Stevie Chick talks to Bob Mould and Greg Norton about blazing a trail in hardcore, the uneasy switch from independent to major label and their complex relationship with Grant Hart, plus paving the way for Pixies and Nirvana. Cover portrait courtesy of Greg Norton

It’s 10 December 1987, and onstage at The Blue Note in Columbia, Missouri, Hüsker Dü are uncharacteristically stinking up the joint. As singer/guitarist Bob Mould writes in his 2011 memoir See A Little Light, the group’s singing drummer Grant Hart is “all messed up… jonesing or trashed on booze – or both. Hüsker Dü didn’t play bad shows. But this was a terrible show, simply awful.” 

Earlier that evening, Hart had returned to his hotel to discover the…

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source https://thequietus.com/interviews/husker-du-interview/

Falle Nioke

Love From The Sea

With lyrics in French, English, Susu, Fulani, Malinké, and more, the debut album from the Guinea-born, Margate-based artist makes for a veritable outerrnational jamboree built on club rhythms and ambient electronic textures

Love From The Sea by Falle Nioke

Falle Nioke unveils his debut album on Eat Your Own Ears after years of refining his unique, mercurial sound. The result, Love From The Sea, comes from a planetary body all its own, a macrocosm where ancient and futuristic elements constellate into something wholly unique. Sumptuous in its textures, Falle Nioke’s latest release is exploding with fresh and intoxicating rhythms.

From a young age, Nioke had felt music as his calling. He eventually left his home to join Nimbé Sacré,…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/falle-nioke-love-from-the-sea-review/

Noel G is back again to blast away Autumnal blues with “wicked sick stick-thin machinified aquatic death rock”, Iranian diaspora HC, the grotty AF Brainbombs and Eva Leblanc’s Traidora (featured in the main portrait)

The debut LP by devastating London hardcore group Traidora is titled Una Mujer Trans Sin País – ‘a trans woman without a country’ – and is the project’s second studio recording after 2023 demo Un Cuerpo Trans Lleno De Odio, or ‘a trans body full of hate’. Those are what you might call statement titles, and if they prepare you for something autobiographical, this is not wrong as such, but potentially misleading.

A four-piece on this release, Traidora was previously the one-woman band of Eva Leblanc, resident in the UK for a decade after time spent…

The post Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & Hardcore for October appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/punk/punk-hardcore-review/

As Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson bring Cabaret Voltaire back to life at the Sheffield’s FORGE warehouse as part of the Sensoria Festival, Daniel Dylan Wray is knocked sidewise by a set of visceral power, and moving tribute to Richard H Kirk

Cabaret Voltaire live in Sheffield by Leon Chew

“For Richard Kirk,” says Stephen Mallinder, as his first words of the evening on stage. A mighty roar erupts inside the former Victorian steel forge in tribute to the late founding member who passed away in 2021. It dissipates into the strange, eerie opening of 1980’s ‘The Voice of America/The Damage is Done’, rumbling through the vast space.  

The sense of anticipation leading up to this moment has been intense – a steady, rising…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/live-reviews/cabaret-voltaire-live-review/

KAKUHAN & Adam Gołębiewski

Repercussions

The duo of Koshiro Hino and Yuki Nakagawa team up with Polish percussionist Adam Gołębiewski for an album composed and recorded in a single improvised session

Repercussions by KAKUHAN & Adam Golebiewski

Watching KAKUHAN at last week’s Insomnia festival in Tromsø, Norway, I was struck by how a duo performing with only a sampler and cello can sound simultaneously amorphous and cohesive. Consisting of Koshiro Hino – he of Osaka’s goat (jp) – and cellist Yuki Nakagawa, KAKUHAN forged their sound on the 2022 debut Metal Zone. Hino’s percussive abrasions pan, pop and cascade as Nakagawa’s use of echo boxes and other effects dissolve expectations of what the cello ought to sound like. The duo slip between sonic states…

The post KAKUHAN & Adam Gołębiewski – Repercussions appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/kakuhan-adam-golebiewski-repercussions-review/

Lily Allen

West End Girl

The Hammersmith-born singer-songwriter phone hacks herself, resulting in an album of unvarnished rawness with more in common with Kirsty MacColl or Squeeze than any of her pop contemporaries

West End Girl by Lily Allen

When you first go, one of the weirdest things about AA meetings is how honest everyone is. Standing up to speak your truth, there’s no florid language to disguise the raw, bald facts of things. Spending some time in this no-bullshit bubble of authenticity makes the normal world – a world of forced politeness, fake manners and mechanical codes of conduct – seem unbearably plastic and unreal. Sober for six years, Lily Allen’s new album, West End Girl, lays bare the toxic demise of her…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/lily-allen-west-end-girl-review/

Aug Stone talks to the Dolly Mixture singer/bassist about her new book, Teenage Daydream, chronicling the band’s brushes with success

Dolly-Mixture, 1982, Debsey, Hester, Rachel; Elizabeth Hollingsworth

Dolly Mixture: a best kept pop secret, a charmed existence.They were the band that handed The Undertones a tape after a gig and minutes later were invited to open for them the following night leading to a support slot on the tour. They were one of the first signings to Paul Weller’s Respond label. They had U2 open for them twice, and were the backing singers on Captain Sensible’s #1 single ‘Happy Talk’. Despite the impressive CV, being an artist hits different when you’re on the inside – when great songs, hundreds of gigs, and…

The post Sweet Dreams: An Interview with Debsey Wykes of Dolly Mixture appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/culture/books/sweet-dreams-an-interview-with-debsey-wykes-of-dolly-mixture/

Dave Ball of Soft Cell and The Grid, should be remembered as a hitmaker, but as one of the most ceaselessly explorative, pioneering musicians of his generation, says Patrick Clarke

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In a moving tribute to his late Soft Cell bandmate Dave Ball, who died this week at the age of 66, Marc Almond remarked that the two were “chalk and cheese”. When I interviewed several dozen of the musicians’ collaborators, associates, friends and occasional foes for my book on Soft Cell, Bedsit Land, it was telling that almost all of them remarked, in one way or the other, on the same thing. Almond was the flamboyant, magnetic frontman, Ball the reclusive mastermind, buried in the shadows with his…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/remember-them/dave-ball-soft-cell-obituary/

Joe Muggs looks back to Tom Jenkinson’s first bid for braindance supremacy and finds much to love has been revealed by a crunchy remaster

Stereotype by Squarepusher

Quite a few years ago, I was talking to Tom Jenkinson about his considerable popularity in Japan, and he remarked that (I’m paraphrasing here), he especially enjoyed playing on the other side of the world because the further you get from the origins of musical styles geographically and temporally, the less categories matter to people and the more they’re able to engage with the music on its own merits. This came back to me more recently when I heard Jenkinson being interviewed by Sherelle on the radio, which brought home how much water has flowed…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/reissue-of-the-week/squarepusher-stereotype-review/

aylu

Fobia

The Argentinian artist (and host of NTS’s Austral show) works through her fears on an album of stuttering rhythms and fluttering lightness

Fobia by aylu

Fears are very individual, and how one person copes with theirs might not make their struggles evident to others. So while Argentinian artist aylu took a generally delicate approach to her latest album, she’s made explicit that it is an exercise in processing with the title Fobia.

aylu – real name Ailin Grad – sets a panicked tone with short, laboured breathing from the opening seconds of Fobia. Depending on your own mental state, this might be the only uncomfortable aspect of the album. But if your brain has ever played a round of pinball with your thoughts,…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/aylu-fobia-review/