The Junglist! mix of ragga, d&b and jungle remind Manu Ekanayake of an optimistic time of cultural and creative flex

A group of British Sri Lankan creatives are holding a fundraising event to help the survivors of Cyclone Ditwah this Sunday 7 December, from 3pm to 11pm at Big Chill Kings Cross. The Mutton Roll Daytimer combines the island’s favourite snack or ‘short eat’, the iconic mutton roll – a delicious deep fried pancake roll filled with […]

As much-loved club night A Love From Outer Space reaches its 15th anniversary, Sean Johnston – its co-founder alongside the much-missed Andrew Weatherall – picks 13 tracks that have soundtracked its journey from a Stoke Newington basement to an international community

In this month's subscriber essay, Manu Ekanayake revisits the BBC adaptation of John Le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to explore ideas of Englishness and patriotism corrupted by the Establishment and private school system

Smokin' Jo's autobiography 'You Don’t Need A Dick To DJ' is an inspiring and at-times brutal tale, detailing a turbulent adolescence and rise to become one of UK's most legendary DJs. She speaks to Manu Ekanayake about her remarkable life and challenges along the way

Manga Saint Hilare speaks to Manu Ekanayake about his days in Roll Deep, keeping it real, and approaching different genres from a grime perspective

Slimzee is hard to pin down, but when you’re getting an audience with a grime OG that’s what you expect. But he’s not locked in the studio, partying, or recovering from said partying; he was actually off on holiday. Slimzee, the godfather of grime (as he rightly calls himself on socials and his website), is […]

Back in the day, every self-respecting club had a chillout room, but by the end of the ’90s, they had all-but disappeared

Photo by Kasia Zacharko Afrodeutsche, aka British-born Ghanaian / Russian / German artist Henrietta Smith-Rolla, is many things all at once. She’s a radio broadcaster, first on NTS since 2016 and then since 2021 on her own Friday evening BBC Radio 6 Music show, ‘The People’s Party’, a sonically diverse but still welcoming mix of […]

Meemo Comma, Auntie Flo, CLAIR, KMRU and Professor James Kilner speak to Manu Ekanayake about the benefits of ambient music to our mental health

20 years ago this mix blew the roof off the indie scene, setting the path for Justice and the Ed Banger Records crew, LCD Soundsystem and the DFA mob and – closer to home – Erol Alkan and friends, to push the guitar-obsessed genre ever forward into the rave. You might say that the spark […]

Laurent Garnier speaks to Manu Ekanayake about the importance of playing new music, French police cracking down on ravers, and his feature-length film Off The Record

Manu Ekanayake speaks to Infinite Coles about finding self-acceptance in the queer underground and following in the musical footsteps of his dad Ghostface Killah and uncle RZA

Across dealings with bouncers, bar staff, promoters, sound engineers and green rooms, Manu Ekanayake examines how South Asian identity affects DJs and clubbers' experience of nightlife

Michael K Williams courtesy of ABC I vividly remember telling my mid-2000s housemates that The Wire was going to change everything. This wasn’t just a cop show, instead there was what felt like a realistic moral ambiguity to the action and plot. Corruption and racism were endemic, and it pulled no punches in its take […]

What South Asian parents think of their childrens' DJ career

Their ‘queer party for all’ brought fun back to the London club scene – then went global. Now, with their first album, they’re on a mission to keep the dancefloor spirit alive in lockdown

Talking to Sylvie Simmons is like mainlining rock & roll history directly into your veins -a good thing, obviously. We speak as she’s about to release her second album of ukulele-led music (yes, really), Blue On Blue, but of course Simmons cut her musical teeth on the other side of the street: for decades she […]

Started as a reaction to the cheesiness of Manchester’s gay clubs, Homobloc unleashed a 10,000 strong celebration of unity, queer culture and musical power

Summing up Meemo Comma’s meanderings is as hard as summing up her new album, Sleepmoss, but it is tQ’s duty to try. So when we sit down for what ends up being a two-and-a-half-hour chat over Skype, we found we had a lot to talk about. From memes to MTV2 and from her Jewish identity […]