The contentious hip hop and electro veteran had faced multiple allegations of sexual assault that emerged over the past decade

Afrika Bambaataa, the DJ, rapper and producer who merged hip hop with electro in the 80s, has died at the age of 68.

News of his passing was confirmed in an Instagram post by the Hip Hop Alliance, a not-for-profit organisation that supports creatives working in hip hop. TMZ reported that he died in Pennsylvania as a result of complications from cancer.

Born Lance Taylor in The Bronx, New York City in April 1957, the artist is considered an early pioneer of hip hop. He launched the Universal Zulu Nation collective in 1973, which helped the genre emerge from its local New York…

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The Riga festival takes place across two days this October

Smerz

Skaņu Mežs has added a second wave of acts to the bill for its 2026 edition.

Returning to Riga’s Hanzas Perons venue this October, the festival will newly take in a set from Smerz, who will be touring in support of last year’s album, Big City Life.

Also newly added to the lineup are Planet Mu affiliate Ship Sket; Lithuanian sound artist Augustė Vickunaitė; and veteran free jazz saxophonist Joe McPhee, who will perform with bassist John Edwards and drummer Klaus Kugel.

They join the previously announced likes of aya, Gudrun Gut, Krallice, and Charlemagne Palestine, Oren Ambarchi & Daniel O’Sullivan.

Revisit tQ’s round-up of seven key performances from last year’s Skaņu Mežs here.

Skaņu Mežs will…

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It marks the second full-length collaboration between the pair

Photo by Alessio Pizzicannella

Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri have shared details of a new LP, Where Light Pauses In The Silence Of The Sun.

Spanning six tracks, the new record marks the second full-length collaboration between the two artists. It emerged from a three-day residency involving the pair at Morphine Raum in Berlin in spring 2025, where the duo developed their source material through improvisation before each artist transformed the recordings in separate studio settings – Mogard in Rome, and Irisarri in New York.

Cellist Martina Bertoni appears on two tracks on the album, while Andrea Burelli also contributes violin and voice to one track.

Speaking about the recording process of the album and…

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Originally commissioned by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, this collaboration between the Amsterdam-based producer and ther UK’s busiest drummer opens up dazzling worlds of percussive sound

Make your first listen to Seismo a naive one. Don’t think about its makers, and the many excellent projects they have worked on. Don’t think about how exciting it is to hear a bold percussionist like Valentina Magaletti collaborate with a producer who can match her inventiveness and unrestricted approach to form and genre. Try not to think about PAN, the storied label backing it. If you can, forget Moin, Midori Takada, Steve Reich, Nicolas Jaar, Miles Davis, Shackleton, or any other past collaborator or influence you might hear flashes of within its eight songs. Don’t think of…

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From a childhood obsessed with art to the electroacoustic, treated piano work of new album Requiem via Can’s “school of pain”, the German composer reflects on a life well lived. Words: Adelle Stripe. Portraits: Robin Maddock

As a founding member of Can, and a composer with an illustrious soundtrack career, Irmin Schmidt is a man who needs little introduction to Quietus readers. Now approaching his 89th year, and residing in the Luberon region of France, he has recently recorded a new album, Requiem, in his home studio. A meditative, poignant work of piano and field recordings, it is one of Schmidt’s most affecting and inspiring records to date and adds to a discography that encompasses over a dozen solo albums and…

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This month’s edition of the pod sees Luke Turner and John Doran discussing the 1977 classic of “cosmic horror”

In this month’s Low Culture podcast, Luke gets in his battered Austin Maxi and heads down to Wiltshire to pick up John before they head to Avebury henge and hope not to get caught in a time shift caused by a powerful ray from a distant black hole. Yes, this can mean only one thing – the cultural artefact up for chat is 1977 TV drama Children Of The Stones. Shot in the woozy heat of the summer of 1976, the six-part series concerns the arrival of a Professor Adam Brake and his son Matthew in the village of Milbury, where they settle…

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Memorials

All Clouds Bring Not Rain

One part Electrelane, one part Wire, Memorials are all gravy and All Clouds Bring Not Rain feels like a great lost album from some magical bygone era, finds Hayley Scott

All Clouds Bring Not Rain by MEMORIALS

There’s a ghost in the Leslie speaker. You can hear it on ‘Wildly Remote’, that blurred, rotor-smeared guitar tone fraying at the edges like a tape played too many times, dissolving the boundary between the song’s warm intimacy and something older, colder, and genuinely uncanny.

All Clouds Bring Not Rain is the second album from Memorials, the duo born out of two of the more quietly canonical acts in British underground music: Electrelane and Wire. The territory they cover is vast, traversed…

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Halo 38, released under the joint name Nine Inch Noize, is out this month

Nine Inch Nails are releasing a collaborative album with Boys Noize under the name Nine Inch Noize.

Titled Halo 38, its release this month will coincide with the two acts’ first live shows together under the Nine Inch Noize banner, which are scheduled to take place at Coachella festival. A billboard advertising the collaboration was spotted in Indio, California where the event will take place this weekend and next.

Boys Noize, real name Alexander Ridha, recently contributed to Nine Inch Nails’ TRON: Ares soundtrack remix album, TRON Ares: Divergence. Ridha also supported the band on tour last year and early this year.

Interscope will release Halo 38 on 17 April…

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WHOLENEW.WORLD collects official releases, live recordings and other material related to the late artist

A new fan-built archive website dedicated to documenting the life and work of SOPHIE has launched online.

WHOLENEW.WORLD collects the late artist’s official releases, live recordings and biographical material about SOPHIE’s life and career. The archive currently takes in live recordings from 2010 to 2020, and further material is due to be added soon.

Those behind the project are inviting people to contribute to the archive, with requests for assistance put out to collaborators, attendees of SOPHIE’s shows, and anyone who may have other information on, or undocumented material by, the artist that is not yet included. Only music that was officially released by SOPHIE will be hosted in…

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Fans believe new material could be on the way after a number of tapes were sent from an address linked to Warp Records

Boards Of Canada may be teasing a new release, with a number of VHS tapes being sent out to fans from an address linked to Warp Records and its retail arm Bleep.

Video posted to Reddit shows that the tapes feature static and decaying analogue visuals, as well as shortwave-style audio and vocal samples, leading fans to speculate that the duo will soon release new music. One Reddit user said they received the tape unexpectedly “from the same address that Warp and Bleep use for shipping” in the US.

Some particularly tuned-in fans have identified samples from the tape’s audio…

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