Andy Thomas - Words & Ideas

Jocks & Nerds • 2nd March 2021

Stylist Judy Blame for Jocks & Nerds

The DIY environment around the Hackney store and workshop resulted in beautifully crafted pieces that worked perfectly together - Judy Blame’s salvaged jewellery finishing off a Nemeth post office sack jacket above a pair of John Moore square toed shoes.

wax-poetics • 17th February 2022

The Boom-Bap - the industrial funk of hip hop drum pioneer Keith Le Blanc

Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound label might be best known for the coming together of Jamaican titans like Lee “Scratch” Perry and Bim Sherman with the mixing-desk genius of its founder. But equally important to the direction of the English label was a...

Bandcamp Daily • 18th July 2024

Wolfgang Tillmans Brings His Photographic Sensibilities to Music - Bandcamp Daily

The first photographer to win the Turner Prize, Wolfgang Tillmans came to prominence in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s with his photographs of the Acid House scene and the intimate portraits of his friends and fellow dancers. His deep immersion in club...

Apartamento Magazine • 6th March 2024

Alex Turnbull — Apartamento Magazine

Born to artists William Turnbull and Kim Lim, London musician, DJ, street style protagonist, skate boarding champion, martial arts practitioner and film maker Alex Turnbull has been immersed in art and culture all his life. Since 2006, with brother...

Dazed & Confused • 2nd March 2021

British shoe designer John Moore for Dazed & Confused

John Moore was a truly iconic designer. Whether adding a commando sole to a pair of stilettos or designing a flared heel that according to Moore was shaped like a 19th-century toilet seat, he masked his genius with a playful eye for the absurd....

DJMag.com • 22nd January 2024

DJ magazine January 2024 issue - Horse Meat Disco: 20 years of queer joy on the dancefloor

“It’s Princess Julia stretching across the stage in smoky mascara and emerald green stockings. It’s classic Amanda Lear videos playing on the wall as three boys who are watching mimic every pose. It’s the naked man, of course...And it’s walking up the...

Jocks & Nerds • 5th March 2021

Profile of '80s clothes designer Christopher Nemeth

Christopher Nemeth was a true English original whose work resonates as loudly today as in the mid 1980s, when his deconstruction style aesthetic first made waves. Graduating from Camberwell Art College in 1982, the Birmingham born designer began...

8th February 2023

A Certain Ratio for Wax Poetics magazine

The grainy black and white silhouette of five figures building stark and hypnotic Latin rythmns fills the screen. It’s 1980 and filmmaker Michael Shamberg has positioned his 16mm camera lens on A Certain Ratio jamming on congas and other percussion...

Highsnobiety • 3rd November 2021

James Lavelle - cover feature and video storyboard/interviews

Mo’ Wax impresario and UNKLE founder James Lavelle is a true pioneer, an OG disruptor of the UK music underground whose cross-disciplinary approach in the ’90s was years ahead of its time. Through hookups with iconic brands while working at the...

8th February 2023

Forged in Steel City - Sheffield's electronic music scene for Wax Poetics

Sheffield’s electronic and dance music roots run deep. Back in the late 1970s while bands across the UK picked up guitars inspired by the DIY spirit of punk, in the Northern England town a group of synthesiser and drum machine mavericks created their...

COS • 12th July 2022

COS Magazine - Collier Schorr on gender and identity

I interviewed artist and photographer Collier Schorr for COS magazine as part of the brand's campaign in celebration of Pride 2022. "I couldn’t wait to get to New York and dress and to advertise this lesbian identity of mine. It was also a form of...

Wax Poetics • 2nd March 2021

Chicago DJ Ron Hardy for Wax Poetics

The innovations and openness of this radical DJ at the renamed Music Box between 1983 and 1987, both in terms of the records he played and the way he played them, created a liberating and electrified environment for house music to grow.

1st November 2022

Wax Poetics - Disco Lighting

Much has been written on the legendary sound systems of disco created by pioneers such as Alex Rosner, Richard Long, and Barry Lederer but next to nothing about the club’s lighting systems and the designers, technicians and operators behind them. But...

2nd March 2021

English clothes designer Nigel Cabourn for Jocks & Nerds

Every detail matters to Nigel Cabourn. Seams sealed by tape for serious wind and rain protection; Harris Tweed and mohair lining on the ultimate British parka; under-arm ventilation with rubberised metal eyelets; horned buttons and military edition...

wax-poetics • 16th November 2022

Cape Jazz - Abdullah Ibrahim programme for JAW Family/Wax Poetics

“The music speaks for itself. Nothing more needs to be added. All there remains to do is to do.” Berlin based music promoter JAW Family commissioned me to write the programme for Abdullah Ibrahim's performance at Berlin’s RBB Sendesaal. It was...

Wax Poetics • 2nd March 2021

LA jazz pianist, bandleader and community activist Horace Tapscott for Wax Poetics

Over thirty years and amid two major social uprisings, the musical and social guidance of this modern-day urban griot helped create a sense of family and belonging across the generations, as an artistic village was built within Los Angeles’s socially...

Jocks & Nerds • 2nd March 2021

Profile of disco legend Sylvester for Jocks & Nerds

Back in March 1979 in the dressing room of the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, Sylvester is making final adjustments to one of his many fabulous outfits while peaking on acid. Amongst the equally fabulous crowd waiting in front of the...

9th July 2024

Galliano biography for Brownswood Recordings

Born out of London’s underground clubs and warehouse parties of the mid to late eighties, with the debut single on the Acid Jazz label in 1988, Galliano came out of a culture that spanned music, dance, fashion, art, design, and the written word. “I’ve...

14th February 2023

The Sun Rising – As Shams and the story of South African jazz under apartheid

A central part of the South African jazz story under apartheid was the Gallo label. An astute businessman, Eric Gallo who passed away in 1998 at the age of 94, became a key figure in the marketing and distribution of South African jazz. For smaller...

2nd March 2021

Graphic designer and music producer Trevor Jackson for Highsnobiety

It’s a bitingly cold February afternoon when I head to the East London studio of one of the true underground renaissance men of the last three decades. Innovating at the cutting edge of audio and visual culture through his work as a producer, sound...