Charles Hayward x Dälek

HAYWARDxDÄLEK

New Jersey rapper and South London drummer team up and tear it up over nine tracks of deep beats and mangled melodies

Back in 2023, From The Other (the creative bods behind Fat Out Fest) invited Charles Hayward and Will Brooks (AKA MC Dälek) to collaborate as part of their artist development programme Samarbeta. What started off as an improvised work, combining synth, drums, and samples, grew over the course of a week into a live performance with Brooks then taking the recordings back to his New Jersey studio to mix and add lyrics.

Deadverse Studio is the Garden State-based headquarters for Brooks’ main creative outlet – Dälek – a heavy as fuck hip-hop outfit that utilises walls of…

The post Charles Hayward x Dälek – HAYWARDxDÄLEK appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/charles-hayward-x-dalek-haywardxdalek/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=charles-hayward-x-dalek-haywardxdalek

Jakub Knera rounds off the year in Central and Eastern European music with a reflection on how the region’s complex ecosystem is reflected in its cultural output, and a selection of 2025’s key albums and reissues

The Cyclist Conspiracy

Sailing down the middle of the Danube, our guide points out that the largest parliament building in Europe is on our left. He says Hungary opened the first metro in Europe. Since the UK left the EU, he adds, we can now say that without hesitation.

We are at the Budapest Music Hub River Party. The event showcases music from Central and Eastern Europe, serving as an opportunity to meet and discuss perspectives on the music industry in the region. Earlier in the…

The post Inner Ear: The Best Central and Eastern European Music of 2025 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/tq-charts/columns-of-the-year/best-central-eastern-european-music-albums-2025/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=best-central-eastern-european-music-albums-2025

JR Moores finds some comfort in his favourite psych and avant-rock albums of the year 

Orcutt Shelley Miller, photo by Rachel Lipsitz

Guy Williams is a righteously angry comedian from New Zealand. He punctuates his sets simply by highlighting something dreadful that has occurred recently. Then he will buckle his lanky frame and scream into the microphone. Those bits, regularly used as an unsubtle segue into Williams’ next topic, aren’t particularly side-splitting. They can, nevertheless, be very cathartic. “White supremacy is back. AAARGH!” That’s one example. Another: “The world is ending. AAARGH!” Couldn’t have put it better myself.

2025 has indeed been another period when it’s felt easy to get onboard with Williams’ pessimistic desperation.

Black Sabbath played their ever final concert and then…

The post Columnfortably Numb: The Best Psych Rock of 2025 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/tq-charts/columns-of-the-year/best-psych-rock-albums-2025-flesh-narc-hebi-katana-orcutt-shelley-miller/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=best-psych-rock-albums-2025-flesh-narc-hebi-katana-orcutt-shelley-miller

In the final pod of the year, tQ’s founders tremble in the face of the coming cheese apocalypse as they dive into their musical highlights from the past 12 months

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a clump of earthworms in a musician’s mouth. John and Luke, as has become part of tQ’s annual tradition, try and stifle their beleaguered coughing fits long enough to praise the the length… the depth… the breadth… the sheer freaky might of this year’s Albums of the Year chart. As well as Aya’s Hexed – which contains one of the weirdest sleeve photos in recent memory – the pair summon vast reserves of praise…

The post Low Culture Podcast: John & Luke Reflect on 2025 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/subscriber-area/low-culture-podcast/low-culture-podcast-john-luke-reflect-on-2025/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=low-culture-podcast-john-luke-reflect-on-2025

Siriusmo

Buletten & Blumen

The fourth LP from the Berlin-based electronic music producer hums with retro-futuristic warmth served with a plentiful side of shits and gigles

The opening track of Buletten & Blumen, Siriusmo’s fourth album, is multi-faceted. ‘That Could Funktion As A Song’ begins with the sound of a computer logging on. A metronome starts. Then a stranger mutters “Hmmm… cool. So that could function as a song… I guess.” The uncanny voice has all the emotional detachment of a scripted call centre helpline or, more chillingly, an AI. “Ok, ok,” says that voice again “I like instruments,” but the intonation is off. It builds symphonically before fading out into the clatter of computer keys being punched. Herbie Hancock meets The Muppets’…

The post Siriusmo – Buletten & Blumen appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/siriusmo-buletten-blumen-review/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=siriusmo-buletten-blumen-review

