The Quietus

The Quietus Albums Of The Year So Far chart is here! But who is at number one? @normanrecords.com buff.ly/z3lSmCv

'Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak are making fresh, entrancing music that communicates places and mindsets in contemporary ways that can’t quite be reduced to any generic label or category.' @ - Autosmile @4ad.com buff.ly/tpjSsHy

Footwork producer Jlin speaks to composer Max Richter in an exclusive interview that gets to grips with practice and inspiration, speaking from one artist directly to another Peer Reviewed: Jlin interviews Max Richter… and Vice Versa #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/I7xJe9M

Portuguese festival SQUARE has revealed the first details of the conference programme for its 2027 edition tQ’s own Jennifer Lucy Allan will moderate a panel discussion called Archives And Memory: Exploring The Unfamiliar buff.ly/Tt9n1g5

'Walshe has written operas which are set on spaceships and performed by Barbie dolls. She has used AI to make music exploring its own dangers and possibilities, but also to reimagine the entire canon of early Western music...' The Strange World Of… Jennifer Walshe buff.ly/2y3ExlK

'We create an intimate cartography of locations that have hidden subjective resonances connected to our pasts. ‘Wickerman’ is a desolate but magical distillation of this, and for all its melancholic nostalgia, it pointed a way forward.' #Pulp’s We Love Life at 25 buff.ly/Rd7iKCJ

"Echo And The Bunnymen from 79 to ‘Bring On The Dancing Horses’ in 85 is just beyond an imperial phase of a band; it is as near to perfection as any band has ever been". Low Culture Podcast: Nicky Wire On Echo & The Bunnymen #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/yW9gFE2

'Rich in eerie timbral combinations with and a fairytale sense of pacing, Doom and the Dooms has layers of alluring, estranged familiarity to be appreciated through repeat listening...' Oliver Leith - Doom and the Dooms buff.ly/DIqFQ1t

Kevin Martin has successfully blocked an unlicensed reissue of Possession, a 1992 album by GOD, the band that he was part of from 1987 until 1996 Martin is in talks with another record label to put together an official box set of GOD’s full-length albums buff.ly/QjpPNDb

Ahead of an appearance at Deep Time, the Irish experimentalist gives Alastair Shuttleworth 10 entry points into a back catalogue which includes an opera with Barbie dolls, 12 fictional aliases and a board game for them to play The Strange World Of… Jennifer Walshe buff.ly/2y3ExlK

"Mission Of Burma's Peter Prescott did that great thing where he never strayed from the three minute song. It was like what Hüsker Dü didn’t yet do before they stopped..." Kristin Hersh on Volcano Suns. #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/p5YnOwG

Hot Chip have shared details of their ninth studio album, A Long Way From Kansas You can watch a video for track ‘Random Violence’ here: buff.ly/tMpM3Zs

"This was a really big life-changing record. When I heard it I was floored. I found this teacher at a music school in Varanasi in India. I went to go learn the [bass string instrument] surbahar..." Kali Malone on Kushal Das - Raga Marwa buff.ly/etzmsEi

'Autechre’s albums and live work seem to increasingly inform and inspire each other. Both take logical ideas to radical conclusions outside of the restrictions of the discrete tracks of dance music...' #Autechre As Concert Musicians #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/q8Smm53

'What Shovel Dance realise is that ‘authenticity’ is to an extent in the eye of the beholder. Folk songs have changed through altered and misremembered lyrics for as long as they’ve existed.' Everything in Readiness by Shovel Dance Collective is tQ's Album of the Week buff.ly/45Xt3OR

"He wanted to channel a lineage that included Ian Dury, Shaun Ryder and Mike Skinner—performers with a huge amount of experience and craft. The single ‘Rudebox’ sounds like someone trying to become an instant expert in all of that." #RobbieWilliams' Rudebox at 20 buff.ly/qqZZseZ

"It’s sad that Meat Puppets are damned to be “that band that Kurt Cobain liked” but ‘Up On The Sun’ was way before that. They were two brothers who played in their garage—the future and the past of music at the same time." Kristin Hersh on #MeatPuppets - Up On The Sun #ThePortal buff.ly/UkPyDrA

