iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s album 1996 is getting a reissue to mark its 30th anniversary @milanrecords.bsky.social buff.ly/vgHIcrI

Colour photograph with fish eye lens of Ryuichi Sakamoto.

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'The band have described Ako Akas as an album about the world now, open and unsettling and exciting, attempting to erase borders. Coming from a group whose singer was ordered to leave the country they are based in, that is not a slogan' Ako Akas by 10LEC6 is tQ's Album of the Week buff.ly/GncCTH1

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"Every time Mica [Levi] makes something new. It sounds very original and exciting. I think it’s because they’re very free and honest and playful – it sounds like they’re enjoying it, but it’s quite emotional as well." Tara Clerkin on Micachu & The Shapes - Never buff.ly/K5CiCFS

Micachu & The Shapes - Never album cover. Embossed, wallpaper-like effect with the word "Never" in salmon pink over the top.

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Angus Andrew guides us through 13 of his favourite LPs, running the gamut from hip hop to smooth jazz and The Cure... Angus Andrew Of Liars’ Favourite LPs #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/iP4XROF

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Róis speaks to Deirdre Anna Rose Kelly about grief for a nation as well as individuals, the complexities of outsiders’ romanticisation of Irish culture, and the role of the Irish language in her work Life is Death: An Interview with Róis buff.ly/nS8dacJ

Colour photo of the Irish artist Róis, wearing a half veil that covers the eyes, and stood before a lightly beige curtain.

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'Whatever monotheists may tell you, there are in fact two Gnods. The first creates thoughtful, psychedelia-tinged records like Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol 1). The second, more vengeful Gnod, creates this record.' Gnod - Chronicles of Gnowt Vol. 2 buff.ly/axaTCFL

Gnod - Chronicles of Gnowt Vol. 2 album cover. Skeletons cavorting at a 'skeleton burial.'

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'The ECM album Octet ∙ Music For A Large Ensemble ∙ Violin Phase is a revelation. It has the sheen of great pop – and used many of the same techniques (close-miking each instrument, the artful application of electronic reverberation).' #SteveReich - The ECM Recordings buff.ly/pRKGyOs

Steve Reich - The ECM Recordings album cover. black and pale grey/ blue lettering against a white background.

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"I mean, we can try to recreate some of the pieces but that would take some practice. And we have one and a half days of practice." Daniel Miller on Duet Emmo's long-awaited live debut buff.ly/bDRCOGF

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'Reich won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Music with this 2007 piece which is reminiscent of Different Trains, although with a far more densely layered, multifaceted texture.' Double Sextet - The Strange World Of… #SteveReich buff.ly/VJIJRE1

Steve Reich Double Sextet album cover. A vibrant painting of numerals 0–9 arranged in a 2×5 grid, with the composer's name in blue across the top, and "DOUBLE SEXTET 2x5" in orange at the bottom.

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'Such is the dissolution of roles and traditional songwriting techniques within the band that Cathy Lucas’ vocals rarely settle, somehow sitting at right angles to the music...' Vanishing Twin’s Archives is tQ's Album of the Week buff.ly/NyCjmtb

Vanishing Twin’s Archives black vinyl variant with disc showing.

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"I don’t think any of us have been involved in the emulation game, ever. Trying to completely recreate something: it’s a rather tedious activity, isn’t it?" 43 years on from their debut album, Duet Emmo speak to tQ ahead of their first ever live performance buff.ly/bDRCOGF

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Pet Shop Boys' new rework of their 2014 BBC Proms performance about Alan Turing mirrors a tension that has always been at their heart – machine vs human, digital vs analogue, electronic vs classical Pet Shop Boys – A Man From the Future buff.ly/krNnMzR

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'Reich hit upon the idea of using the recollection of his travelling as a child on a train between New York and LA while addressing the disparity between those memories and what was happening to Jews in Europe at that time' Different Trains (1988) The Strange World Of… #SteveReich buff.ly/VJIJRE1

Steve Reich - Different Trains/ Electric Counterpoint album cover. Parallel railroad tracks photographed from above in black-and-white, forming repeating lines.

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"I find Trish Keenan’s singing very inspiring. I love her lyrics. They’re proper, proper poetry. Her melodies as well. I wish I could write a melody like hers one day." Tara Clerkin on Broadcast's Tender Buttons buff.ly/cpKFYfJ

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John Doran went to Krakow to throw darts with Leyland James Kirby and hear about Everywhere At The End Of Time, the grand farewell he has planned for his Caretaker project… Leyland James Kirby And The Death Of A Caretaker #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/IETdPdl

Black and white photograph of Leyland James Kirby AKA The Caretaker.

