Xeeland

Master Builder

Jason Stoll, of Sex Swing and Bonnacons Of Doom, makes an apt soundtrack for the quaking concrete of brutalist buildings

Master Builder by Xeeland

In the fertile atmosphere of the 1960s, a genre emerged in Germany that borrowed from the electronic, hypnotic, repetitive, and psychedelic trends of the time – albeit in a rough style that some might consider typically German. This genre, dubbed ‘Krautrock’ by the British music press, influenced not only rock musicians but artists across other genres as well. Thousands of miles westward, in the United States, another trend known as ‘drone music’ developed built on sustained low-frequency repetitions that created a meditative effect, a feature naturally found in many Asian and Middle Eastern instruments. Imagine these two…

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Darran Anderson argues that Elliott Smith’s untimely death created a distorting prism through which his entire back catalogue is now seen, especially his stunning eponymous record

There’s an idea circulating in theoretical physics that suggests the Big Bang birthed two universes – ours, with time moving forwards, and a ‘mirror universe’ where time flows backwards. As is so often the case, science fiction got there first in trying to imagine what a reversed existence would look like (Philip K. Dick’s Counter-Clock World for instance). At first, it seems a revelatory conceit that turns all of our norms (cause and effect, ageing, eating, procreating etc) on their head and allows us to see them afresh. Yet, it quickly exhausts itself and even when…

The post Rejecting the Culture Morticians: Elliot Smith’s Second Album Revisited appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/rejecting-the-culture-morticians-elliot-smiths-second-album-revisited/

Wevie Stonder

Sure Beats Living

Fifteen years after their last record, the plunderphonic Skam Records still have the capacity to surprise and delight, finds Jon Buckland

Sure Beats Living by Wevie Stonder

Slumped on a post-pub sofa at the turn of the twenty-first century, I flicked on the TV and promptly set about recovering my jaw from its new place of residence on the floor. I had tuned into the inaugural episode of Chris Morris’ Jam which, if you haven’t had the pleasure, is about as pitch black as humour can get without being a great hoovering void roaring right back into your face.

Before Jam, there was Blue Jam. A radio show of woozy electronics, surreal monologues, and cut-up snippets of sound designed to…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/wevie-stonder-sure-beats-living/

Because of the death of Ian Curtis and the nature of the band’s last recordings, Joy Division’s Closer is an album around which a stillness has settled. In truth, says Jonathan Wright as he talks to Peter Hook and Paul Morley, no band evolved so rapidly. This feature was originally published on 13/07/2020

In 1979, for even the most avid NME reader living outside Britain’s big cities, it wasn’t easy to get to see new bands. Sure, you could hear them on John Peel, but that didn’t tell you anything about their stage demeanours. It follows that many of those who watched Joy Division perform ‘Transmission’ and ‘She’s Lost Control’ on BBC Two’s Something Else programme on 15 September 1979 had…

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source https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/45-years-later-closer-the-last-days-of-joy-division/

Kneecap and Fontaines DC are among the other acts who have joined the collective, which will aim to support those subject to ‘aggressive, vexatious campaigns’ by pro-Israel advocates

Massive Attack, Brian Eno, Kneecap and Fontaines DC have formed an alliance of musicians speaking out about Israel’s ongoing miltary assault on Gaza.

Launching the collective via posts shared on Instagram, they will aim to support others who are subjected to “aggressive, vexatious campaigns” by pro-Israel advocates for challenging the government and military’s actions towards the Palestinian people. They said the support will particularly focus on those who are at the early stages of their careers, in order to stop them from being “threatened into silence or career cancellation” by organisations such as UK…

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source https://thequietus.com/news/massive-attack-brian-eno-and-more-form-alliance-of-musicians-speaking-out-about-gaza/

The 30-track record is out in September

Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy is releasing a triple album, titled Twilight Override.

