The Quietus

A disintegrating Specials were part of the sound of July 1981 as unrest flared up in Handsworth, Toxteth, Southall, Moss Side, Hyson Green & Brixton, as Ghost Town hit #1 45 years ago today, writes Wrongtom Brixton 1981 by Kim Aldis On 10 July 1981 the producer Lloyd Coxsone was minding his own business on Atlantic Road in the heart of Brixton when he spotted a young Rasta called Maliki being hassled by the police, and attempted to intervene. The legendary sound system operator was cuffed and bu

With an exclusive introduction by writer and film programmer Gareth Evans, the Quietus presents 'Off With His Head', an extract from a new collection of short stories by the author of Penda’s Fen, The Ash Tree, and Artemis 81 A writer I knew once called anniversaries the ‘running dogs of the bourgeoisie’. For him they were commodification engines, devices to straitjacket the unpredictable nature of history, along with the wayward people and events that made it. I knew what he meant but I disagre

Stevie Chick gets to grips with a 'miraculous' album, two decades after he first heard it “It’s a shame the way we’re killing her / We eat up artists like there’s going to be a famine at the end of those three minutes [...] She’s more important than her music”Nikki Giovanni – ‘Poem For Aretha’ Pop loves a narrative too much to interrogate whether that narrative is healthy for our culture or for the artist we’re placing it upon. We valorise suffering, if it delivers a creative masterpiece. And th

In the latest antidote to the algorithm, Robert Barry looks at the vinyl releases of the pivotal Fluxus movement – records that often resulted from the destruction of their peers Nam June Paik by Brian Smith, courtesy of the Nam June Paik estate / Gagosian In 1963, Nam June Paik made a doner kebab out of records. Born in Seoul in 1932, the irrepressible artist and composer had moved to Germany in 1957 to study music at the University of Munich. Soon after he fell in with Karlheinz Stockhausen an

Gnod R&D Nobody Knows This Is Anywhere Much gnashing of teeth as the Salford's group's wrecking crew bring out the heavy shit SAC-R #005: Nobody Knows this is Anywhere by Gnod R&D Gnod are gnown to push buttons and encroach on boundaries. They regularly upset preconceptions. One minute they’re clobbering people over the head with violent aural steel and the next they’re dropping a woozy collaboration with Portuguese vocalist MC Sissi. Back in April they released volume one of a three-part series

Sicilian trio Nuhara have produced one of the best albums of the year in their debut, Rama. They speak to Patrick Clarke about how the discovery that a member's grandfather had been recorded by Alan Lomax led to a deep dive into the island's traditional worksongs, from which they've drawn a record of ferocious power and remarkable sonic scope Photo by Pietro Motisi Photo by Ivan-Di-Vita In 2016, the ethnomusicologist, anthropologist and folklorist Anna Lomax Wood was in Palermo for a conference

Tariq Goddard heads to the City of London Stadium to see a live institution intent on conquering a vast space. Live photography by Brett Murray Like a culture that becomes a civilisation, a band that evolves into an institution ceases to be judged on purely artistic terms. This is never more true than when the arc of a career grows thicker rather than taller, the music sturdier though no longer sexy, the outward churn less intent on covering new ground than building a wall round existing achieve

The new album from the Washington DC-born singer makes a strong case for the argument that R&B is the most versatile, wide-ranging genre on the block Photo credit: 91 Rules To read some of the press surrounding the lead-up to Kelela’s third album, you would be forgiven for thinking the American artist had made her “rock album”, à la, say, Charli XCX. Kelela’s previous records staked her claim as a Black queer female R&B artist in alt electronic music spaces, as equally at home in the club as the

Sha Ray & DJ Haram Critical Thot A thrilling exploration of sexual politics from the Bay Area-based rapper/producer and New Jersey-born beat maker Critical Thot by Sha Ray & DJ Haram The second ‘Thot Daughter’, the first single from the Indiana-born rapper Sha Ray’s debut full-length album, dropped on Backwoodz Studioz, the heady, increasingly adored label co-founded by Billy Woods, it immediately became one of most unique singles in the roster’s history. Home to the disparate funhouse mirror pr

Ahead of her new solo album Beard, the Odd Future and The Internet alumna talks Gemma Samways through the 13 albums that have helped shape her sound, from rage rap to samba Photo by Nabil At some point, every wunderkind has to relinquish their title. Syd was still in high school when she got her break DJing with hip hop iconoclasts Odd Future, and just 19 when she and Matt Martians broke away to form Grammy-nominated alternative R&B collective The Internet. A decade and half on, the prolific sin

