22: So what was the sound of Tory Britain?

We’ve become so accustomed to bad news that Labour’s landslide
victory in the UK general election has been a hard one to
process, despite it being a dead cert. The Tories are actually
gone? Can it be real? So this week we decided to piece together
our memories of the last 14 years of cuts, corruption and chaos,
and see if we can identify the sound of Tory Britain. 


We’ve spent most of our music careers toiling under the long
shadow of George Osborne’s turbo-cuts to public spending – not to
mention Brexit batshittery, the crazy days of Corbynism, the
aftermath of the Grenfell disaster and Black Lives Matter, and of
course the lockdown years and attendant Covid conspiracies. 


But the politics of austerity Britain also changed the nation’s
musical culture, and in this episode we talk about the dominance
of festivals at the expense of clubbing, the sound of the student
protest movement, the emergence of drill in the hollowed out
communities of South London, and the political backlash to the
five-headed monster of Cameron, May, Boris, Truss (lol) and
Sunak. 


We also have a think about why Keir Starmer seems to have
forgotten his musical roots, and what we might expect from a
Labour government that’s appointed Lisa “Towns” Nandy as culture
minister.


Remember that this Saturday 20th July we’ll be in Glasgow for a
live No Tags experience, hosted by Feena and Wheelman at Glasgow
University Chapel! Tickets are available on the door, or you can
sign up for membership of the Events Research Programme for just
£3.50. 


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