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The album, which is a collaboration between Ferry and artist Amelia Barrett, marks a significant shift for the Roxy Music frontman. He compared the spoken word style to earlier Roxy tracks ‘In Every Dream Home A Heartache’ and ‘Mother of Pearl’. Talking to Clash Magazine last month, Ferry said: “The nearest I ever got to doing pieces like this before would maybe be back in Roxy… I’m pleased that when we’ve played Loose Talk to people, they’ve said, ‘Oh, this sounds really different.’ That’s what I’ve always wanted with everything I’ve done or been involved in: to be different.”  

Barrett has built a career as an artist without pigeonholing herself, having dabbled in performance poetry, painting, and immersive exhibitions. She is not new to the music world either, having released a cassette in 2023 in collaboration with Christian Flamm, which contained recordings in both English and German. Barrett met Ferry at an art exhibition in London’s East End, going on to record an audiobook at the singer’s recording studio. This led to ‘Loose Talk’, which Ferry described as “her words, my music”.

 

 

 

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 In the podcast, the ‘Slave to Love’ singer revealed the pair’s creative processes. Barrett wrote and recorded her parts completely separately to Ferry, whose sole focus was on composing and mixing the music, doing so alongside the album’s producer, James Garzke.

Ferry also revealed that the album would feature a co-credit for late bass player Alan Spenner, who passed away in 1991. The bassist played with Roxy Music during the late 70s and early 80s, and the piece that Ferry has unearthed and used on his upcoming album comes from 1973’s ‘For Your Pleasure’. It was shelved, before Spenner added a bass part when he played with the band, and then shelved again. Spenner’s playing can be heard on ‘More Than This’, ‘Avalon’, and ‘Dance Away’. His playing style has been described as “spinning lines that exuded a soulful, rhythm & blues disposition akin to Motown masters”.

Through his work with Roxy Music and his solo career, Ferry has built up a reputation as a modern-day aesthete, regarding the visuals to be just as important as the music. He touched on this in the interview, crediting his former university lecturer and pop artist, Richard Hamilton, for shaping his tastes. The artist’s influence is evident in the three music videos that have been released so far, blending various filmmaking techniques and looking more experimental than his usual sleek and highly-stylised music videos. The music videos for ‘Loose Talk’ are also Ferry’s first time directing videos, which might go some way to explaining the shift.

‘Loose Talk’ is set to be released in less than two weeks, hitting shelves and streaming services on 28 March. Preorders, presaves, and an exclusive green vinyl pressing are all available now. With a considerable buzz in certain circles, it will be fascinating to see the response to Ferry’s new direction.

The British spoken-word artist will take to the small-venue stage at Bristol’s Thekla March 26, followed by performances March 27 and 31 at Leeds’ Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen, and London’s Village Underground respectively. Tickets go on sale tomorrow (March 13) at 10am – You can find the complete list of dates in this article’s featured image, and visit here for ticket purchase. 

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Tempest announced the run of shows via Instagram, posting a monochrome videoclip that revealed the featured tour poster at the end. The post in question read: “What your doing end of March? I’m putting a new live set together, and we’re playing a couple of small venues to kick things off… can’t wait to get back to it – get your tickets while you can – will be very special. Kae x”.  These show dates serve as a lead-up to Kae Tempest’s headline performance at BBC Radio 6 Music Festival, set to happen March 26 – 29 at Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse. Co-headliners include Ezra Collective and Mogwai, joined on the bill by indie rock band English Teacher, American pop singer Perfume Genius, as well as alt rockers Fat Dog. BBC 6’s home DJs Jamz Supernova, Tom Ravenscroft and Sherelle will also join the extensive line-up, providing an entertaining three-night eclectic montage of live performances, indie show-stoppers and dance music specials. 

 

 

 

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Having last released a full-length album in 2022 with ‘The Line Is a Curve’, Tempest is set to launch their fifth studio album later this year via Island Records. The poet and spoken-word musician first rose to prominence in 2013 with the theatrical piece ‘Brand New Ancients’, earning Tempest the esteemed Ted Hughes Prize. Their follow-up album ‘Let Them Eat Chaos’ (2016) earned them a Mercury Prize nomination, as well as an (at the time) Best British Female Solo Performer at the 2018 Brit Awards. Kae Tempest has proven themselves an artist of many variations over the past decade, releasing numerous books, including debut The Bricks That Built the Houses, a Sunday Times best-seller and winner of the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers Award. Notable singles from Tempest include ‘More Pressure’ (featuring Kevin Abstract of BROCKHAMPTON), ‘Salt Coast’, ‘No Prizes’ (featuring Lianne La Havas) and ‘Move’ (featuring Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C.). 

