Darran Anderson speaks to the writer and filmmaker about the closure of Smithfield Market on the Northside and the sung and spoken eulogy he made to celebrate its passing

At its deepest, an elegy is a mourning not just for an individual, but a place and time now lost forever. You can hear this in everything from Charles Mingus’ jazz requiem ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ for the late Lester ‘Pres’ Young to Gavin Bryars’ homeless choral ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ to Scott Walker’s threnody for Pasolini, ‘Farmer In The City’. These are memorials but they are also boundary markers, across which there is no returning. 

We are currently living through the greatest period of urbanisation ever seen in history. And…

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source https://thequietus.com/culture/film/dave-tynan-interview/

Me Lost Me

This Material Moment

Backed by clarinets, bass and drums (the latter courtesy of Ewan Mackenzie or Pigsx7), Jayne Dent’s latest channels random processes into her most personal material to date

This Material Moment by Me Lost Me

Jayne Dent’s intrepid explorations of folk song and abstract electronics as Me Lost Me have often produced extraordinary music but her fourth album, This Material Moment, is her most accomplished and inventive yet. Setting aside storytelling, Dent makes use of chance-based and automatic writing techniques to arrive at something vibrant and evocative. Such formal exercises can make for interesting if somewhat dry results but they can also open doors to the unconscious and when Dent noticed her feelings bleeding through into the songs she accepted…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/me-lost-me-this-material-moment-review/

Four hours of sounds from the month that was

Well that was a flaming June if ever we experienced one, and not just in the weather but all the gear we’ve been writing about on The Quietus, all helpfully summarised in this month’s subscriber-exclusive playlist, which our loyal supporters can find on Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, Deezer and Qobuz below. So there’s over four hours of sounds from artists including Jerkin Fendrix, Clipse, Ámaarae, Lyra Pramuk, Patrick Wolf, Matmos, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Gelli Haha, Haress, The Messthetics, Quinton Barnes, Pulp, James Holden with Wacław Zimpel, Joy Orbison and Overmono, The Lemonheads, Daphni, Big Thief, Badsistah, Emptiest, The Hidden Cameras, Kim Gordon and so much more. A reminder that subscribers don’t…

The post tQ’s Exclusive Monthly Playlist: Catch up with June 2025 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/subscriber-area/monthly-playlists/tqs-exclusive-monthly-playlist-catch-up-with-june-2025/

Noel Gardner delivers another guide to the sound of New Weird Britain, taking in 16rpm street soul, the dub/folk connection, gothic ambience responding to a 14th century manuscript and more

M-G Dysfunction

A common oldhead refrain you’ll probably know, if you’re the sort of person reading this, is “where have all the bad reviews gone?” Well, in my case, because the stuff I write about is mostly very niche and has minimal public profile, so it’s rarely if ever worthwhile highlighting something crap. Mista Self-Isolation, by sometimes-Yorkshire/sometimes-London electronic ironist M-G Dysfunction, offers an unusual variation by being an album which reviews itself – badly.

On its opening track, a hired hypeman gets ready to craft a praiseful intro to the tape before realising…

The post New Weird Britain in Review for July by Noel Gardner appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/new-weird-britain/new-weird-britain-july-2025-m-g-dysfunction-henzo-rest-symbol/

Richard Skelton

The Second Chamber

Marking twenty years of his Sustain-Release label, Richard Skelton’s new album feels like a summation of two decades of work in atmospheric experimental music

The Second Chamber by Richard Skelton

According to Roland Barthes, the event of grief gives way to an absence that paradoxically fills us. “We don’t forget, but something vacant settles in us.” The oxymoron of becoming full with emptiness. The hollows fill with more empty space. When Richard Skelton lost his wife in 2004, he began to process the tragedy by composing music. He filled the empty spaces with sound. At that time he also returned to his parents’ home in Wigan, where, in his own words, he was “reconnecting with a sense of that…

The post Richard Skelton – The Second Chamber appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/richard-skelton-the-second-chamber-review/

Ensemble Nist-Nah

Spilla

Australian musician Will Guthrie’s gamelan-inspired ensemble pushes improvised percussion music to rich and experimental new heights, finds Levi Dayan

Spilla by ENSEMBLE NIST-NAH

All music is inherently syncretic, traditional and contemporary alike, and it’s impossible (not to mention undesirable) to maintain complete musical purity. If this wasn’t the case, there would be no mystery to the nature of music, and no power. That being said, there can be a thin line between a genuine musical dialogue across borders and treacly garbage.

