From cooperation in the face of political tension, to complex approaches to tradition, Jakub Knera explores the many driving forces of Croatia’s underground music scene, and picks out 10 key releases

Mimika Orchestra, photo by Marina Uzelac

I wonder where the story begins for this exploration of Croatian music. Maybe with my mother’s recollections of a holiday on Lošinj Island in Yugoslavia, in August 1985, seven months before I was born. She bought me a terrycloth jumpsuit, unavailable in Poland – in that period, new things only arrived from German relatives. Or maybe it starts in Groningen in 2025, when the post rock tambura that Croation outfit Nemeček were using during their set at ESNS caught my attention. 

Or maybe the real beginning…

The post Inner Ear: Croatian Music for April, by Jakub Knera appeared first on The Quietus.

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Sean Kitching speaks to Brian Hageman, Mark Davies and Hugh Swarts of TFUL282 about recording at Steve Albini’s house and setting John Cage’s voice to a glitchy dancefloor banger, while offering ten points of entry to their unique back catalogue

TFUL282 by Michael Galinsky

 Hailing largely from rural Iowa, the members of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 relocated to the Bay Area in 1986, from where they released seven unique studio albums between 1988 and 2001. A collision of divergent personalities and eclectic music tastes (classical music, big band jazz, easy listening, The Beatles, Ennio Morricone, Perez Prado, Zoviet France, Gastr del Sol, The Residents, to name but a few), with an ear for a great pop tune as well as a…

The post The Strange World Of… Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 appeared first on The Quietus.

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Catch up with everything we wrote about in March.

With March done and dusted with the appalling pollen of early spring, we’re back with your regular playlist of everything we wrote about over the past four or so weeks, available on Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Qobuz and Deezer. Firstly, a reminder of the other perks our Subscriber and Subscriber Plus tier members received during that time: we had the Low Culture Podcast on Suicide’s debut album, an Organic Intelligence newsletter on psychedelic Porto, and the Low Culture Essay featuring Natalie Marlin on the relationship between The Chemical Brothers’ Hanna soundtrack and her trans identity. Subscriber Plus tier members have their bonus playlists featuring music from Baker’s Dozen selections by Sarah Nixey of Black Box Recorder, Sherelle…

The post Our Subscriber-Exclusive Playlist for March 2026 appeared first on The Quietus.

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Ahead of their show at Bristol New Music, Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley and Ethan Miller tell Jennifer Lucy Allan how a Grateful Dead tribute show led to their acclaimed new collaboration, the joy of bootlegs, and how they’re avoiding the ego-driven pitfalls that have dogged supergroups past

Photo by Sheva Kafai

“Our delightful origin story takes place around a Grateful Dead tribute show that Bill and I played together,” says Ethan Miller, when I ask how he, guitarist Bill Orcutt, and drummer Steve Shelley came to form a trio. “Don’t tell anybody that though!” 

I regretfully inform him that we are on the record. “Bill isn’t a huge Dead fan,” he explains, “but after that show, Bill told me how fun it was…

The post Triple Threat: An Interview with Orcutt Shelley Miller appeared first on The Quietus.

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After stripping pop down to its electro-skeleton in the first half of the decade, Prince built it back up from bones in 1986, says Toby Manning

 Prince always had a strange relationship to individualism, the ethos that was as constitutive of the 80s as his own music. As a one-man band, Prince pioneered the nervy, synthy new-wave/disco hybrid that became 80s pop, though his hits tended to be band productions like 1983’s ‘Little Red Corvette’ or the previous year’s ‘1999’. Paradoxically, once he formed a proper band, The Revolution, Prince often still played every instrument himself, as on 1984 smash ‘When Doves Cry’. Yet this control freakery didn’t extend to billing or composer credits: Prince even attributed the solo-written ‘Purple Rain’ to…

The post Prince’s Parade (Under The Cherry Moon) 40 Years On appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/prince-parade-review/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=prince-parade-review

Irreversible Entanglements

Future Present Past

Their second album for Impulse! records finds the improvising quintet in a surprisingly hopeful place, finds Andrew Taylor-Dawson

Since forming in 2015, free-jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements have charted a singular musical course. Their sound marries the fiery liberation poetry of Camae Ayewa (better known as Moor Mother), with exploratory and often improvisational brass from trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and saxophonist Keir Neuringer. Grounding their experimental style are double bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Tcheser Holmes.

The band’s music exists in a space between wild artistic freedom and the righteous anger that defines the lyrics of Moor Mother. Their focus on social and racial justice is written into their DNA. They did after all first come together as part of a…

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A Bosnian satirist Dr. Nele Karajlić recently claimed that the entire Yugo rock scene of the 1980s was created by the socialist State; but what if he isn’t joking? A report by Robert Rigny

Laibach by Nika H. Praper & Ludvik

In a small, smoky room in Sarajevo some time in the early 80s, socialist apparatchiks in suits discuss the problem of youth delinquency and the horror of “Western influence”. One comrade makes a deadpan joke that they should form a rock band. His logic is that the kids are getting restless and rock music already exists: “So let’s channel it; institutionalise it; give it a socialist framework.” The cadres nod and discuss it with the same level of seriousness they would apply to talking…

The post The Yugoslav Psy-Op That may have Given us Laibach… and Inspired Rammstein appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/laibach-rammstein-yugoslavian-psy-ops/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=laibach-rammstein-yugoslavian-psy-ops

Robyn

Sexistential

Dumb pleasure is a philosophy on Sexistential, Robyn’s fizzing record of love, sex and motherhood

Sexistential by Robyn

Sixteen years since Body Talk? Eight since Honey? Robyn’s best albums feel closer and further away than that. The Swedish indie popstar’s best music is timeless in that surreal way; untouched by trends come and gone, and so ubiquitous as to have existed with us forever. Both minimal and maximal, her songs have a purity. Beats and melody are cut down until the nerves are exposed.

That’s still true on her new album, Sexistential, a refined, immaculate set of pop songs which still burst with weirdness and impulse. She flirts with solipsism, references ‘juicy hentai’ and, inexplicably, Don’t Mess with the Zohan. And in its…

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He was already great, but over the course of one year, when he released Fishscale and More Fish, Ghostface became a legend. Words by Angus Batey

 As attentive readers of this august journal will know, the remit and parameters for the occasional Three Album Run series are exacting, the bar set so high it can see for miles. The records that define a whole genre? That’s tough. But it has to be: the artists who’ve made three crackers in a row have already earned their place in the canon, so writing about a particularly storied arc in their catalogue is obvious to the point of laziness. Ghostface didn’t make three records that encapsulated his genre, but, starting in April 2004, he…

The post Fishing for Pearls: Ghostface Killah in 2006 appeared first on The Quietus.

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Approval for the development, which could have threatened the future of the London venue, wasn’t granted amid a campaign against it by the venue and its supporters

A planning application for a development adjacent to London venue MOTH Club has been refused, marking what the team behind the venue called “a huge win” for its future.

Announcing the news via Instagram, MOTH Club thanked people who supported its campaign in standing against the nearby development by signing petitions, voicing their disapproval for the plans and amplifying the venue’s cause. “We couldn’t have done it without your support,” the social media post read.

There is still some uncertainty around the situation, however. A separate planning application related to another nearby development is still in…

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