Gen Z it girl Alix Earle got the Netflix treatment. In the vein of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the social media star launched her own reality series that promises to take viewers behind the scenes of her life.
So far, so good. With 1.8 million views this week, Earle Meets World is among the most-watched titles on the streaming platform and a Top 10 show in eight countries. Could this mean that more episodes are on the way? Here’s what we know so far.
Earle Meets World Season 2 Release Date
At the time of writing, there’s no news about a potential Earle Meets World season 2.
That said, the show hasn’t been out for long, so a renewal might be just around the corner. Netflix sometimes waits to assess viewership before making a decision either way.
If all goes well, new episodes could arrive sometime in 2027.
Earle Meets World Cast
Alix Earle
Ashtin Earle
TJ Earle
Ashley Earle
Alisa Maniaci
Izabel Earle
Penelope Earle
Thomas James Earle II
What Is Earle Meets World About?
Alix Earle is a social media influencer. She stood out with candid TikTok Get Ready with Me videos and built a following of millions.
From there, she turned her online popularity into a career. While you might know her from Dancing with the Stars, her personal life also made headlines. That’s mainly thanks to her relationship with NFL player Braxton Berrios and her friendship/feud with Alex Cooper, the host of the popular Call Her Daddy podcast.
Her family is a major part of Alix’s public persona, so there’s no wonder they joined her for Earle Meets World. The reality series centres on Earle and her entourage as they navigate the pressures of fame, love, family, and everything in between. Viewers can tune in to see how she deals with hardship and the scrutiny that comes with being in the public eye.
Major plot points of the first season include Earle processing her breakup with Berrios and trying to figure out what she wants to do next. Her family’s history becomes a major storyline, you see Earle navigate bad news, and the influencer’s love life becomes complicated. Finally, Earle briefly addresses her falling-out with Cooper.
A potential Earle Meets World season 2 would likely continue in the same vein, following Earle and her loved ones as ups and downs come their way. Based on her social media following, interest is clearly high.
Log into almost any US-facing sweepstakes casino today, and the pitch sounds almost too simple: Buy virtual coins for fun, receive a second set of coins for free, and if the free coins win, cash them out.
No state gambling license. No physical casino floor. No traditional casino deposit process.
It can look like a modern invention built for the app-store generation. It is not.
The model is a legal workaround with roots in an entirely different era of American consumer law. It was first repurposed for strip-mall computer cafés and later adapted for websites and smartphones.
A promotional loophole, repurposed
US sweepstakes law has traditionally rested on one central idea: A company can run a prize giveaway connected to a product, as long as no one is required to pay to enter.
That is why cereal boxes have included mail-in contests for decades, and why fast-food chains can hand out lottery-style game pieces with a purchase.
As long as a free method of entry exists alongside a paid option, courts have generally treated the activity as marketing or promotion rather than gambling.
Today’s top sweepstakes casinos are direct descendants of that logic. The difference is that the promotion is no longer tied to soda bottle caps, cereal boxes, internet access, or phone cards. It is tied to online slots, roulette, blackjack, and other casino-style games.
The entire industry hinges on the “no purchase necessary” exemption found in long-standing sweepstakes and promotional-contest laws—applied in a setting legislators did not originally anticipate.
Strip malls before smartphones
The first large-scale version of this idea did not appear on mobile phones. It appeared in strip malls.
Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, so-called internet sweepstakes cafés spread across the United States. These businesses offered rows of computers where customers could buy internet time, phone cards, or other products.
With those purchases, customers received sweepstakes entries. The prizes were then revealed through slot-machine-like spins or casino-style games on a computer screen.
Operators argued that they were selling a legitimate product—such as internet access—and that the casino-like games were merely an incidental promotional display.
The model grew into a multibillion-dollar cottage industry, despite frequent police raids and regulatory challenges.
States pushed back
States responded unevenly:
Florida banned internet sweepstakes cafés outright in 2013 after a corruption scandal involving a veterans’ charity led to the resignation of the state’s lieutenant governor.
North Carolina attempted a similar ban, but part of its law was struck down on First Amendment grounds because it targeted the “entertaining display” of results rather than the underlying transaction.
Operators then adapted their systems so that prizes were technically revealed before the game animation appeared. This became known as pre-reveal.
That created the cat-and-mouse pattern that still defines the sector today: regulators write rules, operators adjust the mechanics, and lawmakers try again.
From strip malls to Chumba
The version most players recognise today can largely be traced to one Australian company: VGW.
Founded in Perth in 2010 by Laurence Escalante, VGW later launched Chumba Casino in 2012. Its system combined a casino-style gaming platform with a sweepstakes structure.
Instead of sitting at a computer in a strip mall, players used a website. Instead of using one kind of virtual currency, they used two:
Gold Coins: Used for entertainment only and cannot be redeemed for cash.
Sweeps Coins: Available through free methods such as daily bonuses or mail-in requests, and potentially redeemable for cash prizes after play-through and verification requirements are met.
The underlying legal concept was similar to the internet café model. The distribution method was what changed.
Chumba’s dual-currency structure became the template that much of the industry copied. Operators generally frame paid Gold Coins as entertainment-only purchases, while Sweeps Coins are the promotional currency that may lead to redeemable prizes.
This distinction is intended to avoid classifying the transaction as a direct real-money wager under many state gambling laws.
Why players keep coming back
Sweepstakes casinos manage to fly under the radar in states that have banned regular online gambling. They’re the best choice for players with no other online options. However, they attract a broader audience because of free-play options. Players keep coming back.
Wider availability
The most obvious appeal is location.
Only a small number of US states license traditional real-money online casinos. Someone in a state such as Texas or Georgia generally cannot legally access regulated online slots for real money.
Sweepstakes casinos aim to offer a casino-like alternative in states where ordinary online casino gambling is unavailable, provided sweepstakes promotions are permitted there. Although laws are constantly changing and some now ban sweepstakes, most still allow them.
Low barrier to entry
There is also less psychological friction:
Signing up is free.
Free virtual coins are often available at registration or through daily bonuses.
Free-play modes look and feel like ordinary mobile games.
Small coin packages can feel more like in-app purchases than casino deposits.
A player does not necessarily make one clear, deliberate decision to deposit money into a gambling account. Spending can happen gradually through repeated purchases of virtual currency.
90% of sweepstakes casino players considered what they were doing to be gambling.
68% said that winning real money was their main reason for playing.
In other words, players are not necessarily attracted because they see the activity as harmless social gaming. They are attracted because it functions much like a casino, is easier to access than a licensed one, and may feel less intimidating at the start.
An unsettled future
The legal position is not stable.
A growing number of states—including California, Connecticut, and Montana—have moved to restrict or ban parts of the sweepstakes-casino model. Elsewhere, state attorneys general, lawmakers, and regulators are scrutinizing whether these platforms are genuinely promotional sweepstakes or simply unlicensed gambling under another name.
The result is a fragmented and fast-changing legal landscape.
Whether sweepstakes casinos continue expanding or become limited to a smaller number of states will likely depend less on player demand and more on how state legislatures and attorneys general interpret an old promotional-law loophole in a new online-gambling context.
There was a time when fetish culture lived mostly behind closed doors, whispered about in private clubs, or tucked away in specialist shops.