“We’ve remade these tracks using technology, so we’ve made it contemporary in that sense. Technology’s kind of caught up with us. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes, and it’s rhyming now.” Northern Mantra: #CabaretVoltaire say Goodbye buff.ly/pFRWtWH

'A bit like punk’s rallying calls, his works deal often with something he genuinely hated—the destruction of an English countryside sacrificed for motorways, runways and residential estates...' The death of #EdwardBurra and the birth of British punk buff.ly/1Lu8AeD

"It’s good to privilege different voices. We did a screening in Newcastle the other night. Someone in the audience was very tearful and they said, ‘This film made me proud to be from the North East.'" The Damning Indictment cast by All Rivers Spill Their Stories To The Sea buff.ly/3ABgj4F

"I wanted them to go down the road suggested by ‘Never Tell’. I love the first album of course but it’s so very young. I thought he was going to go to ‘Never Tell’ next and take that wretchedness to another level." Kristin Hersh on #ViolentFemmes - Hallowed Ground #ThePortal buff.ly/z9gWQ5x

#WendyEisenberg has surprise released a companion album to their self-titled LP from earlier this year featuring new versions of the tracks with Mr. Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, drummer Ryan Sawyer and violinist Mari Rubio, otherwise known as More Eaze buff.ly/mWPaA3T

'On the surface, We Love Life is the least Pulp of Pulp’s incarnations. There are songs about woods, birdsong, dawn. While this seems a departure from the shady council estate noir of their earlier work, it’s a logical progression.' #Pulp’s We Love Life at 25 buff.ly/Rd7iKCJ

It was in response to the violence and alienation of Los Angeles that Liars created their album Sisterworld. Here, they talk about the underbelly of the City of Angels #Liars On Los Angeles: The City That Shaped Sisterworld #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/TxxcWGE

#TalkingHeads are publishing a book that will look back over their history and impact on the music world. Talking Heads: New Feeling will be released to mark the 50th anniversary of the band’s debut album, Talking Heads: 77 buff.ly/wFUJt3G

Rising Damp expert Sophie Sleigh-Johnson tunes in to the 70s pub sports telly series that celebrated regional specificity through a fug of cig smoke and the rituals of indoor combat Low Culture Essay: Sophie Sleigh-Johnson on The Indoor League buff.ly/B1ksBT2

Robbie Williams’ hip hop pivot is widely seen as one of the most obnoxious failures in pop. Claire Biddles & Fergal Kinney deal with an LP which is experimental outlier, outsider art & baffling mess all at once #RobbieWilliams' Rudebox turns 20 today! buff.ly/qqZZseZ

'It is Burra who captures the Britain that was dying just before punk, often in strange, menacing tableaux. His pictures show parched landscapes seemingly devoid of futures or fruitfulness and populated by ghosts...' The death of #EdwardBurra and the birth of British punk buff.ly/1Lu8AeD

'It would be glib to say Slayer’s masterpiece rendered thrash metal dead in an instant for any other group, but the movement had made its point. Wise minds understood that harder and faster were no longer the metrics of progress' How #Slayer's Reign in Blood Changed Metal buff.ly/3Koy1m1

The mighty #AfricanHeadCharge play four dates on their 45th anniversary tour, starting this Saturday 24 in Hastings, with a London, Nottingham and Birkenhead show to follow on 25, 30 October and 7 November Revisit our Strange World of AHC here: buff.ly/LyPgmDL

'There’s never been anybody quite like Keiji Haino. Improviser, noisemaker, guitarist, jazz man, poet, vocalist – he’s none of them and all of them all at once...' The Strange World Of… #KeijiHaino #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/HVF9dQX

The London experimental folk outliers’ triumphant third album is a demonstration of traditional music at its most progressive, outward-looking and migratory Everything in Readiness by Shovel Dance Collective is tQ's Album of the Week buff.ly/45Xt3OR

The last three days of October will see London’s experimental music lodestar Cafe OTO host a three day program organised by Tenerife-based DIY label Discrepant and the annual Canary Islands festival Keroxen @cafeotodalston.bsky.social buff.ly/QXJi5pp

