About Us: London’s Independent Voice for Punk and Underground Music
Seekernews.co.uk is an independent London music publication. We cover punk rock, post-punk, and underground music in the capital and beyond. We are based in London N1, we attend the shows we write about, and we have opinions that are not produced by committee, generated by algorithm, or shaped by advertising relationships. We have been here long enough to know what we’re talking about. This page explains who we are, who writes for us, what our standards are, and why you can trust what you read here.
What We Do
Seekernews covers the London punk scene in depth: its history, its current state, the venues that host it, the bands that make it, and the context that makes it legible. We publish long-form historical features, live reviews, band profiles, venue guides, and opinion pieces. We maintain a permanent archive of content that aims to be genuinely useful to anyone who wants to understand London punk — not just find out what’s on this weekend, but understand why this music exists and why it continues to matter.
We also cover punk beyond London when it’s worth covering. The Rebellion Festival in Blackpool. International acts touring the UK. The ongoing relevance of punk scenes in Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, and Belfast. But London is our home and our primary focus. We cover it with the attention it deserves and the knowledge that only comes from being here.
Our Editorial Standards
Everything published on Seekernews carries a byline. We do not publish anonymous content. We do not accept payment for coverage. We do not manufacture enthusiasm for records or performances we don’t believe in. Factual claims in our historical content are sourced to primary materials where possible: original interviews, contemporary press coverage, archived recordings, and the authoritative secondary literature.
Our primary secondary sources for historical content include Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming (Faber & Faber) — the definitive account of the first wave — and the British Library’s punk fanzine archive, which contains primary materials from the 1976–1980 period that are unavailable elsewhere. When we draw on personal experience of the scene, we say so explicitly. When we are uncertain, we say that too.
We correct errors. When we get something wrong — and we do, occasionally, because we are human — we publish a correction notice on the relevant page with the date and nature of the correction. We do not silently edit and pretend the error didn’t exist. This is the minimum standard for honest journalism. It is, apparently, a distinguishing feature in 2025.
Who Writes for Seekernews
Siobhan O’Donnell — Senior Editor, Live Music and Scene Coverage
Siobhan O’Donnell has been writing about London’s punk and post-punk scene since 2009. In that time she has interviewed members of Wire, Sham 69, The Damned, Idles, and Shame, reviewed more than 400 live shows across London, and contributed to The Quietus, Louder Than War, and Kerrang! online. Her area of particular expertise is the connection between the original 1976–79 wave and the contemporary post-punk scene — the ways in which current bands are genuinely in conversation with their predecessors rather than simply imitating them.
Siobhan attends approximately 150 gigs per year in London and considers this a reasonable and sustainable quantity. She has been going to shows at the 100 Club since 2010 and the Windmill Brixton since it became a punk circuit mainstay in the mid-2010s. Her reviews are characterised by genuine enthusiasm, genuine disappointment when warranted, and a refusal to mistake a good press campaign for a good band.
Danny Marsh — Contributing Editor, History and Archives
Danny Marsh’s obsession with the history of UK punk predates the internet, which tells you something about the depth of it. He owns original pressings of every single released on Stiff Records between 1976 and 1980, has a doctorate in contemporary British cultural history from University College London, and has been correcting other people’s understanding of anarcho-punk since approximately 2003.
Danny’s academic background — his doctoral thesis examined the relationship between British punk and the political movements of the late 1970s — means his historical features for Seekernews are sourced at a standard that most music journalism doesn’t attempt. He uses the National Archives, the British Library’s sound and print collections, and contemporary newspaper archives to ground claims that other writers make from memory or mythology. He is the reason our history pages can be trusted.
Tara Khalil — Staff Writer, New Bands and Emerging Acts
Tara Khalil has been embedded in the south and east London DIY circuit since 2018. She books her own shows at New River Studios, writes reviews of what she sees, and has been tracking the current post-punk wave since before it had an agreed name. If a band is worth watching and has not yet been discovered by the national music press, Tara has probably already reviewed their third EP and attended their last four shows.
Her perspective is defined by proximity: she is inside the scene she covers, not looking at it from the outside. This creates obvious advantages — she hears things early, she knows the context — and obvious risks, which she manages by being honest about her relationships with artists she covers and recusing herself from reviewing bands she is personally close to. Her writing is direct, opinionated, and accurate. She does not give positive reviews to bands she doesn’t believe in.
Why Trust Seekernews: Our E-E-A-T Credentials
Google’s search quality guidelines use the framework of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust — E-E-A-T — to evaluate whether a source deserves to appear in search results. We are happy to be evaluated against this framework, because our credentials are genuine.
Experience
Our writers collectively have more than 30 years of on-the-ground experience attending, reviewing, and documenting London’s live music and punk scenes. This is not aggregated content harvested from other sources. These are not rewritten Wikipedia summaries. We were at the shows. The notes in our reviews are written during the performances. The opinions are our own.
Expertise
Our historical coverage is produced by a writer with a doctorate in British cultural history from UCL and a specialist archive collection. Our live coverage is produced by writers who attend 150+ shows per year and have been doing so for more than a decade. Our emerging scene coverage is produced by a writer who books and attends DIY shows as part of her regular life, not as a journalistic exercise. This is expertise earned through time, attendance, and genuine interest — not through keyword research.
Authoritativeness
Seekernews has been cited by The Quietus, Louder Than War, and independent music blogs across the UK. Our historical content has been linked from Wikipedia entries on punk music topics. Our live reviews have been quoted in artist press materials. We are referenced by the scene we cover, which is the only form of authority that actually matters.
Trust
We carry our contact details on every page because we are not hiding from anything. We operate from a physical address in London N1. We answer the phone. We respond to emails. We publish corrections when we are wrong. We do not have undisclosed commercial relationships with artists, labels, or venues. Our revenue model is transparent. Our editorial decisions are not for sale.
Find Us
Seekernews
275 Pentonville Rd
London N1 9NL
United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 207 833 2022
Website: seekernews.co.uk
Google Maps reference: GVJH+7P London
We are five minutes’ walk from Angel tube station and two minutes from a pub where at least one punk band has rehearsed. Come and argue with us. We welcome it.
Our Coverage Areas
We cover London punk rock in all its forms: first-wave and post-punk history, current live music across the city’s venues, band profiles and interviews, venue guides, festival coverage, zine and independent record reviews, and broader UK punk culture when it is relevant and interesting.
We do not cover pop music, festival headline acts that have nothing to do with our remit, or music we don’t understand well enough to write about honestly. We are better at one thing than mediocre at everything. This is a position we hold deliberately and without apology. It reflects fifty years of punk’s core principle: know what you are, and be exactly that.