Now? Latex appears on red carpets. Musicians dressed as dominatrixes turn up in music videos. Chokers, harnesses, leather, and PVC outfits are worn by people who have probably never once had to explain a safeword. Kink has moved from the shadows into fashion, entertainment, dating apps, social media, and everyday conversation.
So how did fetish culture become more mainstream? Well, it didn’t happen overnight… that’s for sure. Here’s how the world of kink went from underground curiosity to something even your grandparents are (worryingly) aware of.
When Fetish Culture Was Still Underground
Before fetish culture became easy to find online, it was far more hidden, local, and word-of-mouth. To find anything BDSM-related, you usually had to know someone, find the right bar, buy the right magazine, visit the right shop, or quietly work your way into a scene that was not exactly advertising itself on the high street.
Much of modern BDSM culture grew out of smaller leather, gay, queer, fetish, and underground club communities. Leather bars, private parties, motorcycle clubs, specialist publications, and discreet social networks all helped people find each other before the internet made everything searchable. These spaces had their own rules, signals, etiquette, dress codes, hierarchies, and expectations.
Some of that might sound a little extreme in this day and age, but when your sexuality could cost you your reputation, job, relationship, or even legal safety, discretion was survival. The UK’s Operation Spanner case in the late 1980s, which involved police action around consensual same-sex sadomasochistic activity, is a good example of why BDSM communities had reason to stay careful and semi-private.
That underground structure created strong communities, but it also made fetish culture difficult to enter. If you had, say, a fantasy about being tied up, you might spend years thinking you were strange simply because you had no easy way to meet anyone else who felt the same. Today, that same person can find terminology, forums, events, professional Mistresses, safety guides, and entire communities in one evening.
And Then Came The Internet
If fetish culture had a proper coming-out moment, the internet probably deserves most of the credit. Suddenly, people could search for BDSM, foot worship, femdom, bondage, and every other wonderfully specific little interest without having to say the words out loud to another human being.
That mattered because anonymity gave people room to be curious. Forums, chat rooms, blogs, educational sites, fetish directories, and later platforms like FetLife helped people realise they were not alone. What once felt like a private oddity became a shared interest with language, etiquette, communities, events, roles, and endless variations.
In short, the internet gave people the means and motivation needed to explore their kinks safely.
How Latex, Leather & Harnesses Took Over Fashion
Fashion has always loved stealing from the dangerous-looking corners of culture, and fetish wear has been one of its favourite victims.
Leather, latex, corsets, chokers, thigh-high boots, collars, harnesses, gloves, PVC, bondage straps, and sharply structured silhouettes all existed in fetish spaces long before they appeared on runways and red carpets. But high fashion realised very quickly that fetish imagery has power. It looks provocative. It looks controlled. It suggests danger, sex, confidence, discipline, and rebellion before anyone has even opened their mouth.
Designers such as Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen, Mugler, and many others helped pull elements of fetish styling into mainstream fashion. Corsetry became glamorous rather than purely restrictive… harnesses became styling pieces… even latex moved from specialist fetish wardrobes to music videos and celebrity shoots. Chokers, once strongly associated with punk, goth, BDSM, and alternative fashion, became something people wore to brunch.
Film, TV & the Fifty Shades Effect
We cannot talk about mainstream kink without mentioning Fifty Shades of Grey. Yes, half the BDSM community had opinions… very strong opinions spoken through gritted teeth. Still, whether people loved it, hated it, or read it in secret on holiday, Fifty Shades changed the conversation. It put dominance, submission, restraint, spanking, contracts, red rooms, and sexual power exchange into book clubs, cinemas, daytime television debates, and ordinary relationships where kink had never been discussed before.
Was it a perfect representation of BDSM? No. Did it make millions of people curious? Absolutely. But Fifty Shades was only one part of a much bigger media shift. TV shows, films, music videos, podcasts, documentaries, and online articles began treating kink like something real adults might explore. Certain fetishes and examples of power exchange started appearing in storylines without always being framed as monstrous or deviant.
Social Media Made Kink More Visible
Instead of having to search for a specific BDSM forum, people began seeing kink-adjacent content in their feeds. This included the likes of latex outfits, pole performers, rope artists, dominatrix education, boudoir photography, and plenty of meme pages joking about praise kink and degradation. Not all of that content is serious BDSM, obviously, but watered-down visibility is still visibility at the end of the day. It makes fetish terminology more familiar, and gives people language for desires they may not have understood before.
The creator economy also played a huge role. Platforms like OnlyFans, clip sites, premium socials, and independent adult content gave fetish creators a way to build audiences around very specific interests. Suddenly, niche kinks were searchable, marketable, and in some cases extremely profitable. When you see thousands of others openly discussing foot worship, latex, chastity, femdom, pet play, impact play, or financial domination, it becomes harder to convince yourself that your fantasy is some lonely little secret no one else understands.
Why Fetishes Are No Longer Treated the Same Way
One of the biggest changes behind the scenes has been psychological and cultural rather than visual. For a long time, fetish interests were treated very differently by medical and social institutions. Anything outside conventional sexuality was often labelled as abnormal, deviant, unhealthy, or something that needed to be corrected. That attitude made people ashamed of desires that, in many cases, were harmless when explored between consenting adults.
Modern thinking is a lot more nuanced. There’s now a clearer distinction between having an unusual sexual interest and having a disorder. A fetish, kink, or paraphilia is not automatically treated as a problem simply because it’s unusual. The more important questions are whether everyone involved is consenting, whether the behaviour causes distress or harm, and whether boundaries are being respected. It also supports the wider sex-positive movement, where adults are encouraged to understand their desires honestly rather than burying them under shame.
Fetish Events Became Bigger, Bolder & More Public
Large-scale fetish events, club nights, pride-adjacent leather gatherings, BDSM markets, rope workshops, latex balls, and alternative nightlife events gave kink a physical presence. No longer were these just secret gatherings hidden in basements. Many became organised, ticketed, visible events with dress codes, performers, DJs, vendors, workshops, photographers, security, and proper rules around consent.
Events like Torture Garden helped make fetish nightlife feel theatrical, stylish, and social rather than purely sexual. In other countries, huge gatherings such as Folsom Street Fair showed that kink communities could take up public space openly, loudly, and with a frankly impressive amount of leather in direct sunlight. After some time, people began to understand that fetish culture was not just one thing. It could be nightlife. Fashion. Community. Education. Performance. Art. Sexual exploration. Political visibility. A place to meet people. A place to learn. A place to be stared at for the right reasons.
Dating Apps & Modern Dating Made Kink Easier to Discuss
There was once a time when telling someone you were into BDSM meant waiting until precisely the right moment, choosing your words carefully, and hoping they didn’t look at you like you were some freak. Now, plenty of people put kink references directly into dating profiles on platforms like Feeld. “Switch.” “Sub leaning.” “Domme.” “Open-minded.” “Praise kink.” “Into rope.” These little clues have made it much easier for people to find partners who are at least willing to talk about desire more openly.
Modern relationships have also become more comfortable with negotiation. People talk about boundaries, turn-ons, communication styles, emotional needs, sexual compatibility, open relationships, non-monogamy, and power exchange more than previous generations often did. Once people have the language, the next step becomes easier. And once the next step feels easier, suddenly fetish culture becomes a lot more normalised.
