the writing process has deliberately changed. Sometimes we'll go into a record and be like, let’s write all the words first, because we haven’t done that before. Let's do that hard thing. We try to do a new thing deliberately with each record. If you're asking me how a song usually comes together, well, by default we have to do something different every time. I feel like we have tried all of the combinations. That's why we're doing this — this feels exciting and scary. It is one of my favourite things that we have done, it is a really fun show to do.
Some records have been made primarily on tour, others have been made entirely off tour. It varies. Right now we are still in a phase of bringing in ideas from the universe. It could still go a lot of ways. We've probably got more material written now without having a finished thing than we ever have. I'm not sure that's good. I think that's actually bad.

Tell me about working with Eurorack synthesizers. How does it compare to playing the guitar?

Eurorack is the format, it’s the type of synth invented by a German guy. Eurorack is good at improvising — it’s what it's made for. It's very good at generating ideas and patterns, at playing with randomness. You can send some voltage out to some sequencer. You're playing with voltage, control voltage, CV — basically minus five to plus five volts. Being in a band with these guys for twelve, fifteen years — that’s education. As rock musicians on guitars, we've learned to listen to each other and improvise. When we pick up this stuff, it's about learning the gear and translating what's in your head into the sound — that's work. But the instinct is the same. I know what Joe is going to do and I know what the Cavs is gonna do because what they would do on guitar is similar to what they would do on a synth — maybe not in sound, but the instinct and the flow. We know each other very well and we couldn't do this if we hadn't played together for a long time.

What do you get from each extreme?

I feel different coming on stage, I get a different thing out of it. But we're using what we've learned — what we already learned how to do, just with different instruments. It sounds probably nothing alike but the instinct and the way that we can play together is similar. I'm eye level with Joe, we're standing this far apart, and the tables in front of me are close together and we're looking at each other. It's intense. Sometimes Joe will do something, look at me and just give me that look and I'm like, yeah.

“I want to feel challenged. I want to be able to feel like we can do anything that we want.”

Your Spotify removal was an interesting move. Can you tell me about that decision?

There are quite a few good reasons to take music off. For us it was a pretty easy decision. We have to get together and make music, it's vulnerable and intimate, you want to feel good about what you’re doing. You want to feel like you're part of something positive. The last thing for us was all of the military AI drone shit. We don't have to do that. Sometimes when you're a musician and you are part of a larger ecosystem as we are, you feel like you have to do this and you have to do that, and you don't question why. But that's our decision. So it was simple. We thought, we don't have to be in that place or do that.
It has been interesting to see how much talk has been around it. At the time it felt not that radical, but hopefully it will inspire more people. You don't need to. You just have to feel good about what you're doing.

Tell me about the Bootlegger Program.

We give all of our music for free and let people online download the individual live recordings. They can make their own mixes or anything they want. If you look online, you'll find hundreds and hundreds of different people making King Gizzard records. They're like record labels, they sell thousands of copies. There are quite a lot of record labels which have started by pressing King Gizzard records and eventually they go on to sign bands and turn into other things. We often ask for folks to send us something. Sometimes we'll do a record fair and sell some things that people sent us and maybe pay back a few of the bills. But for the most part I've always just seen that as building an inclusive, wholesome, nice community of people who feel welcome and part of the music.

In terms of the band's versatility and genre-hopping, is this something that comes organically or something you consciously need to do?

I want to feel free and scared of things. I want to feel challenged. I want to be able to feel like we can do anything that we want. Sometimes we have made a rock album and sometimes we're going back to certain things. I want us to do what we're interested in. If people want to analyse it and try to understand it, that's okay. But we mostly get together and talk about what we want to do and then we do it. I would always want to treat whatever music that we make with a lot of respect. I am also a big fan of music history. All of us are music fans first. We don't approach it from some virtuosic angle; we’re not trying to be shredders or anything.

After years of touring, how do you manage to maintain that energy and balance it with your personal life?

When we're home, we have families. I have kids and a lot of the guys do as well, and we find life balance. But I think we genuinely like being around each other. These guys are my best friends. When I'm home I still want to be around them. We make music together because we like it, we like to work, the studio, and writing.

There’s a particular tension in the days leading up to a release, that quiet, suspended moment where the music exists only between the artist and the people who’ve heard it early. When we spoke to Maya Randle just a few days ago, redemption pt.2 was still living in that liminal space: finished, humming with intention, and waiting for its first breath outside the studio. Today, it finally steps out into the world.

“It's always scary releasing a new project,” she admitted, reflecting on the weight that comes with letting go of something so personal. But fear has never dictated her direction. Built from self-taught instinct and an emotional palette sharpened over years of solitary creation, her new EP moves deeper into the shadows she’s been tracing since my streets cracked something open earlier this year. This time, the edges are darker, the drums heavier and the storytelling more exposed. A shift she embraces with the kind of clarity that only comes from being pushed against your own limits.

And if let you in signalled that transformation, a song she revisited because “it became more relevant to my life as time went on”, then redemption pt.2 confirms it. It’s the sound of someone stepping into the version of themselves they’ve been orbiting for years, finally close enough to touch.

Your new single, let you in, has been out for a few days now, settling into the world with its new video, while you’re only days away from releasing redemption pt.2. What does being in this in-between moment feel like for you?

The main feeling right now is anticipation. It’s always scary releasing a new project and wondering how people will take it in, if they will understand your message and your meaning behind it and, most importantly, if they’ll like the music. I feel like in the time where you are waiting for your music to drop, that is the time when you can really start questioning yourself and your work, but ultimately, I love this project, and I'm very excited for it to be released.

When you revisited let you in, a track born from your earliest days experimenting with drum & bass, what drew you back to it?

One of the main things that drew me back into this song was the backing vocals. I feel like they're quite addictive, which is why they are running through pretty much all of the track. I knew I loved the song when I originally made it, but I knew I could give it a new lease of life with a new, better, more intricate production, especially with the drums and adding my own pitch-shifted vocals onto it. I also think the concept of the song drew me back into it as it became more relevant to my life as time went on. I think this is why I found it so easy to write more of my own lyrics to it, as it resonated with me more and fits in the same space as other songs on the EP and my streets from redemption pt.1. Also, the fact that this song stuck with a lot of people when I first made it and showed them, in the same way it did with me, made me realise I had a strong foundation and concept for the song.

The song circles around trust and the moments when it fractures. Now that a bit of time has passed since releasing it, does that feeling sit differently for you?

The feelings around trust still sit the same with me, and I think I’ll always have a similar view on it. Trust means a lot to me, so when it fractures, it impacts me a lot. A lot of my music touches on the concept of trust, but with let you in, it focuses on what it’s like to trust, have it be broken and the feelings that come after that. I hold trust quite highly in my life, as it takes a lot of time to build and strengthen and isn’t something that comes naturally with every person you meet. It’s usually built with the people you choose to be closest to, which is why when it’s broken, it feels more significant. Let you in almost acts as a reminder for me of past situations or times where I've put my trust into the wrong person or people.

And which detail of let you in still gives you that internal jolt when you hear it?

There's a synth sound in there which sounds quite sinister; it almost gives the feeling of empowerment when I hear it. I think it really ties the song together whilst giving it a mysterious vibe, but it’s also how I imagine my thoughts to be as a sound. Especially in the period of time when I was making this song.

Your sound has always carried emotional weight, but this new chapter feels even more shadowed and internal. You mentioned someone once told you your music “sounds lonely”. Did that description shape how you approached the EP?

I feel like that comment has always stuck with me because I find a lot of truth in it throughout all my music. I think a few of the songs in this EP are a lot darker because my music will always reflect certain periods of my life, but also because I found a way to add one of my passions that I started when I was quite young—drumming—into my music too. I started to think more about live performances and the feeling and atmosphere I wanted to create when I started curating my own live shows, and I feel like a lot of these songs will carry a lot of weight in a live performance.

Redemption pt.1 built a real foundation—my streets, whenever you’re ready, and the momentum they created. When you began pt. 2, what did you feel was unfinished?

I knew I wanted this EP to be two parts from the start, as I felt that five songs weren’t enough to tell the story I wanted to tell. With my streets especially, I had only just begun to scratch the surface of where I wanted to take it. I wanted to keep a lot of emotional weight in some songs, while in others I wanted to showcase the drums and the vocals, whilst keeping the music impactful to try and drive the messages more. I also think I made it a two-part EP because all the songs feel like they live in the same space and were all made in a period of my life where I was really searching for redemption.

These new tracks, you’ve said, came from a place of escapism. What were you running from when you wrote them, and what did you find in the process?

I think I was running from reality and my thoughts; making music is a good way to get away from that, but also being able to put your emotions into your music helps to separate them a bit more. A lot of these tracks I made in a period of my life where I felt kind of stuck in my career; things weren’t really going the way I thought they would for a while, and it made me really doubt myself and my craft. But I found a new way of looking at things, a new style of sound or a new, more impactful way to tell my story. I found purpose in the music I was making, as it was connecting with people in a different way, in a way I had always wanted it to emotionally.
Even though some of the songs aren’t necessarily “sad songs”, they still hold a lot of power, meaning, and emotion, and I’ve found that you can also express “sad” feelings in songs with different emotions. I've found it’s about telling a story or having a concept that people can relate to, but making sure it really comes from the heart; I think that’s when it connects the most. I've also found out a lot more about myself in the process of making all this music, about what this really means to me and what impact I want my music to have on the world.

You’ve built your entire production identity from scratch, self-taught on a bedroom laptop. When you think about that version of yourself, what would surprise her most about the music you’re making now?

I'd be most surprised at the freedom in what I'm making. I've been writing lyrics for years, and they've always lived in my notes app with not really any intention of using them, so I'd be surprised that I've found a way to share my story with my lyrics and have put them in my own music in a way that fits with my style. I also think my music has sonically come a long way from where I started. Most producers would probably feel the same, but you never really notice the progress until you look back on it.
I think I'd be proud of the music I'm making now, as it seemed so far away at the time. Also bringing back my love of playing the drums, I started when I was around ten years old but stopped when I got to grade 6. I wasn't sure if I'd ever revisit that passion, but I'm glad I've rediscovered it from the new music I've been making. I started making music with no expectations so where I am now in general would surprise me too.
When I listen to my very first EP, focus, I still love all the music but feel as though I have learnt a lot production-wise and about myself, so I think what I'm making now feels a lot more whole, has more finesse and is more conceptual. Genre-wise I always knew I'd experiment with different ones as when I first started producing, I was making completely different genres, so I knew my love for music wasn't at all genre-based but more based on emotions and feelings, which it still is now.

Your stream numbers keep climbing. How do you keep that noise from shaping the music itself?

It’s always hard to know if people are going to like what you’re creating and knowing when or if you're in the right lane, but I've always wanted my music to make people feel something in the way that it does for me, so as long as my music is doing that, even when tapping into completely different emotions, it will all kind of live in a similar space. Starting from my streets, I've explored a slightly different avenue with my style of music, and it’s nice to see that it has resonated more, but you have to stay true to the music you want to make and the music that feels right, I think, rather than going off-stream numbers.

Your work with other artists, including co-writing and producing for 49th & Main, shows another side of you entirely. How does collaboration reshape the way you approach your own sound afterwards?

With collaborating and music in general, I find it’s more about the feeling in a song rather than the genre or anything else. It definitely inspires me a lot when I go back into creating on my own after a collaboration, as it opens your mind to sounds or ideas that I may not have thought about before. I always feel madly inspired after collaborating and not always because of the music, but because of the conversations you have with the new people you meet. It’s different from just meeting someone new, as it feels like when you have something in common that's to do with music, quite often you have similar experiences you can share or you click with them in a way you maybe wouldn't with everybody else. Which ultimately makes the music you're making together feel so much more connected and real. I feel as though when two or more very creative minds meet and connect, it’s almost inevitable that something special will come out of it, whether that be a song or a conversation full of inspiration or ideas.

When you think about the person behind the artist, what part of yourself are you still getting to know?

I think I struggle to separate any part of myself from the music because of how much passion I have for it. Most of my life involves or revolves around music, to the point where I find it’s all I talk about sometimes, so I'd say I'm still getting to know the person I am without all the music. It’s so easy to isolate yourself in this industry, especially starting as a bedroom producer—you spend a lot of time by yourself—so I find it can be hard to go back into reality or “normal life” outside of producing and making music, which can make it harder to get to know yourself away from all of that.

And what can you tell us about your projects for 2026?

For 2026, there will be a lot more music, a lot more emotion and a lot more thought and planning for live shows. In terms of projects, my cards are quite close to my chest at the minute, but there is definitely a lot more music on the way.

The landscapes, being the first country with the first democratically elected female head of state worldwide, the lack of annoying mosquitos, a huge social and political commitment in its society or being a very, very cold place. These are facts why we might refer to Iceland, but, when we think about this singular place in the world, the name that unquestionably comes to our minds is the one and only: Björk. She is one of the most important musicians of our time, an absolute icon who is like no one else. Her voice is unmistakable but her contribution to music goes so much more beyond that: she is an innovator. And today we say: happy Birthday, Björk!

She turns sixty and we celebrate not only her longevity but her fearless artistry. From her early days as a teenage prodigy in Iceland to becoming one of the most influential musicians of the last four decades, Björk has consistently defied convention. She has created art traversing pop, electronic, classical, and experimental music, making her a singular figure in global culture. But also, she has transformed live performance, visual storytelling, and fashion into extensions of her art. Her iconic videos and stage presentations have become cultural touchstones, while her collaborations with visual artists, designers, and technologists continually push the boundaries of what music can be. She embodies the fusion of sound, visual art, and activism.

“I’ve learned that the deepest pain can be transformed into the most powerful music,” she said in a 2015 interview with Pitchfork about Vulnicura, reflecting on heartbreak and the album’s emotional intensity. Anyone who has related to Björk’s work has ever felt less isolated, challenged and hopeful, all at the same time. She’s kind of the cool guardian angel of pop music and the creator of the most intriguing musical universes. 

As we honour her sixtieth birthday, we look back on the moments, works, and collaborations that define her enduring legacy, celebrating the eclectic, transformative, and boundary-breaking career of one of music’s most singular figures.

The album that changed everything: Homogenic (1997)

Homogenic is the moment Björk detonated her full artistic identity. Torn between Iceland’s volcanic vastness and 90s London’s chaos, she fused violent electronic beats with sweeping strings to create a new cinematic language for pop. Tracks like Jóga and Bachelorette feel tectonic, emotional earthquakes rendered in orchestral colour. The album was brutal, unified, and world-building, setting a new benchmark for avant-pop. With Homogenic, Björk stopped being a rising star and became a cultural architect whose influence resonates through every ambitious pop auteur that followed. The cultural impact of this album is still developing, that’s how visionary the artist’s work is.

Debut solo breakthrough: Debut (1993)

Debut was Björk stepping into her own spotlight after the Sugarcubes, and doing it with dazzling, genre-shattering confidence. Blending house, jazz, trip-hop, world music, and pure curiosity, the album introduced her as a singular force in 90s pop. Its emotional playfulness and club-infused sophistication turned her into an international phenomenon almost overnight. Debut bridged underground London nightlife with mainstream audiences, proving that experimental pop could be both intimate and global. And set an important issue, all along present in the artist’s career: Björk does contribute to the acknowledgment of unknown cultures with respect, especially inclined to the original histories of each, and their ecosystems. Violently Happy is the perfect example of what a trendsetter she has always been — noting it was made in 1994.

Visionary music videos

Björk turned the music video into a laboratory for art, technology, and imagination. Collaborating with Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Nick Knight, Chris Cunningham, and other visual revolutionaries, she created iconic pieces like Human Behaviour, Pagan Poetry, and the robot-love masterpiece All Is Full of Love. These weren’t promotional clips; they were short films that blurred surrealism, futurism, vulnerability, and fashion. Björk used the medium to build worlds, not just visuals, influencing generations of filmmakers, designers, and pop artists. The Gate remains one of her most compelling artistic efforts, an ode to love in the purest way contextualised in another possibility of a world that uses tech cleverly.

Swan dress at the Oscars (2001)

The Swan dress wasn’t a gimmick; it was a cultural shockwave. Björk walked into Hollywood’s most self-serious ceremony wearing a creature of whimsy, humour, and defiance, laying eggs on the red carpet and challenging every expectation of ‘acceptable’ female celebrity aesthetics. People mocked it at first, but the dress became a symbol of artistic autonomy and anti-conformist glamour. Today, it stands as one of fashion’s most iconic red carpet moments, proving Björk’s unmatched ability to turn spectacle into rebellion. Not only has she shown the world of fashion designers that there were different worldwide, but she has successfully inserted a very specific sense of humour into it 

Vespertine (2001): intimacy and micro-sound

With Vespertine, Björk staged a soft revolution. In an era obsessed with pop spectacle, she whispered instead of shouted, weaving music boxes, harps, choirs, and microbeats into a luminous interior world. The album captures the sensual magic of domestic spaces: the hush of winter, the electricity of solitude, the glow of private desire. Vespertine predicted ASMR, ambient pop, and the confessional electronica that would define the 2010s. It is one of her most delicate and most radical creations, in which she showed how rebellion lives also in tenderness. Inez and Vinoodh took the original black and white photograph of Björk in the infamous Marjan Pejoski swan dress, and M/M (Paris) added illustrations, including a swan and the album title, to the image, for the album cover, which is another thing Björk has been known for; her amazing vision to capture disruptive images to represent her work.

Live performance innovation

Björk’s live shows feel less like concerts and more like rituals. From the volcanic fury of the Homogenic string ensemble to the crystalline Vespertine choir, from the custom instruments of Biophilia to the cathedral-like spectacle of Cornucopia, she transforms stages into ecosystems. Her shows integrate technology, choreography, couture, and narrative into multisensory experiences. Every artist selling ‘immersive tours’ today is borrowing from the innovations Björk established decades earlier.