Richard Foster considers the life of an artist who died on the day that The Damned's 'New rose' was released, and considers an unusual continuum in weird British culture... Picking a Quarrel: The death of #EdwardBurra and the birth of British punk @richardjamesfoster.bsky.social buff.ly/1Lu8AeD

Darran Anderson looks at Pulp's (one-time) farewell LP, as fine as any of their others, and asks, why did it fall by the wayside? Many Happy Returns to #Pulp’s We Love Life, which turns 25 today! buff.ly/Rd7iKCJ

'The Wessex duo grow into a quartet, still full of doom. Tim Farthing's voice may have a certain unsettling, grave edge to it, but there’s an auditory consolation and optimism weaved throughout the tracks in Roo’s piano work.' Reigns - Antigeist buff.ly/Gcm2aLi

Derek Walmsley assesses to what extent Ae are unique in the world of electronic music given their live shows represent a space of spontaneous creation Radio / Live Transmission: #Autechre As Concert Musicians #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/q8Smm53

'Over eight tracks, Vivek Sharda pulls the classic move of importing the club-ready ‘tude of his 12-inches onto a double-vinyl package, recontextualising it for the proverbial home listen.' V.I.V.E.K - The Escape To Nowhere - New Weird Britain For October buff.ly/A84QLMw

"The orchestra is more rigid and generative and conceptual, then this vocal line just soars, so free on top of it all. It’s so free and accessible in its way. When I started working with the organ, I was experiencing some of that..." Kali Malone on #PhilipGlass - Satyagraha buff.ly/XLqKIp3

"There were always comics around the apartment. They’ve always been a part of my life since before I can remember. I was always asking if I could buy a comic or somebody would buy me one." Jeffrey Lewis’ Favourite Comics #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/fIcFSHD

“My default attitude has always been I don’t fear the technology, I fear the humans that programme the technology. And we’ve also seen in the last few months how AI goes rogue.” Northern Mantra: #CabaretVoltaire say Goodbye buff.ly/pFRWtWH

Matt Carmichael speaks to Gail Tasker about his lush combination of jazz and folk, Held In The Dark, which will be performed with a full septet at three shows next month including a set for London Jazz Festival An Interview With Matt Carmichael buff.ly/rTt4ePW

'Visited by the ghost of gothmas past, Antoni Maiovvi whips out his magic circle for a true grimoire of an album. Los adds the splendour of cinematic strings and a capacious sense of space to Maiovvi's usual MO' Ye Gods - Los buff.ly/WNlhdTb

'An album of electronic library music from the early 80s breaths the air of sunnier climes - an imaginary world, meticulously assembled through the magic of voltage control and additive synthesis.' The Electro Quartet - Nature’s World With Studio G buff.ly/dUqoLak

'Reign In Blood whips by at an average clip of 220 beats per minute. Laden with gruesome excess, its lyric sheet features 36 variations of the worth “death”. Never mind heavy, it’s asphyxiating.' An Evergreen Lodestar of all that is Abominable: How Reign in Blood Changed Metal buff.ly/3Koy1m1

"I toured with them as 50 Foot Wave a couple of years ago and they have their sound and they’re the only people who can make it which is so unusual. They get up on stage for a soundcheck and boom!" Kristin Hersh on Mission of Burma - Vs #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/a7IIqNL

'Blue Movie sits between that world of hyperpop and vaporous shoegaze, and has that ability to hook melodies into your head despite sounding occasionally spectral and on the brink of collapse...' Storefront Church - Blue Movie buff.ly/SnKR7vE

'Everything Frankie did was writ large, and their failure, encapsulated within these 44 minutes, was somehow suitably spectacular.' Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Liverpool turns 40 today! buff.ly/x8gtEFz

Dis Fig kindly talked me through the guest playlist she's pulled together for @thequietus.com There's madcap electronics, heady noise, some genteel folk, and "the fucking queen" Mariah Carey. Check it out: thequietus.com/subscriber-a... @thrilljockey.bsky.social