Robin Murray
Robin Murray is a music editor and writer at Clash, known for curating new releases, in-depth album reviews, and coverage of music books that trace how artists and scenes evolve. He combines frontline news reporting on announcements and premieres with longer-form criticism, giving readers both timely updates and context around the records and books he highlights. Alongside his editorial work, he is an author whose book Listen to This If You Love Great Music extends his taste-led approach into a broad survey of influential albums. He has worked on Clash since 2007 and now holds a leading editorial role shaping the magazine’s music coverage.
New releases and artist announcements
Murray’s news coverage centres on new releases, with a steady run of pieces announcing albums and singles from across contemporary music. Recent headlines include Gilla Band’s album Pugnello, framed as a major step for the band, and a story on Kelela and PinkPantheress collaborating on a new track, positioning their work within alt-R&B and pop’s ongoing crossover. He writes similar announcement-led pieces for acts ranging from underground projects to established names, such as covering EELS’ new album COOKIE HAPPENED, treating the news as an entry point into the band’s current phase.
Beyond individual records, he reports on industry-facing moments that shape the wider ecosystem, such as a feature on Cheerful Music’s panel event bringing together industry leaders in conversation. These stories show an interest in how artists, labels, and executives interact, and how live discussions and events influence the direction of music culture. On social platforms he reinforces this focus on discovery, referring to a recurring “new music almanac” that highlights Bristolian wonk-pop, crunchy dub techno, alt-R&B, and Scottish rave artists, underscoring his commitment to tracking emerging sounds rather than only following the mainstream.
Album reviews across genres
As a reviewer, Murray writes across genres, pairing concise verdicts with attention to the aesthetic and emotional stakes of a record. Recent reviews include Kelela’s new avatar, where he engages with the artist’s evolving sound within futuristic R&B. He covers newer acts such as The Heavenly Bodes on Green Hills, a release treated as part of a rising wave of alternative guitar music. At the same time he writes about long-running bands, including Deep Purple’s album SPLAT!, placing veteran acts within a contemporary landscape rather than treating them as heritage-only stories.
This breadth reflects the approach in his book Listen to This If You Love Great Music, a curated selection of 100 albums from the past four decades that deliberately avoids the most obvious classics and instead digs deeper into his record collection. The same sensibility runs through his criticism at Clash: he uses reviews to surface records that matter to him, whether that is an experimental R&B project, a cult rock band, or a lesser-known release from a storied artist. His editorial position allows him to link these reviews into a wider picture of how different scenes and genres speak to one another.
Interviews, premieres, and artist-led features
Murray regularly moves beyond straight reportage into interviews and artist-driven features, giving musicians space to explain their work in their own words. His “CLASH Meets” pieces function as focused conversations with artists, typically timed around a new record or project and structured to dig into creative process, influences, and future plans. A feature interview with Bob Mould, published under the line “I Just Wanted To Make A Simple Record!”, shows his style: the piece is grounded in an extended discussion of the musician’s intentions and craft rather than purely promotional talking points.
He also handles premieres for new tracks, using first-play coverage to introduce emerging acts and sounds to Clash’s audience. In “Premiere: The Underground Youth – ‘The Death Of The Author’” he presents caustic post-punk from an ongoing project, positioning the song within their productivity and artistic trajectory rather than simply posting a link. This mix of Q&A features and premiere write-ups gives his coverage a direct line to artists, while maintaining the editorial framing needed to situate each release in its scene.
Music books and long-form criticism
A distinctive strand of Murray’s work is his sustained attention to music books, where he treats written histories and memoirs as part of the culture he covers. He writes annual round-ups such as “The Best Music Books Of 2022” and “The Best Music Books Of 2024”, and “Music Books Of The Year 2025”, selecting titles that range from scene histories to personal memoir. These lists highlight works like Unapologetic Expression: The Inside Story Of The UK Jazz Explosion, a study of contemporary UK jazz, Rebel Girl: My Life As A Feminist Punk, a punk memoir, and a biography of Paul Weller, signalling an interest in both genre-focused narratives and individual life stories.
In these features he does more than compile titles: he offers commentary on why each book matters, pointing to revelatory pages, fresh perspectives, and connections between print narratives and the music they document. Taken together with his own album curation in Listen to This If You Love Great Music, this strand of his work marks him out as a critic who treats recordings, performances, and written accounts as a single field of material to be mapped and explained. It gives his coverage a historical and literary dimension that goes beyond standard release cycles, making space for the stories behind the music alongside the sounds themselves.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
Abigail Kellett is a news reporter at the Halifax Courier who stands out for visually led coverage that shows how culture, nightlife and local life play out on the ground. She documents gigs, festivals and major live shows at venues such as The Piece Hall through curated photo sets that capture atmosphere, crowd and setting as much as performers, and she uses extensive image galleries to tap reader nostalgia for nights out in Halifax town centre. Her beat spans arts, entertainment, going out, heritage, books and literary events, along with community life, people stories, local challenges, milestones, transport, regeneration, lifestyle and food. She reports through photographs, checklist-style features, reader-driven lists and roundups of most-read stories, turning announcements, programmes, author events, festivals, shop lists and everyday characters into stories about place, shared memory and how people spend their time.
Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alison Brinkworth
Alison Brinkworth is a freelance journalist who treats music as a gateway into place, history and everyday life, often through exhibitions, performances and city-centre events. She covers music within the wider cultural and lifestyle scene, leaning toward accessible, on-the-ground stories framed by familiar artists, venues and local attractions. Her work often focuses on music exhibitions and attractions built around well-known performers, alongside theatre reviews, live events and city attractions. She brings a lifestyle, travel and human-interest sensibility, using interviews and personal stories to show how people spend their time. With over 25 years of experience across print, digital, social media and internal communications, she writes clear, factual, audience-facing articles with dates, locations and organisers, suited to listings, guides and practical recommendations.