For more information on Kae Tempest, visit their official website.  

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Sponsored by the music therapy charity Nordoff and Robbins, the Northern Music Awards celebrate artists and music whose work has been shaped by the North of England, and this year will be the second ceremony since the awards inception in 2024. The Northern Music Award, of which Cooper Clarke will be this year’s recipient, honours household names with long and highly-respected careers who are still active in music. Last year’s winner was another Salfordian, Tim Burgess, who has followed up his success with the Charlatans with the innovative ‘Tim’s Listening Party’. 

Earning him the unofficial title, ‘The Bard of Salford’, Cooper Clarke was a pivotal figure in the punk scene of the late 70s, opening up for the acts such as the Sex Pistols, Joy Division and New Order, and Elvis Costello with his act that fell somewhere between performance poetry and rapid-fire a capella numbers.

After signing with Epic Records in 1978, he released a trio of classic albums crammed with observational humour and sharp wit. The triad of albums was made up of ‘Disguise in Love’ (1978), ‘Snap, Crackle & Bop’ (1980), and ‘Zip Style Method’ (1982). Backing him on the records were The Invisible Girls, a band made up of Manchester musicians such as Martin Hannett, who was also the producer behind many of Factory Records’ biggest albums, and Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks. The latter two albums also made it into the UK Charts, placing at 26 and 97, respectively.

In a 2023 interview with The Guardian, Cooper Clarke revealed his initial misgivings about putting his words to music. “That wasn’t my idea, I gotta be honest, but I couldn’t think of an argument against it. ‘Who plays spoken word records more than once?’ And I kind of believed that at the time.” He worked with musician Plan B on the 2013 record, ‘Ill Manors’, and has a track named after him on the debut album of Todmorden-based group, Working Men’s Club.

One of his most enduring legacies is ‘I Wanna Be Yours’, a poem from his 1982 collection, ‘Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt’, also recorded as part of ‘Zip Style Method’ from the same year. After being included on the GCSE English syllabus, the poem inspired, and would be covered by the Arctic Monkeys. Included on their 2013 album ‘AM’, the track has become the bands most streamed song, amassing almost 3 billion streams on Spotify. The sleeper hit has also become a popular wedding song, with Cooper Clarke saying “it is to weddings what ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ is to humanist funerals.”

Cooper Clarke has remained a regular fixture on the UK live circuit, as well as multiple appearances around the world. His unique blend of poetry and comedy has made him a familiar face on British panel shows such as 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown and Would I Lie To You?. In 2023, he was made a freeman of the City of Salford, with the recognition coming a decade after his honorary doctorate from the University of Salford.

2025’s Northern Music Award will recognise a figure who has slowly established himself as a national treasure. Cooper Clarke’s ability to acutely analyse any subject and remove any of the elitism associated with poetry and the spoken word made it accessible to anybody, and through various contemporary artists, is still influencing the music world today. Tickets for the Northern Music Awards are on sale on Ticketmaster, listed for between £40 and £60. Along with Cooper Clarke, The Zutons, Lightning Seeds and Chiedu Oraka will all be performing.

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Unlike his glam-rock roots with Roxy Music, or his well-known covers work, ‘Orchestra’ see’s Ferry’s vocals pushed to the back of the mix, with Barratt taking centre stage with a spoken word performance. Ferry has hinted that this approach will be consistent over the 11-track album, with the 79 year old explaining that he handled the music and left the words to Barratt.  

In an interview with Super Deluxe Edition, Ferry explained his desire to constantly change and challenge himself: “It’s nice to feel you’re being adventurous. Trying things that you haven’t tried yourself, or nobody else has tried.” The ‘Slave to Love’ singer has a reputation as a musical chameleon, with former GQ columnist Peter York calling him an “art object who should be hung in the Tate”.

‘Loose Talk’ represents the first time Ferry has composed music for another artist. A statement on his website draws parallels between Ferry and Barrett, explaining that both artists were formed in art schools (Ferry at Newcastle University, and Barratt at Glasgow School of Art), and their chance meeting at an art exhibition. The release claimed the album will explore “fascinating micro-fictions, simultaneously fragmentary and self-contained.”  