Cross-cultural musical experimentation

The Icelandic artist treats global sound traditions with reverence and curiosity. From flamenco collaborations with Spanish artist Raimundo Amador to working with Inuit throat singers, Icelandic choirs, and international ensembles, Björk builds bridges rather than appropriations. Her borderless sonic universe reflects a deep respect for cultural specificity while imagining entirely new hybrid forms. Through this cross-cultural dialogue, she has expanded the emotional and geographic possibilities of avant-pop.

Breakthrough Acting: Dancer in the Dark (2000)

In Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, Björk delivered one of cinema’s most haunting performances, so emotionally raw and immersive that she swore she’d never act again. Her portrayal of Selma earned her the Cannes Best Actress Award and remains a landmark in film history. The accompanying soundtrack, Selmasongs, fused her musical innovation with cinematic storytelling, turning the film into a devastating blend of narrative, sound, and emotion. Writing on Facebook, the star joined the #MeToo movement by describing abuse by a filmmaker she had worked with. She did not name the director, but by that time, she had only made one film — now she’s also participated in Robert Eggers’ The Northman (2022).

Environmental and social activism

Björk’s activism is a natural extension of her artistry: passionate, uncompromising, and both local and global. Spanning environmental protection, humanitarian aid, and political advocacy, she has campaigned against Iceland’s commercial salmon farms, promoted ocean conservation, raised awareness about climate collapse, and defended fragile ecosystems. She serves as a UNICEF ambassador, fundraises for disaster relief, supports LGBTQ+ and refugee rights, and speaks out on international issues such as Palestinian rights, Kosovo independence, and Chinese government policies, proving that a cultural icon can also be a steadfast protector of people and the planet.

Pioneering multimedia projects: Biophilia (2011)

Biophilia redefined what an album could be. It wasn’t just music; it was an interactive app suite, an educational curriculum, a scientific collaboration, and a live show powered by invented instruments. Björk blended natural science with art and technology, teaching kids physics through music and turning songs into living, modular systems. Long before tech companies tried immersive albums, Biophilia set the gold standard for multimedia innovation, and it was also the inspiration for a fantastic documentary in which the artist dialogued with Sir David Attenborough (When Björk Met Attenborough, Channel 4, 2013). Attenborough also recorded the voice that presented the app with the same name that Björk released along with the album.

Björk and the press

The artist’s relationship with the media has always been combative — not out of ego, but out of necessity. She resisted infantilisation, challenged sexist interviews, and confronted paparazzi invasions that other artists endured in silence. At times she withdrew entirely, prioritising her mental health and artistic autonomy. Her clashes with the press exposed the industry’s misogyny and ultimately shifted public understanding of how female innovators deserve to be treated. She didn’t change for the media; the media had to grow up. She also prepared the space for other non-native English-speaking artists to not feel intimidated by the language barrier or pronunciation. But, without a doubt, Björk’s best moment with the press took place in a Bangkok when she reacted ‘violently happy’ after a reporter harassed her and her child.

Vulnicura (2015): raw emotional humanity

Vulnicura is heartbreak rendered with almost surgical clarity. Combining orchestral strings with Arca’s fractured electronics, Björk documented the dissolution of love in devastating detail — from rupture to healing. The album’s emotional transparency resonated globally, becoming a beacon for listeners navigating their own grief, and also opening a channel in which she refers to the female experience during breakup in detailed moments throughout the album. It stands as one of the most powerful expressions of personal pain ever captured in contemporary music. The whole project is an exploration of her breakup with visual artist Matthew Barney, and the title itself is a play on words combining ‘vulnerability’ and ‘cure’. Stonemilker is one of the most devastating songs ever, in which the singer desperately begs for “emotional respect.” Shot on location in Iceland by award-winning director Andrew Thomas Huang, she presented a 360 degree film performing the haunting song.

DJ and curatorial work

Björk’s DJ sets are unpredictable, ecstatic, and deeply educational. She blends global folk traditions with cutting-edge electronic experiments, rare tracks with personal favourites, creating a sonic journey that feels like being inside her creative brain. Beyond technique, her sets serve as cultural curation, uplifting overlooked genres and giving underground scenes global visibility. When Björk DJs, she expands the musical map. Notable sets include a four-hour set at the opening of Sónar in Barcelona and a performance at the Tri Angle Records fifth-anniversary show.

Championing feminism 

Björk has long championed women and LGBTQ+ artists, not as a trend, but as a structural necessity. She has also stood for herself and pointed out sexism in the music industry. “Some media could not get their head around that I was not ‘performing’ and ‘hiding’ behind desks, and my male counterparts not. And I think this is sexism,” she explained in an interview to The Guardian when the male performers at the Day and Night festival in Houston, including Aphex Twin and Matmos, played similar DJ sets but didn’t get the same critique that they weren’t performing. But in 1994 she was already highlighting sexism, as she explained in an interview: “Men can be silly, fat, funny, intelligent, hardcore, sensual, philosophical, but with women, they always have to be feminine. Feminine, feminine. ”

Collaborations with visionary artists

Björk collaborates not for clout but for genuine alchemy. Her partnerships, including Arca, Anohni, Zeena Parkins, serpentwithfeet, Mark Bell, Matmos, Alexander McQueen, Iris van Herpen, or Jenny Holzer, represent a constellation of creative disciplines spanning fashion, film, or music. She invites others into her universe and pushes them toward their most daring work, often amplifying emerging voices long before the industry recognises them. These collaborations expand her world and reshape the cultural landscape at large. The most recent and exciting one is in Berghain, the lead single in Rosalía’s Lux (the Spanish singer recently called her “the most fascinating human being I have ever met”). Both artists already share a collaboration: the song Oral, released in 2023, and both donated all their rights to income generated by this song to the AEGIS non-profit organisation to combat open pen fish farming in Iceland.

By now, we’ve all noticed the 2010s creeping back into our lives from every angle. In indie sleaze music and The Dare’s wild electroclash vibe, for example. In those military, army, circus-director jackets suddenly marching down every runway. In Isabel Marant’s sneaker heels, of course, and even in the way people post on Instagram again, horizontally, chaotically, and with a concerning amount of filters. So honestly, there couldn’t be a better moment to bring back the one genre that had all of us in a collective chokehold: dystopian, post-apocalyptic, brutally dramatic action movies. And that’s what the new trailer for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping has done.

Balenciaga is also doing it with their PUBG collaboration, but that’s not where we’re going. We’re going straight to the second sequel of The Hunger Games. We’re going to Sunrise on the Reaping. And just yesterday, we finally got our very first look through the official trailer, teasing a film that isn’t coming out until exactly a year later (!!!), on November 20th, 2026. 

In case you’re not fully up to date: Sunrise on the Reaping takes place about twenty-four years before Katniss Everdeen enters the arena for the first time. And if you’re really not up to date: The Hunger Games world is set in a not-exactly-defined future, somewhere in North America after wars, people, and natural disasters basically nuked civilization as we knew it. Out of those ashes rose Panem, a dictatorship divided into the wealthy Capitol and thirteen districts. The name Panem comes from the Latin ‘Panem et circenses’, which means bread and games. Because just like the Romans, the Capitol keeps everyone fed enough and distracted enough with deadly entertainment to stop them from rising up. Cute.

Now you’re caught up. In this world, Sunrise on the Reaping tells the story of Haymitch, yes, that Haymitch, the impulsive, bitter, hilarious, begrudgingly lovable mentor we all know from the original trilogy. Except here, he’s not a mentor yet. He’s a tribute. And of course, the year he’s chosen happens to be an anniversary: the fiftieth Hunger Games. Meaning, the Capitol decides to celebrate by doubling the number of tributes. So instead of twenty-four terrified teenagers, there are forty-eight. And, as always, they have to fight until only one is left standing. Happy anniversary, I guess.

From what the trailer shows, we’re in for drama. For epic, brutal, emotional chaos. Maybe even the darkest story the The Hunger Games universe has ever given us. We’ll see. The full movie is still basically a year away, but the cast already looks incredible. Newcomer Joseph Zada, who we recently saw in the Amazon series We Were Liars (2025), plays Haymitch. McKenna Grace, the child actress who at one point seemed to be in every single movie, is also on board. Whitney Peak, known from the Gossip Girl reboot (2021-2023), plays Haymitch’s girlfriend. And then come the big highlights: Elle Fanning as young Effie Trinket. Literally everyone is thrilled about that choice. And for good reason. She is perfect. Let’s see if she also gets to wear Alexander McQueen in this one. And yes, Ralph Fiennes is in it too, you know — Voldemort, Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Conclave (2024). Plus Kieran Culkin from Succession (2018-2023), Maya Hawke from Stranger Things (2016-2026), and Glenn Close, the woman behind the OG Cruella DeVil herself.

So far, everything looks extremely promising. And honestly, it fits the moment so well it almost hurts. If the 2010s really are making their chaotic, glitter-smudged comeback, the music, the fashion, the unhinged Insta energy, then reviving one of the era’s sagas feels less like a trend and more like a full-circle moment. A nod to a time that somehow felt simpler, even though the movies were literally about kids forced to fight to the death. And maybe that is exactly why this trailer hits so hard right now. Because in a time full of propaganda, power abuse, censorship, inequality, and chaos, a return to Panem feels not like escapism anymore. No, it feels shockingly relevant right now. Like a mirror that we need to think about. A very glossy, very brutal, very 2010s style mirror.

My first encounter with Miles Greenberg was in Berlin, 2022, at the Julia Stoschek Collection film presentation of his performance Fountain I — a hypnotic meditation where the body became a living sculpture, a vessel, a monument to its own surrender. Montreal-born and New York-based, Greenberg has emerged as one of contemporary performance’s most singular voices, moving fluently between endurance, sculpture and ritual.

Two years later in Paris, under the curatorship of Olivia Anani, Greenberg unveils Gods of Solaris at Reiffers Arts Initiative: an immersive, subterranean landscape of mud, mirrors, and metal where myth and flesh are suspended in luminous tension. Presented in dialogue with Daniel Buren, whose vibrant geometry occupies the space above, the exhibition becomes a vertical confrontation between earth and sky, weight and light. Here, transcendence is carved through matter, and the body remains both origin and aftermath: a relic, a ghost, a pulse that refuses to fade.

To go further, I spoke with Miles about permanence, ritual, and the invisible architecture of the body.

Who are you when no one’s watching?

If I told you, I wouldn’t be unwatched anymore, would I?

In Gods of Solaris, your sculptures depict mythological figures such as Saint George and the dragon, Perseus with Medusa’s head, and Saint Michael the Archangel defeating the demon. What dialogue do you aim to establish between the monumentality of these figures and the fragility or ephemerality of their surrounding environment?

The temporality embedded in the forms I’m working with is something that makes them somehow fragile, too. If not fragile, then fleeting. It’s a diaphanous, slippery ghost frozen in a block of something hard.

Your work has always touched on both transcendence and vulnerability. When was the last time you felt truly grounded?

At home, in Quebec, in the Laurentian mountains where I grew up. Geologically speaking, it’s one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth.

Daniel Buren intervenes in the same adjacent space with colour and geometry. How do you perceive the tension or dialogue between your visceral, bodily approach and Buren’s conceptual and geometric language?

Mine is dark, his is light; my light comes from the depths, his from the sky; I’m working from the center of the earth out, he’s working from the sky above in. These contrasts are exactly why he selected me for the project and I think it worked out pretty elegantly. For months, we tried to marry the two worlds, but it kept clashing. The moment we finally relented and allowed oil and water to separate into two distinct levels, the correlations became apparent and complementary. He’s a tough guy, though— he doesn’t suffer bullshit, and he’s very exacting, which I appreciate. This was neither a collaboration, nor a mentorship, it was an intergenerational boxing match, and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

Extreme corporeality and implicit rituals seem to be a recurring thread in your work. What role do these contemporary rituals play in the viewer’s experience of Gods of Solaris?

That should be intuitive for every viewer. Each figure is composed of traces of a real living, breathing body. When we are before a body, we react intuitively and empathetically. How do you feel standing in front of works from antiquity?

Beyond the studio, what practices or rituals help you sustain that same intensity in your everyday life?

Over thirty-five different supplements throughout the course of the day, for starters. I’ve also been doing a lot of cupping, lately.

The choice of aluminum for the sculptures is new in your practice, contrasting with more organic materials like clay and water. What does this material contrast contribute to the perception of permanence and fragility in the work?

All my sculpture work is meant to last ostensibly forever, which is a bit of a joke in and of itself because we will all be dust sooner or later. But I'm following the same intuitive principles around the purpose of the work that the Greeks and the Romans did, and that has been prevalent in the western canon of art. It’s about creating an illusion of permanence as a tool for deeper understanding. A moment flickers past us and we might understand one percent of it, but if we freeze it in space and time in a material like marble or metal or wood, not only does it endure, but we know that it will endure. That perception component is crucial, because when we feel as though something is built to last forever, we can metabolise it at our own pace. More layers can emerge. Aluminium reflects light in a very beautiful, white hue. It recalls Soviet-era sculpture to me, which is also a style that is prevalent in monuments on the African continent from a certain era as well. I thought it was fitting, and it’s light and holds plenty of pretty mistakes.

Your sculptures reinterpret ancient myths in a contemporary, urban context. How do you see these mythic narratives engaging with current concerns about ethics, power, or transformation?

That’s not my job to interpret, or rather, I’m not interested in dictating that reading for the audience.

Do you believe the body remembers more than the mind?

The mind is the body is the spirit.

The juxtaposition of performance and sculpture raises questions about authorship. Where does your body end and the work begin? Where does the spectator fit within this equation?

It’s all one thing.

The exhibition invites viewers to simultaneously encounter the sublime and the unsettling. What role does discomfort or sensory provocation play in your conception of art?

Discomfort isn’t a topic, it’s a doorway. With all due respect, I think the laziest reading of my work is when people fixate on the pain aspect, and worse, funnel that into ethnically-charged narratives of subjugation. It’s just not what I’m talking about, per se. Look a little deeper and you’ll find as much range in my topics as in anyone from any canon. I don’t care much for the audience’s guilt or concern for my wellbeing, it’s not the point.

The chosen mythological figures depict epic battles and moral narratives. How do you see these stories influencing the construction of the spectator’s emotional experience?

I wanted to illustrate victory and defeat in one body, of one body. It’s like if an alien were trying to understand the nuance of two opposing things to be true at once, and struggling.

What do you fear the most: stillness, or change?

I don’t believe in stillness; it barely exists.

What zodiac sign are you? Do you believe in astrology?

Scorpio, first day, October 23rd. Year of the Ox. The opening of the Paris show was on my birthday! For what it’s worth, I was born two weeks late and after forty hours of labour, I somehow wound up being delivered about ten minutes into Scorpio. All that to say, I believe in astrology insofar as I think saying you’re a Scorpio is chic.

Blanco’s new EP, Paradise on a Lifeboat, arrives as a moment of suspension, the kind of pause that quietly rearranges the architecture of a story. Ten years after his first steps in Kennington, he releases a project that feels both distilled and disarmingly poignant, rooted in tension, memory, and the search for meaning amidst survival.

The EP draws from an arc in Naruto, where the so-called filler episodes reveal the emotional logic beneath the narrative. As Blanco explains, “Paradise on a Lifeboat is inspired by an arc from the anime Naruto. The title immediately stood out to me because of its oxymoronic nature; it captures both beauty and struggle, and their coexistence. Can’t lie, it reflects my own life, my upbringing was rough, but there were still moments that felt like paradise.” 

A few days before the release, he reflected on the decade behind him, writing, “How can there be paradise when we’re barely surviving? When I reflect back on my music career, a lot has changed. It’s been ten years exactly since I started rapping, and now I’m four projects deep… doing fuckeries on the ends, surrounded by chaos and desperation, but the people around me made it paradise.” Across six tracks, Blanco sharpens that duality. Kuduro textures nod to his Angolan roots, while London’s pulse tightens every line. The collaboration with Kidwild on One More Day adds a warmer counterbalance, the kind of chemistry that already shaped their connection in Remontada, here returning with a more understated tone.

Musically, the project moves with a clear sense of intention. Regime sets the pace with a contained urgency, while Yango and Porto Alegre open the sound toward more rhythmic, global influences without losing focus. Akaza sits at the emotional centre of the EP, its restraint giving way to flashes of internal pressure. The closer, Reborn, offers a softer lift, a moment that hints at change rather than resolving it outright. 

Yesterday, he released the video for Akaza, a stark and controlled visual that mirrors the EP’s inner gravity. It extends the project’s language into image, showing how Blanco anchors mood and narrative through simplicity. Instead of presenting itself as a definitive statement, Paradise on a Lifeboat feels like a chapter that opens more than it closes. Blanco leans into precision, into smaller gestures that carry weight, and into a sound that continues to evolve without losing its centre.

JIHAD, the debut EP by Tunisian-Danish artist 100, arrives today as a work shaped by emotional rupture and meticulous craft. Written, produced and composed entirely by 100, the project unfolds alongside a capsule collaboration with Copenhagen fashion label Sabot. It marks the beginning of a new self-published chapter for a multidisciplinary artist whose practice moves between electronic composition, classical strings, performance and installation.

Hours before the release, she described the EP as “the result of an internal struggle, the biggest Jihad… unfolding the disillusion caused by multi-layered heartbreaks, toxic relationships, and the duality of suppressed feelings versus arenas of emotion.” The statement captures the emotional weight behind the record and the way it moves: fluid, unstructured and constantly shifting, mirroring the instability she writes from.

Musically, JIHAD blends orchestral intensity, noise, R&B fragments and experimental production. On New Day, pipe organ and synths swell into cinematic tension, while her vocal phrasing balances fragility with resistance. Elsewhere, melodies dissolve abruptly, strings are stretched to their breaking point, and the production feels sculpted rather than arranged.

The artist's interdisciplinary background sharpens this fluidity. Having worked across music, visual art, performance and immersive installations, including her previous duo project Pamela Angela, she brings a gallery sensibility into the sonic world. International performances and exhibitions across Europe and North Africa have already shaped her language, and JIHAD extends that vocabulary into something more personal and self-defined.

