EarthBall’s Outside Over There is one of this year’s best albums. Because it opens with a sample of Stewart Lee talking about pear cider, it felt only right to introduce both parties for a feature. But then a breakdown in communication led to a gloriously unexpected meditation on the nature of improvisation…

“Hello. Very nice to meet you,” someone says, on a currently black laptop screen, “Fuck.”

I am a stand-up comedian and writer, and the Canadian free-rock quintet EarthBall have sampled one of my old routines, about an advert for pear cider, at the start of their new album, Outside Over There. I already liked their work, which I think I had first read about in The Wire. I…

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source https://thequietus.com/interviews/stewart-lee-earthball-interview/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=stewart-lee-earthball-interview

Out next month, the LP is preceded by lead track ‘Crushing Realities’

Photo by Mario Bergmann

Shackleton has a new album on the way.

Marking his first solo release for AD 93, the 10-track Euphoria Bound follows last year’s collaborative record with Holy Tongue, The Tumbling Psychic Joy Of Now, for the same label. A press statement shared by the imprint said of the new record: “The approach here is more direct than recent releases, with textures that accumulate and disintegrate with renewed urgency.”

Arriving alongside the announcement of Euphoria Bound is lead track ‘Crushing Realities’, which you can listen to below.

AD 93 will release Euphoria Bound on January 30, 2026.

Euphoria Bound by Shackleton
…

The post Shackleton to Release New Album, ‘Euphoria Bound’, Via AD 93 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/news/shackleton-to-release-new-album-euphoria-bound-via-ad-93/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=shackleton-to-release-new-album-euphoria-bound-via-ad-93

Blarke Bayer

The King In Yellow

Guitar strings are punished and reverb is smeared on My Disco guitarist Benjamin Andrews’ tribute to Robert W. Chambers’s gilded age gothic

THE KING IN YELLOW by Blarke Bayer

In an effort to familiarise myself with the inspiration for Blarke Bayer’s The King in Yellow, the proto-Lovecraftian collection of short stories of the same name by gilded age goth Robert W. Chambers, I chanced upon a YouTube explainer with the Ulysses-tier runtime of nine hours by a guy called Flawed Peacock. Initially I took this as some metatextual allusion to the ruinous obsession that surrounds Chambers’ play-within-a-story (also called ‘The King in Yellow’), though the theory was quickly dispelled after seeing that our man also has a fifteen-hour…

The post Blarke Bayer – The King In Yellow appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/blarke-bayer-the-king-in-yellow-review/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blarke-bayer-the-king-in-yellow-review

From venue closures to VAT, conversations around the UK’s beleaguered nightlife sector have struck a singularly gloomy tone for more than a decade. But has that pessimism become part of the problem? Ed Gillett asks whether our eulogies for the late-night scene have outlived their usefulness.

Nightlife is dead, everyone knows it. Your favourite venues have all closed, it’s impossible to get a drink anywhere after 11pm, and even if you could it’d be prohibitively expensive. People don’t care about going out, Gen Z have stopped drinking, and the hospitality industry is on its knees: we’ll be lucky if there’s a single nightclub left open anywhere in the country by the end of the decade. From broadsheet commentary to industry reports,…

The post Why Reports of the Death of UK Nightlife are Greatly Exaggerated appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/why-reports-of-the-death-of-uk-nightlife-are-greatly-exaggerated/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=why-reports-of-the-death-of-uk-nightlife-are-greatly-exaggerated

Fat White Family

Konk If You’re Lonely: Fat White Family Live At Konk Studios

A new live-ish album from the Fat Whites lacks the incendiary madness of their live reputation

Konk If You’re Lonely: Fat White Family Live at Konk Studios by Fat White Family

Wikipedia puts the number for the members of the Fat White Family at 16 in 14 years, but frontman Lias Saoudi’s best estimate in 2019 was that there had already been 25. Of the original six-piece lineup, only Saoudi and guitarist Adam J. Harmer remain. While people often (incorrectly) liken the band to The Fall, this is one department in which the comparison holds water.