How Professional Dominatrixes Helped
As fetish culture became more visible, experienced Mistresses started appearing in documentaries, interviews, podcasts, blogs, social media posts and educational spaces, explaining what domination actually involves. They helped put proper language around things like submission, humiliation, restraint, worship, discipline, safewords, boundaries and aftercare. For many people, a Pro Domme is the first real-world example they see of BDSM being practised with confidence, structure, rules and consent
Professional mistress websites like Bed Domination also helped normalise fetish exploration. Instead of someone having to find a hidden club or know the right person, they could browse services, read about different kinks, learn what a session might involve and see that BDSM could be explored privately with someone experienced. That accessibility made fetish culture feel far less intimidating to newcomers.
So while fashion, media and the internet all helped fetish culture become more visible, professional mistresses helped make it understandable. They showed that BDSM can be skilled, negotiated, erotic, theatrical, educational and, when done properly, far more controlled than outsiders usually imagine.
Fetish Culture is Here to Stay
Fetish culture became more mainstream because the routes into kink changed. People found each other online, fashion borrowed the look, media pushed BDSM into everyday conversation, public events became more visible, and modern attitudes towards sex became less painfully narrow. What was once hidden behind private clubs, specialist shops, and quiet word-of-mouth networks slowly became easier to see, discuss, understand, and explore.
Kink was always there. The difference is that now, far more people know where to find it.
British aristocracy and organised crime mix well in The Gentlemen, the Guy Ritchie Netflix spin-off of his film of the same name. After a two-year break, the series is back with season 2. We’re happy to report it hasn’t lost any of its spark.
With 6.7 million views this week, The Gentlemen is currently one of the most-watched titles on Netflix, and the #1 show in 24 countries. Does that mean more episodes are just around the corner? Here’s what we know so far.
The Gentlemen Season 3 Release Date
If you’re in desperate need of good news, you’re in luck. Netflix has already renewed the series, so The Gentlemen season 3 is on the way.
“The ambition of The Gentlemen has accelerated, the world has expanded, and the consequences carry weight. A third season felt inevitable, and I’m looking forward to pushing the boundaries of it further,” creator and director Guy Ritchie told Tudum.
There’s no official premiere date yet, but new episodes could arrive in late 2027 or sometime in 2028.
The Gentlemen Cast
Theo James as Edward “Eddie” Horniman
Kaya Scodelario as Susan “Susie” Glass
Daniel Ings as Lord Frederick “Freddy” Horniman
Joely Richardson as Sabrina Horniman
Vinnie Jones as Geoffrey Seacombe
Giancarlo Esposito as Stanley Johnston
Ray Winstone as Robert “Bobby” Glass
Michele Morrone as Francesco “Cico” Maldini
What Could Happen in The Gentlemen Season 3?
The Gentlemen follows Eddie, an Englishman who inherits his family’s sprawling estate. He discovers that the property is part of a lucrative cannabis empire run by crime boss Bobby.
While Eddie initially wants nothing to do with the operation, getting the gangsters off his land proves more complicated than expected. Before long, he’s drawn deeper into the underworld, working alongside Bobby’s daughter, Susie.
In season 2, Eddie and Susie expand the empire beyond Britain to Italy. Unfortunately, their success means new enemies and increasingly complicated alliances. The fresh episodes have action, humour, romance, tragedy, and family drama. By the time the finale rolls around, it’s obvious that Eddie is no longer the reluctant aristocrat he was at the beginning of the story.
The Gentlemen season 3 will likely continue to see him grow his business at a high personal cost. “Has he gone mad or is he moving towards a place where he could be this ruthless leader who is capable of extraordinary things?” lead writer Matthew Read wondered about Eddie when asked what’s next.
Julien Baker has been teasing her fourth solo album, the follow-up to 2021’s Little Oblivions. Here’s everything we know so far.
What is the title of the album?
For now, we can only refer to the album as LP4. Though no details have yet been announced, Baker launched a brand new Instagram account in early September. She only three other accounts there, including regular collaborators Matthew Gilliam and Calvin Lauber.
Have there been any musical teasers yet?
No. Baker has posted a couple ofvideos of herself in a practice, though they cut off before any music is heard.
Has Julien Baker performed any new songs live?
Yes. On September 9, the singer-songwriter played a pop-up show at Nashville’s Blue Room, where she debuted three new songs.
Will there be more shows?
Just a day after her sold-out show at Nashville’s The Blue Room, Baker announced a series of residencies this fall, playing three-night runs in Salt Lake City, Cambridge, Carrboro, Athens, Lawrence, and Seattle. The trek will kick off on October 15 and wrap up November 21. Matt Gilman and Calvin Lauber will be joining her.
What’s kept her busy since releasing Little Oblivions?
In 2022, Baker released B-Sides, a three-song EP drawn from that album’s sessions. The following year, she reunited with her boygenius bandmates Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, releasing The Record in March 2023, and The Rest EP in October. The supergroup toured extensively and won three Grammys for the record. Baker then went on a 2024 solo tour, where she debuted some new material. Last year, Baker joined forces with Torres (Mackenzie Scott) for the alt-country record Send a Prayer My Way. Also in 2025, she produced the Ophelias’ Spring Grove. More recently, she’s guested on a number of projects, including Bridgers’ Lost Weekend and Turnstile’s Never Enough: Versions.
By Maria Bregman, a London-based art critic, writer, and curator. She has curated solo exhibitions for Zurab Tsereteli, president of a leading national academy of arts, and her criticism has been published in outlets such as ArtCulture.UK, Creativity’s UK, and international editions of ELLE, Cosmopolitan and Esquire. A member of several professional writers’ and journalists’ unions, her own literary work has been recognised with multiple international awards.
The works of Sasha Ryabchik are situated in the uncertain space between spoken and unspoken words. Here, language cannot stay within the boundaries of illustration anymore. Words are seen in the form of phrases that emerge as hints of a confession not completed, of a response delayed and of an incomplete idea. Words are painted, repeated, scratched out and partially hidden. They turn into something just as physical as the paint strokes themselves. Sasha Ryabchik’s artworks are the expression of a situation in which the emotion surpasses the language necessary to embrace it.
The tension between the two aspects is particularly evident in the artwork titled No Words Needed. The phrase is written in black over a light background of white, mint, blue and soft pink colors. At first glance, it seems peaceful or soothing in its suggestion. But beneath the phrase, there is a thick cluster of black loops, gathered with an intensity that appears almost violent. It can be viewed as a flower, a wild scribble or an emotional bundle gone out of control. Language is unnecessary here, but the paint tells us otherwise. There is an urgent necessity of communication here.
Sasha Ryabchik, No Words Needed. Courtesy of the artist.
In the case of Just Live a Little, the psychological struggle finds expression in particularly clear terms. To the left we see the words “REGRETS”, “SADNESS”, “FEAR”, “CONFUSION”, “UNCERTAINTY” and “SHAME” that are thoroughly crossed out in black letters. On the right panel, the less severe phrase “Just live a little” is floating on the background that consists of pink, red, gold and white tones. The difference is obvious, but Ryabchik does not provide an easy juxtaposition of suffering and healing. Instead, the erased words are still clearly visible under the black strokes which seem to be aimed at erasing them.
Therefore, the invitation to “just live a little” sounds tender and vulnerable. It does not solve the more negative vocabulary that is seen on the opposite panel; it exists side by side with it. The use of paint is consistent with this interpretation because scraped layers, transparency and sudden explosions of colours demonstrate that the emotions can be painted but not erased.
