Before he gets to grip with the latest psych and noise rock releases, JR Moores has a brilliantly bleak brainwave

This summer I visited Munich and the gallery where the NSDAP once held their exhibition of Degenerate Art. ‘What a terrific concept’, I thought in my skull, and immediately DM’d the president via his Truth Social platform. I had Kunst on my mind, after all.

“How about an exhibition dedicated to the long history of degenerate American sound?” I suggested.Turns out I can’t take credit for this because apparently the big man had already come up with the same “tremendously tremendous” idea himself.

Picture the scene. Heavy metal songs will be broadcast backwards in the lobby, on a continuous loop, to…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/psych-rock/best-psych-rock/

The Utopia Strong

Doperider

The British trio’s fourth album suggests equal parts journey into space and a scrabbling around in the undergrowth, finds Richard Foster

Doperider by The Utopia Strong

Doperider, the fourth release from The Utopia Strong, is mainly a record of great and giving calm. The cover’s lettering may suggest Hawkwind at their most planetary, but this record is not a full on, pedal-driven dive into deep space. Rather, Doperider often encourages an investigation of its immediate surroundings, by way of some lysergically-tinged soundtracks.

Opener ‘Prophecy’, maybe the most narrational track on Doperider, is also its lodestar in terms of what to expect. The pleasantly wriggling synth sounds initially suggest we are present at a secretive undertaking in a lab somewhere. The slightly…

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John Quin attends a festival of interdisciplinary performances at Luckenwalde, featuring Bendik Giske, Rae Hsu, Nazanin Noori, Discovery Zone and more

©Kathleen Pracht

Luckenwalde lies about 30 miles south of Berlin, easily accessible for the city’s residual clubbing community. But, given the placards tied to lampposts advertising candidates in an upcoming mayoral contest, the town feels a million miles away from the capital in terms of political tilt. Here the far-right AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, slogan Deutschland Aber Normal – ‘Germany but normal’, whatever that means) have a 35.2% share of the vote as of this year, more than double their rivals. The beefy baldy guy on one of the posters looks like he’d enjoy kicking your teeth in; another is a…

The post Anguish Models & Empathy Machines: Mensch Maschine Musik at E-WERK appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/culture/art/mensch-maschine-musik-e-werk-bendik-giske-rae-hsu-nazanin-noori-discovery-zone-review/

Joe Muggs celebrates the maverick magpie magic of Fini Tribe in the 1980s; a band who occasionally augured the future in the chaos of their practice

The Sheer Action of the Fini Tribe 1982-1987 by Fini Tribe

As history is written by the victors, so is our understanding of genre flux. That’s doubly true when it comes to subcultures where the curious outsider has to rely on gatekeeping narrators to tell them what it’s all about. Club culture in particular has always suffered from this: there have always been vested interests that have pruned and groomed their narratives to suit their own aesthetic, ideological and social leanings. This dynamic is familiar to many, for example, in the way the UK Balearic Mafia…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/reissue-of-the-week/fini-tribe-greatest-hits/

Jerskin Fendrix

Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire

On his second full-length album, the acclaimed film composer turns to writing soundtracks to his own West Midlands youth

Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire by Jerskin Fendrix

With his score for Yorgos Lanthimos’s gothic fantasies Poor Things and Kind of Kindness, Joscelin Dent-Pooley (aka Jerskin Fendrix) has proven that his skills in sonic storytelling are excellent. His quirky and elaborate instrumentals capture the restless nature of the former’s protagonist, Bella Baxter, a woman with the transplanted brain of an infant, who explores the good and bad of the world.

Composed largely between the artist’s film score work, Once Upon A Time… In Shropshire is an attempt to soundtrack Dent-Pooley’s own life story. Raised in the West…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/jerskin-fendrix-once-upon-a-time-in-shropshire-review/

Pulse Emitter

Tide Pools

Daryl Groetsch submerges the listener in warm pads and playful jazz harmonies, music that ebbs and flows and washes over you in appropriately satisfying waves

Tide Pools by Pulse Emitter

Tide pools function as self-sufficient little watery habitats, brimming with marine life and whatever goodies are swept into the rocks as the tide comes in. Portland, Oregon based Daryl Groetsch’s latest album Tide Pools is no different from its marine counterpart, functioning as an auditory ecosystem, a whole world for the imagination to run rampant and play with for 45 textured minutes, when the tide goes out until gravity pulls you back for your next listen.

The third LP from Groetsch as Pulse Emitter on Hausu Mountain Records is his sprightliest,…

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After four albums of increasingly lavish Americana, Other Lives recorded their new LP in the heartland from which they’d once escaped. Jesse Tabish guides Wyndham Wallace through Volume V’s panoramic terrain

Volume V by Other Lives

Just the name of their hometown is evocative. Even as Stillwater revives memories of Almost Famous’ protagonists – not to mention exemplary shoulder-length hair and musty suede jackets – it speaks to gullies and gulches, saloons and spittoons, true grit and tombstones. As shorthand, then, though the comparison is largely unfavourable, Stillwater is like Deadwood, at least to someone who is yet to visit. Stillwater, too, is an archetypal brand: Oklahoma’s tenth biggest city, is a civic cowboy contrivance that shares a name with ten other…

The post Stillwater Runs Deep: Other Lives on Re-Enchanting the American Dream appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/interviews/other-lives-interview/

The implacable Ron Mael talks Jeremy Allen through his 13 favourite albums, from fiery free jazz to cutting edge J-pop, via militant hip hop and Bach. Portrait by Munachi Osegbu

All is well in the Sparks universe even if it’s not going so well in our own. The Mael brothers have enjoyed another vintage year with a number two album, MAD!, the highest charting in their history (yes, including Kimono My House). And this week sees the release of the sibling duo’s first ever EP, MADDER!, giving the world another four tracks that find them pushing the envelope of what pop can be, while also maintaining their remarkable, unerring consistency.  

“It’s been a busy year, anyway,” says Ron Mael, speaking from…

The post Set Everything On Fire: Ron Mael of Spark’s Favourite Albums appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/interviews/bakers-dozen/ron-mael-sparks-favourite-music/

Jamie Roberts’ meticulously sculpted, brain-detonating sonic constructions provide a peek into an unsettling vision of the future, finds Jon Buckland

Blawan by Ryley Paskal

At the turn of the 20th century, a group of Italian artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers proposed the concept of Futurism: an ideology that praised speed, technology, youth, and violence. They wanted to create sounds that emulated the roar of the world and, in particular, the cacophony of war. Seventy years later, industrial artists, aided by synthesizers, feedback loops, and an array of effects, introduced the slamming sounds of dwindling manufacturing to the musical canvas. Then, in Detroit, rage was channelled via drum machines to create repetitive techno beats as car production faltered and stalled, worsening social, racial,…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/album-of-the-week/sickelixir-blawan-review/

Yasmine Hamdan

I remember I forget

A new album from the pioneer of alternative Arab music tempers pain and disappointment with the experimental grooviness she’s known for

Yasmine Hamdan – I remember I forget بنسى وبتذكر by Yasmine Hamdan

Yasmine Hamdan is finally back, right when we need her most. After an eight-year break, Hamdan has released her newest record, I remember I forget. The regional musical and political landscape has radically shifted since her previous release, and Hamdan reflects this fractured political reality with painful clarity. Yet, she anchors us in her familiar and signature sonic identity, with haunting vocals, trip-hop echoes, and a sound rooted in authenticity and experimentation.

Hamdan is a foundational figure for alternative Arabic music. She started as Soapkills in…

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