Spanning 30 tracks, the follow-up to 2020’s Love Is The King was recorded at Tweedy’s Los Angeles studio, The Loft. It takes in contributions from James Elkington, Finom’s Sima Cunningham Macie Stewart, and Liam Kazar, as well as Tweedy’s sons, Spencer and Sammy.

To mark the announcement of Twilight Override, Tweedy has shared four tracks from the album: ‘Enough’, ‘One Tiny Flower’, ‘Out In The Dark’ and ‘Stray Cats In Spain’. Listen to all of them below.

dBpm will release Twilight Override on September 26, 2025.

https://ift.tt/GtXs4py

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source https://thequietus.com/news/wilcos-jeff-tweedy-details-triple-album-twilight-override/

Robert Davidson hails the art of growing old disgracefully as exemplified on the second and (so far) final Grinderman album

In Boy On Fire, Mark Mordue’s biography of Nick Cave that chronicles the artist as a young man, we find an adolescent whose musical world orbits the 1970s British glam rock scene of T-Rex, Roxy Music, and in particular, David Bowie. Obsessed with his British hero’s stylistic verve, Cave even cuts his moppy hair into a spikey mullet in order to see Ziggy Stardust when he looks in the mirror.

The haircut was just the start. Much of Cave’s career would go on to mirror Bowie’s. A young adulthood complicated by addiction, a self-imposed exile to the edgelands of cold-war Berlin, and…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/reissue-of-the-week/grinderman-2-reissue-review/

In this month’s antidote to the algorithm Mat Colegate rips it to shreds with the ‘orrible racket that emerged in the early-80s, from S.P.K to Ramleh, Whitehouse and 23 Skidoo (pictured)

When Throbbing Gristle’s mission was first terminated in 1981, their influence on the UK underground scene was already hard to overstate. Inspired by T.G.’s confrontational D.I.Y. ethos and their fascination with esoteric subject matter, as well as their use of electronic instruments and non-musical elements, a whole bunch of artists – most of whom were too young to share T.G.’s background in the late 60s and early 70s radical art scene, and who thus rejected some of their more hippy-ish ideals – had started their own projects, encompassing musical acts…

The post Organic Intelligence XLVI: The UK Industrial Diaspora appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/subscriber-area/organic-intelligence/organic-intelligence-xlvi-the-uk-industrial-diaspora/

Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka

Hiraeth

Largely improvised to tape in the small Polish village of Sokołowsko, the duo’s second album feels exploratory and experimental in the truest sense, finds Jakub Knera

Hiraeth by Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka

The collaboration between Sofie Birch and Antonina Nowacka began through the Unsound Festival in 2021 when they first met during the Morning Glory concert series at the Kraków Synagogue at noon. This initial encounter quickly blossomed into the creation of Languoria, an album recorded in Copenhagen and released the following year. In 2024, the duo journeyed to Sokołowsko, a small town in Lower Silesia known for its unique microclimate and historic sanatorium founded in the 19th century. There, Birch and Nowacka deliberately disconnected from modern…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/sofie-birch-antonina-nowacka-hiraeth-review/

Body Lapse will be released in September

Rian Treanor is releasing a collaborative album with Glasgow-born, Stockholm-based artist Cara Tolmie.

Set for release on Planet Mu, the nine-track album’s roots lie in a specially commissioned, joint live performance that they did for Glasgow’s Counterflows festival in 2023. It saw vocalist and performance artist Tolmie combine her vocal technique of Internal Singing — described in a press release as “an intimate practice using breath, movement and touch that explores the subtle binds between voice and body in an unsettling, engrossing sonic space – with Treanor’s own rhythmically complex work.

A series of improvisational performances by the pair followed, which were built on amid recording sessions in Stockholm and Rotherham in 2024. Body Lapse marks…

The post Rian Treanor Collaborates with Cara Tolmie on New Album for Planet Mu appeared first on The Quietus.

source https://thequietus.com/news/rian-treanor-collaborates-with-cara-tolmie-on-new-album-for-planet-mu/