Underground Culture Archives

28 min read 0

Sounds

What the Hell Is Keller Synth? A Guide to Tänzelcore and Basement Goblin Techno

Ex-Plain
March 10, 2026

A strange underground genre with roots in Germany involves blending dungeon synth, hardcore techno, and black metal aesthetics into something…

39 min read 0

Looks

Outsiders as Drawn by an Outsider: Jo Brocklehurst and London After Dark

Ex-Plain
February 25, 2026

A reclusive artist hidden behind dark glasses, Jo Brocklehurst moved through London’s underground as both a witness and accomplice of…

17 min read 0

Sounds

The Time a Japanese Noise Musician Destroyed a Venue With a Bulldozer

Ex-Plain
February 24, 2026

In 1985, Hanatarash frontman Yamantaka Eye drove an excavator into a Tokyo venue, turning a noise performance into an act…

11 min read 0

Sounds

Behind the Beat: Inside the Homes Where Hip-Hop Is Made

Ex-Plain
February 20, 2026

Raph Rashid’s intimate photographs map the domestic environments where hip-hop producers build influential records, showing how constraint, routine, and personal…

48 min read 0

The Bulldozer Exhibition: When the Soviets Tried (and Failed) to Literally Crush an Art Show

Ex-Plain
January 29, 2026

In 1974, Soviet authorities used bulldozers, arrests, and violence to destroy an unsanctioned outdoor art exhibition, only to ignite an…

9 min read 0

Visions

Paintings of Tattoo Guns from a Mexican Prison

Ex-Plain
January 27, 2026

Willingly spending two months in a Mexican prison and collaborating with the inmates, artist Scott Campbell built tattoo machines out…

4 min read 2

Looks
Pasts

80s Youth Culture in a Dying English Industrial Town

Ex-Plain
January 16, 2026

Between 1979 and 1989, photographer Christopher John Ball documented the people of Blackburn, the Lancashire industrial town that shaped his…

6 min read 0

Outsiders In The Cradle of Humanity: Joji Hashiguchi’s Street Photography Across Six Cities

Ex-Plain
July 16, 2025

In the summer of 1981, Japanese photographer Joji Hashiguchi left Tokyo on a self-directed journey through Liverpool, London, Nuremberg, West…

27 min read 1

Pasts
Sounds

X‑Rays You Can Hear: Soviet Bootleg Music’s Non-Clinical Birth, Death, and Rebirth

Ex-Plain
July 15, 2025

During the Cold War, access to music in the Soviet Union was tightly restricted by state censorship. Despite the risks,…

7 min read 0

The Tag That Changed New York: The Lasting Legacy of TAKI 183, Graffiti’s First Icon

Ex-Plain
June 17, 2025

Graffiti, one of the most pervasive aspects of spontaneous creativity in modern life has surprisingly simple stylistic origins, and while…