This release also deepens her relationship with Sabot, a Danish fashion brand known for its uncompromising approach to craft and use of deadstock materials. In October, 100 designed an exclusive T-shirt for the label, followed by a handcrafted silver ring, now available made to order. These pieces form the early stages of a longer collaboration exploring how music can take physical form. As she explains, “I’ve always been interested in giving music a physicality—whether in sculpture, installation, performance, or now something wearable. This way of working—of materializing or installing the music—is maybe also a way to understand it better.”

Ozzy Jones releases between you and me today via Intercept Records, marking not only the arrival of his debut album but also his first live show tonight at Centrale Markthal in Amsterdam. The project was born from a moment that rewired everything: the epileptic seizure he suffered in 2019 that forced him into isolation, reflection and the slow work of confronting fear. What followed was a world built from scratch through electronica, indie textures and an urgent need to reconnect.

The album carries the imprint of that transformation. As Ozzy shares, “after my first seizure, everything I knew about myself and the world shattered. Music became the only place I could process the intensity of those feelings.” Between you and me opens that inner space to others, inviting listeners into the vulnerability and self-discovery that shaped it. Tonight’s debut performance, supported by Possibilities Open Studio with a dance piece by The Current Collective, brings that journey into the physical world.

How are you feeling as you step into this week, knowing the album is finally becoming real?

It’s surreal. This is something that I have been working on for such a long time… I can’t really fathom that on Friday it’ll be out there for the world to hear. It makes me proud, excited, and of course a little nervous. I have never been this vulnerable so publicly.

Your seizure in 2019 broke open the life you thought you knew. What part of yourself did you have to meet for the first time after that moment?

I was always a pretty happy and relaxed guy, and the seizure flipped that upside down. From one day to the next, I became hyper sensitive to the world around me. Very little stimuli would trigger a heavy fight or flight response, leaving me in a state of perpetual fear, anxiety, and survival. Whether this was true or not, I don’t really know. But it was a long period (years) in which I perpetually felt very unsafe. So I guess I met my scared/anxious side? I had, of course, been scared and anxious before, but not to this extent and for this period of time. Unfortunately, I still experience these feelings quite regularly, so I’ve had to change my life and lifestyle to mitigate these states of fear.

Solitude played a huge role in the beginning of this project. How did being alone change the way you understood your own emotions?

I hated solitude before. After I had my seizure, that didn’t change (laughs). It was very confronting, to be honest. When you’re alone, you can’t hide! The dark headspace I found myself in, combined with this new sensitivity, made this a very intense and painful period. The biggest thing I had to learn was to be honest about how I was feeling. For a long time, I tried to pretend to be ok when I wasn’t. Being honest, open and vulnerable about my emotions (even if just over the phone) was probably the biggest thing I learnt from this time in solitude.

You’ve shared a few pieces of the album already, with Nanai as the focus track. What parts of yourself were you revealing with each release?

Each track on the album is a snapshot. The good, the bad and the ugly of these past years. Nanai, for example, is a song about love. Sometimes you meet someone and it feels like a firework, adrenaline mixed with something electric. A feeling like this never lasts forever; the connection was actually quite brief. But in that connection, in that feeling of being alive, there was a reminder that even these kinds of fleeting moments can be healing.

“I hated solitude before. After I had my seizure, that didn’t change (laughs). It was very confronting, to be honest. When you’re alone, you can’t hide!”

Between you and me blends electronica and indie, and it conveys a sense of someone rebuilding themselves from the inside. How did you shape the sound around what you were living emotionally?

I guess in that way: many people journal to process their emotions, and I like to write songs to do the same. It’s cathartic. I never start with any intentions as to what I want to produce; I just start making something. It’s totally improvised. The result is therefore generally a reflection of whatever I am feeling that day. Certain melodies, certain drums and certain words resonate in a moment, I think it’s basically pure intuition. If you make music for no-one other than yourself, you can follow whatever tangent feels right and then all of a sudden you have a track. I also optimise my workflow to be able to record music whenever I want (and in the quickest way possible).
Two examples. First one, always having Ableton open on my laptop with a project open; this allows me to work on it whenever I feel like it, there’s no pressure, no rush, and if I feel like starting something new, I always do. And second, I record vocals with a gamer headset. No joke. All vocals in any of my music, EVER, have been recorded using a forty euro gamer headset as it allows me to quickly get vocals recorded or sketch moods (instead of having to plug in all this gear ruining the entire creative experience). I also don’t have a studio, so I love to make music wherever I am: plane, train, car, but more often than not, the couch!

On a personal level, what was the hardest truth you had to admit to yourself while making this album?

That I was not ok. I would love to be, but I wasn’t. The album is an insight into how I felt, which I guess I don’t always let people see. I’d like to think I do, but I don’t always fully let people into this side of myself.

The idea of masculinity shifted for you during this whole process. What expectations or pressures did you have to let go of in order to feel like yourself again?

Similar to the above, it was admitting I was not ok and letting people know. When they said, but Oz, you’ll be alright; I said, no, I am really not doing ok. Men are much freer to express vulnerability today but we can still do it more. In Australia, where I grew up, the biggest killer of men under twenty-five is themselves. This is shocking. Every opportunity I get to be vulnerable and honest, this can be in both happiness and sadness, I try to take. Even if it is terrifying.

Your family is present in the DNA of this record. When you look at the album cover or think of your mother’s influence on the name, what feelings arise?

I feel pride, so much pride. The cover is a lino-etch my sister made when she was sixteen. It’s insane, no? Twelve years later it found its way onto the front of my record. And the name, between you and me, is an ode to my mother’s 90s kids fashion label. I think it’s awesome to be able to collaborate with my family to make such a personal body of work come alive.

“After my first seizure, everything I knew about myself and the world shattered. Music became the only place I could process the intensity of those feelings: loss, identity, solitude and emotional truth.”

Your work moves between sound, visuals and storytelling as if they were one thing. Does expressing yourself across different mediums help you process what you’re feeling in ways music alone can’t?

Absolutely. The impact of between you and me is exponentially higher due to the intersection of sound, visual and storytelling. Music can do a lot, but paired with the right visuals, it speaks more to us as multiple senses are being stimulated. Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of human connection. And by telling my story, I feel like people understand me, my music and what I stand for far better.

When you look back at your earlier releases, who were you then compared to the person you are now?

Those releases, I love too. But they represent a different side of me, the side that you may see out at a party. This side of me is absolutely still alive. I guess I am introducing the creative world to the other side of me too.

There’s a strong urgency in the way you describe this project. What were you afraid would happen if you didn’t share this story now?

After my first seizure, everything I knew about myself and the world shattered. Music became the only place I could process the intensity of those feelings: loss, identity, solitude and emotional truth. This project is my way of reclaiming space, not just for myself, but for anyone navigating the gap between vulnerability and strength. I feel I owe it to the version of me who was silent, afraid and disconnected to now speak loudly, honestly and with conviction.

Some tracks, like asking your name or layer of love, hold a lot of emotional weight. Was there a moment during the process when the music felt too close to touch?

No, it’s never too close. The closer it gets, the better, but also the heavier it is to make. I have cried many times whilst writing many songs on this album. Literally just sitting there behind my computer, bawling my eyes out whilst I sing or produce. It took me years to feel comfortable releasing music like this, so I don’t think it was ever too close for me to touch whilst producing it, but maybe it did feel too close for others to touch? That’s why it took a long time to come out.

And now, with the release days away, what do you hope people will understand about you, and about themselves, when they listen to the album alone?

I hope that they can be transported into the different emotions I felt during these years. And understand that even though all that happened, I am ok. And they will be too. At the end of the day, the album is just saying: DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE YOURSELF in whatever format, way, emotion or state that may be.

Kalpee’s new EP, Dougla Boi, out today, unfolds as his most personal work to date. Named after the Trinidadian term for people of mixed African and Indian heritage, the project traces the emotional terrain of growing up Dougla in Trinidad and Tobago. These six tracks hold the pauses, the fractures, and the moments of clarity that come from learning to breathe inside an identity shaped by duality.

Under sets the tone with a quiet, unfiltered tenderness, while No Denying and Breathe move with the weight of someone exhaling something long carried. Heaven So Close opens into a softer light, and Everybody, presented in two versions and featuring Full Blown, anchors the release with its communal pulse. The EP flows with an intuitive sense of storytelling, each track landing like a different facet of the same truth.

There is a clear line connecting this chapter with the Kalpee METAL met back in April of 2022, when we covered Jump Off, a single that explored inner fear through the metaphor of leaping into the unknown. Back then, he was shaping the contours of New Calypso, grounding his sound in Trinidad and Tobago while pushing visually through the forest spirits, the shadows, and the volcanic energy of the video filmed with Jalicia Nightingale under the direction of Josiah Persad. That release revealed an artist willing to confront anxiety, tension and the loss of control as part of his creative process. Dougla Boi feels like the natural evolution of that impulse, deeper and more assured, rooted in heritage as both anchor and compass.

Listening through, the EP moves with a sense of inner alignment rather than stylistic fusion. Calypso textures, RnB silhouettes, dancehall warmth and afrobeats energy unfold as extensions of an emotional logic he has been refining for years. What emerges is not a closed statement but an open space where identity keeps unfolding, where healing refuses straight lines and where the in-between becomes its own kind of home.

One half of the acclaimed Safdie Brothers, Benny Safdie, has received the Visionary Award at this year’s Stockholm Film Festival, where he presented a masterclass following his solo directorial debut, The Smashing Machine — a biopic of UFC pioneer Mark Kerr that earned him the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. The movie stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife, revealing vulnerability in Johnson as much as Uncut Gems did with Adam Sandler, humanising characters and actors audiences think they already know.

Following a masterclass moderated by Jakob Åsell, co-director of the festival’s programme, we had the opportunity to speak with Safdie. He discussed everything from his early personal work and signature long-lens visual style to his editorial process and approach to casting against type. Known for his kinetic, immersive approach to cinema with films like Good Time, Uncut Gems, and Heaven Knows What, he opened up about the deeply personal foundations of his filmmaking exploring themes of vulnerability and identity in characters often dismissed by society. Throughout the conversation, he reveals his intimate understanding of the relationship between performance, editing, and authenticity. The film also draws unexpected inspiration from Rocky III and Elvis Presley’s fragile final performances.

You started with very personal material. Can you talk about how your early films drew from your own experiences?

It was my experience in college, trying to make friends. That was something I felt like I could talk about. I didn’t want to do anything I didn’t feel like I could answer to. I want to understand the subject I’m talking about. Since it was my experience, I knew I could do that. Daddy Longlegs was basically: we knew we had had a chaotic childhood and we wanted to explore it. What’s interesting now is that I have two kids exactly the same age as the kids in the movie. I can’t imagine allowing them to be part of a movie because it’s such a complicated process. But I understand why the mom was excited about it — that time of their lives is captured. It’s about the things you want to save. I was twenty-two, just coming out of college, trying to understand why am I here? Where am I? It was just trying to understand how you’re even alive, how to get through things.

Can you talk about your choice of filming with long lenses?

That started with the short film The Black Balloon in 2012. We were testing long lenses for the first time. There was this periscope lens, a zoom with a trombone kind of thing on it. It was a real test to see what you could do with that and how it made things feel. With the balloon, you could follow it through the city and it felt very real. When you compressed the space, I remember learning a lot with that short and taking it to Heaven Knows What.

How much of your work is created in the edit?

A lot is created in the edit. With Good Time, the ending was very different — it was going to follow the other person. In the edit, we realised we truly care about the brother. That was only discovered as the movie was edited. You realise the true nature of the story in the edit because you find out what’s engaging. And if it’s not engaging, you cut it out. It’s very extreme like that.

Your characters force us to reconsider people we might otherwise dismiss. What draws you to that challenge?

What I like is when you make a snap judgment about somebody, then the job becomes undercutting that snap judgment. That’s interesting to me — to learn about somebody who you think you’ve already pegged as something. If anybody’s seen The Curse, Dougie makes you uncomfortable immediately. But then you learn he’s dealing with something really dark, and that struggle makes him human. That's fun to me, to put you in a place of trying to understand somebody.
With The Smashing Machine, you look at Mark and think he’s the strongest person in the world, he can handle anything. But it turns out he’s exactly the opposite. Mark told me, just because he was big and strong, the fact that he could put together a sentence was shocking to people.

Uncut Gems went through 160 rewrites over a decade. What’s behind that number?

It's a yes-and-no kind of thing. When you're making a movie, you have different colours of the draft, and every day you're rewriting the script. That's where that number comes from. Over ten years, it changes. Things get cut out completely. It’s a cool number, but it took us a long time, and then it changed a lot while we were shooting. With Keith’s character, Phil, on the page he's very one-note, a heavy. But what makes it unique is that it’s Keith. He was a longshoreman and brought so much of himself to the role. Casting is so important because a character comes to life based on who’s there.

Josh said you’re like Frederick Wiseman directing from the sound booth. Why that approach?

Since there were two of us, it was a waste to both be in the same place. Early on, the crew was so small: on Heaven Knows What, maybe ten people. I ran sound myself. For fifty per cent of Daddy Longlegs, I did the same thing. It was utilitarian — I knew how to run sound, so that's what I did. It meant I could be right with the actors and give instant feedback. Even now on The Smashing Machine, I was in the same spot because I like being present with the performers. If you’re outside of the room, it slows things down.

 “Casting is so important because a character comes to life based on who’s there.”

Can you talk about your interest in the documentary sports format when plotting The Smashing Machine?

It was based on a documentary made at the same time. After Hoop Dreams, people were making these sports documentaries, in 2000 and 2001, trying to capture the essence of competition. John Hyams’ documentary does a great job. I saw that and thought, what if I was there? I can base my reality on that existing thing and move through it freely as a fiction film. I wanted to make something that could be put online and people would think, is that real? It falls into this place of: this feels like I'm watching something real, but I know it's not. That time period of 1997 to 2001 is very close to a lot of people because it was so documented — reality TV came on, cameras became more available. That aesthetic is burned into people’s brains.

You mentioned reference points like Rocky III, It's a Wonderful Life, and Elvis. Can you elaborate?

It's a Wonderful Life: what happens at the end? What's changed? Nothing. His perspective changes. He has to accept who he is, and in that acceptance is joy. That's basically the same thing in The Smashing Machine: you’re watching somebody come to terms with who they really are. Rocky III, Bill Butler shot it, he also shot Jaws. He uses a lot of long lenses and they’re messy. There's a beautiful feeling to it. But also, Rocky loses in the beginning. He thinks he has it in the bag, fights Mr. T and gets his ass kicked. Then he has to come to terms with what am I actually doing. What's interesting is it's basically a documentary about Sylvester Stallone at that time. Here he was, super famous, everybody expected something of him. Dwayne is trying to understand himself in The Smashing Machine the same way.
Elvis, I was listening to him sing songs from near the end of his life, when he was struggling with painkillers, the same things Mark was struggling with. There’s a version from 1973 in Hawaii that has this fragility to his voice, and it was meaningful to Dwayne. So we used that for the training montage.

How involved are you with the composing process?

Very involved. I worked with Nala Sinephro. Allowing her to be herself was very important, she’s an artist who makes things the way she wants. That’s why you ask somebody like that. She has a very specific vibe to her music, and I wanted that in the movie. We spent about a week recording jazz sessions. We played the movie, I told them what the characters were feeling, and they would play.

You worked with Adam Sandler on Uncut Gems and Dwayne Johnson on The Smashing Machine, both known for different genres. What's the thought behind selecting these actors? 

For Sandler, the character was somebody who was very caustic, maybe not somebody you’d want to be around. To counteract that, he was the perfect person because he’s so lovable. You want to give him a big hug. That inherently softened the character in a way that allowed you to accept him as who he was. He really pushed us to explore his family and show that he felt bad about the position he put his kids in. The fact that you saw he cared about his daughter and his son, those things humanised him in a way that I think only Sandler could have done.
With The Smashing Machine, Dwayne related to who Mark was. He saw a possibility as an alternate reality for himself. They both came up at similar times and one person went one way, the other went the other. He was thinking, what if that had happened to me in a lot of ways? There was a real intense personification of understanding himself that gave the performance its depth. It's really subtle and beautiful. It's about making a connection between the actor and the character.

Do you appreciate the fact that you're giving the audience a chance to see these actors in a completely different light?

Yeah, I think it’s rewarding to show another side of somebody who you really love. Here’s Sandler, who you have all these connections with, and then you see this and realise there’s another side to him. Dwayne has this intense charisma and magnetism, you want him to win the day, but now you realise there’s a lot of vulnerability inside of him that he’s able to do all that in spite of, and that deepens him. When I saw him, I saw that element and was like, wow, we can really explore something here and it would make you understand him in a very different way.

Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton was a photographer, a fashion illustrator, a costume designer, a social caricaturist, a writer, a stylist, a decorator, a dandy, a renaissance man, a rebel but an aristocrat at the same time, an artist, a provocateur, an expressionist, and an aesthete; the list could go on. To describe Beaton, his career and his works in a few words would be nearly impossible, but showing it? That’s definitely more effective. Until 11 January, London’s National Portrait Gallery invites visitors to experience the world of the British photographer and the path that led to his success.

Beaton is definitely a great example of “if you want, you can”. As he admitted in his diaries, he started with “very little talent but a lot of strong ambition”, and perhaps sometimes that’s exactly the key; sometimes ambition can be as powerful as genius. Almost entirely self-taught, Beaton started experimenting with the camera, using his mother and sister as models, soon building a style that was entirely his own. His work became instantly recognisable—elaborate, theatrical, imaginative—and made him one of the defining figures of twentieth-century fashion, celebrated for his visual language, his ability to capture personality and status, and his boundless fantasy.

Think of an artist like Rosalia, who in her new album LUX sings in thirteen different languages and is able to shift between different genres. Beaton was doing something similar through his camera almost a century ago. He “spoke” in multiple visual dialects: fashion, reportage, cinema and society portraiture, reinventing himself with each new medium. Every photograph was a sentence in a language only he could write.

