Jude Jones, Author at The Cold Magazine

Dandy Day's exhibition on mourning and childhood, in The Cold Magazine

Dandy Day’s New Exhibition Explores Mourning, Childhood and WWE

July 2, 2026

Dandy Day became interested in wrestling because she had to. Growing up in Langley, Slough and the youngest of five siblings, the current Royal Academy student spent much of her childhood following her older brothers around. WWE and wrestling was a constant feature of family life, and being thrown around and roughened up was part of the fun. The world of professional wrestling is the subject of her second solo exhibition, Ruthless Aggression, on show at TACO! gallery until July 26th. Day’s recreation of a childhood bedroom – ambivalently theirs

Karina Golisova's photographs of Central Europe's underground

Karina Golisova’s Tumblr-Inspired Photos of Central Europe’s Underground

June 10, 2026

Karina Golisova captures a Europe that is both in transition and which has been left behind. Raised in Bratislava, Slovakia, before moving to Czechia, Golisova captures the music and squatting scenes of those cities – raw and alive – with an intimacy people outside those countries aren’t often shown. Documenting those worlds from within their ranks, Golisova makes models of her friends whose personal worlds and youth become stages for the political, speaking to a generation stymied by economic decline, Internet supremacy and the latter-day existentialism of 21st-century life. As

Dua Saleh is Imagining Queer Love at the End of the World

June 5, 2026

On January 22, 2026, American federal agents arrested the lawyer and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong. A vocal defender of human rights and an equally vocal opponent of ICE, Armstrong was accused of preventing free worship – a violation of the First Amendment – after organising a protest against Cities Church in St Paul, Minnesota, which had allegedly been collaborating with ICE on its deportation regime. On January 23, the following day, the official White House X page posted a celebration of her apprehension, sharing a photo of forces escorting Armstrong

Genesis Owusu, interviewed by The Cold Magazine

Genesis Owusu’s Anti-Capitalist Gospel

May 26, 2026

Genesis Owusu doesn’t want his newest album to be nuanced. Normally, an artist hopes that their work will exist in a spectrum of shades: open to an individual’s exegesis, capable of stirring subjective interpretations special to each beholder. But Owusu wants his music to exist only in a synaesthetic explosion of bright, furious red. Now, he explains, isn’t the time for shades. “I wanted to make an album that was as direct as possible. I want this album to be the soundtrack to somebody’s rebellion.” Give Redstar Wu & The

Cruising Archaeology's new book on sex, surveillance and trash, in The Cold Magazine

‘Faggots Fuck as Empires Crumble’: Cruising Archaeology’s New Book Explores Sex, Surveillance and Trash

May 16, 2026

Cruising is a crash course in compassion, says Jack Scollard, co-founder of queer nightlife and publishing powerhouse SMUT Press. “On apps, you can filter who you’re looking for,” they explain. “But when you’re cruising, you might hook up with somebody who falls outside of what you thought you desired.” Cruising, they say, opens possibilities; it teaches us to treat strangers with a new sort of kindness. Jack is also the architect of the archival art project Cruising Archaeology, which preserves sexual detritus recovered from cruising grounds around Europe. Objects ranging

A shaved-head man crouching nude among bare branches in front of a stacked wood pile, wearing only white socks and black boots, looking directly into the camera — photograph by Slava Mogutin

Photographer, Exile, Icon: Slava Mogutin Regrets Nothing

April 20, 2026

In 1995, Slava Mogutin left his homeland of Russia. “Overnight, I lost everything I had,” he says, “my audience, my family, my circle of friends, my notoriety. I had to rebuild my life and career from scratch.” Born in Siberia in 1974 – a region best known for its atmospheric brutality, a frigid Antipodes for dissenters and deviants – Slava lived through the collapse of the Soviet dream and the fleeting, woozy liberalisation of Russian society under “notorious drunkard” Boris Yeltsin. Through that period’s perforated Iron Wall, Slava dined from

A portrait of Lauren Auder leaning against a large tree trunk, wearing a brown and black leather jacket and yellow-tinted glasses in soft natural light.

