Joe Muggs

London

Writer at Freelance

write things, say things, play records, my beliefs are more luxury than yours. MD ANT 🏅✊🏻

Articles

Album: Little Simz - Lotus

3 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | Joe Muggs

Little Simz clearly believes in meeting situations head on. Her sixth full-length album kicks off, in every sense of the phrase, with “Thief”: unambiguously a lyrical barrage at her childhood friend and frequent collaborator Inflo, who Simz is currently suing for alleged failure to repay £1.7 million in loans for ambitious recording and performance projects.
The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp, May 2025

3 weeks ago | daily.bandcamp.com | Joe Muggs

BEST ELECTRONIC The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp, May 2025 By Joe Muggs · June 03, 2025 Hello again, groovers, it’s time to dive into a new selection of retro rave, cavern funk, heart-rending Spaghetti Western cosmic disco, Spanish-Drexciyan electrofunk, New Age cityscapes, and high-definition ecosystems of polyrhythmic dreaming. And that’s just scratching the surface of what there is to discover this month.
Album: Miley Cyrus - Something Beautiful

4 weeks ago | theartsdesk.com | Joe Muggs

A couple of months ago, I wrote here that Lady Gaga was the godmother of the new generation of ostentatiously “theatre kid” pop stars – but actually, perhaps I was wrong and Miley Cyrus deserves that title.
Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | Joe Muggs

Stereolab always walked a knife edge between deadly serious and dead silly. Their sound was constructed around the sort of reference points – French, German and Brazilian psychedelia, Radiophonic Workshop sound effects, 1960s library music – which back in pre-streaming, pre-discogs days of the early 1990s when they started out you had to be a proper nerd to have any grasp of.
Album: Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - Tall Tales

1 month ago | theartsdesk.com | Joe Muggs

I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and songwriting, and that a lot of people find his anguish cathartic, but the more he goes for it the more I switch off. Even in gentler and less rockist songs he tends to go for a keening sound that still jangles my nerves.
The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp, April 2025

1 month ago | daily.bandcamp.com | Joe Muggs

BEST ELECTRONIC The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp, April 2025 By Joe Muggs · May 06, 2025 Once again, we’ve got a collision of purism and electicism for you this month. There’s pure, old-school jungle, straight-down-the-line amapiano, gently crooned deep house, and black-clad functional Berlin-style techno for when you want to know exactly what you’re going to get.
Lila Tirando a Violeta, “Dream of Snakes”

1 month ago | daily.bandcamp.com | Joe Muggs

ALBUM OF THE DAY Lila Tirando a Violeta, “Dream of Snakes” By Joe Muggs · April 30, 2025 Lila Tirando a Violeta Uruguay follow &check; following unfollow ... Dream of Snakes Lila Tirando a Violeta . / pre-order buy pre-order buy you own this wishlist in wishlist go to album go to track go to album go to track .
’90s Rave Music: The Deep Cuts

2 months ago | daily.bandcamp.com | Joe Muggs

LISTS ’90s Rave Music: The Deep Cuts By Joe Muggs · Illustration by Ian Grandjean · April 24, 2025 What is rave music? It’s been many things to many people over the years, as the sounds of American cities got adopted by UK and European party people, then bounced back to the States and then on to the rest of the world. Almost by definition, the sound of rave was hybrid in nature.
Album: Billy Idol - Dream Into It

2 months ago | theartsdesk.com | Joe Muggs

There’s always been a goofy charm about Billy Idol. As an implausibly chiselled adonis shining out from the deliberate ugliness of the original London punk scene, he was a misfit among misfits. As a pop star through the ‘80s, he was visibly so spectacularly high almost all the time that he somehow made everything pantomime-ish around him. Latterly he’s been such a perfect encapsulation of the Brit rock star in LA archetype he could quite plausibly be starring in a Spinal Tap spinoff.
The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp, March 2025

2 months ago | daily.bandcamp.com | Joe Muggs

BEST ELECTRONIC The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp, March 2025 By Joe Muggs · April 03, 2025 Never let anyone tell you electronic music doesn’t have depth and a vast range of emotion. Just this month, we’ve got bleak and terrifying screeching, elegiac techno balladry for imagined civilizations, exploitation movie dystopias, hopeful dreams of wide skies, and all kinds of other flavors of melancholy, joy, confusion, and foolish fun.