Japanese Television’s Al Brown eagerly licks the toxins of the back of a Sonoran desert toad and sinks into a bottomless funk of motorik rhythms, twisting basslines and Balearic guitars resulting in an album of slithery bedroom electro-psych well-suited to the late, winter months

Golden Toad is the solo project of Al Brown, former co-creator of indie-psychers Japanese Television. He’s also made music videos for the likes of UNKLE, Lambrini Girls, Idles, and Deap Vally. His solo debut Unite The Worms happens to be released twenty years after the extinction declaration of the Costa Rican Golden Toad, the last confirmed sighting of which occurred all the way back in 1989. This Golden Toad, however, decided to hole himself up in a…

The post Wrigglies Extra: Unite The Worms by Golden Toad appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/album-of-the-week/unite-the-worms-golden-toad-review/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unite-the-worms-golden-toad-review

Listen to a track via The Quietus

Composer Rafael Anton Irisarri, who recently released a remix collection featuring the likes of The Bug, Penelope Trappes, William Basinski and Abul Mogard, has unveiled details of a new album. Called Points Of Inaccessibility, the album was recorded in New York after development in improvised sessions of bowed guitar drones in former psychiatric institution the Pieter Baan Centre in Utrecht. Here, Irisarri collaborated with Dutch visual artist Jaco Schlip as he created projections for joint A/V performances. “Points Of Inaccessibility came from thinking about how disconnection feels in an age obsessed with connection,” says Irisarri, “We are constantly online, constantly visible, yet we drift further apart. The real distance isn’t geographic anymore, it’s…

The post Rafael Anton Irisarri Announces new Album appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/news/rafael-anton-irisarri-announces-new-album/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rafael-anton-irisarri-announces-new-album

The band take on Talking Heads, Daniel Johnston, GloRilla, Robyn and more on Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1

Xiu Xiu have announced a new covers album, Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1, to be released on 16 January via Polyvinyl.

The record sees the longstanding experimental outfit interpreting the likes of Talking Heads, Robyn, Throbbing Gristle, Soft Cell and more.

Said the band’s Jamie Stewart: “We have a long history of doing covers and have done 3 albums of covers. The enduring and basic throughline with all of them is an attempt to say thank you to those songs. They are all in one way or another pieces of music that have moved us and exploring them in a deep way is a…

The post Xiu Xiu Announce New Covers Album appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/news/xiu-xiu-announce-new-covers-album/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=xiu-xiu-announce-new-covers-album

The Michigan punks’ cult debut album will receive a long-awaited full release next March, ahead of a European and UK tour. The band have also shared a new video below

Photo by Steve Gullick

Mute have announced the signing of Dearborn band Prostitute, whose 2024 debut Attempted Martyr will receive a long-awaited worldwide physical release ahead of a new European tour.

Originally released on a small independent run, Attempted Martyr has since accrued significant word-of-mouth acclaim (and an in-depth feature in these pages) for its incendiary mixture of hardcore punk, noise, and middle eastern music.

Mute’s new editition of the record is out on CD and two vinyl editions – a limited ‘Arabic edition’ on ‘Lebanese sunburst vinyl’ available exclusively through Dinked, and a…

The post Prostitute Sign to Mute for Worldwide Release of Debut Album appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/news/prostitute-sign-to-mute-for-worldwide-release-of-debut-album/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=prostitute-sign-to-mute-for-worldwide-release-of-debut-album

Kez Whelan picks out the 20 best records from 2025 in metal, year of heartening cross-pollination and pushed limits, as well as some heartbreaking departures 

Messa, photo by Nicola Pianalto

2025 will undoubtedly go down as an important year in metal history, if only for the heartbreaking number of generational voices and visionary musicians we lost over the last 12 months. As sad as it is to say goodbye to artists we’ve grown up listening to, there’s a distinct inevitability to it at this point; if we’re taking Black Sabbath’s 1970 debut as year zero, then heavy metal as a concept will be 56 years old next year, and we’ll likely lose even more of the genre’s old guard as the…

The post Columnus Metallicus: The Best Heavy Metal of 2025 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/tq-charts/columns-of-the-year/best-heavy-metal-albums-2025-messa-primitive-man-coltsblood/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=best-heavy-metal-albums-2025-messa-primitive-man-coltsblood