Lauren Auder: ‘I Don’t Want to Make Cool Music’

March 27, 2026

Lately, Lauren Auder has been in earth-shattering love. “The world has had a completely different sheen, like when you’re walking through a forest on psychedelics. Everything is the same, but it has a different glow.” Auder is an erudite musician-model-Substacker whose new album, Whole World As Vigil, takes equal doses of inspiration from anarchist gay author Dennis Cooper and guerilla philosopher Hakim Bey as it does from Madchester music and Paris’ gabber scene, the latter of which she says was “a huge part of me forming myself as an adult.”

Courtney Barnett on the digital cover of COLD Magazine. The Australian singer-songwriter is sitting inside a red circular architectural frame, wearing a black suit and white top. Text reads "Courtney Barnett is back".

Courtney Barnett’s Creatures of Habit

March 23, 2026

Courtney Barnett has been having a mid-thirties crisis. She might not say it (she keeps her cards close to her chest, speaking broadly about “life” and “things”; as she once confessed to the Guardian, “I don’t really like talking about myself”) but the symptoms are all there. A general sense of feeling “lost”; the relocation from Melbourne to LA “on a whim” after the closure of her self-started record label, Milk!; and, most damningly, the adoption of a muppet-y poodle mix named Larry. “I never used to understand why dog

A person in underwear arches backward dramatically while operating DJ equipment, illuminated by vibrant purple and blue stage lighting and surrounded by smoke.

Bathing Suits are Leeds’ Always Dancey, Always Loud, Always Sexy Electro-Noise Outfit

February 27, 2026

Bathing Suits have just wrapped their debut show at London’s Lexington and frontwoman Freyja Blevins is dripping water and sweat, dressed only in the bottom half of her peach illusion bathing suit. Blonde, 6ft 6in and svelte, she has spent the last 40 minutes thrashing manically on stage, as if Ian Curtis’s ghost had suddenly possessed a supermodel’s body (she has recently been contacted about modelling, though she’s reluctant after watching Reality Check). “I feel good,” she says politely, slinking backstage. A 50-something fan ambles past. “That was fucking heavy.”

A woman with long dark hair, wearing a white furry coat and white top, lies on a black surface and looks at the camera. The magazine cover reads COLD DIGITAL and simOne knows how to have fun.

sim0ne knows how to have fun

February 16, 2026

sim0ne is a through-and-through party girl, a profession she threw herself into when she was just 15 years old. Now the founding mother of her own club night, club zer0, and a world-renowned DJ and rave fanatic, sim0ne spoke to The Cold Magazine just ahead of New Year’s Eve 2025-6 to talk about her upcoming EP zer0, catharsis and Kylie Minogue. Before I interview Simone Murphy, better known as sim0ne, I know it’s going to be fun. Because, dear reader, not all interviews are fun. Some are like pulling a

A dimly lit street corner at night features an old-fashioned pub with a large bay window, dark green facade, and glowing red lights inside. The entrance is marked with the number 323 above the door.

UK Independent Venue Week 2026: Cold’s Favourite Music Venues

January 26, 2026

The independent music venue is, it can seem, an endangered species. I won’t bore you with the details, which are seemingly better trodden than England’s dancefloors: the hundreds of pubs, clubs and music joints forced to shutter up under the long shadows of austerity, lockdowns and arts-industry cuts; Britain’s monastic youth who would rather buy a gym membership than grab a pint. The list goes on. Maybe it’s also because artists don’t need venues anymore. Who does when fame’s freshest vector is short-format videos that can be recorded then sent

A person wearing a patterned knit headband is partially illuminated against a dark background, with most of their face and surroundings in shadow.