Sasha Ryabchik, Just Live a Little (diptych). Courtesy of the artist.
In other cases, repetition becomes a means of longing. Thus, in Thinking of You, the words are repeatedly written one after another in front of the layered dark background with interruptions of white and vivid pink elements.
Sasha Ryabchik, Thinking of You. Courtesy of the artist.
“You make me feel like…” is another variation on this theme and comes from a similar emotional place, even though its function is different. In this case, an incomplete phrase is set against the background of a deep navy blue and thus does not give a name to that particular feeling. The painting then shifts to white strokes, splashes of cyan, red, yellow, and transparent paint in place of words. There is no need for solving the phrase; on the contrary, it generates a space where a few emotions could coexist.
Sasha Ryabchik, You make me feel like… Courtesy of the artist.
In the purely abstract paintings by Ryabchik, there is the same kind of tension, but without words. This is how a painting with a black shape and a red handprint works. Here, the hand is used to deliver the first message of presence – a touch, a warning or even a protest. At the same time, it is partly swallowed by the darkness around it, and so it stays somewhere between self-expression and concealment.
Sasha Ryabchik, untitled. Courtesy of the artist.
The accomplishment of Ryabchik lies in the fact that she makes words act like paint and paint act like words. Her sentences do not describe her paintings; rather, they are dissolved within them, where color, pressure, repetition and erasure have equal value. The image that lingers with us is a residue of the work: an unfinished sentence, a crossed-out word that can still be read, a gesture left unsaid.
There’s so much music coming out all the time that it’s hard to keep track. On those days when the influx of new tracks is particularly overwhelming, we sift through the noise to bring you a curated list of the most interesting new releases (the best of which will be added to our Best New Songs playlist). Below, check out our track roundup for Wednesday, September 9, 2026.
Soul Glo – ‘February Theory’
Soul Glo have announced a new LP, NA I’M GON GRAB ALLAT, which arrives on January 15 on Epitaph. The Diaspora Problems follow-up features TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson, Commitment’s Tati Salazar, MIKE and Bbymutha, and Mannequin Pussy’s Colins “Bear” Regisford. Regisford and his bandmates also star in the video for the ferocious lead single ‘February Theory’. Frontman Pierce Jordan dedicates the album to “everyone who has known the joy and pain of loving a man. All different types of love: platonic, romantic, familial, self.”
Deerhoof – ‘Sun Like It Hot’
Deerhoof have a new album on the way. Following last year’s Noble and Godlike in Ruin, Divine Schism will be self-released on October 2. It will be available digitally on Bandcamp, and the physical release will be tour-only. The blistering 12-minute opening track ‘Sun Like It Hot’ leads the LP, whose description reads: “A child looks for a mother to communicate with, but can’t quite tune in. So many distractions in the vastness of space. The child is desperate for a mother’s love. The mother thinks the child has hidden itself deliberately as a show of independence. The mother doesn’t realize that she is needed. The child has been too childish. It has been behaving so badly as to make itself go extinct faster than it needed to. A mother outliving a child is sad, but that’s how it goes. Mom wins after all…living long enough to see the tragedy of many children.”
The War on Drugs – ‘Who’s That’
‘Who’s That’ is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from the return of the War on Drugs, and that’s a good thing. Wide-eyed and soaring, the band’s first new music in four years “was written in 10 minutes somewhere between first coffee and school drop off,” according to bandleader Adam Granduciel. “It’s a song about trying to love yourself despite things we can’t always control, like the anxiety, depression and self doubt that may stand in the way of living the life we truly desire.”
This Is Lorelei – ‘The Kid With the Crown’
We’ll have more to say about the great new This Is Lorelei album very soon, but ahead of its release on Friday, Nate Amos has dropped one more intoxicating single, ‘The Kid With the Crown’. The track “is the opposite of ‘Oh No Now My’,” he explained, referring to The Singer in My Band‘s previous single, “in that it was plucked and preserved at an early age. The album needed an untied shoelace and this is what I came up with.”
The Avalanches – ‘Far Away’ [feat. John Glacier & Khadija Al Hanafi]
After unveiling the tracklist of their new album No Bad Memories, the Avalanches have shared an intimate dance track, ‘Far Away’, which features UK rapper John Glacier and Tunisian footwork producer Khadija Khadija Al Hanafi. It follows ‘Can’t Get Over Losing You’ featuring Portraits of Tracy, ‘Blue Shadows’ featuring Karen O, ‘Every Single Weekend’ with Jamie xx, and ‘Together’ with Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and Prentiss.
Jess Williamson – ‘High Heels and Blue Jeans’
Jess Williamson has unveiled ‘High Heels and Blue Jeans’, a pensive yet affirming cut from her forthcoming album, A Mile South of Heaven. “Being on tour has its own special way of amplifying whatever else is going on in your life, and this song was inspired by times on the road over the years when things felt hard,” Williamson explained. “There are moments in life, for us women especially, when the only way through is to put your makeup on, get dressed up, and carry on. I’ve had nights on tour where I was going through something in my personal life and fighting back tears trying to do my eyeliner before a show. I feel a big responsibility to the audience to give them the best show I can, and an even deeper gratitude that they showed up in the first place. So no matter what I’m carrying, it’s on with the show. I wanted the chorus to feel like a celebration because that’s exactly what being onstage is for me. Whatever else is happening in my life, I never lose sight of what a privilege it is to get to do this job.”
Lucy Dacus – ‘No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye’
Lucy Dacus is reissuing her debut album, No Burden, to celebrate its 10th anniversary. To mark the announcement, the singer-songwriter has unveiled the previously unreleased fan-favourite ‘No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye’.
Chastity Belt – ‘I Could Say Less’ and ‘Pavement’
Chastity Belt are back with two new songs, ‘I Could Say Less’ and ‘Pavement’. Both are quite melancholic, but build out in different ways. According to a press release, “The A-side sparked while the band crafted demos in Washington, grappling with wanting to be perceived while feeling flattened by misunderstanding. ‘Pavement’ came to life on tour in Australia, inspired by feelings of disappointment during an otherwise exciting time.”
Max Richter – ‘Now We Can Sing’
Max Richter has announced a new album, While the Flood Rages, which is set for release on October 16 via Decca Records. The record draws from a collaborative score with Wayne McGregor titled MaddAddam, which was co-commissioned by the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Opera House. The impeccably serene title track is out today.
Liars – ‘Ice Pick, Kalamazoo’
Liars have announced a new album titled A Ban on Plastic Bag Bans, which drops on March 5 on Mute. The ominous, disorienting single ‘Ice Pick, Kalamazoo’ leads the LP, which takes its name from an actual Michigan law. In a press release, frontman Angus Andrew said the record has “more to do with the perception of things than modern pollution — how these things that can be a constant in your life become sort of ingrained and invisible.”
Niis – ‘Earthquakes’
Los Angeles band Niis have signed to Rise Records, which will release their new EP, Play Niis, on October 23. The bouncy lead single ‘Earthquakes’ arrives today with a video directed by Jake Woodbridge. “It’s a song about growing through pain and heartbreak,” vocalist Mimi Doe explained. “Coming to terms with lost love and the profound scars it can leave on your heart. In a way, it’s a love letter to heartbreak itself. Working with Rise has been a dream. They truly are a label who have cultivated such an amazing environment for us to thrive and experiment.”