Walking around the National Portrait Gallery, we stumble across all kinds of personalities: socialites and aristocrats, Hollywood icons and soldiers, workers and political figures, and even the Queen. From portraying the Bright Young Things, those dazzling, hedonistic socialites who ruled the 1920s tabloids (think Gossip Girl, Blair Waldorf or Serena van der Woodsen, but swapping martinis for champagne and cigarette holders) to his photojournalism during the war and his contribution to iconic movies like My Fair Lady, which earned him an Oscar for costume and set design, Beaton’s career proves what we already said at the beginning: he was an artist with range.

Modigliani used to say, “When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes,” and Beaton seemed to have that same intuitive gift. His images were never just about surface beauty; they mirrored the identity of the person in front of him, making them feel closer to us, alive, more real and recognisable. He completely changed the way we construct images: with his imaginative backdrops, artistic language, and playful elegance, he transformed portraiture into storytelling. He wasn’t just the King of Vogue; he was the architect of a new visual language, one that continues to echo today.

Presenting your first album in six years is no small feat. Especially when that album is one made in the wake of your mother’s passing in 2023. One with heartfelt tracks oscillating between themes of homecoming, missing loved ones, and being in the countryside away from the city. Nonetheless, Dev Hynes aka Blood Orange was up for the challenge, selling out four dates at London’s Alexandra Palace in the blink of an eye. Needless to say, the hundreds of fans who snatched tickets were not disappointed as Hynes and his band brought Essex Honey to life beautifully while weaving in deep cuts, fan favourites, and a surprise guest appearance on their second night.

As the historical venue went dark and cheers erupted, passing through the crowd and out of the shadows, Hynes emerged and made his way onto the stage. With a single spotlight on him, he started the night off with Essex Honey’s opening track, Look At You. One piano key is all it took for the applauding audience to cease suddenly and tune in. As the song started coming to an end, strobe lights lit up the venue in time to welcome Hynes’ band to the stage situated in the middle of the room. The voices and instrumentation of Eva Tolkin, Ian Isiah, and Tariq Saleem Al-Sabir accompanied Hynes throughout the night as he displayed his versatility floating between the keyboard, guitar, and cello. Dreamy soul-hitting vocals worked together with the live instrumentation to perfection, creating a meticulously layered and vibrant embodiment of the setlist. 

Thinking Clean, a surprise solo cover of The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now on electric cello, Saint, Somewhere in Between, and Jesus Freak Lighter followed, the latter causing the venue to erupt into flashing lights and cheering from the crowd after merely hearing the very first guitar chord. All eyes were glued to the round stage throughout the night as the audience stood struck in awe, dancing, singing and even crying. It felt equal parts intimate, heartwarming, and hazy as it did buzzing and dynamic, a testament to Hynes’ eclectic and varied musical repertoire. 

Although most of the performance was drawn from Essex Honey, the artist also delved into his earlier stuff. After stoking things up further with Mind Loaded and Countryside, we got to hear You’re Not Good Enough from his debut album as well as the swaggering social media viral hit Charcoal Baby. However, it was Champagne Coast, the track that has become his biggest hit because of its popularity on TikTok, that garnered the biggest reaction of the night. It pulled everyone away from heavier sentiments of melancholy for its duration and filled the crowd with energy as they all sang their hearts out. The cherry on top? Hynes’ hypnotic guitar solo. And while he was in close proximity to the audience throughout the night, making his way around the stage, he said little to nothing between songs, occasionally acknowledging everyone being there and being present and speaking of his bandmates and collaborators. 

Reeling it back to Essex Honey, he delivered mesmerising renditions of The Field, The Last of England and a tender acoustic version of The Train (King's Cross), with the live band adding ecstatic propulsive warmth and depth to each track. The pairing of ongoing drum vibrations, guitar riffs and ethereal vocals was musical beauty in all its glory. With many friends and collaborators in town for the time of the performance, including Erika de Casier (whom Hynes did an NTS show on the day of), Daniel Caesar, Oklou and more, it was highly likely for a guest to make an appearance. Luckily for us, Mustafa joined Hynes on stage for a starkly exquisite performance of their collaboration with Mabe Fratti, I Can Go. 

As the show came to a close, Hynes is left alone on stage, all but with a single spotlight on him, the same way he started the night out. As he begins to sing the profoundly melancholic Time Will Tell, a song about the passage of time and the uncertainty it brings, the emotion overcomes the crowd, heard in their collective voice singing the lyrics back to Hynes. Taking a bow with the backing track of it still playing, he thanks the crowd and leaves the stage victoriously, soundtracked by the dynamic cheers from the audience grateful to have witnessed such unique and versatile talent in the flesh. Dev Hynes is one of those generational musicians that comes about every decade and one of those that will stand the test of time. His four-night residency at Alexandra Palace? Unforgettable. What a breathtaking show.

Amidst a time that feels ruled by uncertainty and apprehension, New York persists as a city that refuses to bow down to austerity. The cultural capital continues to thrive with emerging creatives to inspire hope in a climate that forsakes art. Enter JKeefer, a roughed-up yet refined voice amongst New York’s blazing talent.

 Born in 2020 by Joseph Keefer, the eponymous menswear label is capturing a zeitgeist for the many restless souls of America. Subculture-driven and always resting on the fringes, it looks to Keefer’s upbringing in Washington D.C within the skate, hardcore and punk scenes, to fuse it with deftly tailored garments and a keen eye for culture. While primarily darkly hued and acerbic, JKeefer’s playful, rebellious spirit lends to its appeal as a brand for the creative.

 In the latest collection, Series 08: Heretics, Keefer pays homage to Jack Kerouac’s acclaimed novel On the Road, often coined as the beatnik Bible for defining the feeling of the post-war Beat Generation. Slouchy, drawstring trousers worn beneath tailored blazers create a striking silhouette where sharp lines meet with a carefree, streetwear edge. Close-fitting t-shirts hug the torso, enveloped in crisp racer jackets and button-down shirts for a look both poised and dishevelled. Using simple, hard-wearing materials like lightweight cotton gabardine and resin-impregnated poplin, each garment roots itself in wearability and longevity, lending to the label’s commitment to create timeless fashion. Paired with an almost entirely all-black colour palette (excluding a standout all-white look), the clean designs stand beyond trend cycles in a series of unpretentious, elevated essentials.

Taking place in a lookbook that harnesses desert travel photography, subtle star motifs are woven throughout the garments in what feels like both a critique and celebration of Keefer’s home country. A cupro-cotton silk varsity jacket and various sleek work jackets strike a resemblance to American heritage and traditional workwear, as the collection finds its identity in the soul-searching journey through the landscapes of America. Styled with the contemporary chicness of black Vans and classic sunglasses, Series 08: Heretics still walks through the world with a modern attitude.

Beginning his career under various pioneering designers such as Robert Geller, Siki Im, and Tim Hamilton, Keefer informs his work with counterculture and authenticity. With all garments conscientiously made in Italy, JKeefer stands out as a menswear brand for the rebels and the heretics, as it perseveres amid an era that dismisses the intricacies of fashion. Having already gained celebrity attention from the likes of Trent Reznor and Justin Theroux, the brand’s momentum is well underway.

Sculptural silhouettes, colour, and movement are what Christian Louboutin’s Cruise 2026 collection is all about. For this collection, the campaign, shot in the streets of Paris, showcases the upcoming silhouettes ready to take over the stores: ballerinas, fur boots, chic pumps, and the ideal baguette bag.

Christian Louboutin has always understood the audience, creating classics that are not only seen on TV shows and red carpets, but have also become some of the most recognisable fashion items.. From dazzling pumps to sneakers, the French Maison is the one when it comes to reinvention. For the Cruise 2026 collection, they have unveiled their latest offering, and honestly, we are living for it. Taking inspiration from movement, the performing arts, theatricality, and motion, this release balances the needs of urban life with the designer’s vision of effortless allure and femininity. 

At the heart of the collection lies the Cassia line, a true ode to grace and motion that reimagines the fluid elegance of the ballet slipper with a modern twist. Other comfortable, flat shoes (both for men and women) include technical sneakers, suede boots, lace-up shoes, and loafers. For those who prefer to reach the sky, Louboutin’s Cruise collection also has options: elegant, classic black pumps, daring fur boots, and sky-high platform boots, all of them with different heels — from super thin to chunkier. For menswear, the line keeps it classic with the new Ruben shoe, which could become the new essential, which leads us to the effortless sneaker silhouette, the Trailrun. Besides the footwear, one of the new highlights is the bags, especially the Venus Baguette line, the perfect complement to any outfit.

Three years after we last spoke with Lily Lane around the release of her sophomore EP, Queen of Hearts, the East Coast artist returns with a track that feels both sharper and lighter on its feet. Higher! arrived a few days ago, slipping into the world with a wink, a spark, and the kind of self-aware warmth Lane has always carried into her storytelling.

Built on soul-leaning vocals and a pop confidence that rarely misses, the new single expands her language of empowerment into something breezier. Lane calls it “my way of turning down the volume,” a line that captures the quiet shift running beneath the track — not escape as avoidance, but as a way of reclaiming space. She leans into humour too, admitting, “I literally sing about needing to light up to calm down… but I'm also talking about something bigger: letting go of the noise and choosing to rise above it.”

Where her earlier releases circled catharsis and desire from different angles, Higher! folds those impulses into a moment that feels both knowingly cheeky and unexpectedly grounded. Lane puts it plainly: “This isn’t just an escapist weed anthem, it’s a ‘HEY, TOUCH GRASS’ moment… and also a ‘hey, it’s okay if you need to smoke grass.’” The track doesn’t try to solve anything; it simply sits in the reality of coping mechanisms and turns them into something soft-edged and melodic.

The single also acts as the final breadcrumb leading into Domesticated, her upcoming EP, out November 28. If this track is any indication, the project sits somewhere between glamour and grit, the place Lane has always felt most electric.

Loewe’s silhouettes are on constant renewal and reinvention, adapting emblematic pieces to today’s times. Now, the Spanish House highlights their commitment to craftsmanship and innovation via the new, playful Panta line, and celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Hammock family. Together, these two capture the dual spirit of the season and offer fresh takes on silhouettes that have strengthened Loewe’s community and fan base.

Over the years, the Spanish House has built a vocabulary of instantly recognisable shapes, from the geometric precision of the Puzzle to the soft architecture of the Hammock, each designed to evolve rather than remain static. This constant reimagining has become part of Loewe’s identity, allowing their classics to feel both familiar and newly relevant.

The Panta line continues Loewe’s exploration of denim-inspired detailing, sparked by the unexpected popularity of previous drops and the cult status of the Panta boot. Here, signature bags like the Puzzle, Amazona, and Flamenco Clutch are reinterpreted with elements borrowed from five-pocket jeans: functional pockets, belt loops, fly fronts, metal buttons, double stitching and vintage-silver hardware engraved with the Loewe logo. The result is a collection that blends playfulness with precision, bringing everyday references into the realm of refined craftsmanship.

Marking its tenth anniversary, the Hammock family adds a new member: the Hammock Flip. This edition softens the structural lines of the original, introducing new proportions and turned seams that enhance its flexibility and ease. An adjustable strap lets it shift from top-handle to shoulder or hobo-style crossbody, adapting to movement and mood.

The canvas is bustling with colour, movement, sparkles, and texture. At first glance you feel overwhelmed—there’s too much to focus on, and you need another pair of eyes to absorb it all. Bea Scaccia’s new collection, Mood Swings, evokes a sense of discomfort and intrigue that draws you in until your nose is almost pressed up against the painting trying to take in every little detail. Her work is now on display at Maruani Mercier in Brussels until December 12th, 2025, and at the Quadriennale di Roma, co-curated by Francesco Bonami, among others, until 21 December 2025.

As a woman, I recognised the cosmic joke of looking for your lipstick in an overstuffed bag in On Sundays, she cleaned herself or the annoyance of losing a clip in your hair in Even though it was the season of Carnival. But most of all, I recognised the weight of the expectations that come with being a woman, or rather, the weight of the masks we use to perform a different version of ourselves.

Scaccia’s work shows us how complicated femininity is—quite refreshing in a world where men’s hollow conceptions of what it means to be a woman have permeated our culture. She uses movement to show the fluctuating definitions of womanhood and humanity in general, reflecting a broader societal phenomenon of constant change and ‘swings’.

We talk with Scaccia about performance, the absurd existence of humankind, fairy tales, and women’s greatest ally: the cat.

Your work feels so whimsical when studying the objects, the positions of the figures, the jewels, the hair, the background—everything. I feel like I am in Alice in Wonderland. What fairy tales do you remember from your childhood? Which ones inspire you in your art?

I can’t blame just one fairytale—it was all of them. I grew up enchanted by stories and animated movies. Like many, I discovered Walt Disney before I ever fell in love with books. I have vivid memories of being obsessed with Robin Hood and Beauty and the Beast, and I treasured an illustrated Snow White book with the original, unsweetened ending—not the Disney-fied version. There was a full-page illustration of Snow White’s face as she slept, her lips glossy. I remember studying that image intently. Even then, I knew I loved stories and pictures more than most kids my age.

Your earlier works are more sketch-like: a lot of use of pencil and paper, wax, some watercolours. What made you change your technique from pencil on paper and wax to painting?

After finishing the Academy in Rome, I spent years chasing painting but never quite found my path. Eventually, I decided to wipe the canvas clean—literally—and start again with just drawing, stripping away colour to get back to basics. When I moved to New York City, drawing became a practical necessity as much as an artistic one: it was all I could afford. Strangely, though, drawing always left me feeling as though I were incomplete. Uprooting my life for another country was its own kind of trauma, and it took me longer than I care to admit to figure out what my work was missing. To make ends meet, I was often painting for other artists, and that didn’t help. Then I began experimenting with stop-motion animation, and while shooting for the frames, I began playing with the lighting and the movements in a more consistent way. That is when I started to see how my paintings were supposed to “feel like”.

In your current exhibition, Mood Swings, movement is a central theme, representing both human nature to change and shift as well as society’s precarious fluctuations. What societal fluctuations are catching your attention right now? Are these represented in your paintings?

Movement has always taken centre stage in my work, sometimes quite literally. We’re living in an intriguing twilight in Western society—a period of uncertainty and ambiguity. Naturally, my paintings grapple with questions of gender and existence. But the elements I choose to highlight are deeply intertwined with Western culture itself. They reflect a society that, for many reasons, often escapes real scrutiny.

In these paintings, there is one spot that lights up, sometimes around jewels, sometimes in the hair, sometimes with a perfume bottle. What do you hope to show with this illumination?

There’s a visual logic behind my use of lighting. I highlight certain parts of the composition simply because the piece demands it. The process isn’t calculated or deliberate—sometimes, it’s almost serendipitous which object ends up catching the light. But without those lights, my paintings wouldn’t work. Theatre has been an important component of my work. I love the verb “staging”… Staging my lights, turning them on, in some area or another, makes the whole process more complex. I also need my lights to add a bit of “bad taste” to the composition. I consider all my elements fake, like every costume is. Pearls are not real, hair is wigs, and fabric is cheap. Lights add something in that sense. Another layer of “fakeness”.

“If a woman follows society’s script without realising it, it’s a cage. But if she chooses to play with those expectations and twist them, it becomes her weapon.”

The human figure is central to much of your work, in Mood Swings and in past collections; however, you hide a central part of the human figure: the face. Why?

Adding a face would transform the entire piece—it’s a temptation I sometimes feel, but it never quite seems right. Honestly, I wish someone could explain it to me. There’s a big part of my work that remains mysterious even to myself.

In fairytales and mythology, you notice women are often either pegged as monsters or innocent waifs who do no wrong, as though multifacetedness and complication are aspects reserved for men. Yet, more recently, in the fields of psychology and emotions, women are hailed as being intelligent and more complex in this sense. What do you make of this dichotomy?

Society has a habit of flattening what it can’t fully grasp. Women, for so long, were cast as outsiders, villains, or objects to be possessed. Make something one-dimensional, and suddenly it’s less threatening. We are in a much better position right now: think about all the complex female characters in pop culture. There are so many female tricksters nowadays. It is refreshing. We now talk about the heroine’s journey in contrast with the hero’s journey and so on. We know female artists and writers.
I grew up in the eighties in a provincial reality; I was obsessed with literature, and yet, I wouldn’t realise that I was studying only male writers. I would dismiss my mother as lesser and respect my dad, only for the simple fact of being a man. So much awareness to be built in my generation! Now, this is even impossible to conceive. But something disturbing is happening more and more: there is an attempt to go back in time. Some kind of dangerous nostalgia for a past where women were relegated to domestic roles. We have to be careful.

In Cake, candle, swing, flying shoe, colourful stockings. Am I not perfectly alive? the figure is swinging across the canvas while carrying jewels, mounds of hair, a cake, furs, lights, and clips. As she swings, she does so freely despite the objects that should be weighing her down, and it reminds me of how effortlessly women carry themselves in spite of all the things people want us to be. How do you find joy in being a woman, walking that tight rope of performance, carrying the expectations of your gender?

It is interesting to see how the painting gets perceived through other people’s eyes. I don’t see the “puppet-like performer” of that specific painting being free. I see a frozen movement, cluttered with too much stuff. But it’s humorous, and there are happy aspects to it—that’s for sure. There is always a connection to childhood and playing dress-up, too. That is why it probably irradiates something light and playful. We always contain both sides. I see our shadows even in the most illuminated moments.
I have to say, I’m genuinely happy to be a woman, and I find the ageing process fascinating. I like who I am. I try not to overperform, reminding myself that our time here is brief and that I owe it to myself to be strong enough to live authentically. I choose to stay a little unsettling, to defy the expectations placed on my gender—through my work, my actions, and a healthy dose of conversation. It doesn’t mean I succeed; sometimes, I fail miserably.