Ferry’s last album of original material came back in 2014 with ‘Avonmore’. The album featured collaborations with various musicians, including Johnny Marr and Nile Rodgers, and peaked at 19 on the UK Albums Chart. His 2018 release, ‘Bitter-Sweet’, reworked his own and Roxy Music’s tracks with his own ‘Bryan Ferry Orchestra’.   

In October, ‘Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023’ was released. A career-spanning collection of hits from Ferry’s solo career, it came in at over five hours, and received praise from fans and critics alike with Metacritic showing a score of 90%. Included was ‘Star’, Ferry’s first original song in a decade, of which Uncut magazine said “its smouldering brilliance sounds less a postscript to everything it follows than a new beginning, Ferry nearing 80, still alert to the sound of tomorrow calling.”

Live performances remain uncertain. Ferry joined Roxy Music on their 50th anniversary tour in 2022, but as a solo artist, his last performance came before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The singer played the Royal Albert Hall in March 2020, in a performance that was well-received, and was later released as a live album. In the SDE interview, Ferry was asked about the possibility of more live shows, to which he responded: “Very doubtful. We’ll see how this new album goes. We could do some live presentations, but I’m not sure.”  

Reactions to the news of the album and the new single have been positive, with one fan on X commenting: “Love it. Still innovative after all these years.”

Love it. Still innovative after all these years. Love you, big man.

— Elaine McElhatton (@ECMcElhatton) February 1, 2025

Fans will be hoping for another single between now and the album’s release, and will be optimistically hoping for some live performances. The album is available for preorder here.

The annual festival returns to the Winter Gardens, Blackpool, running from Thursday the 3rd of August until Sunday the 6th, and will welcome Rollins to Blackpool for the first time on the Friday.

In a press release, Rollins expressed his joy at the invitation, stating, “I’m looking forward to being part of Rebellion Festival this year. I will be on my own, no band, just me speaking. Perhaps the lowest volume performance of the entire event!”

The festival is a celebration of all things punk, having been around around since 1996 (under the previous name Holidays in the Sun, a reference to a Sex Pistols track of the same name), hosting a multitude of punk acts in doing so.

This year’s edition features another frontman of a prominent 80s punk outfit, H.R from Bad Brains, and will see Neville Staples, formerly of two-tone ska band the Specials, and Brix Smith, former member of the post-punk band the Fall, perform solo too.

Other classic punk bands include English band the Damned, American groups M.D.C, TSOL and the Dickies, while English contemporary punk duo Bob Vylan are also set to perform at the renowned punk event.

As well as all the punk rock on offer there are groups whose music goes beyond the traditional punk realm, thereby exemplifying the festival’s ideals: bands like rock group the Only Ones and ska band Bad Manners aren’t specifically punk bands but they carry a certain punk attitude, an attitude that doesn’t particularly care what others may think of them, an attitude on which the festival is built on.

Rollins certainly embodies such a punk attitude. Starting off as a roadie for local Washington D.C punk bands, he formed and fronted State of Alert in 1980, and released an EP with this group before they disbanded later that year.

Rollins soon after became a fan of Black Flag, seeing as many shows as possible and even singing for the group on one occasion. Coincidentally the band was then on the lookout for a new vocalist after former singer Dez Cadena switched to playing guitar, and Rollins was thus invited to join.

Rollins’ stage presence helped Black Flag’s prominence and, after releasing six albums in as many years, the band became synonymous with the American punk scene. In 1986 the band disbanded, however, and Rollins formed another band, the Rollins Band, and also started his spoken word career, and has released seventeen spoken word albums to date.

Listen to “Rise Above” by Black Flag below:

Tickets for Rebellion Festival are available to purchase here.

Our debut album NAILS is out on April 21st on Invada Records. Come see us play it live!
“Benefits are something different, something primal and essential that needs to be heard.” @NME
“An urgent combination of noise rock and spoken word fury.” @RollingStoneUK pic.twitter.com/vphuWXmj2x

— Benefits (@Benefitstheband) March 1, 2023

The scolding LP has already received a great deal of praise, with The Quietus describing it as a “work of volatile physicality and penetrating sincerity“.

