Ahead of a much-anticipated slot at this year’s Supersonic Festival, the Canadian-Zambian rapper speaks to Alex Rigotti about her pivot away from industrial beats, the end of her award-winning album trilogy and an embrace of considered craftsmanship on Only Dust Remains. Content warning: this article contains discussions of suicide.

Photo by Méchant Vaporwave

Backxwash’s musical identity has been reborn on her newest record Only Dust Remains. Under the moniker, Ashanti Mutinta had broken out with a trilogy of metal-infused industrial hip hop albums, each one more ear-bleeding than the other. Snagging the Canadian Polaris Prize for the first instalment, 2020’s God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It, its follow-up, 2021’s I Lie Here Buried With My Rings…

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This relatively obscure, nihilistic and resigned second album by a near forgotten Mancunian post punk group was released decades before the birth of writer Lina Adams in the early 00s; so why does it speak so clearly to her life today?

It’s been 40 years since The Chameleons released What Does Anything Mean? Basically. Currently playing on my laptop, remastered in crisp HD 1440p, their frontman Mark Burgess is belting out the final refrain of ‘Singing Rule Brittania’. It’s 1984, the year before the album was released, and The Chameleons are playing live at Camden Palace, following the release of the album they are best known for, Script Of The Bridge. Four brooding Manchester lads in skinny jeans look cool as…

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source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/the-chameleons-what-does-anything-mean-album-review/

The Fall

Singles Live Vol.1: 1978–81

The smell of Benson & Hedges ashtrays pervades these early concert recordings, personally selected by the dream team of Paul Hanley, Steve Hanley, Marc Riley and Craig Scanlon

Singles Live Vol.1: ‘78 – ‘81 by The Fall

The cover of The Fall’s 1980 double-single ‘How I Wrote ‘Elastic Man’ / ‘City Hobgoblins’ isn’t just a visual; it’s a battleground. A sinister, leering hobgoblin looms over a crumbling tenement, its crude, etched form crashing into an already fractured urban landscape. Mark Fisher’s description of this image is key: “This is a war of worlds, an ontological struggle, a struggle over the means of representation.”

It’s an act of defiance in pure form: Prestwich Weltanschauung distilled into a jagged proposition; alien…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/the-fall-singles-live-vol-1-1978-81-review/

In his latest guide to the best in metal, Kez Whelan celebrates Deafhaven’s trip outside their comfort zone, a career-highlight new record from Conan, the nebulous world of heavy metal supergroups, and reviews his essential new releases

Neptunian Maximalism

When is a supergroup not a supergroup? The phrase seems almost woefully out-dated given how small and incestuous most extreme music scenes are in 2025, a hangover from a time where sharing band members felt like a curious novelty rather than a basic necessity. At any rate, Florida four-piece Heaven’s Gate would certainly qualify for ‘supergroup’ status, featuring Municipal Waste’s Tony Foresta on vocals, Warthog’s Mike Goo on guitar, Reversal Of Man’s Jeff Howe on bass and Cannibal Corpse’s Paul Mazurkiewicz on drums….

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In this month’s episode of the pod, John takes Luke to a Wiltshire village for his first introduction to the time-defying Doctor

“What the blazes is that?! Some kind of ornament?” No, dear readers, it’s not Luke looking at John on Zoom after forgetting to put his reading glasses on but the first signs that Whovian mania has come to the Quietus! After four and a half decades of enforced followed by elective abstinence, Luke has been persuaded to watch some Doctor Who by John. With a 62-year span to choose from, the choice of story was fraught however. Would they go OG or reboot? Ncuti Gatwa or William Hartnell? Cactus loving billionaire Harrison Chase playing modular synth in his lunatic greenhouse or…

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Ahead of their appearance at an essential new festival of left field music at Liverpool’s Invisible Wind Factory, tQ catches up with one of the city’s rising stars, a Lesser Version, who feature on this year’s bill

Photos by Aidan Shard

The last weekend of this month sees the launch of a new two-day festival in Liverpool, Outer Waves. Taking place in the city’s North Docks around the Invisible Wind Factory and the Make creative hub, the inaugural lineup features a mixture of Merseyside’s underground outliers, and invitees from beyond.

Several established tQ favourites feature, including the band behind our favourite album of 2024 and local favourites Ex-Easter Island Head, who join long standing pysch rock heroes Gong as headliners. Elsewhere, there’s the…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/interview-a-lesser-version-on-liverpools-new-outer-waves-festival/

Three day party featuring Matmos, Scotch Rolex, Rattle, Regis, MPTL Microplastics, Milkweed, William Doyle, The Utopia Strong & Karl D’Silva starts on Friday

Acid Horse, a three day, two stage festival in Wiltshire featuring headliners Matmos, William Doyle, Dyslecta, The Utopia Strong, Michael, Regis, Karl D’Silva and Slav To The Rhytym, is coming close to selling the last of its weekend and day tickets.

The weekend also contains a mobile sound barrow, numerous independent food concessions, a badge making workshop, a guided walk around eerie Alton Barnes led by local archaeologist, a Warhammer 40k miniature painting workshop and a nightly blazing campfire. It will be a chance to see a lot of music live that tQ has been really enjoying over…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/buy-acid-horse-festival-tickets/

Goddess

Goddess

Savages’ Faye Minton delivers a hymn to ‘feminine energy’, with guest spots from Salvia, Isabel Muñoz-Newsome, Delilah Holliday and others

Goddess by Goddess

Very few music lovers would welcome a drummer-less universe, yet solo ventures by percussionists tend to be an acquired taste. Even if you are drawn to the skins, drums taking centerstage can be strong medicine (one that I happen to love, as it happens), so it will probably be a relief to most listeners that Goddess, while devised by a drummer, owes nothing to such purism. Nor is the project a ruse to move a band member traditionally sat at the back to the foreground, in an act of egotistic overcorrection, harking back to the days when Ringo and…

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With the release of her new book Small Town Joy: From glam rock to hyperpop: how queer music changed the sound of Scotland, author Carrie Marshall talks to Claire Sawers about growing up in 1970s Lanark, clubbing at Edinburgh’s Fire Island and the “seismic” influence of Jimmy Somerville

Photo by David Marshall

Carrie Marshall could see dark clouds on the horizon. Three years ago, she was promoting her new book Carrie Kills A Man, her memoir of coming out as a trans woman at the age of 44, and looking for her next writing project. Her autobiography described “throwing a hand grenade into a perfect life,” metaphorically killing off a depressed suburban dad. She wrote about the subsequent highs and lows of…

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source https://thequietus.com/culture/books/the-sound-of-young-queer-scotland-an-interview-with-carrie-marshall/

The 24-track release takes in new cuts from long-time affiliates of the label, as well as some new faces

Tectonic, the electronic music label run by Bristol DJ and producer Pinch, is releasing a compilation to mark its 20th anniversary.

Set to be made available digitally and in a vinyl box set. Tectonic Sound features 24 new cuts by long-time affiliates of the label, in addition to some new faces. Among the artists who have contributed tracks to the release are Peverelist, Shed, Coki, 2562, Sophia Loizou, Appleblim, Flora Yin Wong and Pinch himself.

“The last compilation series I did on the label was called Tectonic Plates, which started in 2006, at a time when dubstep DJs including myself would cut 10-inch dubplates…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/tectonic-details-20th-anniversary-compilation/