Luke Turner revisits Coil’s penultimate album, currently being re-released by Dais, and finds it a potent listen haunted by the premature death of John Balance.

Black Antlers by Coil

Black Antlers comes with less of the mythos that attaches itself to other Coil albums. Where Time Machines, Loves Secret Domain, Horse Rotorvator and so on inspired nerdy obsessions with the eldritch mechanisms used to create them – a determined perpetual state of constant evolution and hedonistic experimentation via narcotics and pharmaceuticals, home studio tech, countercultural mining, occult practice and sundry other alternative states – Coil’s penultimate studio album superficially seems more ordinary. It is, after all, one where they embraced more conventional song structures, including the wonderful take on English folk staple ‘All The Pretty…

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Osmium

Osmium

Members of Senyawa and Emptyset join forces with Sam Slater and Oscar-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir for an exploration of machine learning that sounds thrillingly alien

OSMIUM by OSMIUM

Given all the discussion and debate around artificial intelligence and what it means for the future of art, culture, employment and humanity itself, releasing a record that explores “the relationship between humans and machines, tradition and progress” could either be seen as apposite or painfully on the nose.  

Rather than any sort of exploration of AI – either thematic, or as a collaborative tool – Osmium instead construct the machines they need before going about bending them to their collective will. Using bespoke and homemade instrumentation, the quartet craft something dark, ominous and entirely…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/osmium-osmium/

Matthew Herbert and Preservation, with Armand Hammer, also appear on the release

Hatis Noit, photo by Özge Cöne

Hatis Noit is releasing a remix album for her 2022 LP Aura.

Out in September, the eight-track collection takes in reworks of songs from the original record by the likes of Laraaji, Jlin, William Basinski, Matthew Herbert and Preservation, whose remix features billy woods and ELUCID, AKA Armand Hammer.

Alongside news of the release, Hatis Noit has shared Jlin’s remix of the track ‘A Caso’, which you can listen to below.

Speaking about her rework, Jlin said: “Hatis Noit has a uniquely brilliant vocal approach in her music. I simply wanted to play against it because she never seems to do the same thing twice. I love…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/laraaji-jlin-william-basinski-and-more-rework-hatis-noit-on-new-remixes-package/

Mark Van Hoen

The Eternal Present

Whether covering Slowdive or summoning Squarepusher, Croydon’s Mark Van Hoen inhabits a timeline all of his own

The Eternal Present by Mark Van Hoen

In Alan Moore’s all-encompassing three book epic Jerusalem he carefully and painstakingly depicts the multi-generational lives of the inhabitants of the mediaeval centre of Northampton known as The Boroughs. Through tracing their surreal, mundane, magickal, exhaustive, and, at times, harrowing existences, Moore posits the notion of ‘Eternalism’: a theory in which all events, past, present and future, occur simultaneously. Much as geographical spaces still exist without our presence, the same can also be said for these instances of time. For Mark Van Hoen, the music he created nearly thirty years ago is equally concurrent…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/mark-van-hoen-the-eternal-present-review/

A long-term fixture on Beirut’s underground experimental music scene, the latest from Sary Moussa is caught between the political and the personal, the whisper close and wide-open space. Wind, Again is an album whose contradictions make it all the more compelling, finds Kirsteen McNish

Wind, Again is an intoxicating album of deep complexity and nuance. Based between France and Lebanon, the architect of this work, Sary Moussa, has created an interplay between the micro and macro within complicated landscapes. With both Western and West Asian instruments and deftly hewn, jagged electronics, he oscillates between collective experience and the deeply personal. This album is an exploration of how we occupy the real and unreal nature of place individually and collectively. It is about…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/album-of-the-week/wind-again-sary-moussa-review/

Your exclusive tQ subscriber download this week is a special one – a wild, excessive cut of hurdy-gurdy driven drone from one of our favourite bands, France

Photo by Naima Saidi

On a mid-November night last year, fans gathered for a rare show by search-engine impaired French underground trio France, a band who unite heads across Europe, but many of whom can’t tell you exactly how many songs this band has. The answer is just one, but it exists in multitudes. 

It was the third on a short tour, the only type of tour they will countenance, and a rare trip to the UK, and after nights in Bristol and Todmorden, they capped it off with a bigger show at Rich Mix. The…

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source https://thequietus.com/subscriber-area/music-downloads/tq-subscriber-release-france/

Stephen O’Malley

But Remember What You Have Had

The SUNN O))) member’s minimalism leaves JR Moores wanting more

But remember what you have had by Stephen O'Malley

Those with low expectations might still get something out of this new recording by SUNN O))) amp botherer Stephen O’Malley. On first listen, it’s a fairly underwhelming experience on account of its relative sparseness and brevity. Released in the Portraits GRM series, the “album” is a single piece so those who are after a physical copy would be advised to purchase it on compact disc. Not only is this cheaper, it means you won’t have to turn over an LP halfway through listening to the song. Once the CD is out of its shrink-wrap and in the…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/stephen-omalley-but-remember-what-you-have-had-review/

For 40 years, Jon Spencer has been playing a mutant strain of rock & roll. Here he offers Mark Andrews 10 entry points to his vast back catalogue, from his earliest days in Pussy Galore, through the Blues Explosion all the way up to his still-nameless new band

Jon Spencer turned 60 in February this year. His 50s yielded a run of consistently excellent records: the Blues Explosion’s Freedom Tower (2015); Boss Hog’s Brood X (2017); and three records under his own name: Spencer Sings The Hits (2018); Spencer Gets It Lit (2022) and Sick of Being Sick! (2024). His work as a producer on Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton’s Death Wish Blues (2023) was even nominated for a Grammy (in the…

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source https://thequietus.com/interviews/strange-world-of/jon-spencer-best-records/

Phil Langero

Practical Dancing (For The Modern Man)

Moundabout man gets lost in the rural murk, clanging away in a darkened basement, covering Beyoncé…

Practical Dancing (for the Modern Man) by Phil Langero

The recently minted Black Hole imprint from Rocket Recordings is a space for those willing to take the darker, less travelled path. For their fourth instalment, they’ve invited Cork’s Phil Langero to bravely cross the event horizon. If you’re familiar with Langero’s Moundabout project with Gnod’s Paddy Shine, you’ll know the rough wheelhouse this exists within. Practical Dancing (For The Modern Man), however, strays even further from the path, continuing up a hill to a handmade wooden shed stood braced against the howling wind. It’s here that Langero concocted his gyrating…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/phil-langero-practical-dancing-for-the-modern-man-review/

Nyege Nyege artists and more for Berlin event in Jully

Berlin festival Gaswerk Music Days, now in its third years, has unveiled the full programme for their 2025 event, which takes place over the weekends of 12 and 19 July. The festival is curated by the musical community of the Gaswerksiedlung, a block of century-old flats close to the River Spree in the east of the city that’s been converted into an art and creative hub, with performances taking place both indoors and in the gART.n outside area. The events over the two weekends happen under different themes, from ‘Improvisation, Exploration, Interaction’ to ‘Psychedelia and Experimental Electronics’ and a day-long focus on music tech and distribution.

This year there’s a focus on…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/gaswerk-music-days-announces-programme/