Stephanie Phillips

Takiaya Reed’s ceiling-shaking soundscapes, imbued with anti-colonialist fury, have taken this dynamic musical project from the underground to widespread critical acclaim
Ask Takiaya Reed of the Melbourne-based doom band Divide and Dissolve how she created their megalithic sound and she’ll tell you a story that aligns with her nature as a staunch believer in own her artistic path: it came to her in a dream. “It sticks with me, this sound,” says Reed. “I’m always chasing after it.”
In 2017, dr...

The 1994 documentary Reeling With PJ Harvey is not a household name outside of fan communities but to Stephanie Phillips, the Maria Mochnacz directed film remains a fitting example of an artist’s need to curate their image

As London-based hardcore act High Vis release their second album Blending, M Magazine speaks to the band about how therapy helped unlock a sweeter sound on their new album.
There are plenty of acts that neatly fit the stereotype of the brooding, forever angry at the world hardcore band. Rising stars of the London DIY hardcore scene, High Vis, want nothing more than to move away from that image. The band are veterans of a scene where the outpouring of emotion that hits you in the belly of the ...

This article is part of Open Secrets, a collaboration between gal-dem and VICE that explores abusive behaviour in the music industry – and how it has been left unchecked for too long. Read gal-dem’s Open Secrets articles here, and read VICE’s Open Secrets articles here.
When DJ Rebekah read about the allegations of sexual assault surrounding fellow DJs Erick Morillo and Derrick May in 2020, she saw th...

There are a few things you can count on in a British summer: two or three days of sunshine, an afternoon spent burning sausages to a crisp at a mate’s barbecue, and the cultural ubiquity of music festivals.

Life in a touring band brings with it a particular set of hazards. Brendan Yates, lead singer of the Baltimore hardcore band Turnstile, has just experienced the big one: The tour van broke down. “I had a rough morning,” he confesses over the phone, speaking from the recently repaired van as the five-piece band races toward their next show in Phoenix.
Judging by the reaction to their new album, Glow On, this won’t be the last time the band will be faced with battling the vagaries of life on to...

The desire to take a music project beyond the confines of an album has driven the career direction of so many creatively ambitious musicians. From classic studio films, such as The Who’s “Tommy” (1975) or Prince’s “Purple Rain” (1984), to extended music video projects, such as Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” in 2016, the music-to-film pipeline, when done successfully, can establish an artist’s auteur status.

On the wall of Skin’s Brooklyn home studio hangs a picture of Grace Jones. The Jamaican model is crawling on all fours, her face frozen in a sultry snarl and angled defiantly towards the camera.

For much of Skin’s career, she has found herself compared to the artworld icon and disco firebrand. “I always saw it in a positive light, but it used to annoy me that people are so limited in their imagination of how many Black people, Black women, there were,” explains the Skunk Anansie frontwoman ov...

Post-punk friends, writer Jon Savage and guitarist and singer Johnny Marr meet to discuss their relationship, their enduring work ethic and the challenges facing young people today
Today has been declared an Equals day. This wasn’t a call made by Rolling Stone, but by avid fans of the north London pop group and long-time close friends, author and music journalist Jon Savage and legendary guitarist and songwriter Johnny Marr. As we sit in Marr’s Stockport studio on a fiercely dreary Monday aft...

From a song so good she almost forgot her shopping, to the iconoclastic brilliance of Alice Coltrane, Bas Jan’s Serafina Steer guides Stephanie Phillips through thirteen songs and albums that have inspired her

Perhaps it is because there are so few odes to Black British girlhood that when one comes around a fight for ownership can break out so easily. This was the narrative that came to dominate south east London rapper Enny’s 2020 single ‘Peng Black Girls’. Originally featuring unsigned singer Amia Brave, the collaboration and accompanying video were praised for its joyous depiction of the beauty and variety of Black womanhood. When a new remix of the song dropped, many were surprised to see her l...

Even through the small and pixelated screen of our video call, the positive energy radiating from producer and multi-instrumentalist cktrl feels as if it could power a small jet plane. Calling from his home studio in Lewisham, southeast London, cktrl – real name Bradley Miller – is dressed casuall...

Indie star Moses Sumney talks the joys of lockdown, not staying in his ‘box’ and the objectification of Black men

Andy Bell of Ride talks Stephanie Phillips through his Baker’s Dozen, from listening to Spacemen 3 in a damp student box room to handing Tierra Whack a copy of Green Eggs And Ha