Amina Hocine

ātamōn

Recorded in an abandoned mineshaft with a jerry-built foghorn organ, ātamōn is far from your run-of-the-mill drone record

ātamōn by Amina Hocine

ātamōn, the first full-length release from Swedish composer Amina Hocine, was born from a foghorn organ built by the composer herself, made from everyday objects taken from hardware stores. Listening to ātamōn without any context, it would not be immediately apparent that the music was made utilizing any acoustic instruments, let alone one so rudimentary. The most immediately noticeable aspect of ātamōn is how icy and synthetic its drones sound, almost feeling like a digital condensation of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures.

ātamōn was recorded in an abandoned iron mine in rural Sweden, a process reminiscent of Pauline Oliveros’ cistern experiments,…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/amina-hocine-atamon-review/

Ahead of their show at this year’s Skaņu Mežs festival, Jack Barnett of These New Puritans takes Claire Biddles through an eclectic Baker’s Dozen, taking in everything from flamenco and Greek traditional music to Steely Dan and Bob Dylan

“I don’t really think about musical influences that much,” admits Jack Barnett of These New Puritans, speaking from his hometown of Southend-on-Sea. “I think I spend more time writing music than listening to it really.” Released earlier in 2025, These New Puritans’ Crooked Wing is their first studio album in six years, and it’s easy to imagine Barnett spending every single one of the intervening minutes crafting its complex kaleidoscope of sounds. 

Befitting someone whose music is difficult to categorise, Barnett’s list of favourite albums…

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In this month’s subscriber podcast, John Doran and Luke Turner rev up to discuss a 1996 erotic thriller based on the writings of JG Ballard 

 In this month’s Low Culture podcast John and Luke are grasping their fuelling nozzles, lubing up the big end, and casting their eyes over the smooth chrome body of David Cronenberg’s 1996 film Crash, based on the JG Ballard novel of the same name. Incredibly 90s from the opening graphics to the styling of pubic hair, Crash was an at the time controversial erotic thriller about a film producer and his wife’s open marriage and their deepening involvement in a shadowy group of people who find sexual stimulation in auto-accidents. Is it just a compilation of sex scenes with…

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University

McCartney, It’ll be OK

Noisy youths make thrilling racket, charting a unique and rather startling course through the choppy waters of post-punk, post-hardcore and math-rock

McCartney, It'll Be OK by UNIVERSITY

University are a bunch of noisy young punks from Crewe, the nation’s most interconnected nowhere. If I understand correctly the name is sardonic: when all their friends left for higher education they stayed, putting their energy into the band. Resisting the urge to ride the rails, a degree of insularity and focus has paid off in a sharp math-punk assault with its own identity. Their debut McCartney, It’ll be OK opens with about ten seconds of distorted and enthusiastic yelling down the phone, which seems as fitting an introduction as any to…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/university-mccartney-itll-be-ok/

The London septet locate hope and amplify joy on an era-defining second

Photographer credit: Delali Ayivi

Great art always finds its time. Kokoroko’s second LP, though, is unlikely to be a record that’s going to have to wait for its audience catch up with it. Tuff Times Never Last arrives with the UK bouncing between apparently intensifying heatwaves as the geopolitical temperature takes up permanent residence in the danger zone. Wherever you look there’s chaos and crisis, and if answers exist for our myriad global maladies they’re too complicated for our digitally disrupted heads to get themselves around. Each day starts with you feeling like all that’s left is to lash out impotently and ineffectually, or bury your head in the sinking…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/album-of-the-week/tuff-times-never-last-kokoroko-review/

The festival will also host a special celebration of the last 20 years of jazz featuring Shabaka Hutchings and Camilla George

Nubya Garcia

EFG London Jazz Festival has confirmed an extensive cast of acts joining the lineup for its 2025 edition later this year.

Among them is London-born saxophonist and composer Nubya Garcia, who will headline a closing event at HERE at Outernet featuring specially commissioned visuals. Mulatu Astatke is also set to play at the same venue a week earlier in one of two gigs for this year’s festival. The other one will take place at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, and both sets will see him perform music from across his career, as well as his upcoming studio album, Mulatu Plays…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/efg-london-jazz-festival-adds-nubya-garcia-mulatu-astatke-and-more-to-2025-lineup/

Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo will play live with Peder Mannerfelt and Yonatan Gat at this year’s event

Berlin Atonal has shared the full five-day music programme for its 2025 edition.

Returning to its usual home of the Kraftwerk building in Berlin, the opening night of the event will take in world premiere live performances by Bendik Giske & Barker; Carmen Villain; and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, who will perform alongside Peder Mannerfelt and Yonatan Gat. There will also be DJ sets from Equiknoxx affiliate Gavsborg and DJ Pete, who will play back-to-back with Calibre.

The following night, there will be live performances by Moin; Djrum; emptyset, with visual artist MFO; and Ziúr & Sandi, who present their show, Home. The festival’s third night,…

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The 18xLP set, I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002-2016), includes Bowie’s final albums, as well as rarities and live recordings

David Bowie’s final 14 years of output has been compiled into a new box set, titled I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002-2016).

Set to be released in 18xLP and 13xCD editions, as well as on digital formats, the set includes remastered versions of Heathen, Reality, The Next Day and The Next Day Extra EP, as well as the original versions of final album Blackstar and the EP No Plan. The collection is rounded off by a live album recorded at Montreux Jazz Festival in 2002, another recorded on the 2003 Reality Tour, and a compilation titled Re:call 6, which features 41 rarities, some of them available in physical formats for the first time.

Tony…

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The new record is described by the brotherly duo as “a rock album made without any electric guitars”

Soulwax are set to release their first album of new material in seven years, titled All Systems Are Lying.

Comprised of 14 tracks, the follow-up to 2018’s Essentials is described by the brotherly duo of David and Stephen Dewaele as “a rock album made without any electric guitars”. They added: “We wanted to capture the feeling of a band playing electronic instruments – live, loud and loose. This record is the result of that experiment.”

To mark the announcement of All Systems Are Lying, the duo have shared the title track and another single called ‘Run Free’. Listen to both songs below.

Alongside their work as…

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Keith Kahn-Harris argues that the Back To The Beginning show highlighted the pivotal role that the imperfections of the body play in metal. Live photographs courtesy of Ross Halfin. With thanks to Jasmine Hazel Shadrack

Before even a note had been played, the Back To The Beginning concert was clearly designed around a particular narrative. For Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath to end their story as live musicians in Aston at the Villa Park stadium was exquisitely appropriate. The choice of venue acknowledged the wider narrative of metal’s roots as growing from that particular grimy and industrial inner city region of Birmingham, where their story began back in 1968. The pilgrimage of some of the biggest names in metal to their…

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source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/ozzy-black-sabbath-live-review-villa-park/