And debut single ‘D’Artagnan’ – named after Dumas’ Musketeer (because why not, I guess?) feels like the kind of all-or-nothing, cards-on-the-table statement that maybe all debut singles should aspire to. A cerebrum-collapsing post-hardcore waltz of zinging riffs, muddy spoken word, tantalising post-rock breakdowns and all-out, ‘get fucked’ abrasions, the world might end tomorrow but at least paper hats could say they gave it all.

Fitting alongside howling Crewe-based racket-mongers UNIVERSITY, it’s hard not to recall here too the furious dramas of early black midi too, in the tight tempestuous vibe-switches and acute sense of theatre, where you can’t help but pin your whole future on whatever the song might take you next

Photo by Richard Mukuze

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A long-standing word-of-mouth favourite for those in the know among Manchester’s thriving band scene, a debut single from Shaking Hand has been a long time coming. But even still, as ‘Over The Coals’ meals out its first twangs and snare taps, we’re still made to wait. Four minutes of exquisite preamble later – itself a brooding poison of emotive slowcore and spidery American Football expansion – the ‘song’ then ‘begins’.

Delivering that wandering instrumental into dazzling new relief, George Hunter’s ghostly vocal skulks through the mist – “Life Not Linear. Life’s Not Linear” – and Shaking Hand break out from their chrysalis to butterfly into a proud and glorious shoegazing life. It’s a life that, as any witness to their gigs might attest, has plenty more tricks up its sleeve still to be revealed…

And alongside these self-determined ‘Modernist Post-Rock’ manoeuvers, the associated imagery of unused LA Architectural plans from the 1960s provides all the appropriate metaphors: Shaking Hand are a trio of clean lines, meticulous planning, and comprehensive visions, with one foot in the idealisms of lost fantasy, the other pitched in the gristle and grime of the post-industrial present.

So Young is a new music magazine and our new issue is out now. Buy in print here. Subscribe here.
Issue Fifty-Five features Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, The Orchestra (For Now), Westside Cowboy, Car Seat Headrest, Real Farmer, School Fair, Elias Rønnenfelt, feeble little horse, Kissing On Camera, Pooneh Ghana and Rhi Dancey.
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Channeling the dark, cinematic atmospheres of GZA’s Liquid Swords, while doffing its cap to the great Bristolian Trip Hop pioneers Massive Attack and Portishead, the new single from wing! – aka South London producer Adam Swan – emphatically marks them out as immersive modern instrumentalists of the most prestigious order. 

Taking the listener to the smoky sumptuousness of their live three-piece set-up – one that brings a heady post-rock drama into the fold too – ‘Out From Outer’ cooks, cruises and creeks; heavy bass-lines wade through our stomachs;  eerie samples screech through the mix like the ghosts of departed soul; tambourines rattle like the bones of skeletons pulled up from the grave. It’s a testament to wing!’s precision in song-structure and world-building that the track remains so captivating, so thrilling, as it ventures in, through, and out of itself with its subtle, yet devastating variations.

A new addition to the excellent Memorials of Distinction label, whose ever-growing roster this year – Truthpaste and Glasshouse Red Spider Mite et al. – has quickly made them a name to keep an eye on, wing!’s arrival has confirmed, against all odds, that dark, groove-rich trip-hop instrumentals are exactly what we needed. And maybe, just maybe, if an industry-tipped Green Man Rising victory last month is anything to go by it is, it’s even here to stay (?).

Photo by Cole Pemberton

So Young is a new music magazine and our new issue is out now. Buy in print here. Subscribe here.
Issue Fifty-Five features Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, The Orchestra (For Now), Westside Cowboy, Car Seat Headrest, Real Farmer, School Fair, Elias Rønnenfelt, feeble little horse, Kissing On Camera, Pooneh Ghana and Rhi Dancey.
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Having toured their last record the world over, and during that time expanded their live set-up from backing-track beats to frenzied drum-bashing furor – inviting kindred duo Fantasy of A Broken Heart into the fray – ‘Life Signs’ sounds like the work of wizened artists reshaped and redefined by life on the road. Their once experimental-pop leaning remains here in the track’s daring spirit, but here gives way wholeheartedly to the looser, more warm-blooded vernacular of indie-rock.

