Akusmi

Terra Incognita

Pascal Bideau’s latest album as Akusmi plays out like a collective expression of notional anthems from unknown lands, says Bernie Brooks

Terra Incognita by Akusmi

Just shy of a decade ago, I toured part of an automobile plant where trucks are assembled. While this was obviously a sanitised space intended for visitors, it was equally obvious that the place was far from a dark, satanic mill of yore. It was relatively bright and clean, and the work, while clearly skilled and not without risk, was well-paid. The factory – humans included – was less a collection of automated and operated industrial equipment and more like a single, giant mechanism. Or cyberorganism, maybe, each worker a part of the machine, filling roles…

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There Near is out next month

Photo by Jeff Fowler

Dinosaur Jr. have shared details of their first studio album in five years, titled There Near.

Spanning 11 tracks that were recorded in short bursts over the course of a year, the new record was made almost entirely by the band’s core trio of J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph. Friend of the band Ken Mauri also adds piano and organ on some tracks.

In a statement, Mascis said: “I’m not always sure what a song is ‘about’ when I’m writing it. I guess the meaning will present itself at some point. I’ll use whatever words work. And a lot of it will be influenced by whatever esoteric mumbo jumbo I’m reading at the…

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The festival’s 13th edition makes use of extraordinary sites, including a former granite quarry, a medieval village, natural gorges and thermal baths

Photo by Piercarlo Quecchia

Next month sees the 13th edition of Italy’s Nextones, a festival dedicated to “research and experimentation in contemporary music in dialogue with the performing and audiovisual arts.”

Taking place from 16 to 19 July across the Ossola Valley, Nextones utilises sites such as the former granite quarry Tones Teatro Natura, while site-specific performances will take place at the Premia Thermal Baths, the natural gorges known as the Orridi di Uriezzo, the medieval village of Ghesc, and the Oratorio di San Marco.

It opens with a performance by London harpist Miriam Adefris, the activation of a sound installation called…

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The whimsy had fallen away leaving De La Soul in a position to voice a an alarming diagnosis: hip hop faced a double-threat from sectarianism and corporate influx, says Jacob Manieson

The architecture of 90s hip hop was notoriously sectarian. Amongst and between enclaves like the Bay Area and Brooklyn, enormous personalities like Biggie and Tupac proved that the genre could be a commercial powerhouse. They flung stones from coast to coast, and sold an unfathomable amount of records as a result. At the same time, the south began charting its own musical course, away from the bustling scenes of coastal America. Yet all the while, within more bohemian circles, some artists began taking a different approach. A sound aptly named…

The post The Price of Integrity: 30 Years of the Stakes is High by De La Soul appeared first on The Quietus.

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This ambient side project from the guitarist in Squid reaches back through a deep history of British music inspired by the countryside

Credit: Holly Whitaker

Locked into the grind of city living, it’s easy to feel depressed, isolated, alienated. The world we live in feels so hostile, and it’s all too easy to feel completely disconnected from your peers, your purpose, and, especially the Earth itself. If you’re particularly unlucky, you might see less than a dozen trees and a sole grassy knoll during your daily flat-bus-work-bus-flat strife knot.

It would be naive to say the fatigue and implied hopelessness of modern life are solely down to our loss of connection to nature, but it’s a significant factor. There’s a clarity of thought…

The post Nature Boy: Driving Through Belgium by Anton Pearson appeared first on The Quietus.

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Debt Rag

It Is Clear What’s Going On

Three Los Angelinos make Sesame Street no wave, a new kind of absurdist bubblegum avant-garde with the energy of a perpetual motion machine and not a guitar in sight

It Is Clear What's Going On by Debt Rag

There is something pointed about calling your record It Is Clear What’s Going On in 2026 and then responding with lyrics that show no interest in meeting the listener halfway. Debt Rag are not being glib. Or rather, they are, and that’s precisely the point.

Glasnost, the late Soviet-era principle of saying the thing plainly because the pretence had become untenable, is a useful way in. When the word entered circulation, the world felt as though it was shifting…

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Ahead of the paperback reprint of her memoir You Had To Be There, the DJ, drag queen and author takes Alex Rigotti through her favourite albums, from growing up on Grace Jones to touring with Kylie, via formative experiences with Madonna and more

Photo by Aimee McGhee

Before accidentally becoming a drag queen and DJ by the name of Jodie Harsh, young Jay Clarke dreamt of being a journalist. “All the nightlife and music and drag, all these extra things that have filled the last few decades of my life are like bonuses,” Harsh tells us. “I wanted to interview people, write reviews… I always wanted to write”. 

Harsh’s memoir You Had To Be There is about to be published in…

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Truck Violence

The Weathervane Is My Body

A cathartic blast of blaring noise rock from the Montreal four-piece

The weathervane is my body by Truck Violence

Two weeks before their debut Violence hit the shelves, Truck Violence’s home burned to the ground. Despite losing everything the Montreal-based four-piece picked themselves up and carried on doing what they do best: playing blaring noise rock with a folksy edge as hard and as loud and as weird as they can.

It won’t surprise you to learn that ‘House caught Fire’, the fourth track on follow up record The Weathervane Is My Body, broaches this subject. What is surprising, however, is that it’s lacking the fury that you might expect from a band renowned for channelling rage into…

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David Katz navigates ten entry points into the back catalogue of the King Tubby, the enigmatic Jamaican audio engineer who devised the dub art form

Fifty years after the release of magnum opus King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, the work of King Tubby still beguiles and inspires. Operating out of a converted bedroom in Waterhouse, western Kingston, Tubby was an integral force in the development of dub, the abstract reggae subgenre defined by its bass-heavy remixes and echo-shrouded disappearing vocals, the idiosyncratic audio treatments tailored for sound system events. Utilising an obsolete MCI console with a built-in high-pass filter and a homemade tape delay, Tubby’s sonic alchemy yielded a distinctive sound that was totally unlike that of his peers, making his…

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Our subscribers can tune in to nearly five ours of music from the past month

There are nearly five hours of music for our Quietus subscribers, based on what we wrote about in the broiling month of June. This stretches from Converge to The Cure, Bob Smith’s top pop pal Olivia Rodrigo, Julia Holter, Luft, Soft Cell, DJ Plead, Marie Delprat, Earth Ball, Gamut Inc, Marisa Anderson, Alison Cotton, Tara Clerkin Trio, Kelela, Actress, Suede and much more.

Playlists are of course not all our subscribers receive. Also in June 2026, the Low Culture Podcast featured John and Luke discussing the impact that seeing the evolution of Sunn O))) had on the early years of The Quietus, Robert Barry wrote a Low Culture Essay on…

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