RHR Talks Slang, Sound and Brazilian Dance

January 8, 2026

In the last few years, Brazilian dance music has become one of global music’s hottest commodities – from the bailes of São Paulo to crowded London Fashion Week afterparties – and RHR one of the movement’s hottest talents. With an explosive Boiler Room set and Skrillex sessions under his belt, his performances melt funk, dancehall, techno, rap and pop into a euphoric – and distinctly Brazilian – ocean of rhythm, sweat and swagger. Releasing a new EP in January, The Cold Magazine caught up with the Brazilian DJ to discuss

Mochakk, wearing a black sleeveless shirt, stands outdoors with mountains in the background. The natural lighting and clear sky evoke a scene reminiscent of a still from Belo horizonte documentary.

Funk do Brasil: Mochakk takes us inside Belo Horizonte’s dark, addictive sound

December 11, 2025

How did funk go from a gritty delicacy of the Brazilian favelas to one of the most infectious dance sounds on the world stage? This April, Beatport – electronic music’s global adjudicator – officially recognised Brazilian funk as an independent genre, recognising what the movement itself has already known for decades. Now, the music platform is collaborating with music company ONErpm to produce a docuseries telling the tale of Brazilian funk from the people who have shaped its sound – hosted by Mochakk, the high-energy Brazilian DJ who has sold

Anna von Hausswolff and her album Iconoclasts, in The Cold Magazine

Anna von Hausswolff’s “Iconoclasts” is a Seven-Year Search for the Divine

October 27, 2025

Scrambling to call Anna von Hausswolff – the genre-pushing experimentalist whose oeuvre has implicated church organs and warbling shrieks, whose sound transcends music to occupy that sonic third space where one may find the likes of Ethel Cain’s Perverts and Diamanda Galás – I mention in passing that I’d studied History as an undergraduate. Medieval History, that is, that abject and disarticulated world of Babel-esque churches and convulsing mystics, of Marian visions, bleeding wounds, and ritualised rite. A world to which, I sense, Anna somehow belongs. Eventually finding a quiet

Performer gazing at a glass display filled with figurines under pink neon light, scene from Łukasz Twarkowski’s “ROHTKO”, photographed by Artūrs Pavlovs for Cold Magazine.

Łukasz Twarkowski’s “ROHTKO” at the Barbican is a Play about NFTs, AI Slop, and Authenticity

October 2, 2025

The other day, my quinquagenarian mother texted me a link to an Instagram reel, imploring me to watch this heartwarming video that had brought her to the threshold of tears. The video in question was slop: an AI simulation of a snow leopard inexplicably lost at sea then miraculously saved by a quasi-Christological pack of dolphins. Of course, I rolled my eyes, then dutifully texted her that famous creed, Don’t believe everything you read (or, nowadays, see, watch, or hear) on the internet. But the Polish-born theatre iconoclast Łukasz Twarkowski

Luvcat lies on a green floor in red tartan pants, cartoon-print bikini top, and leopard-print hair bow, with legs raised and silver heels, featured on the cover of Cold Digital.

Luvcat is Your Newest Obsession’s Newest Obsession

August 28, 2025

According to apocryphal legend, Luvcat is a circus runaway born on the Parisian Seine to the forlorn dirges of Leonard Cohen. This made her February performance at the French capital’s art deco behemoth L’Olympia – supporting wily britpop staples The Libertines – something of a natural homecoming. In the seven months since, the artist has been everywhere, including the Northern Music Awards stage to win Best Breakthrough Act and back to Paris to play with your favourite artist’s favourite artist Chappell Roan at Rock en Seine, a pop star with

Yoshitomo Nara painting “After the Acid Rain,” wide-eyed figure in orange dress, Japanese contemporary art.

Yoshitomo Nara’s Twisted Cuties Are the Art Show of the Summer

June 19, 2025

You’ll probably recognise the iconography of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, even if you don’t immediately recognise his name. Fat-cheeked and wide-eyed girls who stare unsentient (or sometimes hyper-sentient) into oblivion like Sonny Angels painted by Klimt. Punkish toddlers with vampire teeth and halting glares, demanding “NO NUKES” or thrashing-out to The Ramones. These figures, like strange anti-saints in the stained-glass church of postmodernity, have been abundantly decorating social media feeds, populating pre-Labubu blind boxes, and appearing on Stella McCartney runways for well over a decade now; they are also among