Jon Buckland

Ultracrepidarian

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The Quietus •

Pullman – III | The Quietus

The instrumental supergroup known as Pullman first slunk onto the scene with their dream-like debut of genteel post-rock, Turnstyles and Junkpiles, in 1998. Consisting of Tortoise’s Ken “Bundy K.” Brown, Chris Brokaw of Come (the alternative indie outfit rather than pre-Whitehouse electronics obliterators), Curtis Harvey from Rex, and Doug McCombs also of Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day, they followed this, in 2001, with Viewfinder for which they enlisted the drumming talents of Tim Barnes, whose CV includes working with Silver Jews, Jim O’Rourke, Wilco, Sonic Youth, and so many more. A studio-only outfit, the group then quietly dispersed to focus on their separate projects for a couple of decades.
Bandcamp Daily •

Xiu Xiu - “Xiu Mutha F—in’ Xiu: Vol. 1”

Xiu Xiu have always worn their influences on their sleeves. In the case of their first album, Knife Play, quite literally: The album artwork included a sticker that read “When my mom died I listened to Henry Cowell, Joy Division, Detroit techno, the Smiths, Takemitsu, Sabbath, Gamelan, Black Angels and Cecil Taylor.” This reverence continued through subsequent homages: a cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” an album of Nina Simone interpretations, and, of course, their David Lynch homage Xiu Xiu Plays The Music of Twin Peaks.

Top 25 Records of 2025

We’re a quarter of the way into the 21st century and whilst age has crept up on me, wisdom still eludes my grasp. The world keeps on dishing out surprises. The only surefire thing seems to be that there are no surefire things, that and the great galumphing musical juggernaut keeps on going. Although, with AI’s twitchy grin and greasy paws leering and clawing at its rags, even that has a question mark hanging over it… But this isn’t the time for dourness or doom-mongering - it’s the end of one year and the beginning of another, therefore time for celebration!
The Quietus •

Charles Hayward x Dälek – HAYWARDxDÄLEK | The Quietus

New Jersey rapper and South London drummer team up and tear it up over nine tracks of deep beats and mangled melodiesBack in 2023, From The Other (the creative bods behind Fat Out Fest) invited Charles Hayward and Will Brooks (AKA MC Dälek) to collaborate as part of their artist development programme Samarbeta. What started off as an improvised work, combining synth, drums, and samples, grew over the course of a week into a live performance with Brooks then taking the recordings back to his New Jersey studio to mix and add lyrics.
The Quietus •

Wrigglies Extra: Unite The Worms by Golden Toad | The Quietus

Japanese Television's Al Brown eagerly licks the toxins of the back of a Sonoran desert toad and sinks into a bottomless funk of motorik rhythms, twisting basslines and Balearic guitars resulting in an album of slithery bedroom electro-psych well-suited to the late, winter months. Golden Toad is the solo project of Al Brown, former co-creator of indie-psychers Japanese Television. He’s also made music videos for the likes of UNKLE, Lambrini Girls, Idles, and Deap Vally.
Bandcamp Daily •

Adhesive Sounds - The Tape Label Report, November 2025

In 2014 Toronto-based Kel C was going through a tough time. “My body was basically in crisis. I was allergic to everything, including the elements.” Kel explains. “I had to avoid wind and direct sunlight. I left school and isolated at home.” This housebound period led to an intense focus on music and music production, and thus Adhesive Sounds was born, unveiling the warped tape experimentation of Ben Disaster’s Japanese Treats project as the label’s inaugural release.
The Quietus •

AVTT/PTTN – AVTT/PTTN | The Quietus

You might have heard of Mike Patton. Primarily known for his work in Mr Bungle, Faith No More, Fantômas, and Peeping Tom, his career is a record of boundaries pushed and sonic expectations subverted. Through his dynamic, ear-shredding vocal techniques he’s worked with everyone from Sepultura, Merzbow, and Laurie Anderson to Eyvind Kang, Björk and Kool Keith. He’s been deeply embroiled in the avant-garde music scene and famously laughed off offers to join INXS and the Guns ‘n’ Roses spin-off band, Velvet Revolver. He runs Ipecac Records and landed three UK top 20 hits during his time in Faith No More.
The Quietus •

Earth Ball – Outside Over There | The Quietus

Based out of a similar neck of the Pacific Northwest’s woods that brought us Twin Peaks, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy and Mandy by Panos Cosmatos, Earth Ball navigate the lure of nature with a weird bit between their teeth. Less in that saturated, folk horror, zeitgeist-y way, more like they’ve been left to their own devices and have been experimenting without any overarching fear of judgement. They trust in their own intuitions, no matter how wild.
Bandcamp Daily •

Acroplane Recordings - The Tape Label Report, October 2025

Welcome to The Tape Label Report, where we introduce you to five cassette-focused labels you should know about, and highlight key releases from each.

