A one-minute noise-rock miniature, a 1965 protest anthem and a masked actor trading bars with a Wu-Tang alumnus — the September instalment of What Hi-Fi?‘s monthly Now Playing column, published on September 3, 2026, is an unusually wide-ranging shopping list for anyone who wants to push a system somewhere new. These are working tools rather than mood music: each track was picked because it exposes something specific about a pair of headphones, a streamer or a set of speakers.
- Ballerina — YHWH Nailgun. Taken from Magazine, the New York band’s follow-up to their 2025 debut 45 Pounds, released through 4AD. The track runs exactly one minute, and it is not even the album’s outlier — the longest song there comes in at 1:36. Reviewer Ioan Hazell rates it for stereo imaging and depth: reverberant, overdriven synths and Zack Borzone’s rasping vocal sit in a sparse, staccato arrangement that periodically collapses into record-scratching chaos before snapping back into the groove.
- Eve Of Destruction — Barry McGuire. Written by P. F. Sloan and a US Billboard Hot 100 number one in September 1965, McGuire’s anti-war polemic surfaced here via the Mafia III soundtrack, which also leans on Aretha Franklin’s Respect and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son. The appeal is its rawness — a hard, throaty delivery with no studio gloss to hide behind, which makes it an honest read on how forgiving (or not) a system is with midrange grit.
- Jolene — Dolly Parton. Parton died on August 25, 2026 at the age of 80. She wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You in roughly a single day in 1973, and while Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover reshaped the latter, the Jolene original is untouched: tactile, propulsive guitar strums under a voice that stays steady and defiant. Kashfia Kabir picks it for fluid dynamics and for a vocal performance that holds attention on almost any hardware.
- Present Tense — Pearl Jam. The deep cut from No Code, released on August 27, 1996, and a track a sound engineer once recommended to Harry McKerrell at an early press event. Gentle, hesitant guitars in an uncluttered soundscape give wired headphones room to show off air and decay without bleeding or distortion — and, unusually for Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder’s lyrics are actually intelligible.
- Mad Technology — Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer feat. Method Man. The album landed on August 28, 2026 via Silver Age: 15 tracks, 47 minutes, with Busta Rhymes, Method Man, El-P and Kendra Morris guesting. Czarface — 7L and Esoteric alongside former Wu-Tang Clan member Inspectah Deck — supply full-blooded 1990s-style hip-hop, and Mad Technology hits hard with big beats, a staccato piano riff and aggressive flows. Frankie Pulitzer, who performs fully masked, is widely reported to be actor Tom Hardy.
The full selection is available as a playlist on Tidal, and the column returns monthly with fresh picks from the review team.
