The UK artist will oversee the programming for next year’s edition of the event at London’s Southbank Centre

Photo by Jordan Hemingway

FKA twigs has been confirmed as the curator of next year’s Meltdown festival.

Returning once again to London’s Southbank Centre, the lineup for next year’s event will be overseen by the UK artist, who will also play a headline set as part of the 11-day event. The full lineup will be announced in the coming months, but a press release promised that she will bring together an array of musical genre and artists working across various creative disciplines to reflect her influences.

In a statement, FKA twigs said: “I am honoured and excited to be curating Meltdown at the Southbank Centre. The…

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The lead single, ‘Random Violence’, is a tribute to the late Optimo (Espacio) DJ JD Twitch

Photo by Fiona Garden

Hot Chip have shared details of their ninth studio album, A Long Way From Kansas.

Spanning 11 tracks, the LP’s title is a nod to towards The Wizard Of Oz, while Beth Ditto and Eddie Chaco have contributed guest vocals. In a statement, the band’s Alexis Taylor said: “In addition to myself and Joe, Owen and Felix are singing (Felix for the first time on a Hot Chip record). There’s also a choir and lots of group singing. I think we like opening out our interior world and bringing all these voices together.”

Opening up on the record’s influences and themes explored its tracks,…

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Discrepant founder Gonçalo F. Cardoso tells tQ about a stacked lineup celebrating the underground scene of the Canary Islands and beyond

Alejandra Cárdenas, aka Ale Hop

The last three days of October will see London’s experimental music lodestar Cafe OTO host a three day program organised by Tenerife-based DIY label Discrepant and the annual Canary Islands festival Keroxen.

Taking place on 29, 30 and 31 October, a rammed schedule will see performances from more than a dozen acts. They include representatives from the thriving Canarian underground like psych rockers GAF Y La Estrella De La Muerte, experimental guitarist Paul Pèrrim, leftfield pop songwriter Akane and more.

International representation comes from the likes of Japanese turntablist DJ Sniff, making a rare appearance in the…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/discrepant-keroxen-cafe-oto-festival-goncalo-f-cardoso-interview/

Richard Foster considers the life of an artist who died on the day that The Damned’s ‘New rose’ was released, and considers an unusual continuum in weird British culture

Those familiar with the popular British TV series Doctor Who will be aware that the unnamed Timelord protagonist occasionally transforms, ‘dying’ and reemerging alive once more within seconds, now portrayed by a new actor. This pareidolic process, alongside the sometimes ectoplasmic visual effects found in the programme’s opening and closing credits (especially those seen in the mid-1970s) suggests astral travel and spiritual regeneration; new possibilities that nevertheless draw on old hinterlands. 

On 22 October 1976, the English watercolour painter Edward Burra died in the Royal East Sussex hospital in Hastings. A happier and…

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source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/edward-burra-the-damned-1976/

Darran Anderson looks at Pulp’s (one-time) farewell LP, as fine as any of their others, and asks, why did it fall by the wayside?

In Die Technik des Dramas (1863), Gustav Freytag argued for an ideal five act structure in storytelling. The problem was Freytag, for all his talent and success, was a racist Prussian supremacist and had, to put it mildly, something of a questionable world-view. Another problem was that life, with all its messy tangents and inconvenient loose ends, does not necessarily unfold in five acts.

Though the structure existed in practise before then, it took off after Freytag formalised it, and it’s easy to see why; audiences, theatre producers, and political and religious moralists were all flattered by…

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source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/pulp-we-love-life-review/

The London experimental folk outliers’ triumphant third album is a demonstration of traditional music at its most progressive, outward-looking and migratory

Photo credit: Brad Gilbert

The hammered dulcimer originated in Persia as the santur, perhaps as many as 5,000 years ago. From there it travelled in all directions, adapting and mutating as it went. It moved southwards to India, where it became the santoor, played by ancient Sufi mystics as an accompaniment to hymns, and then moved eastwards via China to become the Korean yanggeum. In Hungary it has grown bigger and turned into the cimbalom, the national instrument. In Spain, it can be found depicted on the relief of a 12th century cathedral. It England it became popular with street performers…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/album-of-the-week/everything-in-readiness-shovel-dance-collective-review/

Reigns

Antigeist

Wessex duo grow into a quartet, get amped, still full of doom

The Antigeist by Reigns

Somerset is a real epicentre of modern druidry and all things occult. Stonehenge is there, the Stanton Drew Stone Circles are there and Glastonbury Tor is there, all generating plenty of neo-pagan energy. It is also the mystical home county of sibling duo Reigns (Roo and Tim Farthing) who since their 2004 debut have consistently welded horror-flavoured storytelling and a trippy electro-folk sound to create a discography that could serve a spiritual companion to Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet

Reigns’ signature is mining the darker side of humanity through their work, offering the audience scant relief from these terrifying realities. But whereas the duo worked alone…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/reigns-antigeist-review/

Matt Carmichael speaks to Gail Tasker about his lush combination of jazz and folk, Held In The Dark, which will be performed with a full septet at three shows next month including a set for London Jazz Festival

Photo by Camille Lemoine

Matt Carmichael is an artist whose deep and introspective relationship with music belies his years. Based in Glasgow, he forms part of a cohort of young music graduates who have steadily yet organically been pushing against the boundaries of learned traditions. Carmichael’s latest album, Held In The Dark, is his fourth, and a further iteration of the lush combination of folk and jazz which characterises his music.

In some ways, Held In The Dark is familiar territory for Carmichael. It features…

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Ye Gods

Los

Visited by the ghost of gothmas past, Antoni Maiovvi whips out his magic circle for a true grimoire of an album

Los by Ye Gods

When Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman tells you to do something, you should probably do it. Even if it’s only in a dream. In the case of British composer Antoni Maiovvi (AKA AD Goodfellow), the post-punk vocalist’s mid-slumber visit guided him back to the ritual magick practice he had let slide. To further atone for this oversight, Coleman suggested the name Ye Gods.

Seven years and 12 releases later (by my abacus twiddling) and this “occult devotional electronics project” arrives at the William Blake-referencing Los. Over the years, Maiovvi’s compositional approach has evolved. The electronics are still scrambled,…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/ye-gods-los/

The Electro Quartet

Nature’s World With Studio G

An album of electronic library music from the early 80s breaths the air of sunnier climes

Nature's World With Studio G by Various Artists

1982 was an odd year. Ozzy Osbourne was treated for rabies after biting the head of a bat in the middle of a gig. The first ever computer virus was created by a 15-year old kid in Pittsburgh. Mary Whitehouse sued the National Theatre for obscenity. The Falklands War kicked off in the South Atlantic. Israel invaded Lebanon in a military campaign called Operation Peace. Abba split up. The first compact discs were produced in Germany. The most popular albums in Britain that year included Barbra Streisand’s schmaltzily nostalgic Memories, the soundtrack…

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