Catch up with everything we wrote about last month

The observant among you might well notice that this month the mediaeval woodcut figure that accompanies our monthly subscriber playlist has a new look. This is because on Thursday we’re announcing some changes to our subs system to mark our seventeenth birthday – keep your eyes peeled to find out what they are. In the meantime, our Subscriber and Subscriber Plus tier members can access over four hours of music connected to everything we were writing about in the long, long month of August 2025. Here’s what everyone in the state of mind that is tQHQ though were the best of the month in our round-up column, you can get stuck in to the…

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source https://thequietus.com/subscriber-area/monthly-playlists/your-august-subscriber-playlist-is-here/

Legacy Of Brutality conveys much of what is magnificent about the band, and much of what is exasperating about Glenn Danzig, says Andrew Holter, as he assesses the compilation – and Danzig’s complicated legacy – 40 years on

We are met to consider the Misfits’ Legacy Of Brutality, a canonical American punk record released 40 years ago this month, but Glenn Danzig has left us no choice but to address the sonnenradin the room.

Late last March, as Danzig was nearing the end of a brief American tour with his eponymous band, fan-captured photographs appeared online of two conspicuous items for sale at his official merch table: a poster ($80 USD) and t-shirt ($40) each bearing the runic “black sun” of Nazi…

The post American Nightmare: Misfits’ Legacy of Brutality at 40 appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/american-nightmare-misfits-legacy-of-brutality-at-40/

Adrian Sherwood

The Collapse Of Everything

Over a decade since his last solo record, the UK dub pioneer returns with Brian Eno and the late Keith LeBlanc in tow along with a swelling sense of hope

The Collapse Of Everything by Adrian Sherwood

It’s been thirteen years since Adrian Sherwood’s previous solo venture, Survival & Resistance. With the focus on production work during the decade (from Horacy Andy and the late Lee “Scratch” Perry to less obvious clients Panda Bear & Sonic Boom and Spoon), the dub auteur observed the world, accumulated energies and had things to say. There has been a lot to digest. The passing of two friends and collaborators, The Pop Group founder Mark Stewart and drummer Keith LeBlanc, became a…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/adrian-sherwood-the-collapse-of-everything-review/

tQ’s staffers select the finest new music from an August that’s provided a torrent of excellent releases

It’s been a hectic summer here at tQ, with the expected festival season lull in new releases failing to materialise. It makes me think of last winter, too; where once both the industry and the underground would go into festive semi-hibernation, it now seems as if the stream of excellent new music never lets up. I’m knackered, to be honest, but the advantage is that in your August roundup of the best new albums and tracks, we’re able to give you the cream of the summer crop, rather than scrape the barrel.

Everything you’ll find below, as well as all the other excellent music we’ve…

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source https://thequietus.com/tq-charts/music-of-the-month/music-of-the-month-the-best-albums-and-tracks-of-august-2025/

Blood Orange

Essex Honey

Devonté Hynes returns to England with a jolt on the first new Blood Orange LP for six years

The first memory I have of my nan dying is being far from home when it happened. It’s not like that for everyone. Some people remain in the place they were born forever. Some names never get printed on passport pages. That’s just the way it is. Others, though, leave young. They empty their childhood bedrooms and only occasionally return. But even for those who venture furthest, one bind remains: the family left behind. They age in your absence and, eventually, disappear completely. When they do, no matter how far you drifted, no matter how embedded you became, that loss pulls…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/blood-orange-essex-honey-review/

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

Gush

The LA-based artist foregrounds non-verbal communication

GUSH by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith

The Instagram profile of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is filled with images showcasing the West Coast producer’s calisthenics routine. Similarly, the promo for the album is a shot of Smith performing a variation of a press handstand on the seat of a motorcycle. Although not stated explicitly, the connection to bodily experiences is a key subject on Gush. Starting with an arrhythmia of pounding electronic beats, the opening ‘Drip’ ruminates on non-verbal communication with the protagonist unable to speak what they feel: “I keep looking away with my eyes on you”. Yet, the tension is here, punctuated by Smith’s angsty overdubbed vocals and dramatic brushstrokes of the Buchla synthesiser chords….

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/kaitlyn-aurelia-smith-gush-review/

The edit has been a fixture of the duo’s summer live sets, having first been debuted during their headline performance at Love Saves The Day in May

Photo by Jasmina Wood

Overmono have released an edit of High Contrast’s 2007 drum & bass classic ‘If We Ever’.

The duo first revealed the edit during their headlining set at Bristol festival Love Saves The Day in May, and it subsequently went viral following its appearance in their headline set on the West Holts stage at Glastonbury. It’s gone on to be a fixture of their live sets through the summer.

Speaking to BBC Radio 1 this week, the duo made up of brothers Tom and Ed Russell said: “High Contrast used to work in this…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/overmono-release-edit-of-high-contrasts-if-we-ever/

Rún

Rún

Mining sludge metal, free improv, krautrock, sacred music, electronica, and folk, Rún are playing with horror, not just as a trope, but as a worldly experience

Rún by Rún

This collaboration, the name of which is Irish for secret, mystery, or love, depending on context, is going to take the listener some time to digest, but very little time to like. Rún are made up of Tara Baoth Mooney, a vocalist and Henson vocal artist and film-maker, sometime Nurse With Wound collaborator Diarmuid MacDiamarda, and drummer, engineer and sound designer Rian Trench. The three artists here bring such a dense collision of influences to the table that the twists of the music can feel disorientating at first, but there is such an…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/run-run-review/

The urgent spoken word of slam poet and film-maker Saul Williams lifts a suite of soothing ambient jazz into something powerful, optimistic and inspiring, finds Daniel Spicer

Was Miles Davis’s In A Silent Way the first known example of what we now call ambient jazz? It has all the hallmarks: electro-acoustic improvisation that sets a sustained mood, running over an extended period without being overly hung up on rhythmic or harmonic changes, and which can serve as soothing background ambience while also meriting closer listening if the urge strikes.You could also make a case for some of Don Cherry’s work with Collin Walcott and Nana Vasconcelos in the trio Codona, whose albums for the ECM label created pristine soundscapes using a…

The post Voices Beneath the Rubble: Saul Williams, Carlos Niño & Friends At TreePeople appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/album-of-the-week/saul-williams-carlos-nino-friends-at-treepeople-review/

Darren Hayman and his Electric Guitars

Amazing Things

The former Hefner singer delivers a beautiful work of mourning, backed by massed electric guitars

Amazing Things by Darren Hayman and his Electric Guitars

“Somebody just died / Nobody you’d know,” Darren Hayman intones in the opening line of his latest album, Amazing Things. Not being formally acquainted with Hayman’s deceased friend, for whom these songs have been written and were inspired by, does not compromise one’s experience with this heartfelt album. Grief is felt differently by everyone, but there’s a universal language of loss understood by anyone who’s experienced such pain, whether they can translate those emotions into words or not. Little things like keeping someone’s phone number in your list of contacts even though…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/darren-hayman-and-his-electric-guitars-amazing-things/