Acroplane Recordings officially took off in 2006, after Clive Kells stepped back from running Electrotoxic, the dance music-oriented label he’d started in 2002. Taking over the reins was Paul Moore, a resident DJ in one of Belfast’s busiest night clubs from the age of 18.
The Quietus •

Anna Högberg Attack – Ensamseglaren | The Quietus

Over two sides of an LP, Ensamseglaren takes us along paths of genteel jazz, intriguing experimentation, thunderous doom, and brassy sighs capable of breaking your heart. With her 12-strong ensemble, reassembled after a five-year hiatus in order to help work through the grief of losing her father (the lonely sailor to whom the album title alludes), Anna Högberg has transcended any clichés about getting the old band back together. Their collective expression, their artistry, their simply being wi...
The Quietus •

Maggot Brain: SickElixir by Blawan | The Quietus

At the turn of the 20th century, a group of Italian artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers proposed the concept of Futurism: an ideology that praised speed, technology, youth, and violence. They wanted to create sounds that emulated the roar of the world and, in particular, the cacophony of war. Seventy years later, industrial artists, aided by synthesizers, feedback loops, and an array of effects, introduced the slamming sounds of dwindling manufacturing to the musical canvas...
The Quietus •

Human Leather – Here Comes The Mind, There Goes The Body | The Quietus

When my wife was little, she dreamt of being a hand model, gesturing alluringly towards the various prizes on Bruce’s Price is Right. At the time, no artists were crafting music for people with her ambitions. In 2021, Saint Surly and Dyl Thomas addressed this with their predominantly instrumental track featuring a sample of Seinfeld’s George bemoaning the effects of stress on his money-making epidermis. More famously, Queens of the Stone Age closed their self-titled debut with ‘I Was A Teenage Hand Model’. A song about a washed-up has-been, chundering on a toilet floor. Not exactly inspirational material for budding gesticulators.
Bandcamp Daily •

Satatuhatta - The Tape Label Report, August 2025

Welcome to The Tape Label Report, where we introduce you to five cassette-focused labels you should know about, and highlight key releases from each.

“I’m constantly on the hunt for something interesting. And I guess when you keep doing that long enough, you eventually come across harsh noise.”

So says Vilho Koivisto, whose Satatuhatta label has been rapidly releasing exceptional experimental noise music from his home in Oulu, Finland for a little over 5 years now.
The Quietus •

Gwenifer Raymond – Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark | The Quietus

In 1952 the chemist and rocket engineer Jack Parsons died from wounds that he sustained during an accidental explosion whilst working in his home laboratory on explosives for a film set. Upon hearing the news of her son’s death, Ruth Parsons promptly took a fatal overdose of barbiturates.


An occultist and associate of both Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard, Parsons’ story has been memorialised in song by the likes of Six Organs of Admittance, Jóhann Jóhannsson, The Claypool Lennon Delirium, and Luke Haines with Peter Buck. Now the pantheon expands with Gwenifer Raymond’s urgently strummed flurries continuing the tradition. That her ode is instrumental does little to deviate from the Parsons legend.
The Quietus •

Andrew Nolan – Monochrome Vol. 2: Tentacles of Spiritual Contagion | The Quietus

Fresh from partnering with noisy transatlantic neighbours, Full Of Hell and The Body (as part of Intensive Care), Andrew Nolan has corralled together a second round-up of his belligerent sonic output barely a month since the first volume. Leaning heavily into the compilation work that he has produced for that stalwart of the Northeast DIY noise scene, Industrial Coast, Monochrome Vol. 2: Tentacles of Spiritual Contagion, bridges the gaps between Nolan’s hip-hop productions as Wolfagram, the crus...
The Quietus •

Farshad Akbari – Echoes of Nothingness | The Quietus

The sun, a skull, and a vast expanse of desert. The imagery that makes up the woven artwork for Farshad Akbari’s Echoes of Nothingness provides an intriguing signpost for the headspace that this music was created in and where it leads its listeners. Whilst the sand-filled skull might be a signifier, this isn’t the desert psychedelia of El Topo, or the paranoid insanity of Gerry. Nor is it the peculiar sprawl of Walkabout and Picnic at Hanging Rock. It arises, instead, from Akbari’s homeland of Iran, the same landscape depicted by the filmmakers Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Mohammad Rasoulof.
The Quietus •

Wevie Stonder – Sure Beats Living | The Quietus

Fifteen years after their last record, the plunderphonic Skam Records still have the capacity to surprise and delight, finds Jon BucklandSlumped 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....
The Quietus •

Mark Van Hoen – The Eternal Present | The Quietus

In Alan Moore’s all-encompassing three book epic Jerusalem he carefully and painstakingly depicts the multi-generational lives of the inhabitants of the mediaeval centre of Northampton known as The Boroughs. Through tracing their surreal, mundane, magickal, exhaustive, and, at times, harrowing existences, Moore posits the notion of ‘Eternalism’: a theory in which all events, past, present and future, occur simultaneously.
The Quietus •

Phil Langero – Practical Dancing (For The Modern Man) | The Quietus

The recently minted Black Hole imprint from Rocket Recordings is a space for those willing to take the darker, less travelled path. For their fourth instalment, they’ve invited Cork’s Phil Langero to bravely cross the event horizon. If you’re familiar with Langero’s Moundabout project with Gnod’s Paddy Shine, you’ll know the rough wheelhouse this exists within. Practical Dancing (For The Modern Man), however, strays even further from the path, continuing up a hill to a handmade wooden shed stood braced against the howling wind. It’s here that Langero concocted his gyrating instruction manual.
The Quietus •

elijah jamal asani – ,,, as long as i long to memorise your sky ,,, | The Quietus

The plight of the humble bumblebee dips in and out of public interest at roughly the same rate as trouser leg girth. One moment it seems to be of utmost importance to look after these airborne fuzzies, the next they’re not given a second thought. At 10am every morning, a sizable bee (possibly a queen) pays a visit to one of the south-facing windowpanes in our lounge. I don’t know if it’s drawn by the way the light hits the window or by the flowers in the garden, but the bee appears punctually, e...
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