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43 years since their sole record Or So It Seems, Duet Emmo will be reforming for their first ever live performance. Speaking to Kiran Sande, they look back at a cult classic, and forwards to a show that won't try to emulate what's come before buff.ly/JJIM6tp

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Sad news reaches us of the death of Lois Kahlert, who with her husband Dennis were immortalised as two of the most devoted superfans in the history of alternative music. In 2020, Adele Stripe paid homage to a film about the pair that understood their fandom like no other. buff.ly/5PQN9Yf

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Sean Kitching suggests ten points of entry into the back catalogue of the late great Brazilian composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer known as ‘O Bruxo’ (the Sorcerer) The Strange World Of… #HermetoPascoal #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/rV3bz1m

Hermeto Pascoal and band, against a green background, with Pascoal in the centre and the other musicians reaching out towards him.

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'A hugely influential piece that helped to bridge the gap between minimalism, rock music & dance music, Electric Counterpoint explored the concept of a live soloist playing against a layered pre-recorded tape of themselves' Electric Counterpoint - The Strange World Of #SteveReich buff.ly/VJIJRE1

Steve Reich Electric Counterpoint/ Different Trains album cover, featuring Pat Metheny and the Kronos Quartet. The necks of five guitars (some only partially visible0 viewed from an angle that recalls train tracks.

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'Controlled Burn is a welcome addition to the slim canon of what Tate brands ‘avant-soul’ storytelling – an album whose embers seem, hopefully, primed to catch.' Marvin Tate – Controlled Burn buff.ly/2Ss2sqL

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A childhood spent dancing to Top Of The Pops, a complicated relationship with Michael Jackson and the tragic loss of her tape collection, Afrodeutsche takes us through the 13 albums that changed her life Afrodeutsche’s Favourite Albums #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/VK1veBT

Colour photograph of Afrodeutsche, taken against a very light pink background.

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'This debut solo release from flautist Joussein is astonishing. One track, ‘Argent Massif’ takes such an unexpected turn that I had to check my laptop wasn’t malfunctioning...' Delphine Joussein - Calamity #FrenchMusic for September buff.ly/2qaF2Q3

Delphine Joussein - Calamity album cover. Dark decorative abstract image with pink and orange speckled paint forming starburst floral shapes across a black background and a faint, ghostly human-face silhouette.

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'Eraserhead—a hallucinatory black hole of a film with a soundtrack that resembles a field recording made in a derelict section of hell...' The Haunted Legacy Of #DavidLynch’s Eraserhead Soundtrack #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/ZNzyH4a

Jack Nance as Henry Spencer, with his hair stood on end, in a black and white still from Eraserhead.

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'Gamelan concertos-of-sorts for Jakarta-born jazz pianist Sri Hanuraga, who plays catchy, angular polyrhythms with the off-kilter strut of 1920s player pianos.' Dewa Alit, Gamelan Salukat - Baur Bentur - Rum Music For October 2026 buff.ly/jntsbwS

Dewa Alit, Gamelan Salukat - Baur Bentur album cover.

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Paris collective 10LEC6 return with a record named after a Cameroonian mountain that traps walkers in a dance they cannot quit. The reason they chose that story is more pointed than the sleeve lets on. Ako Akas by 10LEC6 is our album of the week buff.ly/SoGQbJk

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'A large part of Seconds’ unsettling power is down to the tantalising ambiguities that lurk at the edge of our understanding. These ambiguities are explained away in David Ely’s 1963 source novel but sensibly excised by Frankenheimer' John Frankenheimer’s Seconds at 60 buff.ly/PrRZ4jI

Scene from John Frankenheimer's Seconds. Rock Hudson strapped to a hospital trolley.

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'Sacred Harp hymns, experimental folk, Appalachian motets, a dose of drones, all with the aim to “retell our current reality through a feminist lens”. Very nice' Jessie Marino, Inga Margrete Aas, Pinquins - Murder Ballads Vol II - Rum Music For October 2026 buff.ly/jntsbwS

Jessie Marino, Inga Margrete Aas, Pinquins - Murder Ballads Vol II. Teenage girl in a checked blazer and school tie cradling a small kitten in her lap against a worn plaster wall.

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In this month's edition of the Low Culture Podcast, John and Luke discuss the oldest and newest films in the epic Godzilla franchise, their origins in both the trauma and propaganda of the Second World War and a fascinating tale of Bunraku, Kabuki, kamikaze & PTSD. buff.ly/KZZAuUc

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'Rather than writing a traditional orchestral concerto, Reich played off the different instrument groups of the orchestra – strings, percussion, woodwind and brass – against each other...' The Four Sections (1987) The Strange World Of… #SteveReich buff.ly/VJIJRE1

Album cover for Steve Reich's The Four Sections and Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, showing a four-panel graphic: a yellow brass bell, brown string f-holes and fingerboard, and a percussion mallet head over diagonal blue-and-white stripes.