Sadurn – ‘can’t stop’
Sadurn have unveiled ‘can’t stop’, a hushed, affecting preview of their forthcoming album Underworld. “I made ‘can’t stop’ on GarageBand – it was supposed to be a demo that we recreated to be more nice and official, but the feel just wasn’t the same, so we kept the original,” songwriter G DeGroot recalled. “I’m proud of that. It has some reversed pedal steel on it, and there’s this one vocal sample at the end from a time some friends were singing in a tunnel in the woods – the same tunnel is featured on the cover of the album, which feels significant in this secret little way. The song speaks to the feeling of being stuck on a past relationship, revisiting things over and over and looking for glimmers of hope that it could be real again. This is a big theme in the album – being stuck on the past – although each song has its own subtle emotional valence to that experience.”
Jess Kerber – ‘Changing’
Nashville artist Jess Kerber has announced a new album, The World Is Dark, but I Want It to Be Funny, arriving November 6 through Felte. The gorgeously poignant lead single ‘Changing’ is out today. “Everything is always cycling through, big and small, and in these songs I am realizing how much energy even little things require,” Kerber said of the song.
Soft Cell – ‘The Rainbow Room’
Soft Cell deliver an ode to early 80s New York on their latest single, ‘The Rainbow Room’, from the forthcoming Danceteria. “And I did celebrate my birthday – my 21st or 22nd – at The Rainbow Room in the Rockefeller Center…” frontman Marc Almond told John Earls at Classic Pop. “The story of that view is true, too, I really did think: ‘Imagine falling down there’ at the time. It was important to mention the Twin Towers, to acknowledge that this song about the future had a poignancy to it, knowing how dark that future would become.”
BODEGA – ‘Literary World’
New York outfit BODEGA have previewed their upcoming LP All Inside Aquarium with a dreamy, anthemic new single, ‘Literary World’. “Regardless of neoliberal propaganda, I believe in the dignity of the artist,” vocalist Ben Hozie reflected. “I also believe it is the duty of an artist to emerge new ways of thinking and being, which extends far beyond ideological didacticism. This isn’t an argument for apolitical art —> The modern artist should work alongside the rising global political consciousness (brought about by new tech and the revelation of extreme injustice) not only through practical action (such as sharing information or raising money with their audience) but through empathetic honest works that imagine alternative modalities.”
Gurriers – ‘Pins’
Dublin’s Gurriers continue to tease their forthcoming album, Nobody’s Coming To Save You, with the swaggering ‘Pins’. The LP lands September 25 via their new label home, Play It Again Sam.
June McDoom – ‘Get Out of My Life’
June McDoom has shared an enchanting new single, ‘Get Out Of My Life’, from her upcoming debut full-length, Follow the Light. The track comes paired with a music video directed by Bella Newman.
Hour – ‘Pearls’
Hour have unveiled ‘Pearls’, the second offering from their forthcoming record Ghost Bridge, arriving October 9 via Dear Life Records. It’s accompanied by a music video by William H. Travis filmed at the first full band rehearsal for the album. “Anyone who has tried to schedule anything can appreciate the precarity of getting thirteen musicians plus two photographers to be in the same place at the same time,” bandleader Cormier-O’Leary commented. “I’m proud to say we managed to get nearly everyone–shout out to our flute player Adelyn who was on tour in Europe with Skullcrusher when this filmed. We missed her a lot.”
Sylvie – ‘Rina’
Sylvie – the project of Los Angeles artist Ben Schwab – has announced their new album and first for Ghostly International, New Season, out November 6. The breezy new single ‘Rina’ was originally written by Ben’s father, John Schwab of Mad Anthony, and features vocals by collaborator Alex Amen. “‘Rina’ is an all-time favorite,” Schwab explained. “It was tough to record because I wanted to honor the original my dad wrote while bringing something new to it. Rina reminds me of the beauty and strength found in people the world overlooks. Alex understood that and gave the song exactly the touch it needed.” Amen added: “I’ve loved this song since the first time I heard it off the Mad Anthony tapes. As a song, the writing is about as good as it gets… the chords, the melody, the lyrics. It’s just perfect all around. It’s one of those rediscovered songs that makes you wonder how many other timeless things have been written and recorded and are just collecting dust in some warehouse or closet on some forgotten tape. I’m really excited to have been able to sing on this new version of Rina and hope the song finds a new life and can reach new ears.”
“You don’t want a familiar feeling,” Felix Walworth sings on ‘Real Love’, the opening track of their first Told Slant album in six years. Even at its most romantic, What’s Up is not exactly heartwarming so much as evocative of a “low fire burning,” and more than on any previous record, Walworth allows their simmering frustration to spill over into outrage, mingle with grief, and melt back into tenderness, resulting in their most dynamic record to date. Tracking everything to an eight-track reel-to-reel, they brought together Hannah Pruzinsky (aka h. pruz, also their collaborator in Sister.), their Florist bandmates Emily Sprague and Jonnie Baker, as well as Hellen Ballentine (aka Skullcrusher), Mari Rubio (aka more eaze), and Elijah Wolf – familiar names if you’ve been following Walworth’s work or the New York scene to which they’re embedded, but all of whom help fill the record with thorny, uncompromising details. You wouldn’t call it uncanny territory – just a raw body of work more comfortable making room for irregular shapes than being defined by its increasingly dour, homogenized surroundings.
We caught up with Told Slant’s Felix Walworth to talk about Alan Vega, turning 30, photography, and other inspirations behind What’s Up.
Alan Vega
When I was in high school, I was introduced to that wave of New York punk music, and after the more introductory bands, someone along the way showed me Suicide. They’ve always been in the background of what I’ve been making, but never in a way where I’ve really thought of them as a world that I could pull from. It’s only been recently that I’ve even been interested in experimenting with more synthesized music at all – or being angry in my music, for that matter, or confrontational. It was more that aspect, which is why maybe I list Alan Vega and not Suicide as a band. What I wanted to draw from him was the ability to alienate the audience, to be ungenerous with my audience. It’s just so easy to be like, “I only got this one shot, and I want to make it palatable in all of those ways.” And I’m not that interested in music that’s very palatable. I’m interested in music that’s challenging, maybe it’s got a little bit of a bad attitude sometimes.
‘I Am a Singer’ is this sort of confrontational moment that comes towards the end of the record. You’re not throwing this at the listener from the get go.
That, and ‘Rain of God’ as well. The places that those take on the record are chosen for some of those reasons – I didn’t want to start this record with ‘I Am a Singer’ because I’m not that cruel. There’s sweetness on this record, there’s beauty to be found, and the first song is a jumping-off point for what’s to come. I didn’t want to relegate the abrasion and the ugliness to the end, exactly. But I also didn’t want to say, “Hello, this is who I am.” Which is why the first track, ‘Real Love’, is definitely not one of the poppier songs on the record. Droning and slowly lurching forward – that felt like the way to introduce this thing that you’re gonna have to be patient with, and it’s not gonna jump out at you.
