Table of contents for Issue 82: Autumn/Winter 2025 in Huck

KOJEY RADICAL don’t look down THE NEW ALBUM out 19th september WELCOME TO HUCK 82 —THE MUSIC ISSUE. AT HUCK WE PRIDE OURSELVES ON HAVING A UNIQUE POINT OF VIEW ON THE WORLD. SO WHEN WE DECIDED THAT THIS ONE WOULD BE A MUSIC ISSUE, I KNEW THAT WE’D HAVE TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY. WITH MUSIC (AS WITH ALL ART) YOU NEED SPACE TO CREATE. PHYSICAL SPACES TO WRITE AND PERFORM, SPACE IN YOUR HEAD TO THINK, SPACE TO EVOLVE. OUR COVER FEATURE KOJEY RADICAL IS THE PERSONIFICATION OF THIS — FROM SKATING AROUND LONDON’S HOXTON WHERE HE GREW UP KNOWING HE WANTED TO DO SOMETHING CREATIVE BUT WASN’T SURE WHAT, TO LOCAL COMMUNITY SPACES WHERE HE WAS ENCOURAGED IN HIS MUSICAL PURSUITS, TO HIS FRIENDS AND FAMILY WHO HAVE INSPIRED…

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH WHAT KIND OF MUSIC DO YOU LIKE TO LISTEN TO MOST WHEN YOU’RE TRAINING? I think I mostly listen to pop music, then reggae, then french songs, then calming songs or old school music. I like a bit of everything! HOW IMPORTANT IS MUSIC TO YOU FOR TRAINING? Music is a help to get happy and motivated when you are not feeling it! It can really help when you have to be training every day. DO YOU PREFER TO SHUT THE WORLD OUT WITH HEADPHONES WHEN YOU’RE PREPARING FOR A COMPETITION OR BLAST MUSIC OUT LOUD? I like to shut things out and use my headphones, yes :) WHICH SURFER ON THE PRO CIRCUIT IS THE BEST DJ? Hmmm… Probably Gabriel Medina, who plays great Brazilian music……

ALONG the shingle stretches of the UK’s eastern Kent coast, where dog walkers cross paths with seasoned anglers, a new kind of fishing community is gathering. They come with rods and firewood, flasks and fold-up chairs. Some know how to tie a rig, others are holding a rod for the first time. This isn’t about the biggest catch. It’s about who showed up and who felt welcome — who felt like they belonged. We Are Black Fish is a grassroots coastal collective run by Corynne Elliott (also known as Mercury Prize winning musician Speech Debelle) and Alexis Lee, two queer women of colour and artists with a shared mission to make fishing, foraging and coastal skills accessible to the people most often excluded from them. That means Black people, inner…

“MUSIC IS GOING INTO THE RANDOM JAZZ BAR AT 11PM. IT’S BEING THERE, SWEATING, SINGING, DANCING. THAT’S MUSIC” CASHMERE of the chance to tour the Tears should have been a turning point for Kojey Radical, but Covid-19 swept the planet and he was robbed album. Arriving at the tail-end of 2019, the jazz, funk and gospel-flecked offering was a breakout moment for the East London rhymer, but the chance to reach its full potential was halted by no cause of his own. It was no flash in the pan, however, for his next project, Reason To Smile, brought him a second chance: built on a lot of the good will its predecessor built up — and a fanbase eager to catch him live — Reason To Smile found him on bigger…

As the world opened up after Covid, Nocturnal Creatures Society started putting on underground events and raves in unusual places across New York and New Jersey. Founded by a duo known as Astrid and Magik who’d taught themselves to mix during lockdown, their initiative has rapidly built a devoted following — especially within the queer community — as young people seek alternative, self-governed party spaces. In a time when many queer individuals report feeling increasingly marginalised, Nocturnal Creatures Society offers a space for uninhibited self-expression and connection. Italian photographer Matteo Cassini found himself at one of the early raves and has become an unofficial-ish documenter of the goings on. We caught up with him to discuss the photos he’s taken, the adrenaline rush of the events, and why communities like…

