At a festival in Eupen, in German-speaking East Belgium, Robert Barry finds a rich tapestry of experimental sounds – and almost gets hit by a flying mic

Saba Arat. Photo credit: Annika Schönfeldt

It was when he started swinging the second microphone that I started to worry. It was a fairly confined space. The first mic had already gone flying off its lead and smashed against the wall. Shrugging his shoulders, he rifled through his bag for another, calmly attached it to the buzzing cable and starting swinging again, over his head, like a lasso: Whoomph-whoomph-whoomph. That’s when people started to back off a bit, giving him some space. A few held their hands up to shield their faces. Little by little he…

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The 1996 album by the cult Japanese ambient music producer had previously only been available on CD, with copies selling for hundreds of pounds on Discogs

Photo by Ghig & Ikuko Takahashi

Hiroshi Yoshimura’s 1996 ambient music album Quiet Forest is being reissued by LA-based label Temporal Drift.

The updated release will see the LP by the cult Japanese ambient music producer get a first-time vinyl pressing having previously only been issued on CD in Yoshimura’s home country. Copies of the original release are on sale for hundreds of pounds on Discogs at the time of writing, so a reissue is much welcomed. The original album has been remastered from the source tapes for its new vinyl pressing, while the LP is also…

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The inaugural edition of the Canterbury festival takes place next July

These New Puritans, photo by Jeremy Young

Shadowlands, the new Canterbury-based festival focused on experimental music, has added a second wave of acts to the lineup for its inaugural edition next summer.

Taking place at Canterbury’s Gulbenkian Arts Centre across four days, the event will newly take in sets from These New Puritans, Matmos, Årabrot, Hula, Barry Adamson and Sunroof, among others.

Matmos’ Drew Daniel will also play a second set at the festival as The Soft Pink Truth, while fellow project member M. C. Schmidt is lined up to play another set alongside Obel Feldi. JG Thirlwell, previously confirmed to be playing a headline set as Foetus backed by a 20-piece chamber…

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Ahead of this weekend’s pivotal election that could see Sweden slip even further to the right, Alan Pedder talks to the artists speaking out about a country on the edge, and rounds up five essential tracks

Boko Yout, photo by Maceo Frost

When musician Markus Svensson turned 13, he was given a copy of Om Detta Må Ni Berätt, a book about the Holocaust that was used in Swedish schools to warn against the signs of a country’s slide into fascism. Graphic and unsparing in its detail, it made the past feel brutally present. The idea that fascism could take hold anywhere, even in Sweden, felt like a caution for the future, but what if it was already here?At the time of…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/quietus-international/swedish-election-2026-music-against-far-right-aret-var-boko-yout-marcus-svensson/

To help us celebrate our 18th birthday, the good folk at Thrill Jockey, aided and abetted by Norman Records, not to mention the wonderful Mari Rubio aka More Eaze, have given us physical & digital copies of the new album to give away. See below for details…

More Eaze by Laura Brunisholz

One of the many tasks English polymath Thomas Browne set himself was to find a connection between intelligent design in nature and human achievements in art and society. Browne’s spiritual investigations echo back to us four centuries later through the practice of Texan-in-Brooklyn composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Mari Rubio, aka More Eaze. Rubio’s new work, Valley And Structure – her second solo album of 2026 which some lucky subscribers…

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source https://thequietus.com/interviews/more-eaze-interview/

At 79 years old, the former Yellow Magic Orchestra and Happy End member has produced a true labour of love, offering a sometimes croonsome window on the sunlit uplands

Photo credit: Masahiro Handa

‘Sincerity’ isn’t quite the word that springs to mind when considering Haruomi Hosono’s fifty years worth of solo albums. Not only were Hosono’s two famous pop groups – the Japanese-language folk-rock quartet Happy End, and the wildly innovative technopop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra – consummate ironists, his couple of dozen solo albums, hopping impatiently from style to style, from decade to decade, were never confessional or intimate or emotionally driven. Rather, they were music about music, pop about pop, with a subject matter that was more likely to revolve…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/album-of-the-week/haruomi-hosono-yours-sincerely-review/

Nu-Jazz

Un-Jazz

Members of Trap Music Orchestra, Murderpact, CGI Jesus and Deli Girls link heavy prog and weird jazz to mindbending effect

Un Jazz by Nu Jazz

In the third series of Donald Glover’s groundbreaking TV series Atlanta, rising rapper Paper Boi (played by Brian Tyree Henry) finds himself rapidly losing touch with reality after consuming a Nepalese space cake. He spirals through a series of nightmarish scenarios involving a woman sobbing in an art gallery, British schoolkids tossing a baby around and a visit to the ‘Cancel Club’ where Liam Neeson seems to double down on his racist admissions. Along the way, he encounters Lorraine, a sort of adversarial guardian angel, who dubs him ‘New Jazz’ and pops a Goofy cap on his…

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Tariq Goddard enjoys sets from Pulp, Angine de Poitrine, Gnod, Mozart Estate and more at Larmer Tree Gardens set in Thomas Hardy country. Main photograph of Pulp: Burak Cingi

Things ain’t what they used to be, which for many of us is a sign that history bends towards the light, at least as far as festival antics and amenities are concerned. No more Glasgow punks throwing a raver off a bridge because he wouldn’t shout ‘I Am Mussolini’. (I would have complied and been carried aloft in their arms like Maximus.) No more watching the sky blacken with bottles of piss intended for Meatloaf’s nose. No more lack of safe spaces. (Once upon a time not even a sleeping bag would…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/live-reviews/end-of-the-road-2026-review/

The record sees him lean back towards dance floor territory after last year’s SickElixir LP

Photo by Ryley Paskal

Blawan has a new EP on the way for XL Recordings.

Comprised of two tracks, titled ‘Gi Mi Keys Back’ and ‘Auto Fake’, the record builds on his mischievous modular techno sound of recent years, while leaning back towards dance floor territory after the more experimental reaches of last year’s SickElixir LP. A digital release of the EP is due later this month, while a limited edition 12-inch vinyl edition will follow on 13 November.

In a statement about the new record, the UK artist, real name Jamie Roberts, said: “[I’m] in the process of finding my feet again with my more dance floor-friendly excursions….

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Another Day On Earth and Drawn From Life, two of his records that have been largely out of print for almost two decades, are back in new editions

Photo by Guido Harari

Brian Eno has relaunched his cult label Opal Records after more than three decades of inactivity.

He’s marking the imprint’s return with the reissue of two of his albums that have been out of print outside of Japan for almost two decades. The first of those is 2005’s Another Day On Earth, which was Eno’s first song-based album since Nerve Net in 1992, while the other is his 2001 collaboration with J. Peter Schwalm, Drawn From Life, which featured guest contributions from Holger Czukay, Laurie Anderson and more.

Both reissues will be…

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