Becoming 30
When I was young or younger – let’s just say young, I’m old – I had so much concern about who I was. Identity was this central puzzle in my life: Who am I? What am I like? How am I influenced by the world around me? How am I changing in all of these ways? The self as this mutable category was something that I was always trying to interrogate. I think there’s something about entering my third decade on Earth that I feel like I reframed that question a little bit for myself, where it was less like “Who am I?” and more like, “I am all these things that I did. A bunch of things happened, and now I live like this. I wake up and this is what my day looks like.” I’m 34, and not to say that I’m done growing and changing and learning about things, but I was just approaching that question of identity from a slightly different angle. And I feel like decentering myself in that way allowed me to write more about what’s around me. My home – sure, my relationships as well, but how all of these things have coalesced to form who I am, and in a less of an insecure way.
I feel that shift in thinking also applies to the record’s sense of place. It’s less, “What is home?” or “What defines New York?” and more so, “What’s happened to this place that I’ve called home?”
Yeah, and I feel like there’s even a more subtextual question: how is my life impacting this place that I live? Which doesn’t get grappled with in a serious way on this record, I would say, but it’s in there. I think any conversation about gentrification has this structure and agency balance to it. These things live in the background of any thoughts I have about the city.
Attic Abasement
I saw they played at your album release show, and also recently put out a new record.
That’s an evergreen band for me, maybe my favorite band ever; at least my favorite band ever that isn’t in the widely hailed pantheon of bands. Mike just has this incredible lyrical and rhythmic sense. We’re very different writers, but I can tell that he arranges these complex rhythmic machines in his mind, and then goes into a studio, or opens up his laptop, or whatever way he’s recording, and the whole thing is coming from him. There’s also amazing players on those songs as well, but this approach to making music of doing a huge part of it yourself is something I used to be a little more attached to, and I kind of moved out of that for this record.
I wish I could ape Mike from Attica Basement more, but he’s just so singular. A lot of his music is in interesting time signatures, but very natural-sounding. The way that we find sort of comfort in the repetition of the 4/4 time signature, I feel like he lives in the 5/4 time signature. But he lives in it like he grew up there. He knows it, and he’s just comfortable.
What made you want to lean into that collaborative element a little bit more on this record, given that you do have different outlets for that side to come out more?
So much of the music that I listen to and that I love is recorded this way. Much of it was done pre-digital recording, where this style of multitracking that I learned on just wasn’t possible. The feeling of a band playing together – specifically even a band that doesn’t know how to play together that well yet, that’s not playing to a click track, and the drummer’s kinda scrappy – these are my favorite kinds of recordings. Velvet Underground, Tom Waits, Modest Mouse, these things that have this kind of ramshackle, about-to-fall-apart feeling. Attica Basement on that list as well. Mistakes laid bare in the recording process, but they’re mistakes that are born of improvisation, not knowing. It’s like a feeling of someone biting off a little more than they can chew in a moment, because they got too excited, they were feeling it too much.
Recording by yourself, there’s only so much you can react to. You’re reacting to yourself over and over again. How much can you surprise yourself? But when everyone’s in the room together playing and you hear someone kick it up a notch a little bit dynamics-wise, or throw a part in that you’ve never heard them throw in before, it changes the way that you’re gonna perform in that moment. When we did ‘I Am a Singer’ that was almost entirely live, vocals included. Hannah’s bass playing was live, and Johnny’s drum machine and live sampling was all simultaneous, just 5 or so tracks into the tape machine. There’s just no way that could have happened and feel that crazy and raw if it were stacked up. And especially not if it was me doing everything, because if I had it my way, it would probably end up being a rock song. It wouldn’t even be a cool, Nine Inch Nails vibe.
Allegra Krieger
I know you toured together around Florist’s Jellyfish and her latest record Art of the Unseen Infinity Machine. Where were you in the process of making What’s Up around that time, 2024 to 2025?
There was definitely still stuff to be written at that point. For some songs, I finished writing the lyrics while we were recording. But yeah, Allegra is such a genius songwriter, and has a way of writing about New York specifically that feels so honest, but also romantic. I think she’s aware of the history of this thing that she’s playing into with this romanticization of this city, and I can tell how much she loves being part of it, and also how difficult it makes her life. I was like, “You’re so good at doing this. I love the way you write these songs.” Touring with her and getting to pick her brain is always delightful.
When she introduces her perspective, or the individual perspectives of narrators on these songs, they all feel like vignettes in this larger, bleak, capitalist megacity landscape that she’s discussing. And she has so much love for those people, and for herself, and for this place, even though I feel like there’s criticism as well in there. It’s not a simple relationship. I tried to bring that kind of nuance into my own writing about New York, because it’s easy to romanticize this place. And it’s also easy to be a hater. But if you really know what it’s like here, you can tell a really good story about it, I think.
When did you realize your own record was shaping up to be a more complicated portrait of the city?
I think I knew from the top that it was gonna be like that. What would there even be to say? What would be the point of making a simple record about New York? Also, so much of it is just about being a working artist, which is such a fraught thing to be, because you do what you love with your life – which is the most beautiful thing in the world – and you are also constantly checking your bank account and having a panic attack, which is one of the worst things in the world. And that’s obviously just exacerbated by this place.
Commercial music
Let’s start by defining what you mean by that.
I think it’s music that wants to be enjoyed first and foremost. And then, after being enjoyed, it hopes that it can be sold as well. I’m just so bored of this kind of music. I would say that I’m inspired by how sick I am of it. When I set out to make this record, I was like, “I do not want to make a record that is easy, or that is beautiful, even.” It can have beautiful moments, sure, but it shouldn’t have mass appeal. It’s disheartening to me when I go to a show in a tiny venue in New York City, and I’m hearing essentially pop music, or alt-country pop music, or whatever. It feels so unimaginative, and it’s in these places that are supposed to be the breeding ground of interesting new ideas. Where do you take risks with your music if it isn’t in the 50-capacity venue in Brooklyn?
The fact that people at that level – small bands – are approaching music from this place of, “Let’s make something that the people want,” is sad to me. It feels stifling. And I was like, “I do not want to make a record that the people want.” Nor can I – I’ve made a lot of records, and the people don’t want them, and that’s fine. But I’m just not interested in that kind of thing. Seeing it so much made me be like, “I need to make something that feels real, that feels outside of commerce.”
I feel like we have so much access to data and information about music now that people know what BPM is the most popular BPM. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not interested in that. Imagine the first thing that you think about when you’re making a piece of art is, “Which BPM should I select as my template, because it’ll do the best on streaming?” I feel like that kind of mindset is very contagious for artists, especially because we’re so broke. So people are like, “Okay, I want to be an artist and I want to be able to pay my rent.” But yeah, I would rather die than figure out what BPM is the most important. It’s just not the reason why I’m doing it. And if I’m playing that song in a hole-in-the-wall bar for a bunch of people on a Wednesday night, that seems extra sad, because I’m like, “We’re supposed to be inventors.” We’re supposed to have the pop songwriters ripping us off. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Do you find that it’s mostly young musicians who are infected by that sort of mindset, or is it also happening with artists who have been at it for a while?
It’s across the board. And there are so many ways to compromise, and we all have to draw our lines somewhere. Whether it’s songwriters making a reel every day and hoping that it goes viral as their life raft, and then being like, “Okay, this is the song that people liked 25% more in this reel, so maybe I’ll make another song that’s kind of like that.” To me, that is not a creative practice. That is more like superstitious people at the casino who are like, “You know, it hasn’t hit black in a while, so we’re gonna hit black. It’s coming, right?”
