The Black Sabbath frontman was 76

Ozzy Osbourne at Villa Park by Ross Halfin

Ozzy Osbourne, sonic pioneer and frontman of Black Sabbath, has died. The Osbourne family issued a short statement, saying “It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time. Sharon, Jack, Kelly, Aimee and Louis”. Osbourne died just weeks after what was billed as his final concert at Villa Park in Birmingham, where Sabbath and Ozzy solo were joined by the likes of Anthrax, Slayer and Mastodon to celebrate the life and influence…

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Aaron Turner – Sumac frontman and guest star on the new album from the mighty Pharaoh Overlord – tells tQ what his parallel career in tattooing has taught him about humility and human connection

Photo by Pon

“The hurdy-gurdy roars like an elephant!” declared none other than Ritchie Blackmore to me a few years ago, a statement that I dismissed with a highly patronising “Sure it does, Ritchie” at the time. Having recently listened to Pharoah Overlord’s bewitching new album Louhi, though, I realise now that Blackmore was completely right. Played and produced with respect and care, as it is on Louhi, the hurdy-gurdy sounds monstrous, a demonic drone that matches the heaviest guitars with ease.

Another compelling reason to listen to Louhi…

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source https://thequietus.com/interviews/things-i-have-learned/aaron-turner-on-the-philosophy-of-tattooing/

From the close-knit DIY underground to the centuries-old choral singing embedded in national identity, in his latest guide to the music of Central and Eastern Europe Jakub Knera turns his eye to Estonia

Ajukaja and Mart Avi, photo by Alana Proosa

What comes to mind when I consider Estonian music in 2025? Tommy Cash, choral singing, and Arvo Pärt. 

Cash recorded Estonia’s most popular song of the year. Representing his country at Eurovision, he acknowledged that ‘Espresso Macchiato’ wasn’t his typical style, but that it was crafted deliberately for the show’s format – playfully funny and cringeworthy too, something that resonated with viewers. It’s not the first time Estonia has chosen an artist from the indie scene for the contest – last year it…

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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/quietus-international/inner-ear-estonian-music-for-july-by-jakub-knera/

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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source https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/xeeland-master-builder-review/

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…

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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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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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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/