Live review – Kerrang!
Live Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Leeds O2 Academy
Montreal post-rockers bring a dramatic 90-minute symphony of their strongest work to the north of England, effortlessly showing that they are still the best in the game.
It is the 9th of April at an oversold Leeds O2 Academy, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor (GY!BE) are about to take the stage. The Montreal-based band has been delivering droning post-rock instrumentals to the world since the late 90s, utilising an eight-member ensemble to create a sound that is, well, massive.
The lights dim, and the once bustling crowd fall into a lull as signature introduction “Hope Drone” builds, an arrhythmic wall of noise. Behind the stage is a screen, illuminating the eight band members with flashing imagery and in the centre, the single word “hope”. Throughout the show, the sounds of GY!BE are accompanied by constantly rolling 16mm film footage projected from two video tape players overlooking the crowd.
The immense guitar tones signature to Mike Moya and Efrim Menuck cut the air like a knife with blasting intent as the band follow with “SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPOURS”, setting a looming precedent for what is to come. The following show is an auditory masterclass in composition, contrasting epic guitar-based soundscapes with delicate moments; during “BABY’S IN A THUNDERCLOUD”, the band hush for a poignant duet between bass and violin, before rising into a chaotic final climax.
The next piece, “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD” follows with an equally gargantuan guitar riff that builds into a driving four to the floor drumbeat, verifying the band’s authority over dynamic control and evoking an unexpected yet welcome urge to dance – to post rock?
It’s refreshing to see the band are unafraid to showcase newer material, the first half of the set primarily being music from their 2024 release “No Title As of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead”. This is helped somewhat by the clearly loyal fanbase. I stood surrounded by a die-hard crowd who appreciate the band branching out into different ideas, creating not only a more intimate atmosphere, but creating room for GY!BE to thrive; and thrive they have.
Screens showing wildfires and violent protests are stopped mid song while the tape player engineers hold a lighter to the roll of tape, melting it as it is projected onto the screen, adding a uniqueness to the concert in the knowledge that said tape footage will never be used again. The crowd erupt in cheer as the band play their final song, “East Hastings” from their debut album F#A# Infinity, a cult classic and suitable finale.
The band leave the stage without their instruments and without speaking a word, just as they entered. The droning feedback that remains says more than they ever could with words, a final testament to the long-lasting influence they have had on the genre of post rock.
News piece – for The METRO
Popstar Sabrina Carpenter has become the target for online uproar after referring to a cultural Arabic cheer as “yodelling”
Internationally known popstar Sabrina Carpenter faces accusations of Islamophobia on social media regarding comments she made during her headlining performance at Coachella festival 2026.
The American singer referred to a traditional Arabic cheer of celebration as “yodelling” on stage, later stating online that her response was “pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill-intended”.
After a well-received performance of “Please, please, please”, Carpenter took a moment between tracks in which a fan in the audience let out a zaghrouta, a cheer commonly used by women in Arabic and North African cultures to express joy.
She halted the performance of her next song to remark on what she heard with an apparent confusion and bemusement, shaking her head and stating “is that what you’re doing? I don’t like it.”
When the audience member explained “It’s my culture”, Carpenter responded by saying “That’s your culture, is yodelling?”, to which the audience can be heard laughing.
After the same voice from the audience explains that the cheer is a “call of celebration”, the singer asks: “Is this Burning man? What’s going on? This is weird”, putting an end to the exchange.
Shortly after the performance, a video of the interaction spread across social media to be met with an uproar from unhappy fans, claiming Carpenter’s response was “mad disrespectful”, and generally rude and unnecessary.
One user on the platform X described it as “insensitive and Islamophobic”, to which Carpenter personally responded apologising, claiming that she did not mean to offend anybody and that she “could have handled it better”.
Although being under the spotlight for most of her life, Carpenter’s first taste of booming mainstream success came in 2024, when hit singles “Espresso” and “please, please, please” went viral across social media platforms like TikTok, shooting her into the pop music stratosphere.
Carpenter came up as a teen acting star for Disney, her breakthrough acting role being in the show “Girl meets World” in 2014. This was the beginning of her journey to stardom, leading her to sign a five-album record deal with Hollywood records. After seven studio albums and two EPs, she ultimately headlined Coachella festival in California on Friday the 10th of April this year.
Opinion piece – for The Guardian
Sabrina Carpenter’s Coachella controversy: how quick do we jump to condemn artists?
The American pop singer faced a slurry of online criticism after a misinformed remark at Coachella festival
It’s the final act of the night, rounding off the first Friday of Coachella festival 2026, and in one interaction with an audience member Sabrina Carpenter has made herself the target of an online uproar.
A misinformed and perhaps foolish reaction led the singer to refer to a traditional Arabic vocal cheer (specifically a zaghrouta) as “yodelling” while on stage, made only worse for herself by stating “That’s your culture, is yodelling?” when the audience member attempted to explain upwards from the crowd that it is their culture.
It seemed to me when I first watched the video footage that this was Carpenter’s attempt at turning her confused reaction into crowd work; she is, after all, a performer and it seems unlikely that PR training would have taught her to purposely ridicule an audience member. She also stated publicly in an apology on X her inability to hear the audience properly from on stage.
