The Portal

The Portal: 18 August 2025

The Reading and Leeds festivals used to be an annual rite of passage for tens of thousands of teenagers up and down the country, and while this has changed, we thought with the August Bank Holiday approaching we’d have a quick look in tQ’s archive to see what we had… and lo! there is an early interview with The XX from 2009, plus JR Moores on the disorder at Leeds in 2002. Featuring police helicopters, burning portaloos and petulant headliners he asks, “What was that all about?” We’ve also got Baker’s Dozens from Lee Ranaldo and Dennis Bovell, a Black Sky Thinking on the shift of black metal from the endless forests etc etc to the urban, a reflective interview with David Sylvian, and a guide to the Strange World of spiritual jazz saxophonist and bandleader Idris Ackamoor. From the Subscriber Area a guide to magic realism in Polish experimental music and, in case you missed it a couple of months ago, there’s our epic playlist wrapping up hours of music from our albums of the year so far chart.