You said once you wanted to combine beauty, femininity, pop culture, and domesticity in a way that is disturbing and unsettling because nothing can exist in one dimension; there is always contrast. Why do you find it important to expose the underbelly of these concepts that, at first glance, may have a light air to them?

Beauty, femininity, and domesticity—as we know them—are ideas handed down to us in a very particular, prescriptive way. Ageing, for instance, is treated almost like a sin, because femininity and beauty are so tightly knotted to youth. And domesticity? That’s still stuck to women like a stubborn label. Pop culture is the glue that keeps these old concepts firmly in place, passing them from generation to generation. Just think: A single iconic movie character can shift society’s perspective far more than even the most complex theoretical book ever could.

Artifice and performance are central themes to your work, and you’ve mentioned that they are not necessarily negative, that everything we adorn ourselves with and each mask we wear are tools to get closer to our interior selves. How does one find and perform their interior self?

Since reading Bergson’s Laughter, I have been intrigued by the concept of existential performance with its own grotesque aspects. He conveys that we laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing. It is “the mechanical encrusted upon the living” that makes us laugh. Even though we sometimes overlook our ridiculous aspects, it is in those, probably, that we can see some truth. Paradoxically, then, by embracing our own puppet-like identity, we can perform more genuinely.
You must choose your own masks and costumes; you don’t have to passively wear the ones society, family, or your hometown hands you. We’re all fragile performers—even when we think no one’s watching—and becoming the person you want to be means picking a costume that’s truly yours. We’re more malleable than we realise, which is why, when societies unravel quickly, you often see it first in what people start to wear—their roles and uniforms shifting quietly along with the times.

I think the concept of artifice is especially concentrated on women in a very negative way. There's a famous quote from Hindu saint Nirmalananda that goes, “Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned.” I think this concept of decorating your cage of oppression is brought up a lot in conversations about feminine practices like putting on makeup, wearing jewellery, having an interest in fashion, colouring our hair, etc. To what extent do you think that’s true? How would you elaborate on this statement?

I like this idea a lot, and like most things, it holds both truth and contradiction. Sometimes, it’s hard to recognise you’ve been caged; it’s the comfort of a familiar hell. But anything can become a strength when wielded with awareness. Take makeup: it can also be a tool for power. It always comes back to the question—are these masks chosen or imposed? If a woman follows society’s script without realising it, it’s a cage. But if she chooses to play with those expectations and twist them, they become her weapon.

Gendered performance, specifically, is very apparent in your works. Judith Butler says gender is not a fixed identity but rather actively formed (and performed) and therefore ever-changing. How do you represent this in your work? And how do you think women’s gender performance is changing today?

We’re in a constant state of change, and my work is often an over-the-top, shapeshifting composition of leftover identities. Gender is shaped; roles are constructed. It is challenging to pinpoint how women’s gender performance is evolving right now. As I mentioned already, we’re living through an especially confusing era, where a new surge of conservative values collides with more relaxed ones. It’s not easy to say exactly what’s going on. We always have to face contradictions and different ways of embracing gender. How do we perform gender? Through behaviour, choices, and fashion. That is how I represent it. Of course, I am mostly focused on the performative nature of the feminine gender. By adding too much, I like the idea of transforming into threatening material elements that are usually considered gentle and harmless.

You’ve spoken about how women have to be very careful not to become grotesque, but they can become grotesque in so many ways. Sometimes on purpose to evade unwanted attention from men, other times because of a non-feminine performance or even just ageing. While being labelled grotesque may sound unsettling to most, you speak about it as something that is almost freeing. Can you tell me a bit about that?

Even before we talk about gender, our very existence on this planet is already a bit grotesque. We strut around as if we’re immortal, acting in ways that defy logic. There’s an absurdity—a fundamental glitch—at the heart of human experience. That’s why it’s liberating to really consider it. Montaigne wrote something about it. Contemplating mortality, in all its grotesque glory, sharpens our focus on what matters most. This applies universally but also to specifics like gender. They’re all connected: the relentless pursuit of perfection demanded of women is tied to our fear of ageing, dying, and remaining unresolved. Women and ‘villains’ have often been the targets, but this struggle is everywhere. Western society, in particular, seems locked in battle with its own dark, fragile, mortal nature.

“The relentless pursuit of perfection demanded of women is tied to our fear of ageing, dying, and remaining unresolved.”

You’ve also noted Goya to be an inspiration. His Black Paintings are considered to be some of the most grotesque and unsettling works. They’re much more obviously disconcerting with bulging eyes, cannibalism, and death, whereas your paintings subtly present unsettling themes like overconsumption and artifice. Why do you find confronting these themes important to your art? 

When I moved to New York, I remember feeling as if I’d landed in a society determined to reject its own shadow. Progress, I realised, is just an illusion if it isn’t rooted in something deeper and more sensitive. That struck me as a kind of collective madness, and it still does. I feel compelled to confront these themes—overconsumption and artifice—because they’re woven into daily life, shaping the way we operate, whether we notice it or not.

During the pandemic, you worked on the Homemade project by Magazzino Italian Art, where you focused on hoarding and accumulation. In Mood Swings, the figure seems to have accumulated all these objects and taken them with her, unable to detach herself from them. Is this a practice of hoarding? Could hoarding be considered in some ways a gendered practice?

I don’t think hoarding is inherently gendered; it’s a distinctly contemporary habit. But overperforming—now that’s a different story. Women are expected to juggle countless roles, and on top of that, maintain physical perfection, style, and class. The more power a woman has, the more pressure there is to look the part. That’s where the link to hoarding comes in: you can accumulate stuff, but you can also hoard roles and expectations. Sometimes, overperforming takes over to the point where even relaxation needs to be scheduled and perfected. I see this everywhere, including in myself. Noticing it and developing awareness is important.

You’ve noted cats to be inherently feminine because of their attitude and discussed their association with the “lonely cat lady” trope. On the outside these women are sad and alone without children or a husband, but really, they have found a companion who won’t dim their light or will them to change. Cats are also closely associated with witchcraft and female monsters. Historically cats have been the allies to women. In Mood Swings, cats are featured in a few paintings without their faces showing, just like the human figures. Is this meant to be a commentary on the correlation between women and cats—almost like an anthropomorphism of women being one with cats?

It’s not exactly anthropomorphism, but animals are definitely allies in my paintings. There is a strong link, in my opinion, between animals’ unpredictability and women. And this connection is even stronger with cats. Cats are feminine, and one of the things people, and more specifically men, don’t like about cats is their independence. Artists like Leonor Fini played the part of the independent, femme fatale cat lady/witch to such an extent that she even posed for a photo of herself on a broom. I was in awe when I saw that image.
Cats also represent a peculiar aspect of domesticity: a bit darker, a bit less welcoming. Cocteau wrote that they are the real soul of one’s home. But there is always something mysterious and unmanageable about them. In my paintings, they are allies, portals, witnesses. There’s even a secret cat’s eye hidden in one of my recent works in Mood Swings. More in general, the bond between women and animals runs deep, stretching far back in cultural history. Nature itself has a feminine nature in our narratives, and it has long been something men were taught to hunt and conquer.

To finish with a curiosity, do you have a cat?

No, I don’t have a cat—yet. One day, I hope to leave the city behind and adopt a cat… and maybe a few goats (laughs).

“I’m gonna tell you about love. Let’s forget your life. Forget your problems. Administration, bills and loads. Come with me…” Madonna whispered these words nearly twenty years ago on the Confessions Tour, folding Future Lovers into Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. At the time, the phrase felt like a seductive escape hatch — a disco incantation promising temporary utopia. Today, in a world where capitalism has mutated into turbocapitalism, where exhaustion is ambient and inescapable, that invitation reads almost like satire. Madonna wasn’t only opening a concert; she was announcing an alternate reality. Two decades on, Confessions on a Dance Floor still stands as the last time a global pop star promised liberation on a mass scale and sounded utterly convincing.

Hung Up detonated in October 2005, and it remains one of pop’s most ruthless openers. An ABBA sample — something that once required almost Vatican-level diplomacy to obtain — was turned into a cultural warhead. It didn’t simply dominate charts; it recalibrated them. And the irony that such an era-defining record emerged from Stuart Price’s modest home studio in London is part of the album’s myth: glamour constructed through discipline, maximalism conjured from minimal means.

The album itself is a study in precision and escalation. Designed as a continuous DJ set, Confessions moves like a single organism: warming, tightening, accelerating. Get Together expresses Madonna’s belief in collectiveness through rhythm, turning desire into something communal rather than private; it still has one of the most gorgeous bridges in her catalogue, carrying a hopeful message: “Do you believe that we can change the future? Do you believe I can make you feel better?” Sorry is one of her smartest pop provocations: a massive post-breakup, self-assuring banger that weaponises multilingual dismissal (Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese) as though languages were percussive instruments, and the reason so many gays worldwide can now apologise in various languages.

Then there are the less obvious disco tracks that complete the album’s cosmos. Let It Will Be is a hypnotic pulse of synth and beat, where Madonna’s airy vocals turn surrender and uncertainty into a meditative, danceable mantra. How High is euphoric and soaring, an electro-disco anthem about ambition, burnout and the assessment of value. I Love New York is urban and filthy, all staccato beats, with Madonna claiming her city with queenly confidence — or, in the live version, inviting you to “suck George Bush’s dick”.

Then comes the album’s spiritual and (too safely) political outlier, Isaac, a track misunderstood in 2005 and sadly prophetic today. Its combination of chanting, desert sonics and liturgical tension shows Madonna sidestepping controversy and leaning into transcendence (in her own fashion). Meanwhile, Jump is an urban ode to movement disguised as dance-pop — its message of reinvention, independence and self-mythology strangely more relevant in 2025 than upon release. Vocally, Madonna is at her most disciplined here. She sings with conscious austerity, shaping phrases as someone who knows the beat is the protagonist. Her restraint gives the album its architecture: no indulgent melisma (not her strongest suit anyway), no melodramatic flourishes. Just form, rhythm, tension. Even detractors concede that Confessions is not a vocalist’s triumph but a vocalist’s strategy — and a masterful one.

Critics recognised this almost immediately. Rolling Stone called it “a masterwork of electronic pop”; The Guardian declared it “the most brilliant revival of the 21st century.” It debuted at number one in forty countries and sold more than ten million copies. Yet Confessions on a Dance Floor didn’t materialise from thin air. Its lineage is clearly indebted to Kylie Minogue’s Fever and Body Language, whose glossy electro-pop had already defined the decade. Madonna didn’t imitate; she absorbed, recalibrated and magnified. She went full disco. But the debt is there, and the fact it is rarely acknowledged says less about the music than about the politics of cultural memory.

Crucially, Confessions on a Dance Floor emerged from chaos. Madonna was recovering from the critical collapse of American Life, the clumsiest political moment of her career. The album’s message — anti-war, anti-capitalist — was sincere but oddly paternalistic, and quickly drowned by backlash, miscommunication and even those infamous anti-piracy decoy files she leaked onto LimeWire. She even had to retract the original American Life video — a moment that could have changed her career in countless ways. The narrative should have been decline. Instead, she seized the moment, abandoned moralising, rediscovered pleasure and reconnected with the club culture that shaped her early life. She didn’t reinvent herself; she realigned herself.

As if that weren’t enough, she mastered the whole era with an incredible tour, now widely available online. Touring and arena pop as we know them wouldn’t exist without Madonna, whether you like it or not. The Confessions Tour was a world of its own — disco horses, mirror-ball crucifixions, gymnastic choreography — and it cemented the album’s myth: Madonna at her most athletic, most conceptual, most commanding. Inspired by the horse-riding accident she had months before, the tour’s imagery — equestrian outfits, emerging from the interior of a breaking disco ball, being hoisted onto a cross to sing Live to Tell (the kind of provocation at which she has always excelled), and the animalistic performance of Let It Will Be — remains astonishing. The choreography throughout the era was ridiculously good, peaking on tour: a reimagined Like a Virgin in Confessions style saw her revolve atop a carousel-horse contraption, pure meritocratic Madonna. And the live TV performances were *chef’s kiss*: the Hung Up opener at the EMAs, the Gorillaz mashup at the Grammys, and the spontaneous Get Together at Star Academy are still worth revisiting today.

But it was also a time when Madonna meant something different — not solely because of her output, but because we related to pop music differently. If rock, reggae, grunge and even nu-metal had carried certain social commentary in earlier years, the early 2000s saw mainstream pop largely absent from that terrain (especially in North America after the Dixie Chicks’ censorship). And this is partly why Confessions on a Dance Floor reads as a historic rupture. It was the last moment Madonna dictated the trajectory of mainstream pop. The collapse of monoculture, the rise of algorithmic consumption and the democratisation of influence dissolved the star-as-architect model. Post-2006, no one — not Beyoncé, not Gaga, not Taylor Swift — could unilaterally define the sonic direction of pop. Cultural power flattened. Madonna went from being the compass to being one among many maps.

In that light, the Twenty Years Edition of Confessions on a Dance Floor reveals more about the present than the past. It is unmistakably shaped by the nostalgia economy: expanded remixes, recycled tracks, celebratory packaging. It commemorates rather than interrogates. And yet the music resists commodification. The album is so structurally airtight, so exquisitely mixed and sequenced, that almost any addition feels unnecessary. Dance music rarely ages well; this has aged almost too well. Warner Records’ announcement of Madonna returning ‘home’ and reuniting with Stuart Price for a new album is therefore charged with anxiety masked as optimism. The temptation — for fans, critics and perhaps even Madonna herself — is to hope for Confessions II, as she has teased. But this desire is symptomatic of the cultural paralysis we inhabit: a belief that the future can only be built by refurbishing the past. In that sense, Madonna may have little new to offer — though nothing left to prove.

Because the truth is unavoidable: Madonna has not been the underground-to-mainstream conduit for almost two decades. Where Confessions absorbed the pulse of London’s club scene and blasted it into the global stratosphere, her last three albums — MDNA, Rebel Heart and Madame X — felt like attempts to chase, reference or revive previous selves. MDNA relied on EDM trends she once would have originated. Rebel Heart split itself between nostalgia and relevance. Madame X, ambitious but disjointed, borrowed cosmopolitan textures without fully integrating them — more appropriation than fusion. None of these albums altered the landscape. None set the pace. Instead of Madonna transforming the zeitgeist, the zeitgeist appeared to be transforming her.

She also hasn’t aged well as a pop star, and this has nothing to do with the ageism levelled at women in the public eye (Björk, Cyndi Lauper, Kylie and Cher all face similar pressures). Time has had one unfortunate effect on her work: a palpable desperation to stay relevant by absorbing every new trend, collaborating with every buzzy newcomer. Yet the results have rarely been strong. She has shown real solidarity with multiple causes but has often faltered in articulating clear positions on major political events of recent years.

And yet Madonna remains one of the few pop artists capable of uniting the world, of making us collectively ecstatic, and doing so while defying the intolerable rules imposed on ageing women in pop. She needs no one and nothing; her latest tour proved how formidable an artist she still is. Her catalogue is like no other — and still, she hasn’t recently released anything truly… exciting. And this is the uncomfortable question the new Madonna–Warner–Price reunion must confront: can the artist who once pulled the underground into the spotlight still do so in an ecosystem that no longer allows a single figure to lead, and when her own recent work has circled her past rather than challenged her future?

Confessions on a Dance Floor proves she once had the power to ignite a global pulse. Twenty years later, with nostalgia threatening to become both comfort and cage, Madonna stands before the same beat she once commanded. While we wait to see what she brings next, let’s try to forget our bills, our loans, our admin, and travel back to a time when certainty felt real and the music made the people come together.

London-based singer and songwriter Sarah Nimmo returns with Can’t Stop Crying, a new single co-produced with Joseph Ashworth and released alongside an intimate visual directed, shot and edited by Ciara Reddy. Following Underground and Night & Day, the track marks a deeper turn in her solo path, one shaped by emotional precision and a renewed sense of authorship.

Some songs come from a distance, softened by time. Can’t Stop Crying arrives with the moment still alive inside it. Written on the night NIMMO came to an end, the track captures the quiet shock of an unexpected rupture, when loss is still raw and language has not yet caught up. Sarah’s voice sits close, steady and exposed, while the rhythm moves forward as if testing the ground beneath her. She described the release as “deep emotional autumnal catharsis,” a fitting description for a track built from both fracture and release.

The video extends this emotional landscape rather than illustrating it. Ciara Reddy approaches the visual with restraint and instinct, using shifts in light, framing and physical stillness to mirror the song’s internal tension. The result feels like an afterimage of the night that inspired it, intimate without being literal.

In the days surrounding the release, Sarah appeared in the new Bangs zine, sharing a memory from her teenage years working the door at her local pub in Kilburn. The story is funny and bruising at once, revealing the mix of vulnerability and resilience that shapes much of her songwriting. It reads like a small window into the person behind the voice.

Can’t Stop Crying signals a chapter defined not by reinvention but by clarity. Sarah Nimmo turns an ending into a moment of illumination, offering a portrait of heartbreak that breathes, listens and eventually opens into something new.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is busy. After their show The Delusion at the Serpentine opened, the artist returned to their studio in Berlin where it’s long days of writing up narratives and late nights of drawing. “I just like working,” they shrugged when I caught them a couple of weeks after the opening, to delve into their artistic practice, “If it’s a work where I’m hitting my head against the wall, I’ll do it at like two or three am.”

Playing a Brathwaite-Shirley game in the early hours of the morning should come with its own warning. Liquid figures dance in pixel pools of vintage game design, they play on new-age fears around the fragility of digital existence and older tales passed through generations or excavated through urban legends. However, Brathwaite-Shirley would hardly want us to sit in the comfort of knowing how it goes and hijacks these tales with lived narratives of black trans experience – the unending sea becomes the middle passage, or you wonder if you can stop your gameplay progress as a cult criminal from an underground revolutionary. Brathwaite-Shirley makes sure you know where you are transgressing in a space that’s not yours to begin with, and where you can stay. 

What made you shift your practice from London to Berlin?