Sincerity, indeed, comes to the forefront as the record progresses. In a prophetic mix of Mark E. Smith, John Cooper Clark and Sleaford Mods, Benefits frontman Kingsley Hall’s rageful and blistering attack on the British political and cultural status quo is a brutally honest one. But it is not only the governmental and monarchal oppressors of this country that are the targets of Hall’s indictment; the everyman, and their blissful unawareness of the corroding of the society that they live in, are too apprehended.

“Marlboro Hundreds“, the album opener, acts as a call of arms, of sort, to the ignorantly bliss, and a plea to engage with their problems (“Formulate your own ideas“, “Question everything“, “Don’t let them break you“). This optimistic rhetoric, however, is shrouded and enclosed in a bleak and decrepit setting; alongside the screeching sound of electronic industrial noise, Britain is made up of “industrial wastelands” in “Empire” and is a “prison island” in “Shit Britain“.

Watch the music video for “Shit Britain” below:

The futile and illogical love for nostalgia and past glories is another central theme to Nails. Flags are a recurring motif, and this “musty relic” (“Flag“) is a symbol of the patriotism that is being wielded as a weapon by the powers that be to keep its people in line, making them focus on past glories rather than their current woes. The album, then, is a picture painted by Hall, a picture that shows the disregard that we, as a society, have for our society’s well-being.

Watch the music video for “Flag” below:

Hall confirms this notion as he speaks to Louder Than War, stating that the album is “an attempt at a soundtrack for the times we live in. This difficult age and all that. Not sitting there with our fingers in our ears and an “everything is fine” meme plastered to our brains. I get baffled by people turning a blind eye to it all, to just carry on as if everything is normal, singing twee songs about fuck all.”

Purchase the album now here.

Benefits will also be touring the UK and Europe in support of the album’s release. You can get tickets here.

See below for tour dates:

21/04/2023 – The Rum Shack – Glasgow
22/04 – The Lending Room – Leeds
23/04 – Soup – Manchester
24/04 – Clwb lfor Bach – Cardiff
25/04 – Tunbridge Wells Forum – Tunbridge Wells
26/04 – Chalk – Brighton
27/04 – 100 Club – London
28/04 – Trades Club – Hebden Bridge
29/04 – The Hare and Hounds – Birmingham
30/04 – Cluny – Newcastle
04/05 – The Deer’s Head –  Belfast
05/05 – Kasbah Social Club – Limerick
06/05 – Workmans Club – Dublin
12/05 – The Great Escape 2023 – Brighton and Hove
17/05 – Supersonic – Paris
18/05 – Supersonic – Paris
19/05 – Benefits in Rotterdam – Rotterdam
20/05 – Benefits at London Calling, Amsterdam – Amsterdam
25/05 – Bearded Theory Festival – Walton
27/05 – Dot to Dot Festival – Bristol
28/05 – Dot to Dot Festival – Nottingham

Bruce Dickinson has lived an extraordinary life, both on and off the stage. His many accomplishments – music aside – include pilot and airline captain, aviation entrepreneur, beer brewer, film scriptwriter, novelist, actor and sports commentator, just to name a few. With his heavy metal band Iron Maiden, formed in 1975 but joined by Dickinson in 1999, he released sixteen studio albums, with more than 100 million records sold worldwide and 41 awards nomination, 29 of which were won.

The show is described as a ’cornucopia of fascinating tales and derring-do exploits, all delivered by Bruce with characteristically infectious enthusiasm and wry wit.’ The evenings will be split into two parts: the first one will see Dickinson taking a satirical and humorous stance on today’s society from his personal perspective. Indeed, he will share private insights of his drive and ambition, most likely including some Iron Maiden anecdotes, and he will be accompanied by photographs, videos and possibly some a-cappella song bits ‘to illustrate a point‘.

The second half of the evening will be entirely dedicated to fans through a Q&A. Here, fans will have the opportunity to pose any type of questions, ‘the more left-field and quirky the question, the more interesting and compelling the response is likely to be!’, Live Nation explains. In other words, this is the opportunity to see an extremely fascinating personality in a rare intimate environment.

Tickets will go on general sale Friday the 29th of April at 10 am on Ticketmaster.

Tour Dates below:

1/08/2021 – Theatre Royal – Brighton
4/08 – The Lowry – Salford
5/08 – St George’s Hall – Bradford
8/08 – Theatre Royal –  Nottingham
9/08 – The Alexandra – Birmingham
10/08 – O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire – London