When Elliott Smith awed a TV studio — and silenced the raucous 90s

At almost the exact midpoint of the 1990s, a relatively unknown Elliott Smith appeared on FX's Breakfast Time. What followed was a quietly powerful antidote to that loud and boisterous decade.

6 June 2026

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Jesca Hoop live at Union Chapel in London

Hoop delivers a captivating set of quiksilver tonal shifts, flooding the half-filled Gothic revival church with her charisma and singular music.

THE ‘ONE TO WATCH’ INTERVIEW

Albert Hogan: ‘We humans have the means to connect to something in the soul’

Albert Hogan on his first musical hero, Engelbert Humperdinck, recording in New York in his younger days and why Leonard Cohen's ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ is the perfect song to play before you go out on a Saturday night.

‘Pete Townshend had us running around spinning the speakers’

On the release of the Bookshop Bands’ new EP Oz Sucks, Ben Please talks about the creative chaos of working with Pete Townshend.

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Founded by David Rea, State of Sound cuts through the noise with incisive music journalism, providing an independent, analogue voice in a digital world.

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