Online consensus has since spoken otherwise. Fans have accused Carpenter of being “insensitive and Islamophobic” across social media platforms such as X and Tiktok for her comments. While it is not unreasonable to assume that her comments would generate an unpleasant reaction, such an immediate online condemnation speaks volumes of cancel culture.
Cancel culture can be an incredibly useful tool, normalising activism against prejudice and stoking positive social change by calling out the wrong doings of both people and companies. A recent example of this is the public outcry against Kanye West for his openly antisemitic rhetoric, combined with the government sanction banning him from travelling to the UK to headline Wireless Festival.
However, the instantly borderless world of social media, a place where everyone has the means to share their opinion, can soon become a breeding ground for mass misunderstanding and mob mentality. The immediacy of opinion, especially at such volume, can often drown out the much-needed context of a situation. A story can lose proportionality in being constantly reposted or edited, leaving little room in some cases for the subject to redeem themselves publicly and resulting in a misinformed jury.
In cases like Carpenter’s incident at Coachella, it is of course important to recognise her mistake. To claim that someone is assuming too much significance in a situation where a marginalised culture is being mocked, intentionally or not, is harmful and can promote intolerant thought processes.
This being said, it also leaves room for us, the public, to reflect on how quickly we jump to criticise artists and public figures for their mistakes regardless of the consequence, even after they realise their wrongdoings.
Feature – for NME magazine
Jamie Haddington of Contact Buzz: paving the way for independent music in Leeds
The Leeds producer shares his views on achieving authenticity in art through cassette tape recording
In early April, I had the pleasure of meeting up with one of the Leeds DIY scene’s top purveyors of all musical things lofi. Jamie Haddington, born and bred in West Yorkshire, is the mastermind producer behind Contact Buzz. We met at the beating heart of the Leeds independent music scene, the Brudenell social club. Located in the centre of the bustling student area Hyde park, the club began hosting live music events in the early 90s, focusing on community and independent music: a fitting environment to talk about authenticity in the arts.
Only as early as September of 2025, Haddington has been recording single tracks with local indie musicians of all genres and styles onto cassette tape, posting the recordings across Youtube, Instagram and Tiktok. He described it in a somewhat self-deprecating manner as “a recording project where I go around with my little four track cassette recorder and record different bands in Leeds, around Leeds”. As well as his beloved Tascam portastudio, Haddington carries with him to every recording session a Sony VHS camcorder which he uses to document the recording process, editing video footage into a live music video of the artists.
It is immediately clear to me that the “do-it-yourself” attitude is an integral part of Haddington’s artistic identity, drawing away from the big flashy high-quality production of mainstream music, and into a more personable authentic output. An example of this is his infatuation with telephone microphones; Haddington will often buy old landline telephones from second hand shops, and in a reportedly quite easy fashion transform them into microphones with a bit of soldering ingenuity. Said microphones can be seen used by artists he records in some of the Contact Buzz sessions.
This falls right into the aesthetic Haddington captures so effortlessly with his craft, an attitude reflected in his recording style; plugging microphones into his Tascam and imprinting the signal directly onto a cassette, “the buzzword is lofi”. He’s “not aiming to get the cleanest signal possible but aiming to get the most character”. To Haddington, music as it is heard live and in person is the most raw, unadulterated form you can experience it in. The most important part is the pure music; anything related to recording is simply a byproduct of that. “You can go into a big studio, but it’s still gonna be the same song…it’s going to be sort of rolled in glitter”. Recording onto tape allows for a more raw, authentic feeling in how reminiscent it is of the way humans conduct themselves.
The name Contact Buzz derives from the lyrics of the song “Drinker’s Peace” by Guided by Voices. As well as being a long-time fan of the band’s music, Haddington appreciated their use of four track cassette recording, inspiring him to do the same in his own practice.
Haddington seems to acknowledge that the technology he uses is obsolete in some ways, but he still holds out. He has an appreciation for a traditional way of doing things, finding value in something that in a soullessly functional way can be completely replaced; his ventures are not in vain, having recorded almost fifty Contact Buzz sessions since last September.
He states that “from quite a young age, from the age when I was really discovering music, we had Spotify, we had this really accessible medium”. Because of this, there is a certain novelty in analogue media like cassette tape and vinyl, in the “warps and the clicks, the little things that make it yours”. It provides both the artist and the listener to be connected through a tangible medium, undistorted by the separation of a streaming service.
Alongside a desire to keep his artistic output true and authentic, Haddington’s approach to recording is very much a social one. Building this bond between people, be it artist to artist or artist to listener is, to him, an integral part of creating a tight-knit community around music.
A key aspect of this is the portability of his recording setup. Instead of working out of a studio he can take his tape recorder anywhere, assuring the artist is in an environment best suited to them, admitting that he “kind of hates the vibe of the studio”. Many of the recording sessions he has done have taken place in unorthodox spaces: living rooms, kitchens, parks, places that can tell more of a story about the musician than a sterile studio.
“It’s the most human I’ve ever felt doing Contact Buzz, meeting people and forming a little bit of a community”
Having lived in Leeds his whole life, Haddington has no intention of leaving, drawn to the local music scene for its “sort of relaxed” identity. There is no dream of moving to London or elsewhere to “make it”; he’s already done that here in Leeds.
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