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Columns of the Year

Straight Hedge! The Best Punk and HC of 2025

Noel Gardner caps off his 15th year as our punk and hardcore columnist with a roundup of the 10 best records of 2025, and reviews of 10 more that got away
Columns of the Year

New Weird Britain: 2025 in Review by Noel Gardner

From avant folk to post-post-club computer music, via several doses of Cornish soundsmithery and a tribute to former Tottenham defender Ledley King, Noel Gardner presents his 10 favourite releases from New Weird Britain in 2025, and rounds up 10 more that got away
Reviews

The Final Age

New Hallucinations

A true 'drummer's album', from one of the drummers in Gnod plus guests from the Bristol scene and beyond, that doesn't skimp on atmosphere
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for November by Noel Gardner

From weighty out-jazz poetry to a dream pop / post rock wormhole, via mutating synth grids, a record fuelled by hatred of the ‘the music industry’ and more – it can only be Noel Gardner’s latest guide to the best of New Weird Britain
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & Hardcore for October

Noel G is back again to blast away Autumnal blues with "wicked sick stick-thin machinified aquatic death rock", Iranian diaspora HC, the grotty AF Brainbombs and Eva Leblanc's Traidora (featured in the main portrait)
A Quietus Interview

Kernow Craft: Oh Mr James Interviewed

Ben James Wood is part of a new generation of Cornwall-based producers, mixing and matching modular and desktop/ soft & hard synths to reboot Braindance for the 21st Century barn dance. Words: Noel Gardner. Photos: Patrick Matthews
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for September by Noel Gardner

Noel Gardner's guide to the greatest in the British underground returns, with vaporous synths, leftfield new age bubblers, avowedly fuck-off noise music and more
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC for August

From Tokyo speedbastards to small town Connecticut hardcore, to a band billing themselves as a two-piece despite one of them being a dog, Noel Gardner's roundup of the best in global punk returns
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for July by Noel Gardner

Noel Gardner delivers another guide to the sound of New Weird Britain, taking in 16rpm street soul, the dub/folk connection, gothic ambience responding to a 14th century manuscript and more
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC For June

From Montreal to Warsaw via Tblisi, Cleveland and Dublin, Noel Gardner's guide to the best in punk and HC returns
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for April by Noel Gardner

From mangled folk music to ever-evolving electroacoustic techno jams inspired by Hackney Marshes, Noel Gardner delivers his latest guide to the sounds of New Weird Britain
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC for April

Noel Gardner's guide to the best in new punk returns, featuring heavy hitters from Toronto via Tehran, primitive French noise that blasts straight through the language barrier, newly reissued 1980s NYC gold dust, and much more
News

Acid Horse 2025: tQ’s 10 Essential Picks

Less than two months out from the return of Pewsey's Acid Horse, Noel Gardner picks out 10 must-sees at this year's edition, from Matmos to Milkweed via ballroom-gone-industrial, Eastern Bloc alt pop, psychic drone and much, much more
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for March by Noel Gardner

Noel Gardner's latest dispatch from the undergrowth features weird grime, Super Nintendo cartridges, an anti-music Napalm Death covers LP, a scorching bagpipe/saxophone drone and much much more

Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC for February

Noel Gardner delivers his latest roundup from the world of punk and hardcore featuring transmissions from the underground scenes of Beirut, Rome and Devizes (Wiltshire)
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for January by Noel Gardner

Noel Gardner kicks off another year in the undergrowth of New Weird Britain with an eclectic selection of thick psychedelia, inchoate delirium, dreamy folksong and sesh gremlin techno
Columns of the Year

New Weird Britain: 2024 in Review by Noel Gardner

The torrent of interesting records from the British underground showed no signs of slowing in 2024, says Noel Gardner, who picks out 10 of his favourites and 10 others that might have otherwise passed him by
Columns of the Year

Straight Hedge! The Best Punk and HC of 2024

The worlds of punk and hardcore remained life-affirming in 2024, says Noel Gardner, rounding up his ten favourite records of the year as well as ten that got away
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC for November

Noel Gardner delivers his latest roundup from the punk and hardcore underground, from gleaming Polish goth to motorik intensity from Leeds, plus two big scoops of noisy American d-beat
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for October by Noel Gardner

Noel Gardner's guide to the best of New Weird Britain returns, from watery worldbuilding hip-pop to isolationist, field recording-embellished ambient dub sessions
Reviews

Pyrrhon

Exhaust

In the same way Party Cannon's logo really sets them apart from the crowd, Pyrrhon have very unusual lyrics for a death metal band, among many other positive attributes, notes Noel Gardner
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC For September

From the upbeat and uncouth to the blaringly sullen, via Oslo, Tokyo, Newcastle and Denver, Noel Gardner brings you his latest guide to the very best in brand new punk and hardcore
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for August by Noel Gardner

From archive recordings of Notting Hill Carnival soundsystems to free-percussion improvisations from a Todmorden primary school, Noel Gardner delivers his latest guide to the sounds of New Weird Britain
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC for July

Noel Gardner delivers ten more frowning bales of intemperate earslaughter, including the perfectly executed anarcho punk of Subdued, the oppressively fucked sound of rising Leeds teenagers Narkotyk, and the feral, bare-brick recordings of Vancouver's Bootlicker
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain in Review for June by Noel Gardner

Noel Gardner brings us artificial birdsong, real birdsong, a metal nail hammered up a nostril, and a big set of technoise gloomsteppers in his latest report from the British fringes
Reviews

Normil Hawaiians

Empires Into Sand

Four decades after their last album, peripatetic London postpunks return in force
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC For May

Your regular guide to the best in brand new punk and HC returns, with Noel Gardner reviewing releases from Kriegshög, Cock Sparrer, Klonns and more
Reviews

The Dengie Hundred with Gemma Blackshaw

Who Will You Love

Children's voices and Essex coastlines collide in an unusually song-centric release from Owen Lawrence’s The Dengie Hundred
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain In Review For April By Noel Gardner

Disassembled slowcore! Spandex-stretchy heroic jamming! Grubbily shimmering disco-techno! Your guide to the best of New Weird Britain returns, courtesy of Noel Gardner
Punk

Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC For March

Noel Gardner's punk and HC roundup returns, taking him from Chicago to Barcelona, Melbourne and beyond. Homepage photo: Coax
New Weird Britain

New Weird Britain In Review For February By Noel Gardner

Your New Weird Britain roundup returns, bringing you sauntering goth-house, watery electronics and an album released via a flowerpot
Reviews

Dean McPhee

Astral Gold

The Bradford guitarist's fifth album takes Roy Montgomery and Manuel Göttsching on a trip deep into the old weird Yorkshire
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