Set over 800 miles away from mainland Portugal, the Azores archipelago has historically been far detached from Portugal’s music and culture. But in recent years, a local scene has begun to emerge. ON the docks of a small fishing village on São Miguel’s north coast, the largest island of the Portuguese Azores archipelago, around 50 musicians take to the stage. They’re all wearing hooded capes, with each responsible for a different part — a drum, synthesiser, microphone or stringed instrument. Standing in front of them, Ricardo Baptista begins to wave his arms frantically, and the music begins. It’s deep, rolling and groovy, as electronic synths and complex syncopated percussion underline chanted folk vocals, with long build ups and releases that are reminiscent of African Head Charge’s ’80s dub psychedelia. One song…

Graham Sayle has battled demons that would flatten most — and barely broken a sweat. We sit down with the hardcore veteran to talk about channeling raw emotion and lived experience into his music, navigating fame, finding peace in a pit full of punks, and what the future holds. FORKS of lightning split an indigo sky as rain lashes down, and I pound the belt of a prehistoric treadmill in my parents’ garage — one foot at a time — staring into a gold-framed print of Muhammad Ali, a prize my dad won for me playing darts at the rodeo. He’s in the hospital, fighting like a rockstar to get back in the proverbial ring after two back-to-back seizures this morning. Meanwhile, I’ve already been knocked for six. I’m attempting to…

South London rapper Jianbo knew he was doing alright when he got recognised in the Croydon car park of legendary Asian supermarket Wing Yip. A woman in a people carrier rolled down her window, blasting his single ‘Mongkok Madness’ off the 2022 EP, Yellow Peril. “She was like, ‘Waah, ming sing [Cantonese for ‘pop star’]!” he laughs. “Then she just drove off.” You could easily slot Jianbo into the rising global movement of third culture East and Southeast Asian rappers (see: Indonesian enfant terrible Rich Brian or Japanese-Australian producer-singer Joji) but really, he’s the kind sonic magpie that only London could produce. Born in Deptford to Chinese and Vietnamese refugees, he layers lyrical grime bars on top of post-punk bass lines, propulsive UKG beats and finishes it off the experimental…

London-based photographer and film-maker Jonangelo Molinari has spent many years visiting Rio’s favelas. When he started seeing the relatively new dance culture known as passinho, he knew he had to meet the dancers and document what they were doing. HOW DID THIS PHOTO PROJECT MANIFEST ITSELF, JONANGELO? I actually did a project a few years back about illegal baile funk Fluxo Parties in the favelas of São Paulo. I would often see passinho dancers at them and was fascinated and blown away by their energy and moves. A few years later when I was in Rio, I was able to meet a few and I knew we needed to shoot a project with them. WHAT IS PASSINHO FOR THOSE WHO DON’T KNOW? Passinho is a super fast and expressive Brazilian…

ON a sunny morning in a Himalayan schoolyard, a group of children gathers around a man singing a traditional Nepalese tune. The melody is familiar: bright, rhythmic, and alive. But the lyrics are not about harvest or heartbreak. They’re about tectonic plates, foreshocks, and why ducking under a table might kill you in Nepal. And the man leading the song is not a schoolteacher or folk performer. He’s Shiba Subedi, a 37-year-old geophysicist and one of Nepal’s few scientist-songwriters, who is using music to save lives. Subedi’s unusual path began in the wake of Nepal’s worst earthquake in recent memory. On 25 April 2015, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal and neighbouring China, India and Bangladesh. Subedi was on the campus of Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, studying for a master’s degree…

BEHIND an industrial gate in Athens’ Kerameikos neighbourhood, a design and skateboard project with a bar and a bowl has become an unlikely hub for the city’s alternative music scene. Now, with a global reputation for being one of the city’s top hangout spots, owner and founder Zachos Varfis talks about posterless parties, no-rules DJ sets, and a ramp that listens. In a place shaped by histories of passage, resistance and reinvention, Latraac unfolds like a quiet threshold into an alternative present. A space named after a playful skateboard-referencing nod to a French political headline, “La transition a commencé” — the transition has begun. Latraac opened in 2017 by architect and skateboarder Zachos Varfis in partnership with cultural collective BIOS. The bowl was built using digital fabrication (computer aided design)…