Berlin is a really good base to do things internationally. My life in Berlin is a lot quieter. I'm infamous for overworking and where I live in Berlin allows me to work very hard, consistently. When you're building these games, thirteen-hour-days are very normal. You want to be able to be focused while experimenting with things that are very confusing and complicated, while making it simpler for the audience. I like that focus Berlin gives me. When I am in London or anywhere else, there's so many things to go to, which is amazing. I want to be able to dip in and out of that. Berlin allows me to have a very strict routine maintaining focus while working for a long time.

Did you know you’d be working with games while you were a student at Slade?

I was in the media department of my school, so they were very happy with us doing performances and films. They didn't know so much about games or animation, so we had to do that ourselves. They didn’t really teach us — they didn’t know how to, or they couldn’t be bothered — they just let everyone do what they did. I think something about Slade is that you either make a career or you don't. That's it. Are you gonna lead yourself to become an artist? Luckily that worked for me, and for some people it doesn't. It sounds quite brutal, but if you don't develop a practice, then you just don’t. You might develop it later, but that's what Slade is. It’s very hands-off. In other spaces you might have a lot more considerations on what you think art is and isn’t, which can either help you do really good on a traditional route or is really limiting. They were quite open for us  to just do, rather than focus on the art market. Other schools were perhaps about making art saleable, but at Slade it’s more about making sure you’re making it on your own terms. Which I greatly appreciate.

So, when did you start getting into games?

When I began at Slade, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. One of the first things I did was make these large posters and drawings in Microsoft Paint, a bit like these over-the-top drawings I do now but more abstract. I started by making films which didn’t have 3D animation, they were a bunch of drawings and  I collaged them alongside photographs of people in my life or myself. That was fun, but it didn’t feel like anything more than exploration. It wasn’t until I was filming a friend performing that the idea of adding 3D occurred to me and I started to take pictures which could immediately be turned into 3D animations.
Then they started becoming about people, I was around a lot of black trans people, so I started working around queerness, transness, archiving, death and a desire for a past. A lot of those early animations were inspired by the immense amount of games I had played by then, and they helped me figure out how to animate. I was teaching myself through replication. So, my animations started to look like games and have game-like options. It wasn’t until I finished Slade that I realised I needed to make games. I was struggling with the passivity of audiences watching my animations. I wanted them to feel responsible for what they’re seeing and have some agency.

You mentioned once that hearing a visitor say they could ignore what your work was about and just bathe in the visuals was what made you focus more on the content.

I think it was in 2019. That's when I shifted from making films to games because I didn't want anyone to have that opportunity to ignore anything. Since then, I've gone on this journey from making games that are very laser-focused on the transness and queerness to being around laying bare some of people’s emotions and letting them tackle that with someone else in the room. It’s a space that requires a lot from you. If you’re lazy, the work is lazy right back at you. It works as a conversation.
I want the show to be difficult, and people to feel frustrated. I don’t want you to leave saying it was a beautiful show. I prefer you go in and have a conversation which is difficult, or which doesn’t have a clear answer. I want to give the gallery some more of a function rather than a space to just see art. The other day my friends went in, and they had the usual discussion with someone who thought feminism was a way to oppress men. They were trying to explain why it wasn’t that, and that to me is what the show is about. A meeting because the space has been set up for that to happen, rather than a debate or a take-down.

This exhibition too was designed to be around pockets of collectivity, which is different from the usual white cube space which highlights isolation within the collective. How did you navigate this, particularly through the gallery design?

We always want to get away from this white cube thing. I feel people often see that as a space to be dressed with art, but for me it’s blank paper. There’s literally nothing there yet. I don’t want any of that blank paper to be there unless it has a particular message, which is why the gallery is totally converted in my work as I want you to look at every single detail – like the walls, and think about why we did them like that. I want people to think about everything rather than just the art being the only point of interest. The space builds the air in the room, what the colour changing from a light room into a darker room does to your eye. It’s making the gallery into an environment, and it’s usually grounded in something real, like the green grass is probably reconstructed from a picture of a fingernail of a living person. One space was based on my grandma’s house, which is why there were certain colours and religious themes. That’s also why the controllers at The Serpentine were things you’d find in the house, so it doesn’t feel like an interruption to entering the game. 

You’re also foregrounding identity as part of the gameplay where we input our racial or sexual identity. How did that become a significant aspect of your games?

If you give people a set of choices, they might feel responsible for what they see, but it doesn’t feel like they are involved in that world. When you ask for their identity, their name or where they were born, it’s a small titbit about them which can put some pressure on their choices as now the game becomes a reflection of themselves. Earlier, people might not have felt culpable behind a particular game decision, but these additions are there so people feel like part of them is in the game, it has asked something from them and an essence of them remains as they go through choices.

Gaming historically has often been overtaken by straight men, often white. It’s interesting how they also have specific choices relegated to them in some of your games, where they can’t access certain spaces scared to trans experience.

The powerful thing about an interactive medium is that the experience is bespoke and no one else might pick the same options or open the door the same way. So, everyone's going to see a different kind of work. It’s not often that the audience reflects on who they are, in games. Games for a long time have been about selling, which makes sense as it’s expensive to do, but sometimes it leads to a fanbase that’s critical of new attempts to use the medium to do something else. It’s changed a lot with indie games, which are more inclusive and experimental. While larger companies are aiming for game identities designed for middle-aged men, many of my friends making indie games show that games can be so much more.

It definitely felt like I was inputting part of me into the game, which contributed to the horror. What is your personal relationship with horror?

I love horror. I like things that make me inadvertently react and with horror, I jump even if I'm not paying attention. I quite like the experience to be intense. Horror is really good at using very minimal cues that you can read, like you don’t want to go down a red hallway, it's just silly things like this. I try to figure out if I can reuse or reshape those cues and bubble that feeling up before the audience, which movies are so good at doing. I like when someone leads themselves through the game with emotion rather than through the intellectual thought believing that, I'm good at the games or I know how to do this. I like it more when it's more complicated like, I want to do that one but because of who I am, I should do the other one.

The queer experience is also one of horror in slightly older mainstream popular culture where figures of ambiguous gender or sexuality were the criminals or the ones to be afraid of. How do you draw upon that to build a new vocabulary in horror for the black trans experience?

Yes, considering Psycho or modern iterations like Insidious even. We are often seen as some sort of monster. If your child is queer, it’s horror. If your child is trans, it’s horror seeing them. The stories I heard about trans people when I grew up were equally horrible. Someone was speaking about spotting trans women by looking at their hands. Everyone looks like a monster in my work as I don’t want you to find it easier to empathise with someone who looks like a human. If everyone's at the same level of monster, you have to find empathy by their actions or their words. There’s a strong affinity of horror within queer cabaret scenes and we love it. It’s empowering to find power in being undesired or feared as a demon, as we’re not taking it the way people want us to, which is to put us down and break us.

Following that thread, how does exaggeration come to play in the way you sketch forms?

They’re not planned out – very reactionary. I’m in the business of feeling, so I’ll make them when I am feeling a certain way and just go with the flow. If I’m making one based on a picture of someone, I’m picking bits of them that I think have an essence of their soul. It’s like making a collage in a single sitting, evoking your feelings. It’s not I’ve got this feeling of fear, so this character is a representation of that. It’s a very diaristic practice and I make these forms after I’ve seen something or am thinking about something. A lot of them were made of news headlines about things happening around the world or where I was or comments I saw. To process it, I made a drawing.  That’s how I do my diary, instead of writing down how my day was, I’ll draw three or four pictures of how I’m feeling, or something that stuck with me. The characters just spill out.

You mentioned black trans individuals around you filtering into your games. How did the community around you affect your practice?

It affects it deeply because those are the people I interact with. So, they are the ones I’m probably initially going to want to archive. Someone may tell me a story, and to archive it, I will try and model that person in 3D and end up building an entire environment because I couldn't get their essence in one person. I take it to an extreme that if a fictional world was built around you, what could happen. Community is something I’m always trying to reflect but it’s more of a science-fiction idea in the way I’m trying to archive the way they think or the essence of their soul. It’s more interesting to have a character based on someone I know, and you see the decisions they make as you follow them through an odyssey.

What does archiving mean to you, particularly as you mention trans ancestry which becomes so important for young queer people to archive, like I recall seeing a picture of Mary Jones in one of your works. 

There was a photo of her quoting her as the “Man Monster” from 1836. An archive from my perspective is trying to capture the essence or the soul of a person, or way in which that person thinks. I am much more interested in the inner workings than on the surface, which the world is very much fascinated by. How transpeople move in the world, if they pass or not.

Physicality also is significant in your work, in terms of movement like in Get Home Safe where you transferred that physical movement into numbers. Sometimes these figures even become tropes in your work like faces with conjoined lips.

My process is very recycle-based. Images from one project will feed into the next one. The sculptures are made with fabrics from older works. It's almost like they are part of the same universe with the same DNA. Although I'm definitely not consciously thinking about making motifs, but because they exist in my head, they cross over. I add a lot of pockets and I just don’t know why. All the works are very collage-y, and they have a strong aesthetic, but anything can fit in that aesthetic. We have a rule that if something gets added to the project, you can’t take it out and figure out how to make it work. Same with drawings where there’s no editing a mistake. It’s interesting you say physicality as I have always considered my characters a bit floaty, and physicality is something I want to add more in, actually. We often work with the movement artist Malik Nashad Sharpe, who I worked with to see if I could make an archive just for movement, which is how we made She Keeps Me Damn Alive. Sometimes archiving appears in the way people walk in the game, or characters dancing a particular way.

In working with collage, are you drawing back from art history?

I wouldn’t say I’m taking from Dadaism. Some are more influenced by Caravaggio and mixed with a game reference, a book from the 2000s or a graphic novel from the 90s or Francis Bacon. More recent ones are inspired by the lineage of performance artists like Rebecca Allen. Some have been appreciated as art, others under-appreciated, and Slade was good at enabling us to make connections between things we considered art versus the more art historical. That’s what artists are good at, is looking at something overlooked and saying, this is art. Maybe that’s why games are getting more popular in the art world.

What draws you towards the early computer graphics from the 90s?

I'm always looking at older games. They had resolution limitations, so there was only so much detail they could put in, let’s say, a spaceship. The best thing about that was when you play the game for a long time, your imagination starts adding in the extra details. A perfect example of this is Silent Hill on PlayStation 1 where when you see a dead body, you can’t make out what happened to it, but you think about what could have happened. It becomes a lot more visceral than anything that you can render. That's why I use a lot of pixelated graphics because I want your brain to start filling in some of these gaps.

What are you reading or playing before you start a project?

The initial point for this exhibition was a book by Percival Everett called The Trees which I thought was really interesting as it uses something real like lynching and then tries to give them justice in a parallel universe, as our world could never give them the kind of justice or revenge that they get. I read House of Leaves which is a very strange book that thinks about how space can hold people or make them feel uncomfortable. I also played a lot of games, of course. Might and Magic VI was a massive influence in graphics as it had a 3D environment with 2D characters. Disaster Report on PlayStation 2 was the only game I’ve seen that tries to give you a sense of how much damage a tsunami does from a single person’s point-of-view. It’s quite a hard game to play if someone has been through a tsunami. I look at games as art, especially the engines they use. I see them as paintings that use a particular medium. If one game uses a particular kind of game engine to be built, that was never used again, it’s really interesting to use that medium again. Right now, I’m playing a game that is a sound novel, which were very popular in Japan as visual novels with movie sound. I really advocate more games as pieces of art to be studied, like we study Caravaggio.

You mentioned universe previously, how are you imagining the universe you’re building?

Oh god, it’s strange because I have this whole universe in my head, and it's changed now. The games are stages of different eras of time in the same universe. The progenitor of everything is Black Trans Sea, following which is a film Digging for Black Trans Life, and then it would be Black Trans Archive. Each period has rules, so one was focused on when the sea wakes up, which allows me to tell stories in particular ways. Then the whole universe has just been rewritten in this exhibition where the world has had this apocalypse moment. I wanted to figure out how to get the universe completely playable, which I don’t know how! The most successful thing I did this year was role-playing it like a Dungeons and Dragons experience, which was amazing. Then we realised I need to do a lot more, as role-playing really fleshes out the possible. The helpful thing about this universe is that a lot of things can just happen so I can’t really give you a distinct idea of it because it's always changing.

Do you see your work housed beyond a gallery?

For me it’s always important that some of the works exist for free. That's why so many of them are online, accessible from anywhere. We probably will do something like this for the show as well and you don’t have to go up the art world or know about art to just stumble upon it. I mean, it’s hard to stumble on anything online right now. I played most of my games for free, my favourite ones are online. I come from a lineage of amazing artists who made online interactive works in the early 90s, and artists doing amazing interactive shows in burlesque clubs. So, for me, the gallery is just one place where the work exists in a particular form.

When were you sure you wanted to be an artist?

Well, I was going to study Physics, and I was supposed to go to this University called Surrey. I'd done extra Maths classes, done my A-levels early, basically everything to do Physics. My partner at the time did an Art foundation course and I thought it was really interesting, maybe I could delay my Physics? So, I did, and when everyone was applying to art school, I had that moment of realisation when I decided I wanted to apply too. What helped me was I knew nothing about art, the best schools or how you’re supposed to present yourself as an artist or what’s considered the best art. I just wanted to create and that really helped me find my own way, which was probably very weird at the beginning and still is.

Who are you surrounded by or call your community in Berlin, after relocating your practice from London?

I found a good art community, a queer community. I'm also all about work right now. I'm quite lucky that wherever I go, I usually find people that I find very interesting to talk to and maintain long friendships with. It's about people who you trust and really get down to do some nitty-gritty work with, rather than just dreaming. There's a lot of amazing artists in Berlin who you can bounce ideas off of. I'm a very talky person, so it might not be a super cool artist but just finding someone to chat with. I will chat with literally anybody. If you speak to security guards at any art show, you hear a lot of interesting things.

When we last spoke with Izza Gara in early September, she had just released Favour, a track that hinted at a new sharpness in her storytelling. Now, with Superbia Hardcore, the Swedish artist turns that instinct into a full statement, revisiting the years when her tastes, fears and desires were first forming. Born in Gothenburg to Turkish and Swedish roots and raised in the city’s underground dance community, Gara grew up immersed in early-2000s pop and movement-driven expression—influences that resurface here with renewed intention.

The EP unfolds as a conversation between past and present: hyper-femininity meeting defiance, pride shaped by vulnerability, and nostalgia sharpened by experience. Favour opens the project with the same quiet burn we recognised months ago, confronting subtle dismissals with a glow that feels grounded rather than confrontational. It sets the tone for an EP that chooses precision over spectacle.

On OVU, Gara approaches uncertainty with lightness, letting instinct guide her rather than perfection. That rawness becomes even more palpable in Love Me, a study of how identity bends in the search for affection and how easy it is to lose yourself in the process. Each track edges closer to self-awareness without abandoning the emotional messiness that fuels it.

A short detour through Grocery Shopping Interlude resets the senses before the EP’s most exploratory moment: 3000, featuring London artist Miso Extra. The track threads two cities and two creative worlds, offering a more futuristic angle without breaking the EP’s emotional coherence.

Everything settles in Superbia, a closing piece shaped by relief and clarity. A recognition of pride not as vanity, but as survival. It’s here that Gara pays tribute to the younger version of herself, the one who absorbed sounds, images and movements before she had the words to connect them.

Superbia Hardcore isn’t a return to the 00s; it’s a return to instinct. Bold, cinematic and tender, it captures an artist stepping into sharper self-definition while staying rooted in the intuition that started it all.

Some news arrives with a sense of quiet inevitability. Erick the Architect joining Jamiroquai on their upcoming UK and European tour feels like one of those moments, a meeting of two different musical worlds shaped by instinct, groove and constant evolution. The tour begins on November 25 in Amsterdam at the Ziggo Dome, continues through Brussels on the 29th, reaches Glasgow on December 3 and Manchester on December 6, and ends on December 9 at London’s O2 Arena, where Erick appears as the only other artist performing that night.

For Erick, this step carries both gratitude and a touch of childhood memory. He has spoken openly about growing up with Jamiroquai’s videos, their fashion, their characters and their cosmic energy. Now he walks onto their stage with a DJ set shaped by the funk and dance records he has always loved, including some unreleased tracks he has been waiting to play in exactly the right rooms.

The timing feels aligned with the pace of his year. Throughout 2025, Erick has moved comfortably between collaborations, from the soulful brightness of Revival with Joyce Wrice to the playful energy of Skincare Riddim with Col3trane and AntsLive and the intensity of Psycho with Alison Wonderland.

His momentum builds on the foundation of his 2024 debut album, I’ve Never Been Here Before, a deeply personal project created in his Los Angeles home studio with artists including James Blake, Joey Bada$$, George Clinton and Channel Tres. The record explored fearlessness, resilience and unity through a mix of hip hop, soul, dub and psychedelic shades. His performance of Candle Flame with Jungle at Coachella, a track now past 122 million streams, reinforced that Erick is working in a space where genre quietly dissolves.

Stepping into Jamiroquai’s orbit just before launching his own thirty-eight-date international tour, Erick the Architect arrives not as an opener but as an artist in full motion. Someone who has spent years shaping his own world and is now ready to shift the atmosphere inside arenas he once admired from afar.

It Ain’t Nothing introduces a new chapter for Scout Willis with a steady, deliberate calm. The song opens without urgency, placing the focus on structure and tone rather than impact for its own sake. It sets up a release where clarity takes priority and where the smallest decisions guide the emotional direction of the track.

Willis shapes that atmosphere with a voice that lands close and unforced. There is a directness in the way she phrases each line, as if the song were built from conversations she has finally decided to say out loud. Her sound sits somewhere between folk, blues and understated pop, but she does not lean fully into any of them. Instead, she uses tone and pacing to anchor the story she wants to tell.

