Rafael Toral

Traveling Light

The Portuguese guitarist and ambient composer takes a suite of jazz standards into strange new territory

Traveling Light by Rafael Toral

Portuguese guitarist Rafael Toral has never been the type to call a lot of attention to himself. Despite releasing some of the most exceptional ambient albums of the 90s and early 00s, he’s always remained an artist strictly for the heads, never quite receiving the following that contemporaries such as his former MIMEO bandmate Christian Fennesz enjoyed. His retreat from ambient guitar soundscapes into the ever-insular world of electroacoustic improvised music, with his Space Quartet group, only further solidified this.

But last year, when comrade Jim O’Rourke relaunched his Moikai label, their very first release was Toral’s return to longform…

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The new book by photographers Karla L. Murray and James T. Murray documents the unique character and colourful inner lives of New York’s finest – by which, of course, I mean it’s many and varied record shops

There are over 200 record shops in New York City. Some of them date back to the middle of the last century. In recent years, several much-beloved stores have closed down: Other Music, Deadly Dragon, Rebel Rebel, among others. James and Karla Murray are on a mission. The NYC-based husband-and-wife photographic team have spent a quarter-century documenting the unique topography of their home town, snapping its dive bars and bodegas, its candy stores and corner delis, its hi-fi shops and haberdasheries. Theirs is a…

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At the Portuguese city’s annual festival of “singular music”, sets by Tashi Dorji, Erik Dæhlin, Masma Dream World and more get me thinking about the curved space of experimental music

There is a peculiar imaginary topography to experimental music. People speak of playing out – far out – but also, of leftfield. There is that dialectics of underground and overground: a question of surfaces and borders, limits and edges. At a festival called Out Fest, I seemed to be spending a lot of time feeling like I was inside of something in some way. Enclosed, secreted, travelling inwards. Listening to Leila Bordreuil’s set at post-industrial warehouse venue ADAO was an experience a lot like being trapped in an electrical substation. The…

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Melvin Gibbs

Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2

When visual artist Arthur Jafa suggested Melvin Gibbs assemble a band to riff off Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis, it could easily have turned into an exercise in nostalgia. But Gibbs had other ideas, taking the grooves and rhythmic experiments of electric Miles into weird and wonderful new terrains

Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2 by Melvin Gibbs

One of the first shows I attended after things slowly started to open up post-pandemic was a quintet performance by Marshall Allen. It opened with an invocation by noted Sun Ra scholar Dr. Thomas “Bushmeat” Stanley, in which he stated that if The Temptations were around today, he would want them to sound like Death Grips. Four years later, in the wake of…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/melvin-gibbs-amasia-anamibia-sessions-2-review/

Promoters Crushing Death & Grief celebrate two decades in the game with a three day festival

Crushing Death & Grief may or may not be a former late 20th century violent direct action paramilitary group from West Germany who went into hiding in the south east of England – although the wise money is on “not”. Either way, over the last 20 years they have been responsible for, in their own words “gigs in Cambridge, gigs in East Anglia. No messing.” And their list of shows looks like a complete record of all the music we’ve covered here at the Quietus after you take Erasure and OMD off the list.

Now they’ve chosen to celebrate two decades in the game by holding…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/cdgxx-festival/

Dale Cornish reviews a new five disc set, compiled by Jonny Slut of Nag Nag Nag infamy, that celebrates the fruity abandon of electroclash

In the rich and varied history of Japanese art, I’d wager the work of Hokusai would be most recognisable to the average person on the Clapham Omnibus – or, indeed, the post-club Uber. Most people would know The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, even if they were unaware of anything else by the artist. That swirl of energy, a force of nature frozen in time; looming, but never quite breaking, has been endlessly reproduced on IKEA prints, Carhartt T-shirts and infinite iterations of Etsy tat. 

A little linguistic detour: the word “refund” comes from the Latin refundere – to…

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Bar Italia

Some Like It Hot

The Dean Blunt-approved London three-piece arrive with all the fanfare and art world caché a band could dream of, but do they have the tunes?

Some Like It Hot by bar italia

London-rooted but breathlessly international, the rapidly emerging diffident art-pop trio Bar Italia arrive at their fifth album in five years, and third for Matador. In March 2026 they’ll headline by far their biggest hometown show to date, at The Roundhouse. Some Like It Hot is clearly the point at which this cult outfit punts for the big-time.

A wrinkle in that potted biog is the band’s knotty relationship with the international art and fashion trades – scenesters to the core – associations which have brought them early…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/bar-italia-some-like-it-hot-review/

The two acts will headline the event next June

Orchestral Manouvres In The Dark

Bristol Sounds has revealed two of the headline acts playing its 2026 edition next summer.

Orchestral Manouvres In The Dark are set to headline the event on June 26, bringing their synth-pop sound to Bristol off the back of 2023 album Bauhaus Staircase. The following night, The Streets will head up proceedings, playing their classic 2004 album A Grand Don’t Come For Free live in full for the first time.

More headliners and full daytime lineups for the Bristol Harbourside-based event will be announced in the coming months.

Bristol Sounds will take place in June 2026. Find more information here.
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Sir Richard Bishop

Hillbilly Ragas

Sir Richard Bishop’s latest solo LP for Drag City finds the former Sun City Girl in fine, rambunctious form, says Bernie Brooks

Hillbilly Ragas by Sir Richard Bishop

Sometimes, things don’t work out like you wanted.

Initially, I was going to start this off by throwing some lighthearted jabs at what I perceived to be Saginaw, Michigan’s lack of cultural cache. I was going to say, “Sir Richard and Alan Bishop are Saginaw’s biggest claim to fame next to Simon and Garfunkel singing about hitchhiking outta there.” Or something like that, anyhow. But I forgot that a plurality of ? And The Mysterians were from Saginaw (with members hailing from around the Tri-Cities), and about the weird number of standards…

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Kinlaw & Franco Franco

Faith Elsewhere

The Bristol-based, Avon Terror Corps-affiliated duo of Kinlaw and Italian MC Franco Franco bend time and space into terrifying new shapes

Faith Elsewhere by Kinlaw & Franco Franco

“Feels like a thousand years shut in the room, the wallpaper messed with muddle and paranoia, the machine’s looming watches you from within, the pointed finger, the missing face,” riffs MC Franco Franco over porous industrial thumps and bursts of noise laid beneath him by producer Kinlaw. Although ‘Air Loom Gang’, the opening cut from the Bristol-based duo’s latest album Faith Elsewhere, alludes to the wild claims of the 19th-century merchant/conspiracy theorist/activist James Tilly Matthews about warmongering mind-control methods, the lyrics at hand are anything but historical or hysterical. They…

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