Andy Thomas - Words & Ideas

23rd January 2026

Tony Wilson Factory Records New York Wax Poetics

"It was a couple of years before the heyday of Paradise Garage and Funhouse which took New Order in other directions, but these first two were enough. They were cool clubs. And if New York had them; then why the fuck didn’t Manchester.”

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.

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....

7th April 2021

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...

Everything Jazz • 23rd May 2024

Talking Everything Jazz with... Don Was

In the first instalment of 'Talking Everything Jazz With...' Andy Thomas sits down with Blue Note Records President Don Was to discuss all things jazz, and all things Blue Note.

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...

The Quietus • 24th July 2017

Dancing & Defiance – A Soundtrack to 30 Years of Gay Culture | The Quietus

"There was a point somewhere between the angry sad falsetto of Jimmy Sommerville and the mischievous sex of Holly Johnson that felt like a perfect distillation of a gay adult life." So writes Paul Flynn in the opening chapter of Good As You: From Prejudi...

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.

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...

The Quietus • 12th April 2017

Music As Mountain Railroad: Jeb Loy Nichols' Favourite Records | The Quietus

Musician and crate-digger extraordinaire Jeb Loy Nichols tells the stories behind the stops on his musical railroad, from a deep friendship with Adrian Sherwood and the heroes of Muscle Shoals that led to a love of bluegrass, country, reggae and soul.

Everything Jazz • 17th November 2025

The History Of Blue Note Records | Panel talk featuring Andy Thomas and Kevin Long

Andy Thomas and Kevin Long discuss the history of Blue Note records at the Jazz Social in London.

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...

16th October 2025

Carlos Garnett - We Jazz

A powerful and spiritually charged player whose roots in Calypso and Latin music never left him, Carlos Garnett’s music went well beyond club classics though. Over 50 years he created a back catalogue that marks him out as one of the true legends of...

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...

16th October 2025

As-Shams - We Jazz

As-Shams and the story of South African jazz under apartheid

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...

16th October 2025

Azar Lawrence - We Jazz

For people searching beyond John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders for transcendent saxophonists, Azar Lawrence’s first two albums for Prestige Bridge Into The New Age (1974) and Summer Solstice (1975), became something of a holy grail.

16th October 2025

Ed Michel at Impulse! - We Jazz

Inpulse! Records label owner and producer Ed Michel was a conduit for some of Spiritual Jazz’s greatest recordings.

Bandcamp Daily • 22nd July 2021

From Soldier to Jazz Giant: The Life of Billy Bang

After spending a year in Vietnam, where he had served as a “tunnel rat” armed only with a flashlight and pistol, Sgt. E5 William Walker, known to family and friends as Billy Bang, returned to New York in March 1968. Lost, haunted by what he’d seen in...

16th October 2025

Horace Tapscott - We Jazz

With South Central LA blighted by years of neglect and direct racial attacks by the so–called ”proactive policing” of Chief William H. Parker’s LAPD, the Arkestra provided support to the community that went beyond music.