One path towards engaging with different forms of traditional music in a way that maintains vitality and invention can be found in the world of improvised music. This is, in part, because improvised music always varies heavily based on regional scenes,…

The post Ensemble Nist-Nah – Spilla appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/ensemble-nist-nah-spilla-review/

With a combined age somewhere in the region of 130, French couple Pepe and Irene deliver a powerful industrial sound that a band less than half their age would struggle to match. Words: David McKenna. Main portraits: Maria Jefferis

Grrzzz. Acid Horse Festival 2025. The Barge, Honey Street, Wiltshire.

“It isn’t always easy.”

Pepe is half of French duo GrRzZz, who have been touring European squats and intermittently releasing pounding industrial punk albums for the past 25 years. He “plays guitar and screams”, according to the band’s website. His partner, Irène aka Pimpox – who “runs all the electronic stuff” – immediately retorts “You said it first!”

Pepe grins. “But we can deal with it.”

“I think we’re both very passionate about music, and that’s…

The post Trash Masters: GrRzZz Interviewed appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/interviews/grrzzz-interview/

Burning Down the House by Jonathan Gould tells the story of the American new wave band and the fertile scene they came up with, but does the book risk reduing the city and everyone in it to a backdrop for the group’s mercurial lead singer? asks Elizabeth Wiet

If Talking Heads have a magnum opus, it is surely 1980’s Remain in Light. More than a mere maturation in the band’s sound, the album marks the culmination of frontman David Byrne’s intellectual tête-à-tête with producer Brian Eno. The two met in London in May 1977 while the Heads were on tour with the Ramones. Eno’s avant-garde credentials gave gravitas to the scrappy Heads, who were still ambling on stage at CBGBs and…

The post Artists Only? Jonathan Gould’s Book on Talking Heads and Downtown New York appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/culture/books/jonathan-gould-burning-down-the-house-talking-heads-book-review/

Here are the albums and songs from the last month that tQ’s staffers think you should hear

With the end of June comes the slew of 2025-so-far charts and its accompanying discourse, the first proper attempt to establish an overarching narrative of the year’s sonic output.

tQ’s own round-up of 100 excellent and eclectic releases to have delighted us thus far is just a week away, but for now, there’s still the matter of picking out our favourites from June alone – no small task in itself, as the wealth of pop, minyo, folk, experimentation, dance, hip hop and more we’ve selected here would indicate.

Everything you’ll find below, as well as all the other excellent music we’ve covered at tQ this month,…

The post Music of the Month: The Best Albums and Tracks of June 2025 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/tq-charts/music-of-the-month/best-music-june-2025/

Although David Lynch’s 1992 sitcom was a quickly forgotten flop, James Cooray Smith argues that it has enough of the director’s mercurial strangeness to be considered alongside his finest work

It was inevitable that David Lynch’s death would prompt re-engagement with his now completed body of work. In the UK at least, this has been facilitated by cinemas – including major chains – offering retrospectives of his films. Some have even thrown in much of his TV work, but one title has been absent everywhere: the most obscure item in the Lynch canon, 1992 sitcom On The Air. 

On The Air is set in 1957, towards the end of what many described as the ‘golden age’ of American television; the period when it…

The post Low Culture Essay: James Cooray Smith on David Lynch Sitcom, On The Air appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/subscriber-area/low-culture-essay/david-lynch-on-the-air-sitcom/