Although the band’s early career was characterised by a revolving cast in the rhythm section,…

The post Fat White Family – Konk If You’re Lonely: Fat White Family Live At Konk Studios appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/fat-white-family-konk-if-youre-lonely-fat-white-family-live-at-konk-studios/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fat-white-family-konk-if-youre-lonely-fat-white-family-live-at-konk-studios

Here are our favourite tracks of the past 12 months, as voted for by tQ staff, columnists and core writers

Every year, when we publish our round-up of the year’s best albums, the default reaction on social media and certain corners of Reddit – yes, I have scanned them on occasion I’m afraid – is to assume that we are being pompously obscure in our selections; merely giving ourselves a pat on the back for having the most ‘underground’ of music taste. While I assure anyone who is reading this that this is not the case and it’s the product of polling several people for their favourite records – including specialists of various scenes and genres – I also continually find…

The post The Quietus Tracks of the Year 2025 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/tq-charts/tracks-of-the-year/the-quietus-tracks-of-the-year-2025/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-quietus-tracks-of-the-year-2025

Artist, writer & musician unblocking prompts courtesy of Jimmy Cauty, Alan Moore, Anna Meredith, Robert Fripp &c.

Looking for a unique last minute Christmas present for an art-inclined friend who has a tendency to get becalmed mid-project? Well look no further than Northampton Art Lab’s Ambagious Tactics cards.

Made in tribute to Eno & Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, which turn 50 this year, the cards offer over 120 interventions, maxims, commands, suggestions & tall orders all designed to gently propel the momentarily tar pit stricken creative back along the magical path. Contributors include members of the Northampton Arts Lab such as Alan Moore, film director Jim Jarmusch, composer Anna Meredith, rave situationist Jimmy Cauty and plenty of friends of tQ.

Cards…

The post Ambagious Tactics pays Tribute to Eno & Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/news/ambagious-tactics-eno-schmidt-oblique-strategy-birthday/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ambagious-tactics-eno-schmidt-oblique-strategy-birthday

Not ready for Christmas just yet? Proteus and TLC23 present a night of “high femme melancholy” on Saturday 20 December

Deck the halls with boughs of “high femme melancholy” as Sacrifice Zone – the energising Susu Laroche, an artist of French/Egyptian descent & the mysterious but ineluctable Josef Kurtz – present their debut live performance at Cafe Oto on Saturday heading up a heady bill for […Things Fall Apart…]

Elsewhere on this line up ably put together by TLC23 and Proteus – promising you lucky souls an “evening of abject noise, performative action, projection” and crypto Christmas “GOTHIC” vibes – sits the wonderful Sophie Sleigh Johnson and video/performance artist Charlie Osborne. And last not least there will be DJ sets from your…

The post Sacrifice Zone & Sophie Sleigh Johnson for Cafe Oto this week appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/news/sacrifice-zone-cafe-oto/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sacrifice-zone-cafe-oto

Moundabout

Esker Hippy Bastard Blues

Moundabout may be lurking in the gutter, but their eyes are firmly trained on the stars

Moundabout – Esker Hippy Bastard Blues by Tesla Tapes

Moundabout’s music feels more like it’s been summoned from the depths of the Earth than composed in any traditional fashion. Esker Hippy Bastard Blues is Paddy Shine and Phil Langero’s second album of 2025. Initially it seems warmer and more approachable than the eldritch Goat Skull Table (which opened, let’s not forget, with an atonal incantation lasting for ten terrifying minutes), but it soon reveals its own strange nooks and crannies.

First track ‘Changeling’ is the closest thing to a traditional song here, all loosely-strummed guitar and Langero alternately “searching all night” and “running…

The post Moundabout – Esker Hippy Bastard Blues appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/moundabout-esker-hippy-bastard-blues-review/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=moundabout-esker-hippy-bastard-blues-review

An interview with the book’s author Michael Lentz and its translator, Max Lawton, about the German cult novel Schattenfroh, a bizarre and troubling novel for our bizarre and troubling times, and its timely appearance in an English-language edition

There is a peculiarly modern horror at the centre of Schattenfroh, Michael Lentz’ gargantuan, experimental novel, newly translated into English. The horror of the last century preyed on the blind spots of the imagination. This was the horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. A horror borne from knowing too little, intensified by the mystery of an indifferent cosmos. Schattenfroh is the inverse. Across its 1,001 pages, Schattenfroh is a twenty-first century horror borne from knowing way too much. An overwhelming deluge of terror that…

The post Schattenfroh: A Fable About Totalitarianism Written in Brain-Fluid appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/culture/books/schattenfroh-a-fable-about-totalitarianism-written-in-brain-fluid/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=schattenfroh-a-fable-about-totalitarianism-written-in-brain-fluid