After eight or nine years of the streaming giant Spotify taking over my musical selection and informing me of discoveries, I have finally given into personal ethics and fatigue by cancelling my subscription and leaving a partial vow to not look back.

Over almost a decade, it has led me from subculture to subculture; from an angry youthful individual seeking out the latest in the American hardcore scene, to Spotify’s final years of usefulness: aiding my own need for new jazz and electro tracks. The site shaped my image, helping hone my music taste to a somewhat extensive degree. …

The strangeness and postmodernist ideologies that exist within the Russian DJ and producers music makes him a symbolic reflection of the country’s contemporary electronica music scene.

“The Russian Prince of Techno…” Nikita Zabelin leans back in his chair and, proceeding with a short laugh, discusses the topic with a weight of solemnity upon his face. The music press inside and outside of his native Russia consistently refer to him by this title. Perhaps it would have made sense a decade ago when his primary musical practice was techno, dance and electronica. Things are different now, however. Besides, he does not…

Sometime in the middle of March, my single cup cafetiere, after a long two years of rigorous use and abuse, fell apart. Both its wired mesh and plunger (forgive me, for I am no technical coffee-artiste and do not know the components all that well) broke, and seeing as the month of March is a typically horrific month for personal finances, there was a substantial delay in its replacement.

This delay, however, allowed room for thought: What are the key differences between the percolator and the cafetiere. One plunges and the other cycles the boil. That is about as far…

It is 5:30 pm at Manchester’s Soup Kitchen — a tiny drop of excrement of a venue situated amongst all of the other tourist attractions of the ‘independent’ area of the city (Northern Quarter), with an equally excremental sound system and, perhaps to no surprise, a mishap in communications brings a vast unknowingness as to when exactly Szun Waves are going to conduct this interview that you are reading now.

6:30 pm: after witling around like a lonesome sociopath with a ragged Wilko’s A4 lined notebook that gives the illusion of a low-income professional writer who has consumed £12’s worth…

For those who know and acknowledge the idea of a counterculture, then is it worth denying that it doesn’t exist today? Especially when nearly everything is going at such a speed, that it’s almost impossible to predict. Surely, there is a community that has a lot to object to, right? Subcultures must have formed out of mutual dissatisfaction of the government, climate change or current civil rights, just like it has in the past? The answer is yes, they have formed, and it is fairly obvious to most people. It’s just a lot different in comparison to what it used…

The highly innovative and experimental Glaswegian artist Maria Rossi, also known as Cucina Povera, released her debut LP, ‘Hilja’, in January earlier this year to a responsive market. A day after performing at Salford’s Sounds From The Other City, she had a brief email conversation with The Sound Basement…

So, my first question is basic and painful, but how can you describe your music; how do you perceive it?

When I record I do everything quite spontaneously, I go into a state of immediacy, stream-of-consciousness, I use words and sounds and chords that pop into my head, make alliterations and…

In 1972, Brazil was going through its eighth year of the infamous, but unfamiliar to the common world, Placa Militar — Military Board in English. There was no violent transition to power when Castelo Branco took to the nations Presidential Office, instead, he found himself riding waves of support from those who considered themselves nationalist and those that had been misled from the Brazilian TV network, Rede Globo; which still to this day continuously faces criticism for its support of the Placa Militar and its links to corruption.

Nevertheless, within the seventies, Rede Globo had hired a new…