No Tags

So we had another idea for a movie canon.
After blinking our way through The Moment – the recent mockumentary about Charli XCX by director Aidan Zamiri – we got thinking about a certain kind of music film that exists between the margins of biopic and rockdoc. Not real, not exactly fake… and all the more incisive for it.
We came up with a handful of movies – some of them HIGHLY recommended! – which dramatise rather than document the artist’s status as a ‘star’: their negotiations with fame and celebrity, their discomfort with being the centre of attention, their feelings of being trapped inside the machine.
In our conversation about these films – including Pavements, The Nowhere Inn, Spice World, A Hard Day’s Night and Slade in Flame – we think about the irreversible vibe shift that marks 21st century humour, and identify the influence of film and TV comedy, from the Goon Show to Charlie Brooker.
The canon is a slim one so far – at least compared to our adventures in Big Beat Cinema, the made-up movie niche coined by Finn and mapped out over two NT episodes and a list last year. But we’ve built a Rockufiction Letterboxd list nonetheless and are all ears for your suggestions. A reminder of the criteria: A film about a musician or band in which they play themselves, generally to comic effect. A blurring of reality and fiction. Not a biopic. Not a documentary.
This episode contains some spoilers but not too many. If you need to skip the Charli chat for any reason, it’s from 17:00–29:00.


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Some of the most exciting dance music around right now is coming out of Baltimore.
Reenergised by a younger generation of artists putting a fresh spin on the Baltimore Club sound, the city is producing stacks of great new records – and we keep hearing dazzled on-the-ground reports from our cool DJ friends (yes, we have them!) about the shows they’ve played there.
Kade Young and JIALING are two of the central figures in the city’s new school, known for running events and releasing a stream of club bangers via their label WOE. They had plenty to tell us about why Baltimore is the real engine room of US dance music right now, and why its importance remains undersung. As well as clueing us into the local scene in 2026, they offered an insider perspective on the last 20 years of Baltimore Club.
We also managed to record the entire episode without making a joke about The Wire, so well done us. (Come at JIALING, you best not miss.)
Before that, for this show’s intro, we offer our recent scene reports: Tom’s trip to see Tony Njoku’s All Our Knives are Always Sharp at the Southbank Centre, and Chal mucking in at the SMUT Press night at the Distillery.
We also tackle the elephant in the big room: Fred Again and Thomas Bangalter’s back-to-back at Alexandra Palace. Was this an event for the ages? Should the man behind ‘Club Soda’ be lowering himself to making mash-ups with a bloke with eight hyperlinked family members on Wikipedia? Or are they both in fact nepo baby posh men? Find out inside!


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Taganistas may know Lil Internet from his music videos (Beyoncé, Diplo), his high-concept DJ mixes, or his ever-present voice on Twitter. Since 2017 his main focus has been New Models – a website, podcast and active Discord.
But the reason we asked Lil Internet to join us on No Tags is his latest music project – a brand new, rule-based genre he’s calling gencore. Showcased across two mixes released in 2024 and 2025, gencore is completely AI-generated from Udio.
More controversially, Lil Internet proposes that gencore marks an evolution – or maybe even the endstate – of the hardcore continuum.
Obviously this was catnip to us. We spent a great hour with Lil Internet talking about the AI music landscape, how Udio’s quirks give AI music ‘soul’, moral boundaries and Bandcamp’s AI ban.
And for the first 30 minutes of the show, we each pick a Winter Olympics sport, compare our gunmanship, and offer some recommendations – including Otto Benson, 6amsunset and They Are Gutting a Body of Water.
We do No Tags for the love, but if you enjoy the show and want to show a little love back, you can do so for £5 per month.


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Reports of the death of nightlife may be greatly exaggerated. In recent months we’ve heard of new clubs opening in Peckham and Brixton, an audio upgrade at Tola and plans for a DIY venue in Catford. Even the Old Blue Last is good again!
Yet the official figures paint a depressing picture, with hundreds of venues lost, and thousands of jobs. So which story is right? To inspect the situation, Party Lines author Ed Gillett returns to the podcast fresh from his contribution to the London Nightlife Taskforce report.
The report's 23 recommendations are the result of a year-long consultation following the axing of the night czar role previously held by Amy Lamé. Ed talks to us about noise, crime, gentrification, the closure of Corsica Studios, and his concern that the discourse of decline might be doing more harm than good.
Plus, Chal reports back from the Green Party Party at Heaven, a fundraiser-slash-rally for Zack Polanski’s insurgent electoral movement. Are we really letting Lobsta B lead the green revolution?



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A stack of new interviews are coming down the No Tags pipes right now, but first we return to a conversation from our sold-out event at the ICA last month.
If you couldn’t make it down, or if you were there but forgot to take notes, this episode is a keeper. London-based rave researcher Anjali Prashar-Savoie set out her vision of a ‘club commons’ – a radical, positive and participatory kind of nightlife, as inspired by her research into the history of queer scenes in the UK, from lesbian sound systems with a creche on the side to George Michael-themed free parties.
The interview section begins at 41m. Before that we spend some time reporting on our New Year jollies, our seasonal “locking in” progress, and recent film-watching (Into The Abyss, Marty Supreme, The Smashing Machine).
Then a conversation about the growing magnetism of Substack, a nine-year-old newsletter platform that’s suddenly having a moment with musicians and celebs. Does the Troye Sivan newsletter herald a new intimacy in fan-artist relations? Or is this just another example of Brands Saying Bae? (With apologies to Shawn Reynaldo, who wrote his own First Floor newsletter on this subject a few days after we recorded ours. Soz.)
If you missed it, the ICA event was also a book launch for No Tags Vol 2: Conversations on underground music culture, featuring interviews from the last year of the podcast and four brand new essays. The book is available from our Shopify, and from select bookshops and record shops.
In other news! Chal has written about Britney Spears and her memoir for the latest issue of the London Review of Books. (It also references Jeff Weiss’s 2024 book Waiting For Britney Spears, which we interviewed him about last summer.) And Tom has more dance music out on his label Local Action.


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