A constant horn-locking of two opposing forces, on the one side of ‘Life Signs’, there’s the brooding verses boiling with clashing chords and spidery math-rock riffs. And on the other, the sweeping prettiness of its choruses, its psychedelic joy and effortlessly melodic hooks, keeping you guessing, keeping you in awe. If such a distinction exists, (or if everyone even cares), Water From Your Eyes here sounds less like a ‘project’ and more like a ‘band’ – a living, breathing, sweating, motherfucking band.

A shout-out too must be given to the accompanying video.  Directed by lead vocalist Rachel Brown, it’s a remarkable piece of filmmaking in its own right, as abundant in detailed riches as the music it interprets.

Photo by Adam Powell

So Young is a new music magazine and our new issue is out now. Buy in print here. Subscribe here.
Issue Fifty-Five features Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, The Orchestra (For Now), Westside Cowboy, Car Seat Headrest, Real Farmer, School Fair, Elias Rønnenfelt, feeble little horse, Kissing On Camera, Pooneh Ghana and Rhi Dancey.
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And good news is that their debut release – a double whammy no less – positively tingles with promise. First up, ‘Loot’ chunters in with a seriously swaggering attitude – a grinding, suspenseful underbelly which is inflamed by huge fucking synth-lines like laser beams to the eyeballs, channeling the unpredictable electronic-rock of The Fall’s ‘Unutterable’, mixed with the pop-art experimentalism of Plastic Beach-era Gorillaz.  ‘Dox’ by contrast is measured and restrained, revealing a more polished, auto-tuned disposition than its recalcitrant predecessor. Here, bitcrushing trip-hop rhythms cruise and smoulder, feeling more at ease in the Y2k-core alt-pop zeitgeist than in the seething grassroots bunkers.

Coming in at under 3 minutes a go, the RIP Magic experience, as it reveals itself thus far is an ephemeral and tantalising one, ineluctably hinting at worlds far larger than they are yet willing to reveal. Come on, guys, we’re waiting…

Photo by Beth Boswell-Knight

So Young is a new music magazine and our new issue is out now. Buy in print here. Subscribe here.
Issue Fifty-Five features Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, The Orchestra (For Now), Westside Cowboy, Car Seat Headrest, Real Farmer, School Fair, Elias Rønnenfelt, feeble little horse, Kissing On Camera, Pooneh Ghana and Rhi Dancey.
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Opening themselves up to the world with a double single release on their self-founded imprint Appointment 1, our first introduction to PARADE offers up as many tantalizing questions as it provides delicious answers.

Recorded by the group in a shipping container in Forest Hill on “cheap, mostly broken equipment”, these songs might convincingly be from different projects. ‘Que?’ gruells, grinds, and grunges, wrestling with its own deep anguish in a squall of swampy fuzz. And while ‘Que?’ burrows away into a dark underground, its other half ‘Picking Flowers’ by contrast floats up into the uncertain expanses of space. A new voice, a female vocalist Fiorella this time, waltzes across a oblique but inviting trail of burning stars, reinventing those more expensive stretches of King Krule’s ‘The Ooz’ and sprinkling in some celestial magic jazz-dust

With both tracks united by this uncanny sense of sprawling, urban mystery, it’s clear PARADE feed off curiosity, abstraction and open questioning; like a philosophical quandary that can never be solved, but always explored. In just a handful of exquisite minutes they’ve already revealed an impressive number of quivers to their bow. Who knows how many more might be yet uncovered.

So Young is a new music magazine and our new issue is out now. Buy in print here. Subscribe here.
Issue Fifty-Five features Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, The Orchestra (For Now), Westside Cowboy, Car Seat Headrest, Real Farmer, School Fair, Elias Rønnenfelt, feeble little horse, Kissing On Camera, Pooneh Ghana and Rhi Dancey.
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The sound of a band working maximalism into minimalism, ‘Lucky’ sows a whole field with a handful of seeds; takes a stepladder and reaches for the stars. As with previous cuts ‘Shops!’ and ‘Head and Shoulders’, this one’s also short and bittersweet, with whomping bass stabs and clattering rhythmic structures to-ing, fro-ing, leaping and front-flipping like parkour artists vaulting London’s urban sprawl.

