Oi! from South East London,

Congratulations! We have just about made it through 2025 and our final show of the year is now online. A fair bit of ambient, reverb and computer music for you to ruminate to as the festive week washes over you; we hope you’re getting some rest and seeing your favourite people.

A big thanks to all of you who have listened along, come down to our nights and let us know how you’ve enjoyed our Rectangle Music this year - we’re extremely glad to be part of the Voices Radio rotation, and broadcasting live again amongst Kings Cross’ most stunning developments has been a strange pleasure. We’ll be back to it in the bleak midwinter before you know it, but before then:

Listen: Voices Radio • 21.12.25

01. Laraaji - Joyous Dance '82
02. Peaking Lights - All The Sun That Shines
03. Still House Plants - no sleep deep risk
04. Daniel Higgs - Hoofprints On The Ceiling of Your Mind 
05. Cocteau Twins - Seekers Who Are Lovers (Mark Clifford Remix)
06. Keishi Urata - Destined Route
07. Galaxie 500 - Oblivious
08. EXEK - Lottery of Inheritance 
09. BEF - Uptown Apocalypse
10. JD Emmanuel - Attaining Peace
11. Lord Dog Bird - Two Shimmering Stones
12. Kali Malone & Stephen O'Malley - Siren Song
13. Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie - My Little Loophole

You can hear the show on our Mixcloud and Soundcloud. Links to tracks available on Bandcamp can be found on our Buy Music Club.

We will be broadcasting live again on Voices Radio next month on Sunday 18th January 2026 at 20:00 UK time.

🎵 Swarming Swarming Swarming Swarming Swarming

2025, year of the Brain. (And paper, of course.)

This year belonged, once again, to Traidora, Still House Plants, the new railway clock, the Three Bean Salad episode ‘Donkey Milk Soap’ and prisoners of conscience everywhere. I want every subcultural rocker and whoever else believes that culture shouldn’t belong to the same five evil fuckers to start reading Wikipedia and Companies House records more, and then make a fun little website.

Our good friend BB told me at the Hard Skin final jamboree that Hygiene’s festive seven-inch was nowhere to be found online, the best British Christmas song since ‘Don’t Let The Bells End’ lost in the digial mire. Well, I had to fix that. Cheers!

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Desperation Street Is Where We Meet

December, and you know what that means: it’s time for the List Industrial Complex to grind its gears, smoke pluming into the residential area of the nearby town. Are you a “actually my best music of the year features a million-selling Tiktok star” person, or a “personal failed relationship vendettas presented as ins and outs list” kind of person? I too love to be grist for the mill.

I think this year about Zadar, Croatia’s Sea Organ, which I spent four days sitting at this year with Irene. At least twice a day, I listened to its humming song and hoped to learn something new in its variations. Sometimes it would build volume over the course of an hour, eventually cacophonous and unstable. I bought a postcard there for my friend Ola, writing out some gossip she might find particularly entertaining (as I’m told is her regular request currently). Several months later, I would be informed by Bryony that HMP Peterborough – where she is being held without bail until June 2026 – refuses to accept postcards.

WONDERFULSOUNDSea Organ

I think about standing onstage for four minutes solid, as our band plays a detailed reading of how several people in a similar position to Ola may die of a hunger strike – primarily because of gutless sentient bowling ball David Lammy. My whole body vibrates as words come through the monitor. Two days prior I’d watched Bryony and my decade-long internet friend Jolie front the greatest fake punk band of the last twenty years. Deeply endeared, we explain to our charismatic New Orleans dyke friend (who had attended with zero context) that the chorus is not “we are the workers”.

I think about the city’s constant push-pull. Busy gigs, empty gigs, new venue, closed venue. I think about how US touring bands are using booking agents constantly again, which means they only get booked at the worst pub venue in South London (again). I begrudgingly go and see a literally perfect hardcore band play there, a drunk guy does a Nazi salute and gets immediately leathered. I think about how that show was empty because the promoter made it £17 entry on a Wednesday night in November. A decade prior in the same venue, I have just watched Good Throb when a bloke splits a pool cue in half, attacks a bunch of people and flies a pint glass inches from my face. Time is a flat circle.

I think about Kiernan Laveaux ¹, FAFF ² and Sybil ³ – who were undoubtedly the best DJ sets of the year for separate reasons: ¹ fearless, ² steamy, ³ seamless. I think about seeing the debut live performance of SLUTET completely reframing my head about what can be done with basically nothing except guitars and drums and how, preceding this incredibly intense display of emotion, I had seen two people dress up like giant frogs and play nursery rhymes. I think about how at school I presented Crass to a room of people who didn’t know who they were.

I think about RP Boo & DJ Spinn in Venue MOT being the closest to a hardcore show I’ve ever felt a rave be. I think about how Venue MOT got closed down two days ago / might now be open again idk. I think about flying internationally to watch Brainbombs distilling 25 years of me loving The Stooges’ ‘Fun House’ into the worst riff on earth. I think about “punk damage” and this Sam McPheeters article. I think about how my relationship to physical media has never been the same since during COVID’s initial lockdown, when I was employed to put a third of [REDACTED]’s back catalogue stock in a skip (only NHS staff should have been travelling). I think about paying a book scalper for a copy of the 2006 Edward Fella issue of Idea Magazine, because seeing a copy in a library this year completely reframed visual art for me.

I think about records that didn’t come out in 2025 that I’ve formed renewed or brand new attachments to, coupled with Drew McDaniel’s 13 Reasons Why I Can’t Pick My 13 Favourite Records. I think about how this second my favourite record is this Heavee edit of Tyler, The Creator I heard 48 hours ago – vaguely unremarkable until 1.15m in when it rugpulls the exact transcendence I only get from my favourite DJ Rashad songs. Five minutes prior, it was the first NO LP from 2013: a constant in my life that I’ve been re-fixated on since taking part in one of my favourite activities, pulling out Bryony’s records at random every morning when I stay in her flat.

I think about Mark Fell’s Structure & Synthesis, specifically an interview with the artist Nakul Krisnamurthy. In it, Krisnamurthy explains how carnatic music has no “original score” of a piece, therefore you cannot channel a specific composer – so performers are essentially always improvising within the loosely defined barriers of the composition, foregrounding the beauty of the composition rather than the performer. I think about watching Traidora play d-beat in the basement of Dalston Superstore. I think about continuing that series of shows resulting in my 25yo trans woman friend hearing ‘Goodbye Horses’ for the first time when a DJ played it at 1am. I think about being transgender every waking moment, both positive and negative.

I think about how many things deeply angered me this year, and how many things suddenly clicked. I think about never voting again as long as I live. I think about how I still saw people post online petitions this year, expecting something from that. I think about getting older, and how in this space and time the only satisfying way to do that is to open as many doors as possible to people who sound like I did a decade ago. I think about keeping going, against all odds.