Becoming a photographer
I know that the early writing of the record was inspired by these photo walks that you were taking during the pandemic.
It was not a visible or conscious inspiration, but I’m noticing the more that I’m thinking about this record and talking about it, how photography and my interest in that form of expression has informed this music. These lyrics would mostly be written when I’m out taking photos and taking a break, sitting on a bench, surrounded by people, in this kind of mindset of observing something external rather than mining the internal depth. I don’t want to make too much of a distinction between those things, but I think that there is something different when you’re alone in your room thinking about your personal relationships and your feelings, versus when you’re out in the world thinking about how it feels to be among these people, how it feels to live here, and then dredging up your feelings about that. It’s a sort of different order of lyric writing, maybe.
It also strikes me as a creative practice that’s maybe less quantifiable in the sense that you were talking about earlier, like getting into any sort of new art form that you don’t expect to make much money from.
I know so little about the art world of photography, I’m so outside of it. And I’m so grateful to not know anything about that. I don’t know what makes someone like a photo, and I don’t care. Maybe they like color more than black and white – maybe I’ve learned that. But it’s so detached from its commercial value to me. Also, photography is more expensive than making music. There are material costs to making film photography, so I’ve always felt like I try to offset those, like I develop my film in my bathtub, but I’ve always thought of it as, “This is not something that I’m gonna make money from.” It’s something that I’m going to lose money doing, but I’m going to enjoy doing this thing. It doesn’t have to be solvent, it doesn’t have to pay for itself or anything like that. It’s nice when it does, when I do press photos for people, but it’s just not the point.
How has taking press photos affected your relationship to music, being a listener but also an observer who captures musicians in that sense?
There’s so much there. Something that’s beautiful about any art form is its ability to point to something true about the world. And it doesn’t have to be honest about the way that it does that, I think. Bruce Springsteen is a great example of someone like that, who tells these stories that may or may not have happened, but they’re true. Like, I don’t know if Johnny 99 is a real person who was waving his gun around and ended up going to the electric chair, but he is. Bruce Springsteen made something true in that depiction of this character. Photography has a reputation for honesty: the camera simply spits back up what’s already there. And I don’t think that’s true. I think you point it where you want to point it, and you are in control of this moment of capture, and you want to say something about a person.
So when I go into press photo mode with someone, one of the first things I’ll ask someone is, “What are the ways that you like to be perceived, and what are the ways that make you uncomfortable to be perceived?” And those might be aspects of that person that are real that we’re going to either accentuate or obfuscate in the process of taking these photos. So we have control; we’re gonna lie a little bit, right? And I like collaborating in that way, where we’re going to create a little story together and we’re gonna try to find something true about who you are, and we’re gonna try to highlight that thing. When I take portraits in general, I’m like, “I’m reducing you to this moment, but I want this moment to say something about you that is meaningful.”
Being mad at stuff
There’s a lot of bitterness on the record, and one song where you really channel anger is ‘Draw Blood’. But then on ‘I Am a Singer’, there’s that line: “Even if the world needs shouting, begging for its soul, I am a singer.” My understanding of it is that you can always “shriek at a pitch more dissonant,” but you’re always drawn back to the gentleness. I feel like the fact that you do give yourself permission to be mad on this record accentuates the sweeter moments that are maybe more prominent.
I think that dynamic is kind of at the core of this. There’s so much compassion on this record, and there’s self-directed anger on ‘I Am a Singer’. It’s like, what kind of schmuck looks at this world and does this? It’s towards myself, but it’s also towards other people, like, “What are we fucking doing?” At the same time, I hope you can tell from this record that this is from the perspective of someone who really believes wholeheartedly in what they’re doing: being an artist, expressing themself, and inspiring other people to express themselves. I feel like, on this record, I’m like, “I believe I’m doing the Lord’s work, and I am a complete waste of breath.” [laughs] I can’t imagine meeting an artist that doesn’t think that way about their work.
There’s something suspicious if both things aren’t true at the same time.
If someone’s just like, “I’m the second coming of Jesus Christ,” they’re usually not very good. There’s usually this cocktail of: I think something that I’m doing is really important enough for me to make this whole swath of sacrifices – to basically ruin my life to share this thing and make it happen – but also, what if it’s not enough? What if it’s not good? What if it could be better?
Not to go back to Bruce Springsteen, but I will. I heard this story, I don’t even know if it’s true, of when he received the master tapes of Born in the USA. He thought it just sounded like absolute shit, and he stole them from the studio. He wrestled into a van with these master tapes to destroy them. You have to know that he was in there making those things, being like, “I have something to say. It has to be said.” And this other voice inside of him was like, “This is absolute dogshit.” And that’s what made this record. And my record. And everything I’ve ever made, honestly.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
A club photograph from 2008 announces itself before you read the caption. Bleached faces. Black background. Someone’s arm blurred across the corner of the frame. The flash did all of it.
For two decades, that hard, direct burst was how a night out looked afterward, and photographers built careers on it. Then it stopped being compulsory. Scroll through nightlife photography now, and the pictures are warmer, murkier, tinted whatever color the room happened to be.
Same subject: a crowded bar at 1 am. What changed is where the light comes from, and the reasons are half technical and half a shift in what we want to remember.
Why Direct Flash Defined an Era of Nightlife Photography
Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is where it all starts. The 126 images ran as a slideshow before Aperture published them as a book in 1986, and every one of them is flash-lit.
Goldin has said she had no real knowledge of light at the time because she lived by night. The pictures are unflattering and close, and they are honest because of that rather than despite it.
Mark Hunter launched The Cobrasnake in 2004 and turned the same tool into a nightly document, uploading hundreds of unedited flash photos the morning after a party.
Nobody had much choice. Film stock and early digital sensors could not record a dim room without help, so the flash was the price of admission. It did something social too. A flash announces the photograph. Everyone within a few meters knows a picture just happened, and they adjust. The flash lit the party and took part in it.
How Cameras Learned to Shoot Low Light Without Flash
The technical shift is easy to date. Early digital SLRs turned to much above ISO 1600, so shooting a dark venue without flash meant accepting a file you could not use. Sensor design improved through the 2010s, and a current full-frame body handles ISO 6400 with detail intact, often far higher.
Fast primes also got cheaper. An f/1.8 lens gathers roughly four times the light of a kit zoom at its widest setting, which is the difference between a usable frame and a wasted one. Mirrorless added the part that matters most in a dark room: the viewfinder shows the actual exposure before you commit.
None of it made low light photography free. High ISO still costs color depth and fine detail. What changed is that the cost stopped reading as failure. Grain became texture. A soft, noisy frame signals that someone was in the room rather than staging it afterward.
How Venue Lighting Became the Photographer’s Palette
While cameras were learning to see in the dark, the dark was getting more colorful. Bars, clubs, and restaurants moved to LED through the 2010s. US Department of Energy figures put LEDs at 8% of installed lighting units in 2015 and roughly half by 2020, making saturated color cheap to install and run. Wash lights, strips under bar counters andLED neon signs mounted behind the till put continuous coloured light into the room at roughly the height a photographer needs it.
That handed available light photography something it never had: a coloured key light, already positioned, already part of the scene. The photograph inherits the room’s identity. It is why a picture from a particular bar is often recognizable without anyone naming it.
Continuous light changes the mechanics too. Flash freezes motion whether you want it to or not. Ambient light hands that decision back through shutter speed, so a raised glass can be sharp or smeared.