Madonna Confessions II The restlessly inventive artist for once looks back, but boy has she ever earnt it For an artist defined by perpetual reinvention, the most striking aspect of Confessions II is Madonna’s resolve to look back at a career that reshaped pop music. Steeped in nostalgic, self-referential anecdotes, the album carries an autobiographical weight that makes this her most coherent work since its namesake two decades ago. Though the sixteen-track LP plays it safe sonically, leaning i

Scrambled DIY pop as temporal anomaly, multiple accordions in one band, a duo piping urban noise into tranquil marshes and a Tokyo-Manchester collaboration that both crushes and levitates, Daryl Worthington roams through the tapes of this infernal summer Carlos Ferreira, photo by Luiza Padilha A decision made on any recording is whether to capture its setting or obscure it – keep the recording earthed to the real world or synthesize another one. Some recordings of instrumentalists strive to capt

Luke Haines Izzy Wizzy Let’s Get Bizzy The former Auteurs, Black Box Recorder and Baader Meinhof member waxes nostalgic over the sinister forces which once lurked within the CBBC Broom Cupboard Sartre said that hell is other people, but hell is actually being stuck in the company of someone of a certain age banging on about the TV they used to watch as a kid. Thankfully, Luke Haines has previous where it comes to reanimating what could potentially be seen as nostalgia fodder, always bringing an

Everything changed in 2001, not just in geopolitics but in culture as well, and Aaliyah's third and final album exemplified that more than most, says Toby Manning Autumn 2001 was where the 21st century really began. It wasn’t just that 9/11 changed everything politically, but that a newly diverse, urbanised pop changed everything culturally. Ending the era of both avant R&B and anaemic teenpop, R&B producers effectively conducted a merger, toning down their weirdness to endow pop acts with stree

Nearing the halfway mark of 2026 we polled tQ staff and columnists to compile this chart of our top 100 albums released so far this year. This chart was compiled by John Doran, and built by Patrick Clarke and Christian Eede After a recent birthday (How very dare you! But two and three quarter score if you must know) I had reason to reflect briefly on a core guiding principle: that of weirdness.  The first live rock band I ever watched, 40 years ago this summer in St Helens, were called the Volun

Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra Gabble Ratchets Todmorden’s experimental children’s orchestra returns with a warped concept album about a pack of hellhounds terrorising the uncanny valleys of West Yorkshire gabble ratchets by primitive percussion youth orchestra Children make weird art. Aside from labyrinthine fantasy fiction experiments or Pollockian attempts at the visual medium, young people tend to produce odd music when given the means. From the spasmodic clanging of The Shoreditch Exp

Fifty years ago this weekend, Ramones played their first two UK shows, catalysing the British punk scene. Simon Price talks to people who were there, and argues that anyone who dismissed them as cartoon cretins missed the point Ramones live at the Roundhouse by Gus Stewart / Redferns / Getty  There comes a moment in every Dolly Parton concert, as cherished as it is predictable, when the country icon reels out her famous scripted off-the-rhinestone-cuff remark: “It costs a lot of money to look th

The run of releases sees Kevin Martin link up with a number of female vocalists, including Dis Fig The Bug has launched a new series of collaborative series, LADYBUG, on his own PRESSURE imprint. The run of releases sees Kevin Martin link up with a number of female vocalists. For the first instalment, he collaborates with Dis Fig, real name Felicia Chen, on the track 'Vanishing'. The original cut arrives alongside four alternate versions by Martin. This marks Martin and Chen's second collaborati

Everybody Talks About The Weather will be released by Upset The Rhythm Photo by Luke Fowler The Yummy Fur have shared details of their first album in 27 years, titled Everybody Talks About The Weather. Spanning 10 tracks, the LP was recorded by the original core trio of songwriter and vocalist John McKeown, guitarist Brian MacDougall and drummer Paul Thomson. It comes 17 years after the band reformed for occasional live shows, and seven years after the release of the retrospective compilation Pi

A quarter of a century on Jon Buckland considers the complex emotional affects triggered by Christian Fennesz' third album, Endless Summer. Contains discussion of suicide Endless Summer by Fennesz In 2001 Christian Fennesz released his third full-length record Endless Summer which followed the disrupted drone and noise aesthetics of debut Hotel Paral.lel and spectres-in-a-blizzard sounds of plus forty seven degrees 56' 37" minus sixteen degrees 51' 08" . The strange string of numbers in the tit