Issue 14 — Autumn 2026

The Noise Issue

Sound, signal and the art of being heard. Twelve stories about everything we can’t stop listening to — and the quiet we keep losing.

An orange megaphone mounted on an orange wall
Cover: photographed for KIOSK on a single roll
  • Turn it down Cities you can think in
  • Tape culture The cassette comeback
  • Everybody shouts Who is still listening?
Get issue 14Read the lead feature
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Out nowIssue 14The Noise Issue212 pagesNo adsPrinted in GlasgowTwelve storiesTurn it up

In this issue

  1. p. 014

    Turn it down

    The architects designing cities you can hear yourself think in.

  2. p. 028

    Tape culture

    Why a generation raised on streaming is buying cassettes again.

  3. p. 046

    Everybody shouts

    Our lead feature: attention, volume and the art of being heard.

  4. p. 072

    Front row

    Eleven nights in eleven rooms with the loudest bands in Europe.

  5. p. 098

    Long wave

    A collector and the four hundred radios that fill her house.

  6. p. 121

    Signal tower

    Photographs from the masts that carry everything we say.

Six of the twelve stories in print. Hover a line to hear it louder.

The gold cone of a loudspeaker in close-up
Turn it down
A clear cassette tape with its ribbon pulled loose on yellow
Tape culture
A white bullhorn on a wooden pole against a blue sky
Everybody shouts
A black and white crowd with raised hands under stage lights
Front row
A wall of stacked vintage radios
Long wave
A black and white transmission tower against clouds
Signal tower

Lead feature — p. 046

Everybody is shouting. Who is still listening?

Volume is cheap. Attention is the rarest thing we make.
— Kofi Asante, p. 052

The loudest decade in history began quietly, with a notification sound nobody chose. Since then the average city has grown four decibels louder, the average feed forty times busier and the average listener a great deal more tired. We spent a year with the people pushing back — sound designers who remove noise for a living, librarians defending the last silent rooms, a radio station that broadcasts nothing but birdsong at 4am — to find out what it takes to be heard now, and whether the answer is simply to speak more softly.

A red and white bullhorn resting in a rippled golden bowl
Photograph: Rosa Lindgren
212
Pages
12
Stories
0
Adverts
40
Stockists

The people who made this issue

Contributors

Ines Carvalho

Editor

Founded KIOSK on a kitchen table in 2019. Still answers every letter.

Theo Mbeki

Art director

Believes every page deserves one thing that is too big.

Rosa Lindgren

Photographer

Shot this issue’s cover on a single roll in one afternoon.

Kofi Asante

Writer

Spent a year recording the quietest places left in London.

Mara Quint

Illustrator

Draws with a photocopier, a scalpel and no undo button.

Juno Park

Type designer

Drew the masthead. Adjusts it by hand every issue.

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The Dispatch

One letter a week from the editors: what we are reading, what we are listening to and what went to print. Loud ideas, quiet inbox.