Reading Color Cast Before You Raise the Camera
Mixed sources are the real challenge in a venue, and they explain why so many nightlife photos come back with off skin tones. One room can hold four color temperatures at once, and no white balance setting can correct them all.
How the common sources behave on camera:
Filament and tungsten bulbs, around 2700K. Warm and forgiving, with a color rendering index close to 100, the easiest light in any venue.
Glass neon. Gas discharge emits in narrow bands rather than across a spread, so saturated tubes clip early. Only the red-orange ones are actually neon; other colors come from argon, krypton, mercury, and phosphor coatings, which is why some glass photographs far more easily than the rest.
LED strip and LED neon. Steadier and broader in output, so much easier to balance. Fixtures switching below roughly 1 kHz will show up as banding at fast shutter speeds. Above about 2 kHz, it rarely appears at all.
Sodium street lamps through the window. The low-pressure type sits at a single orange wavelength. The high-pressure type is broader but scores around 20 on the color rendering index. Neither is fixable in editing.
Phone screens. Small, cold, and held close to the face. A fill light nobody planned for.
The color rendering index, the 0 to 100 scale for how honestly a source shows color, covers most of the rest. One catch: the headline figure averages eight test colors and leaves out R9, the saturated red that governs skin tones. A fixture can score 90 and still make a face look wrong.
Venue owners pick their colors for reasons that have nothing to do with cameras, drawing on established thinking abouthow specific colors shapea room’s mood. Photographers borrow that work whether or not they mean to.
Rooms Are Being Lit for the Camera Now
The loop has closed. Venues install lighting knowing the room will be photographed constantly, which is why so much signage now sits at seated head height against a clear wall. Listening bars have gone the other way on purpose, keeping levels low so the space resists being flattened into content.
Private events got there first. Illuminated lettering atweddings and private parties exists partly because somebody worked out that a warm source behind the dance floor does more for the photographs than any uplighting.
Flash never actually died, which is the part most accounts of this get wrong. It stopped being compulsory, then came back as a deliberate choice. The indie sleaze revival of the early 2020s put direct flash back in rotation as a style, though Vice has argued the revival is more echo chamber than real scene. Flash is now a decision, not a default.
There is a trade-off underneath this that photographers still argue about. Flash gave you consistency: you brought the light with you, and a difficult room could not ruin the shoot. Working with whatever the venue provides means accepting that a badly lit bar will produce badly lit pictures, no matter what camera you own.
What you get back is why the shift stuck. A flash tells the room a photograph is being taken. The room’s own light announces nothing, which is why the pictures look closer to how the night actually felt.
The relationship between artists and their fans has always been shaped by the tools available to them. In 2026, that relationship is more direct, more personal, and more visually driven than it has ever been. Musicians are no longer waiting for radio play or label distribution to reach listeners. They are building their own channels, their own content, and their own communities, often with a phone, a laptop, and a handful of well-chosen tools. What used to require a full production crew and a marketing budget can now be handled by a single person with the right setup. The gap between a working musician and their audience has quietly closed in ways that would have seemed unlikely even five years ago. What follows is a look at the technology actually making a difference for working artists right now.
Recording Glasses and Wearable Capture Devices
One of the more practical shifts in recent years has been the move toward first-person content. Fans want to see the world from the artist’s point of view, not just a polished music video shot by a director. Wearable video technology has found a natural fit in music for exactly that reason.Recording glasses are worn like a regular pair of frames and capture video without the artist needing to hold anything or set up a shot. The result is footage that looks the way it actually felt, a soundcheck from the stage, a walk through a venue before doors open, a late-night session in the studio caught without interrupting the work. It is not cinematic, and that is the point. Audiences on short-form platforms tend to respond better to footage that feels honest than to anything that looks too produced. For musicians already juggling writing, recording, and posting their own content, smart glasses with a built-in camera just mean one less thing to think about.
Short-Form Video Platforms as Real-Time Promotion
Short-form video has changed how songs get discovered. A track that might have taken months to build an audience through traditional radio now gains traction in days if the right clip lands. Artists are using these platforms not just to post finished work but to share the process: chord progressions being worked out, lyrics being rewritten, rough mixes playing in a car. The algorithm rewards consistency and authenticity over production value, which means a musician filming from their bedroom often outperforms a label-backed campaign. Camera glasses fit naturally into this workflow, giving artists a way to document their creative process without breaking focus or needing a second person to run a camera.
Community Platforms and Subscription Models
Subscription-based community platforms have given artists a way to build a paying audience outside of streaming royalties. These tools work because they shift the relationship from passive listener to active supporter. Fans who pay a monthly subscription expect something back: early access to music, behind-the-scenes content, personal updates, or exclusive live streams. The artists doing this well tend to treat their subscriber communities less like a fan club and more like a small group of people they actually stay in touch with. The content shared in these spaces tends to be more personal than anything posted publicly, which is what keeps people subscribed month after month.
AI-Assisted Production and Songwriting Tools
AI-assisted tools built into music production software have become part of the workflow for a growing number of independent artists. The most common use is not wholesale generation but idea generation: using AI to sketch out a chord progression, try a genre hybrid, or build a rough reference track that a musician then rewrites and records properly. Artists are also using AI-powered mastering tools to get releases ready for streaming platforms without paying a professional mastering engineer. None of this replaces musicianship, but it does make it easier for artists without label budgets to put out polished work.
Live Streaming and Spatial Audio Technology
Live streaming platforms have come a long way. Dedicated concert streaming tools now support high-quality audio, tipping and ticketing features, and interactive chat that lets artists talk back to their audience in real time. Spatial audio, once limited to high-end studio monitoring, has made its way into consumer headphones and streaming services. Several major platforms now support immersive audio mixes, and artists are starting to record with those formats in mind from day one. For live streams in particular, the mix of good audio quality and direct fan interaction has made virtual concerts a real revenue stream rather than something artists fell back on out of necessity.
Smart Merchandise and NFC-Linked Physical Products
Physical merchandise has made a quiet comeback, largely because artists have found ways to tie it to digital experiences. NFC chips embedded in vinyl records, clothing tags, or wristbands allow a fan to tap their phone and access exclusive content: a short documentary, an unreleased track, a personal message from the artist. This treats physical merchandise not as a static product but as an ongoing point of contact. Some artists are linking smart merch to their community platforms, so that buying an item automatically grants access to a subscriber tier. It is a practical way to get more out of the audience that already cares enough to show up at a show or order directly from a website.
Analytics and Audience Data Tools
Understanding who is listening, where, and on what platform used to require a label’s marketing team. Audience analytics tools now give independent musicians access to the same demographic and geographic data that major labels use to plan tours and ad spend. An artist based in one country can see that a big chunk of their streams are coming from a city they have never visited and book a tour date accordingly. The same data helps with targeted advertising on social platforms, where knowing the age and listening habits of an existing audience makes it much easier to reach new fans who fit that profile.
Conclusion
The common thread across all of these tools is directness. Each one closes the gap between the artist and the person listening, whether that is through first-person footage shot with smart recording eyewear, a personal message attached to a piece of merchandise, or a live stream where a musician can read and respond to comments as they come in. The artists getting the most out of these tools in 2026 are not necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who picked the right tools for how they actually work and stuck with them long enough to build something real.