The music video, featuring Willis and actor Thomas Doherty, strengthens that sense of intention. The film unfolds through simple movements, small gestures and the kind of framing that leaves room for interpretation. There is no narrative spelled out, yet the tension between the two characters is clear. What matters is how they hold space together, not what is explained. It gives the track a physical dimension, turning its restraint into something visible.

Speaking about the video’s origin, Willis explains: “I was sitting with a very special friend of mine, who had just agreed to sing on the track with me and star in the video, when he asked me what the concept for the video was. I hadn’t even considered it yet, but I closed my eyes and the image that came was him staring at me from across the room while this gorgeous, hedonistic, fabulous party was happening… We saw his face awestruck, then it suddenly cut back to me and I was totally alone in the room and he could only see me. This image was the seed for the video and along the way, we sought inspiration from our collective favorite romantic films of all time… We borrowed from classics like Atonement, Pride and Prejudice and Romeo + Juliet. We wanted to capture the essence of longing, desire, and tension. The song acts as a potent spell to the backdrop of this gorgeous cinematic tale, urging the watchers to remember: if you want it, it’s yours, it ain’t nothing.”

Willis has been shaping this direction across recent work, carrying her sound into rooms where intimacy reads louder than volume. The writing here feels precise, focused on the points where a feeling starts rather than where it ends. That discipline gives the song its impact.

It Ain’t Nothing was written with Steph Jones and produced by JT Daly and Daniel Tashian, whose approach supports the track’s clean structure without veering into anything more ornate. The production stays out of the way, allowing the vocal line to guide the momentum. What emerges is a release grounded in intention rather than ornament. It Ain’t Nothing shows Willis sharpening her voice into something clear, steady and entirely her own, offering a glimpse of an artist moving with purpose rather than noise.

Jean Dawson remembers sneaking CDs from the public library long before he ever dreamed of releasing an album. Growing up between Tijuana and San Diego, the car rides with his mom’s mixtape — part Prince, part regional Mexican, part Van Halen — became the soundtracks of a border childhood. Rock A Bye Baby, Glimmer of God is less a continuation than a reflection. Jean revisits his earlier world, bringing fragments of every project before it, testing what still feels true and letting go of what doesn’t.

You grew up between Tijuana and San Diego. What were you actually listening to back then, and how did it shape what you do now?

It was a mixture. My mom would give me CDs and I would also keep records from the public library because they rented them and I just wouldn’t take them back. Most of the stuff I had, I wasn’t familiar with — it was just whatever was around. This was pre-mp3, I didn’t have a computer, so whatever I got my hands on was what I listened to.
My mom learned how to speak English through rap music and Black culture. She went to school in America when she was eighteen, they sent her there to get an education. Her roommate happened to be a Black girl, and even though my mom didn’t speak English at all, this girl was taking her around everywhere. They didn’t speak the same language, but I find that communication through kindness is powerful — you see who’s your friend even if you don’t know what they’re saying.
So my mom, from a very young age, loved Michael Jackson, Prince, and the artists shaping that era, and she also had a really deep admiration for rap music as well as regional Mexican music. She was also a sort of rockera and listened to Scorpions, Van Halen, and stuff like that. The CDs she’d give me were the ones she had laying around, which is why I had a vast interpretation of music — not by choice, but by circumstance.

When you’re building a track, do you think about how you want people to feel?

Never. It’s a privilege that people listen to my music, so I don’t want to dictate their experience. I want the song to add to whatever they already feel, like a vitamin. If you’re sad, I don’t want to make you happy; I want you to feel that sadness in a way that helps you understand it. If you’re happy, I want the song to make you even happier. I call it the five-percent rule: I want to add that little five percent that makes it whole. That’s also why I don’t explain songs word for word. Your interpretation lives and dies with you, and that’s the most important part. If I made music just for myself, I wouldn’t release it.

“It’s a privilege that people listen to my music, so I don’t want to dictate their experience. I want the song to add to whatever they already feel, like a vitamin.”

Some songs on the new project start calm and then hit hard. Is that intentional?

It’s intentional in the sense that I follow what the song wants. You can play something in a minor key and still talk about joy. Or start quiet and end up with everyone in the room talking at the same time — sometimes that’s the best part.

White Lighter feels nostalgic but powerful at the same time. What were you exploring with it?

The production on White Lighter was fun because I’m borrowing nostalgia from an era I wasn’t alive in, around 1986. One of my favourite things to do is to preserve and mutate. My favourite music from that time — Madonna, Prince, all those records — had a certain sentiment because of the era. I like to go fishing in those sounds, uncover something that moves me, reshape it, and keep it alive. There’s a reason the drums felt that way, the piano was played that way — it all came from its moment. Even if I didn’t exist in it, I appreciate it. Part of my job is to pay homage to the people before me, alive or not, and give them a small voice through me.

You often describe your process like a conversation between instruments and feelings. How does that work in your songs?

I see it as a conversation between all the elements: the guitar, the lyrics, the voice. Sometimes everyone’s excited and talking at once — that’s the chorus, it feels bright and full. Other times you have to strip it down to just a violin and a voice so the message is clear. Not everything has to speak at the same time. And sometimes when elements overlap or interrupt each other, that chaos is beautiful too.

The original Glimmer of God came out last year and now you’ve expanded it into Rock A Bye Baby, Glimmer of God. What did this new phase teach you?

Glimmer of God taught me a lot more than I expected. It taught me to have patience with myself in a way that felt truthful and honest. The deluxe was a way to revisit old versions of me; not the songs, but the way my brain used to work when I made music. I wanted to include an element from every project I’ve done before and see how I could improve. It’s like those photos of generations together — the granddaughter, the mother, the grandmother. It’s an homage to what I’ve done before and a farewell to certain ideas I probably won’t use again. Where I am now is very different from where I started.

You didn’t have a network, you weren’t signed, you didn’t belong to a ‘scene’. 

Yeah, nobody in my family’s ever made art — there are no painters, no sculptors, no musicians. My father’s in the military, my mother’s working at a school, my older brother’s in tech. I’m the only person in my family that’s taking time to be introspective in way that’s shared. So in a way, this album became a thank-you to God, or the universe, for letting me do this.

What would you tell someone starting from that same place?

You’ll find in your path to immortality, you’ll die many times. And also: your life is clay, it’s in your hands. I came into music with no network, no uncle at a label. I’ve been unsigned my entire career. I don’t belong to any scene. I don’t hang out with other artists much, not because I think I’m superior, but because sometimes I don’t know what I am, and I’m okay with that. The worst thing you can do is tell yourself there are rules. If you think there are, choose which ones to break, not which ones to follow. The only people who don’t make it in art are the ones who give up.

“I’m still that kid from the barrio who crossed the border to go to school, with no voice training, no classical lessons.”

You’ve recently had moments like Apple choosing New Age Crisis for the iPhone 17 Pro launch, or being part of Jordan Peele-produced film, Him, soundtrack. Did any of that change how you see your work?

Not really. I don’t care about material things. I’m just thankful people care enough to invite me into their worlds. I could be dead and the fact that I’m alive making music is already enough. My gratitude keeps growing. I’m still that kid from the barrio who crossed the border to go to school, with no voice training, no classical lessons. The fact that I get to make music, direct, collaborate with incredible musicians, and that people trust my vision — that’s more than I could ever ask for.

What do you want people to take from this new chapter?

Everything they want. If this album is a house, I want people to walk in and take whatever they need. I don’t want to die with ideas left in me. I want to give it all away while I can.

Suzanne Finnamore once said that pregnancy is the closest thing a woman will ever come to magic, and there’s really no arguing with that. Being able to carry and bring life into the world is truly one of the most incredible phenomena of nature, a testament not only to unconditional love but, perhaps most importantly, to the strength of women. Yet, while this is undeniable, there are also many expectations placed upon us as women. We are often expected to be “birthing persons”, to have the desire to carry life, to become mothers. If our answer to a “Would you like to be a mother?” question is not a firm yes, we are often reassured that it’s just a matter of time: “You are too young; you’ll change your mind.” Sometimes it seems that the desire for motherhood and pregnancy is the only acceptable answer. Naima Green, with her new exhibition, Instead, I Spin Fantasies, at New York’s International Center of Photography, reflects on pregnancy as both a personal and societal experience, imagining different scenarios without romanticising it.

Through constructed self-portraits, landscapes and still life, Green doesn’t portray pregnancy in a stereotypical way; as the title suggests, she spins fantasies. Using a prosthetic belly, she stages alternative versions of herself, creating what she calls “prosthetic lives”, exploring what it might mean to inhabit the body of a pregnant woman without actually being one, literally stepping into their shoes and blurring the line between documentation and performance, creating imaginative scenarios and offering glimpses into myriad potential trajectories of any one individual’s life.

If I didn’t let my mind run too far ahead, I felt happy.
It’s funny how people don’t give that much thought to what kids want, as long as they’re quiet. Molly 19 Days Before Zadie.
The other is an outpouring of everything good in you.

Each title sounds like a thought caught mid-sentence, a fragment from an inner monologue. Together they build the rhythm of an everyday story through images that feel both intimate and performative: a fleeting moment of calm in a bathtub, a lunch thrown together with what’s left in the fridge, an intimate exchange between a mother and her children, a woman filming a vlog she might one day show her child, the company of friends and family, the subtle fatigue. 

Her photographs don’t act as confessions but as possibilities. Green’s lens also ventures into less comfortable narratives, the ones that aren’t usually shown: Pregnant women drinking, smoking, late-night club scenes, and acts that defy the sanitised, moralised image of motherhood. Is that a responsible mother, or do we see her humanity first? Green asks us to challenge our automatic judgements and the way in which we moralise the maternal body.

Is this really something we really want, or is it an expectation that’s been put on us? Why does the question of becoming a parent feel inevitable? How is a pregnant woman supposed to act and feel? What does it mean to be a parent? To raise a child? To be responsible for someone else’s life? Through these prosthetic lives, the photographer stages a conversation with herself, presenting pregnancy as a sort of metaphor, a mutable space where desire, doubt and autonomy coexist.

Her photographs invite us to inhabit the in-between: the tension between fantasy and truth. She doesn’t tell us what pregnancy should look like; she imagines what it could look like. Her images are open questions, tender yet defiant, reminding us that motherhood can exist in many possible forms. The exhibition will be on view until January 12 of 2026.

Truman’s new music video for Tell Him, his collaboration with London-based newcomer Isabel, arrives with the kind of quiet force that lingers long after the screen fades. The track already carries a delicate tension, but the visual sharpens it, revealing the emotional architecture beneath the song. It is less an illustration than an expansion, turning vulnerability into something tactile and lived in.

Directed by Saul Abraham, the film leans into restraint. Adolescent boys deliver the lyrics straight to the camera, their expressions unfiltered in a way that feels almost confrontational. Isabel’s presence threads through the track like a soft counterpoint, grounding the emotion even when the imagery shifts. These performances sit alongside tender fragments of Truman with his grandmother, Patricia Palmer, moments that seem borrowed from memory rather than made for the frame.

Truman captures the emotional core of the piece with disarming precision. “The song is all the words that sad adult men choke on, the deeper voice of their gut as they sink pints and sink into their assigned seats at the bar.” The boys in the video echo that idea, caught in the early rehearsals of self-protection. He adds, “The video shows an early moment in time when men are learning to mask, dressing up in a false self.”

On release day, Truman shared a message that illuminated the spirit behind the project. “A message to the team: you were the bones, brains, and flesh of this video. I simply sat and enjoyed getting into the skin of the idea.” He acknowledged Saul Abraham's vision and the contributions of James Jacob, David Foulkes, Keri Rothwell Douglas, and Richard Fearon, recognising the collaboration that shaped the piece.

Precious Pepala returns with Dream Cheater, a release that locks onto the moment where emotion refuses to obey reason. It is the opening pulse of Rosey, a project built around desire, insecurity, and the stories we tell ourselves when the lights go out. The track arrives with an accompanying music video directed by Miroslav Kiss and Jordan Rabjohn, shifting the perspective to her partner as the tension quietly spreads through the frame.

The artist introduced the project through a confession that felt almost diaristic. “This song is part 1 of my upcoming EP Rosey, which tells the story of two star-crossed lovers stuck in a toxic love cycle.” The cycle begins where certainty ends. “With the honeymoon period now over, Rosey starts to develop insecurities and trust issues.” What follows is a dream that she treats as evidence, even when the facts refuse to support it.

The song sits inside that logic. Pepala sings as if waking mid panic, convinced that what she imagined has stained reality. The lyrics replay the same image with a kind of obsessive clarity, turning a dream into an accusation she cannot swallow. The guitars press forward, the drums tighten, and her voice carries the sting of someone who knows she is spiraling yet can’t step outside the feeling. It is jealousy as déjà vu, irrational and painfully believable.

Across Rosey, that emotional distortion becomes the thread that binds the narrative. Pepala does not position herself as omniscient. Instead, she watches Rosey unravel with an almost anthropological tenderness, allowing contradictions to stay unresolved. She wrote, “I put so much into this body of work and I can’t wait for you all to hear it!” The sentiment feels less like promotion and more like someone opening a door to a room they have been shaping for years.

She brings this new chapter to the stage on December 5 at Temple of Fun in Sheffield. “So excited to announce I’m playing a show at Temple of Fun in Sheffield on December 5th! Can’t wait to perform some new music for you all. See you there!”

In case you thought gaming and eSports are only for geeks and freaks, you’re so wrong. Trust me. Gaming is exciting, out of this world, escapism. Allowing us to dive into surreal worlds, allowing us to be someone else: a hero, a villain, a witch, an Assassin, a squad leader — whoever we want, whatever we want. And now, gaming can even be fashion. Balenciaga has just released a digital and physical collaboration with PUBG: Battlegrounds and PUBG Mobile. A collaboration that is fierce, post-apocalyptic, bold, sci-fi and haute couture — all at the same time.

Who remembers this bitter-sweet, breathtaking, captivating era of dystopian science fiction action movies in the 2010s that had us in a complete chokehold? You know, Maze Runner (2014) with Dylan O’Brien, for example. Or Divergent (2014), the story of Tris who doesn’t fit in any of the factions based on human virtues. Or, the original one, maybe, that started all of it: The Hunger Games (2012). The story of Katniss, who volunteers to fight in a deadly arena where there can be only one lone winner. That’s a really good plot. The power, the tragedy, the humanity, the inhumanity, the horror, the love. Incredible. And that’s basically exactly, or not exactly, the plot of PUBG: Battlegrounds. Because obviously, this era I’m talking about was already around ten years ago. But, thanks to whoever was in charge of that, the immersive drama is not gone. It just shifted. And video games took over.

In PUBG: Battlegrounds for example, one hundred players get dropped off on one of a selection of unique locations, an island for example, an abandoned city. Here, they fight solo, as a duo or as a squad against each other, they loot, they survive, they kill until there is one lone winner standing. Kind of, The Hunger Games (2012), I told you so. So, what Balenciaga announced today is that this special collaboration consists of exclusive in-game content, merch, and gifts for the champions of this year’s official tournaments.

In PUBG Mobile, the players can unlock special Balenciaga looks and pieces including the silver, shimmering, badass armour look that is inspired by the House’s 3D-printed dress from the 52nd Couture Collection, designed by former creative director, Demna. And let’s be real, who wouldn’t love to dress their savage video game character in something like this? Other pieces that are featured in the digital collaboration are inspired by the brand’s Winter 2025 collection. There’s a pink corset-fitted puffer jacket with a big furry hood, for example. A standard logo t-shirt for everyone who wants to keep it simple. There are distressed jeans, a trompe l’oeil tied sleeve miniskirt, a blue fur helmet, thigh-high stiletto boots (because if you lose your dagger, you can still eliminate your opponent with these incredibly fashionable pointy weapons). And, of course, a selection of piercing-covered bags that we also know from real life: from the Explorer, Le City and to the Superbusy lines.

But before you’re getting disappointed now because you’re not good at playing video games, there will also be physical merch of the collaboration available in selected stores and online. This includes Australia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, United States, and the United Arab Emirates. In the meantime, the highlight for everyone who actually is an exceptional video game player: Each person on the winning teams of the 2025’s massive PUBG Global competitions (that will be hosted in Bangkok from December 12th to 14th) will be granted a custom Balenciaga bomber jacket. So much again to the geeks and freaks from the beginning, right?

Overall, the collaboration between the high fashion house and PUBG embraces the convergence between the cultural roles of today's digital worlds: of gaming and of eSports but also of fashion, design and the virtual self. It’s a combination of Balenciaga’s own extravagant futuristic design language and the video game’s dystopian atmosphere — a match that feels natural, logical and still progressive. I don’t know about you, but I might create a profile now on PUBG just to get this fierce haute couture armour look.

Unsettling. Self-reflective. Poignant. And slightly grotesque. These are the words that come to mind when passing through Thomas Schütte’s Genealogies exhibition presented by the Pinault Collection at Venice’s Punta della Dogana, on display until November 23rd. Curated by Camille Morineau and Jean-Marie Gallais, the solo presentation of the German artist showcases some never-before-seen pieces of Schütte. He is known to reflect on the human condition, inspiring irony and introspection through sculptures and paintings.

Genealogies goes a step further by reflecting on Schütte’s own artistic journey, displaying pieces from the 1970s onwards. The first room echoes some of his first creations and a sustained theme through his work of men stuck in the mud. The figures Man in Wind I-III (2018) we see are all young men sinking into the patinated bronze base as the wind blows their clothes tight against their bodies. Schütte questions their ability to move forward, victims of their own society and trapped in a state of passivity. 

Little men bound together in pairs under glass jars in Untitled Enemies (1994) evoke the feeling of a lab experiment with small humans gone wrong as their distorted faces look out to visitors. Some faces angrily dare you to lift the jar and set them free. Others seem like they have nothing going on inside their head. Their stick legs, scrappy clothing, and confronting expressions make me feel as though they are the hangman figurines from my childhood come to life, and they’re angry at me for not guessing the word correctly.

