Chat Pile: “It’s just a big anti-war statement, the whole album”

Oklahoma’s dirtbag metal band Chat Pile are taking on the great, stinking mess of 21st-century America, armed with gallows humour, acerbic lyricism and a crushingly heavy sound.

Bored Lord’s focusing on the ravers, not the room

Bored Lord is the heir apparent of ecstatic, DIY bass music, whose deployment of a pop sample is matched only by her voracious work rate. Chal Ravens learns more about Oakland-based DJ and producer, and her latest album, for Issue 149

Theo Parrish

Todd Haynes’ Velvet Underground documentary is the definitive portrait of rock’s influential outsiders

Chal Ravens reviews the much-anticipated film which screened at the BFI London Film Festival earlier this month

Eris Drew: Keep reaching

Eris Drew has switched countless dancefloors on to the Motherbeat philosophy. With the release of her debut album, the Midwest rave mystic draws us deeper into her world

Director Rudá Santos meticulously executes music video narratives

Go behind the scenes on Ross From Friends’ video for ‘The Daisy’, created via our Three Minutes incubator project

8 tracks that couldn’t exist without the Windrush generation

Writer and cultural commentator Lloyd Bradley chooses eight releases that chart the Windrush generation’s influence on British music

A Conversation with Bandcamp

A podcast episode with Bandcamp’s head of Artist and Label Relations Andrew Jervis, UK/EU label representative Aly Gillani and Chal Ravens

Higher state of consciousness: Music’s irrational turn

A collective tilt towards magical thinking, from astrology to ayahuasca, is changing the way we engage with music – and the structures that surround it

Oli XL – Scaling up

Oli XL is one of electronic music’s most intriguing breakthrough acts, firing out meticulous transmissions from another planet

KEYAH/BLU is the South London artist who defies classification

Get lost in the world of her unique style in our exclusive editorial

Anthony Naples has cleared the fog

After the producer-of-the-moment lost his footing, he went back to basics. Now in New York, we meet the artist to trace his trajectory – from rediscovering his purpose to moving ahead with Incienso

Thom Yorke

20 years on, Moby’s Play feels out of place in today’s contemporary pop discourse

Chal Ravens reappraises the greatest selling electronica album and finds it falls short

Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden still feels like it belongs to another world

Held up as the band’s masterpiece, the record marked a paradigm shift for pop music. Chal Ravens gets lost in its ghostly structures

James Blake

Charli XCX: Pull Up to the Party

Charlotte Aitchison is taking pop on a thrilling joyride. Chal Ravens joins her as she powers into the future

Neopop Festival 2018: World-class techno purism punctuated by unpredictability

Björk injected a sumptuousness into the no-frills first edition of All Points East

SOPHIE: Earthly Pleasures

As she takes the leap from provocative producer to radical popstar, the LA-based artist uses synthetic sounds to enhance the visceral thrills of our physical world

Retrospective: Spiceworld

Chal Ravens revisits the Spice Girls’ earth-conquering sophomore album as it hits its 20th anniversary

M.I.A.: Let the Kids Run Wild

One of the most outspoken artists in popular culture, Crack sits down with M.I.A. to talk Meltdown, the politicisation of pop and what it feels like to influence a new generation of artists