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'This fourth album from the Lyon-based prog pop group is apparently their last. Whatever their reasons for calling it a day, it’s certainly not because they’ve run out of gas, musically speaking.' Odessey & Oracle - Technicolor #FrenchMusic for September buff.ly/2qaF2Q3

Odessey & Oracle - Technicolor album cover. Collage featuring a large frog (partially submerged), Mickey Mouse, a television set, a butterfly's wings (partially hidden), some cars, a bicycle and some trees.

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'Attains an astounding intensity of feeling by looking squarely at the possibility of mankind’s destruction by its own hand, whilst offering a transcendent litany of music and human voices as an argument for its continued existence' The Desert Music: Strange World Of #SteveReich buff.ly/VJIJRE1

Steve Reich - The Desert Music album cover. A photograph from a desert nuclear testing site.

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Mercury Rev’s 1993 album Boces is being reissued Originally released in June 1993, Boces was Mercury Rev’s second studio album, and was their final LP to feature original frontman David Baker @beggarsbanquetrecs.bsky.social buff.ly/3sNusjE

Black and white picture of the original six-piece lineup of Mercury Rev, with David Baker.

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'60 years later, Scarassatti summons the heat of Tom Zé’s seminal album Estudando O Samba with his own project Isto Dando Samba—the title apparently a colloquialism for ‘now the party is kicking off’' Ajítẹnà Marco Scarassatti - Isto Dando Samba - Rum Music For October 2026 buff.ly/jntsbwS

Ajítẹnà Marco Scarassatti - Isto Dando Samba album cover. Cross section through different concrete strata, or paint on a concrete wall to a similar effect in yellow, grey, black and blue.

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'The second instalment of a 'liminal' trilogy sees Jam City at his most refined. Possessing a fluid, mixtape momentum, it synthesises architectural precision, ambient reveries and indelible hooks.' Jam City – My World buff.ly/OFQWS4q

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'The trio in the picture look like they mean business; sonic paramilitaries, ready to inflict pain on our ears, and on themselves if necessary. There’s a strong sense too that they’re doing it because they have to' #EinstürzendeNeubauten’s Kollaps at 45 buff.ly/MmUYkJ4

Einstürzende Neubauten - Kollaps album back cover. Photograph of the band with assembled percussive instruments taken at the Olympiastadion.

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'Red Krayola’s Mayo Thompson had become connected with Rough Trade and I think Geoff wanted to spearhead the idea of him being the in-house producer for the label...' ‘Nag Nag Nag’ (1979) - The Strange World of Early #CabaretVoltaire #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/Wb3n66E

Cabaret Voltaire - #7885 Electropunk to Technopop album cover. Two women in vintage gas masks sitting facing each other against a plain background.

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In this week's Baker's Dozen, Tara Clerkin takes Claire Biddles through 13 records that have defined her life, from sing-along favourites old and new via jazz, ambient, dub and more buff.ly/kFlWosv

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Our Strange World of #SteveReich piece comes with a playlist of 20 tracks by the influential minimalist composer, who turned 90 last week Become a Quietus Subscriber Plus tier member to access this plus many other wonderful perks: buff.ly/VJIJRE1

Black and white photograph of Steve Reich in a cap and jacket standing on a bridge beside suspension cables with a blurred city skyline behind (likely New York).

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This week, Cabaret Voltaire begin their final tour of the UK and Europe, so while we’re waiting to run tQ’s exclusive interview with Chris Watson and Stephen Mallinder... The Strange World Of… Early #CabaretVoltaire #ThePortal: Your Weekly Quietus Archive Dive buff.ly/Wb3n66E

Black and white photograph of early Cabaret Voltaire.

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'On ‘A La Mar Latina’, the duo come across as a less tempestuous version of cult French psychedelic folk duo Natural Snow Buildings while ‘XII’ has the limpid, watery quality of mid-80s art rock.' Adiciatz - Musique Domestique #FrenchMusic for September buff.ly/2qaF2Q3

Adiciatz - Musique Domestique album cover. Delicate vintage lace collar with intricate floral and leaf motifs forming a scalloped circular design around a central round opening on a soft pink background.

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'A further refinement of the expansion of harmonic and textural devices of 18 Musicians, and surely one of Reich’s most beautiful and optimistic sounding pieces.' Octet (1980) The Strange World Of… #SteveReich buff.ly/VJIJRE1

Steve Reich Octet/ Music for a Large Ensemble/ Violin Phase album cover. A music score set in a pale yellow border with lettering in black in the upper third of the image.

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