Speaking of which, as a consummately ‘London’ band, it’s a track that lyrically too rotoscopes through the weird, jumbled mish-mash of a certain kind of modern metropolitan living. In just 2 minutes, the mundane merges with memory; romance mingles into death and sincerity vyes with deadpan wit (“We touch teeth past use by dates” is a great line). For every reflection on lost childhood innocence, or every image of body bags or medication, there’s an off-hand shout-out to women’s jeans, or a gleeful choir of retching.

Upcoming debut album ‘Bigtime’ lands 23rd May, and could not come sooner. Shows across the UK with Elias Rønnenfelt loom in June.

So Young is a new music magazine and our new issue is out now. Buy in print here. Subscribe here.
Issue Fifty-Five features Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, The Orchestra (For Now), Westside Cowboy, Car Seat Headrest, Real Farmer, School Fair, Elias Rønnenfelt, feeble little horse, Kissing On Camera, Pooneh Ghana and Rhi Dancey.

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Six-piece Blousey are all about donning black blazers, puffing out chests, pushing back hair, and belting out a big fat chorus. Within a live show that elsewhere sets its stall on pounding gloomy gothic rumbles a la 80s Nick Cave, new single ‘Chances’ serves up a glinting and melodic moment. Via an artful introduction, the band dole out the kind of ruffled, roguish charm that might recall a Small Faces garage belter, but that’s also fringed with the violin-twiddling, saxophone-blasting orchestral vernacular that, in 2025, befits those London grassroots hotspots the band habitually frequent.

Carrying in its lyric the sincere and heartfelt notion that the best friendships can be born from the unlikeliest of places, ‘Chances’ is the proud and trenchant statement of a band that channel all the freedom of hedonistic late night adventure, of feeling timeless and invincible until you are not. And what is more, you’re all invited.

The release also anticipates an upcoming EP ‘The Precipice’ due for release in full on 29th May.

Photo by Nikan Arghandehpour

So Young is a new music magazine and our new issue is out now. Buy in print here. Subscribe here. Issue Fifty-Five features Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, The Orchestra (For Now), Westside Cowboy, Car Seat Headrest, Real Farmer, School Fair, Elias Rønnenfelt, feeble little horse, Kissing On Camera, Pooneh Ghana and Rhi Dancey.

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Though, by the time we reach the thick southern accents on the searing slow-burn of ‘summer indoors’, and reality has to lead back to cage, we have probably learned that the healing power of horses are a duo from Cambridgeshire, who at the time of writing leave scarce biographical trace – save these 5 songs, collected in an EP named tape NS005, named simply by the catalogue number of the cassette label, Glasgow’s No Soap, that released it. The only other information provided is that they “play heavenly games in the fenlands and shake light into damp rooms, and that they “rely mostly on improvisation, faith, and noise”, which is to say, not a lot of extra information. 

What all of this really means is that this mysterious EP from the equally mysterious the healing power of horses is absorbing, fragile and just a little bit special. A definitive gem of smothering shoegaze and freaked-up lo-fi excursions, at once unafraid to flip a feedback switch and descend into caterwauling weirdo squalls, but confident enough in their songwriting to still wheel out smooth, cohesive rock experiences. At one extreme, ‘tear me all over town’ whispers and enchants with an almost Phoebe Bridgers’ esque indie-pop sensibility. And on the other, there’s the harsh noise climax of ‘4 leaf clover’, and no-holds barred fuckery that caps off ‘summer indoors’ which does all it can to eviscerate the very eardrums it once treated so tenderly. 

One other vital piece of information here is that the EP was recorded during a “biblical” heatwave: “Listening back”, they band , “it reminds us of the choking heat, the scorched grass in our tiny garden, the broken mirror and the flu the two of us had at the time. Which are all in fact very happy memories. We remain untouched and undefeated by the men who live in the walls.”

And you can definitely hear the heaviness of the heat weighing in here, but there’s energy and movement there too bursting in like a garden hose drenching the parched soil. Wait until some sticky shirtless night at the height of summer to dig into this one, or better, check it now .

So Young is a new music magazine and our new issue is out now. Buy in print here. Subscribe here.
Issue Fifty-Five features Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, The Orchestra (For Now), Westside Cowboy, Car Seat Headrest, Real Farmer, School Fair, Elias Rønnenfelt, feeble little horse, Kissing On Camera, Pooneh Ghana and Rhi Dancey.

Read the digital edition below.

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