Braving through the exhibition you see a C-3PO lookalike in The Good and The Bad (2007-2009), who seem like victims of torture who’ve had their mouths stitched shut, eyes gouged and filled, nose kicked in, and encased in a sheeny gold and platinum glaze. They look as though they wish to talk to each other but can’t. So instead, they are communicating through their faces and whatever expression is left. Later on, Three Very Large Spirits (1998-2004) tower over the room. Their twisted legs and bodies sculpted from wax and blanketed in bronze look as if their muscles had been stretched out and wrapped around their bones. As they face each other, deformed, you can’t tell if they would be friends or fight each other to the death. 

Schütte is known for his depiction of men primarily, however, his depictions of women are some of the most interesting in this exhibition. Weeping Women Nr. III (2011) is one of his bronze fountains portraying a woman’s face crying through the spigots. In these fountains, he reduces the woman’s expressions and faces to the bare minimum: two eyes and a mouth pouring out water to be collected in a basin. The fountains have been described by the Pinault Collection as depictions of primal art like masks and statuettes from Africa, but they also show the simplicity which we demand from women — contorted and condensed to barely legible humans. 

The Aluminium Women (1998-2006) collection similarly warps the female figure but talks back to the simple, and many times sexualised, perspective women are boxed into. At first glance, the sculptures portray the feminine nude, but as you circle around them, each angle tells a different story. Laid out on steel tables, they are sliced up as if on display post-surgery. Those with faces look away from passers-by into the beyond or closing their eyes, constantly averting our gaze, as though they can see what is to come. 

Schütte braves the question of human existence and the relationship between our mind and body in Genealogies. The exhibit’s storytelling and layout in non-chronological order shows us how his work is constantly elaborating on just a few core concepts and themes but preserves relevance throughout time.

The exhibition Genealogies by Thomas Schütte is on view through November 23 at Pinault Collection Punta della Dogana, Dorsoduro 2, Venice.

You’ve probably heard the saying that nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news. Well, at least for today, there’s no need to worry, because this time we’re here to discuss only good news. Louis Vuitton just launched their 2025 holiday campaign, a journey of lights, shadows and reflections captured through the lens of Jonas Lindstroem.

Our journey begins at Asnières, a quiet suburb along the Seine where Van Gogh used to find refuge from the chaos of the city, a place that shaped many of his paintings and witnessed the birth of the emblematic Louis Vuitton trunk. From the lid of a Malle Courrier, a single lantern lifts into the orange sky. Guided by this wandering flame, we move through scenes of life: people playing backgammon under the northern lights, dancing around the sparks of a bonfire, and chasing fireflies beneath a deep indigo sky.

The campaign captures that unmistakable and addictive holiday magic: the weightless, carefree moments when we step away from everyday life and let our minds drift unhurried. The Maison’s iconic pieces like My Capucines, the Speedy P9 as well as the Imagination and Attrape-Rêves perfumes and Color Blossom and Damier jewellery collection become our travel companions that move with us, quietly absorbing the memories we create along the way. And just like the mother and daughter at the end, we too stand in awe in front of this magical journey of lights shimmering over the Ville Lumière.

The silent scream of the figure in Francis Bacon’s Figure with Meat echoes in the mind of photographer, chef, and artist, Marshall To, whose childhood inclined him to pay attention to the spiritual and mysterious. In creating his photobook, Blank Notes, published by Charcoal Press, he blurs the divide between what we believe to be reality and the supernatural in black and white images that submerge us into a calm, but at times chilling world.

He sets out to capture the Hungry Ghosts from Taoist tradition where the gates of Hell open letting out spirits in the form of owls, wolves, birds, and even attractive humans who prowl the Earth for nourishment. To’s use of light and movement bends our perceptions of the world and offer a glimpse into a realm unbeknownst to us, pushing the audience to consider there may be something bigger than ourselves.

Blank Notes is a love letter to his heritage and to first- and second-generation immigrants who he says combine older worlds with the modern to forge new stories and realities. As children of immigrants, we have a learned habit of disentangling our identities and placing them into two or three separate boxes for easy legibility, instead of leaving the tangles and embracing complication. To reflects this in his work by chipping away at the confinement of his identity and spirituality.

You started out working as a chef and your parents also owned a Chinese restaurant. How important was food in your personal life growing up and into adulthood?

It was everything to me from the get-go; it was my first introduction to my own culture in a place where there were very few Chinese people. It taught me that food can bring people together no matter their beliefs and differences. It was also the only way some people knew how to show their love and now, for better or for worse, I started doing the same thing. Words can sometimes be very difficult to say when you’re not used to saying them but it’s easy for me to cook you whatever you want and show you how much I care.

It’s interesting to me that you began your career working as a chef because the sensory experience of cooking and photography is quite different. The display of food and the presentation of photos appeal to a similar notion of aesthetic, but the way one consumes each medium diverges. What about being a chef and working with food made you move to photography?

Early on in my cooking career, I began doing food photography at the same time. It made me look at light differently than I ever did before — good light, bad light, etc. I really enjoyed styling and creating a whole scene with food but it started to feel hollow, it was missing a sort of chase. I wanted to feel butterflies, so I chased the first thing I ever loved and that was animals. It was also then that I realised that I was more of an artist than I was a chef. I needed to create physically and intimately with food or illustrations and simultaneously taking photos which then satiated my visual hunger with more immediacy.

In Blank Notes, you explore the celebration of the Hungry Ghosts in Taoist tradition. You yourself grew up in a small town in Canada while also being part of an immigrant household practicing Taoism. How is the diasporic identity weaved into your photography?

First- or second-generation immigrants are the most unique people I find, almost a perfect combination of different or older worlds colliding with new, and with that comes very specific stories and uniquely relatable ones. As I started to grow into my identity as an artist, I realised that I needed to stop compartmentalising who I was. That being fully myself would make my work inherently unique.

Nature and animals are a large part of your collection and of the Taoist tradition. Did growing up in Canada also inform your fascination with nature?

I grew up in the plains of Alberta. In the summer, it would be hot and dry during the day but thunderous and exciting at night. The winters were sunny and dropped down to minus fifty degrees Celsius, the sky would be blue but the landscape would be blanketed in snow. It made me aware of the force that nature is and the beauty that it creates.

How do you think the coexistence of the natural and the supernatural in Taoist tradition are different from that of Western traditions?

I think that the Western world has moved on so much faster than other cultures. Since modernity it has, understandably so, become increasingly more of a secular society and less interested in the unknown and mysterious. Older traditions seem to have space for mystery and the unknown.

What aspects of Taoism do you carry with you in your daily life? How do they impact you as a person and your work as a photographer?

My parents burn incense on an altar that carries statues of deities and photos of our ancestors every morning and ask them to look over our family. I’ve carried on those rituals more and more as complicated health situations have risen in my family. In times of need, it helps me even if I have one foot in and one foot out half the time. Sometimes it allows me to be more vulnerable because it allows me to believe in something bigger than myself, even just for a second. That impacts me the most as a person foremost and secondly as a photographer. Letting in the pain and heartache to only digest it and create from it.

What made you want to explore this specific Taoist tradition where the gates of Hell open releasing the Hungry Ghosts?

As a child, my parents would tell me to not do anything disrespectful outside of the protection of our house like peeing behind a dumpster or screaming and shouting in the ether, inviting unwanted attention during this festival. I’ve had my own experiences with the supernatural that made me fear these festivals. I wasn’t allowed to get out of the car when we would go visit our ancestors at the cemetery because I would fall ill every time. I stopped believing in all these things for so long as I grew into adulthood, it was in the back of my mind and I was never sure whether it was all real or not. I guess Blank Notes is my way of translating it into something tangible and real.

Blank Notes is shot in black and white film, which forces the audience to focus on the shadows and silhouettes and, in this collection, also invokes mystery. What drew you to this style?

I found that black and white film allowed you to immerse yourself faster in a different world and mindspace. Black and white movies such as Kuroneko and Onibaba really helped me see how those specific stories could be told and allow one to suspend belief.

Photography is a depiction of reality in a sense, capturing what is right in front of you in a seemingly objective way. How do you navigate trying to represent the supernatural in such a physical and tangible medium?

Movement is such a big part of it for me, you can bend the depiction of reality with movement of the subject matter and movements of the camera itself. I honestly just like to have fun with it and experiment and hope for the best. If a rabbit hole presents itself, then I’ll go down it as far as I can. In this case I chose to photograph the things that gave me butterflies, gave me a sense of chase and fear. At times I would go to a park alone at night with all noises with a headlamp afraid of the unseen and attempt to photograph that feeling.

I see you also paint and draw, primarily the human form, in an almost macabre manner. What made you choose this style of painting? How is it also reflected in your photography?

It’s pretty safe to say that I gravitate towards the dark as there is a different kind of beauty there. I remember the first time I saw Francis Bacon’s painting Figure With Meat and it was seared into my brain. I couldn’t stop looking at it because I had never seen anything like it before. I’m not sure exactly that it’s reflected in my photography, but I’m keen to reflect it in my practice in the future as they are both very much in the same breath.

Through the movement in the photos, I feel like I can peer into the divide between the natural and supernatural, as though the movement distorts the subject, possibly giving a glimpse into their demonic side. Why do you think it’s important to portray this thin divide between reality and the other-worldly?

It felt imperative to depict the thin divide, the weaving back and forth of realities because that’s how I imagine that it is, constantly confusing and blurry like a fever dream.

Some of the photos also play with the focus where the subject is blurred or a wash of light obscures the image. To me, it reflects the message of what we can see in our reality and the veil that separates us and the supernatural. Can you tell me a bit about your thinking behind this?

A lot of that came from inspiration of other artists' work such as Trent Parke and Masao Yamamoto, who photograph their environments but make them look supernatural, like a beam of sunlight lighting a single person up like a god in a crowd of people. I tried to find ways myself of photographing the same objects in different ways to create more dualities. When you open up the shutter, you allow the reality in front of you to be distorted.

Who are some of your inspirations in your work?

Where do I start… I guess Masahisa Fukase’s Ravens specifically, which allowed me to see how weaving nature and personal life can be photographed. Jesse Lenz, who mentored me and encouraged me to lean into all this. Igor Posner, Masao Yamamoto, Daido Moriyama, Daisuke Yokota. Painters: Francis Bacon, Jenny Saville, Justin Mortimer. Movies: Kuroneko, The Wailing, Onibaba and those are just some.

Your family was Taoist and you talk about your cultural inspiration from your father’s stories. I’m curious what your family thinks of your photographs?

Most of my family really like the pictures of the owls (laughs). They haven’t really shared what they truly think about my photographs but it’s a book more so dedicated to them than it is for them.

The duo is back for another round. After a strong debut, Levi’s and London-based designer Kiko Kostadinov return with a five-piece menswear drop that redefines everyday classics. From refined denim sets to sharp tailoring, the collection blends Levi’s heritage denim with Kostadinov’s experimental design.

The second menswear drop from this match made in heaven is less of a collaboration and more of a thought experiment in fabric. If the duo’s first collection notably resurrected the Levi’s Engineered Jeans archival features with Bulgarian-motif inspired diamond darting for a subtle, utilitarian twist established their shared foundation in structured workwear, this new five-piece capsule elevates the conversation. It’s an exploration into the cultural history of denim, specifically its role in the 20th-century American art scene, and the beautiful friction that arises when high-brow meets hands-on.

For this collaboration, classics like the Levi’s Trucker jacket and workwear jeans are reimagined with Kiko Kostadinov’s modern touch. The Articulate Jacket returns in blue indigo denim with refined stitching and updated details, while the matching jeans offer a relaxed fit and a fresh take on vintage workwear. The Andy Pattern Shirt blends formal and casual style with its gray-and-white check design, and the Andy Suit Jacket and Trousers bring a sleek, contemporary twist to the traditional tuxedo with satin accents and Kostadinov’s signature precision.

As Paracia continues to refine its presence in the contemporary footwear landscape, the Madrid-based brand remains committed to a philosophy that places calm, craftsmanship and thoughtful design at the centre of everyday life. From their studio in the Spanish capital, they have built a distinctive visual and material language shaped by the idea that beauty often reveals itself through simplicity. Guided by their core principle, Enchant the Mundane, Paracia approaches shoes not merely as functional objects but as subtle companions capable of elevating the ordinary.

Within their Fall/Winter 2025 collection, the new Cove Boot channels Paracia’s quiet, thoughtful approach to design. Inspired by the space where land meets sea, the boot takes cues from traditional fishing styles and turns them into something softer and more contemporary. The smooth leather wraps the foot in a gentle curve, and a front zipper gives it a clean, straightforward look. There is a small heel for a bit of lift, but the silhouette stays easy and relaxed. As with many of Paracia’s pieces, the leather gains character with use, allowing each pair to slowly take on its own personality.

This dialogue between environment and form is expanded in Coastal Line, the visual chapter accompanying the release. Set in an unfinished architectural studio, the campaign uses raw surfaces and exposed textures to evoke the slow transformations of coastal spaces. Knu Kim, Jaime Venet, Manon Della Gherardesca and Eva Montesinos shape a world where everyday objects like nets, ropes and wood appear as traces of a landscape rather than staged elements.

Leo Sawikin returns with fresh momentum as he releases Where I’m Running, the second preview of his upcoming EP, The Edge of Everything, a track that signals the shift he has been building toward with producer Phil Ek. Dropping just yesterday, the single arrives with a sense of urgency and renewal, amplified by the excitement Sawikin shared only hours ago: “Where I’m Running is officially out everywhere! I wrote this song in January 2024 and I’m so excited to finally be sharing it. It truly is a lovely day to be me!”

From its opening riff, the song moves with intention. Tight guitars and a driving melodic line anchor a story about escaping comfort for something more unpredictable. “The song is about wanting to escape an easy life for something more exciting and dangerous,” he explains. “The song started from a riff idea I had and came together really quickly compared to a lot of other things I’ve written.” That immediacy remains in the final version, giving the track a restless pulse.

Where I’m Running follows Jumping from So High, the EP’s first single, which introduced this new sonic terrain marked by energy, risk and emotional openness. The NYC singer-songwriter broadens his sound with new collaborators: drummer Max Yassky adds a punchier drive, synth designer William Sawikin brings textured grit, and guitarist Vin Landolfi infuses the arrangements with a brighter, more pop-forward edge.

With his new single, Sawikin adds another layer to the direction he began defining after the success of Till You’re Somebody Else, which topped the Mediabase A/C Independent Artists Chart and expanded his audience well beyond the U.S. Where I’m Running hints at the sharper, more textured sound of The Edge of Everything, due in early 2026, and reflects how his recent collaborators are reshaping the project.

Described as “cosmic R&B meets hip-hop bounce,” producer Kiyan Foroughi releases Seas of Space, his new single in collaboration with Singaporean vocalist Rachelle Ruby and rapper Jude. Defining himself as a “producer, storyteller, curator,” Foroughi releases a hit where the synergies with other artists enhance his talent as a producer, bridging original voices with enveloping melodies. But this isn’t only the artist’s newest song; it’s also the single of his upcoming album, inner light. OUTER SPACE, set for release in February of 2026.

Both the title of the song and the album give it away instantly: Kiyan Foroughi is pretty much obsessed with outer space and the cosmos. The vastness of infinity, the numerous mysteries surrounding it, and the complex way it works inspire the artist’s intricate production, which now cristallises in Seas of Space.  At the same time, it draws from Rumi’s prayer: “Fling me across the fabric of time and the seas of space. make me nothing and from nothing, everything.” As the producer explains, “it’s a plea for ego-death, for the shedding of illusions so the self can be reborn.”

Both words —‘seas’ and ‘space’— evoke an image of grandiosity and the unstoppable power of nature, but at the same time, they somehow remind us of our human condition and scale. The lyrics also contribute to that: “They’re watching over you, all the stars you ever look over. / So keep it moving girl like you’re in perpetual motion,” sings Jude. “Wandering through time and space / Take a trip, ride this wave,” continues Rachelle Ruby.

This is the first single of inner light. OUTER SPACE, Kiyan’s upcoming debut album, which follows a female protagonist (voiced by Rachelle Ruby) navigating “alien worlds and mythic trials.” Influenced by the aforementioned Rumi but also Carl Jung’s shadow work, the LP is thought of as non-linear journey inward or outward, depending on the order you play it. “I realised the album wasn’t just a story I was telling. It was the story I was living,” Foroughi comments.

X & Ivy return with a new single that already feels lived in. Dee Sharp arrives charged with the kind of momentum that comes from months of being tested in real clubs, in real heat, with real dancers. The duo summed it up earlier today, “Been special seeing this one played everywhere over the summer, and our set weapon for a while. Inspired by the 90s rave era, we wanted to bring modern production to sounds that have inspired us.” It is a clear statement of intent, filtering nostalgia through a sharper, contemporary lens.

The production leans into rolling bass and vocal fragments that flicker like strobes, creating a sense of movement that never really lets up. There is warmth in the way the samples collide, but also a sleekness that belongs to the present. The track channels the energy of the era they reference, yet refuses to fall into imitation. Instead, it expands on familiar foundations, tightening edges and amplifying tension until the groove becomes its own form of release.

Their recent trajectory feels like a steady acceleration. After Keep Me, their collaboration with Todd Edwards, X & Ivy continued to sharpen what makes them distinct. Each new release has opened another corner of their sound, moving from club-ready pressure to more atmospheric spaces without losing their pulse. In the studio and onstage, they have settled into a rhythm that feels instinctive and confident. What stands out now is their sense of clarity, a feeling that they are building something meant to last rather than chasing a single breakthrough.

X draws on influences rooted in Australian pub culture, disco, and early electronic experiments. Ivy moves through soul, hardcore and house. Together, they build something rhythm-forward and sample-rich that resists being boxed in. Dee Sharp arrives as another step in their upward shift. With an Australia tour ahead and a New Year’s Eve slot at The Bowl, the timing feels intentional. Visually, the release is framed by cover art from Dominic Silvaggio and a visualizer by Yasmin Spargo, completing a chapter that signals a duo stepping confidently into their global era.