Wrens

Half What You See

Richmond, Virginia jazz heads blend gangsta rap with hermetic poetry

Half of What You See by WRENS

From its musical and linguistic phrases, even down its cover art, Half of What You See might be best defined as exquisite-corpse electro-jazz. Nothing is more easily contextualized by those with avant-garde proclivities than apparent cacophony. As such, launching a never-ending debate pitting structure against chaos is less interesting than trying to observe what Wrens, through free form and live instrumentation, actually attempt to birth out of their chaos. In this case, a sort of sci-fi spin on contemporary nihilism that would manage to be virtuosic, playful and relatable at the same time.

The first adjective is chased throughout the project by quirky…

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After a year in which the wider musical ecosystem is taking more and more notice of the French underground, David McKenna presents 20 of his favourite records that emerged in 2025

Rien Virgule

In another fine year for French releases, it’s been heartening to note that music heads in the UK and Ireland are becoming increasingly aware of how vital the French underground scene is, and just recently I’ve experienced the delights of Rockfort favourites Emmanuelle Parrenin, Société Étrange and Megabasse live on these shores. Earlier this year, it was also a joy to catch mighty, Marseille-based industrial punks GrRzZz at the Acid Horse festival in Wiltshire (and have a very pleasantly sozzled conversation with them afterwards) and chat with electronic power…

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Depeche Mode

Memento Mori: Mexico City

It’s the deep cuts and alternative versions that stand out on this live set from 2023 capturing the group at a time of transition

Depeche Mode have put out official releases covering the vast majority of their tours since the mid-1980s, whether via film, live album releases or more often than not both, so the release of Memento Mori: Mexico City, another dual film and album combination, is in simple terms a continuation of that approach. There’s no way that it can convey the giddy cresting energy and innovation of 101 or the drenched-in-darkness gothicisms of the combined Songs of Faith and Devotion Live and Devotional releases, but Memento Mori: Mexico City does capture the band at…

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Burnt Harbors

Blood High Star

Richard Skelton’s slow unpicking of American history draws to a close on an album which boils with righteous anger

Blood High Star by Burnt Harbors

Burnt Harbors is the latest entity used by Richard Skelton to make music about the times we now find ourselves living in. A composer and artist with an extensive, fascinating catalogue, Skelton’s music is generally instrumental and could be described as ambient, if associations with relaxation and reassurance could be stripped from the word. Alongside the music released under his own name, he has devised separate identities which he uses to record music about the USA. Burnt Harbors is an evolution of his Imperial Valley moniker, under which he made several albums about the Great…

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From all out weird to the ultra polished, club-ready to armchair gems, here are the finest electronic albums of 2025, as selected by our columnist Jaša Bužinel

DJ K, photo by @joca24k

2025 was an odd one. The electronic music scene, at least a considerable part of it, reaffirmed its position as one of the most politically vocal cultural spheres. Amid the genocide in Gaza, political discourse about boycotts, Israeli artists and institutions partnering with the rogue state largely overshadowed conversations about new music. Global macropolitics were mirrored in the culture war that splintered the scene. On a positive note, many artists did use their platform to voice their criticism, while some naysayers and piss-takers under the “politics and music don’t mix”…

The post Hyperspecific: The Best Electronic Music of 2025 appeared first on The Quietus.

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F.Ampism

The Vertical Luminous

Mind and body, natural and synthetic become smudged and smeared in the latest from Brighton-based artist Paul Wilson

Throughout The Vertical Luminous, shimmering vignettes of celestial melodies morph into unexpected shapes without concern for the verse-chorus form. While retaining a semblance of what came before on 2017’s The Unstruck Sound Centre, Paul Wilson’s new LP as F.Ampism enters a new frontier of direct-to-ear fidelity for the Brighton-based artist’s solo work. The listener is routed through a sonic pipeline where the boundaries between the electronic and the organic have been smeared out of sight. Synthesizers and musique concrète form a symbiotic soundscape of collage and, through Wilson’s masterful mixing, a physical proximity to the sounds become nearly palpable, adding a…

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These are our favourite reissues, compilations, live albums, mixes, OSTs and etceteras of the last 12 months, as voted for by tQ staff, columnists and core writers

Looking at this year’s Reissues etc chart I was struck just how close in release date some of the records are to The Quietus’ founding in 2008. Our number one album came out just eight years before our official launch, the third only three years prior. You’ll have to read the damn chart below to find out which records I’m talking about, but safe to say these are among our core artists – note that my fingers trembled typing this – perhaps part of what has become a Quietus canon.When John and I started…

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Retails Drugs

Factory Reset

Jake Brooks’ third album in fifteen months speeds full-throttle into a messy digital future

Factory Reset by Retail Drugs

There’s a particular brand of madness that occurs when an artist gets bored of their own tricks. Jake Brooks didn’t experience some dark night of the soul; he just got sick of guitar and ran out of cassette tapes. Sometimes the most radical artistic shifts have the most mundane origins, and Factory Reset, Retail Drugs’ third full-length record in fifteen months, is what happens when rage gets funnelled through a laptop instead of a four-track: the sound of someone taking an industrial drill to a server room mid-breakdown.

The album imagines a near-future where you can erase your past self. “Which I…

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Combine a day’s worth of DJs with the chance to enjoy Sri Lanka’s favourite snack, all for a good cause this Sunday at Big Chill Kings Cross

A group of British Sri Lankan creatives are holding a fundraising event to help the survivors of Cyclone Ditwah this Sunday 7 December, from 3pm to 11pm at Big Chill Kings Cross. The Mutton Roll Daytimer combines the island’s favourite snack or ‘short eat’, the iconic mutton roll – a delicious deep fried pancake roll filled with spiced mutton and potato (or veggie options of similar delicious provenance) with a day’s worth of DJ talent programmed by Niro, one of the event’s co-founders. He will be DJing alongside the likes of multi-genre experimentalist My Panda Shall…

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At a distance of 15 years, says Dan Franklin, it’s easier to sense the liberating power in CELESTE’s concoction of outlier forms of extreme metal and heavy music

Morte(s) Nee(s) by Celeste

CELESTE, Lyon’s avant-garde metallers, had an unexpected viral moment in November last year. Five women on a girl’s night out travelled from Liverpool to Birmingham for what they assumed was a gig by easygoing, Mercury-nominated singer Celeste. Instead they walked into The Asylum venue (surely a clue this wasn’t the gig they were looking for) after support band Grief Ritual (surely an even bigger clue) finished up, just before the headliners took to the stage and pummelled the sparsely attended audience into submission. 

Realising the group’s mistake, one sympathetic metalhead in…

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