Jon Buckland

Ultracrepidarian

Music Criticism

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....
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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...
The Quietus •

Sumac & Moor Mother – The Film | The Quietus

The audiences of 20th century music were often split by genre into cliques and factions. Of all the concepts around music, the 21st century seems to have ditched that quicker than a Trump tariff. Few artists embody the comprehensive breadth of genre-less music as masterfully as Moor Mother.

Her solo releases are rich and inventive, yet it’s her eclectic collaborations which best reveal her intentions. She’s recorded albums with underground rapper extraordinaire billy woods, and industrial dub a...

Distraxi - Colour Of The Sky | Album Review

For the past 4 years, Alina Church (AKA Distraxi) has been diligently firing out some of the most incendiary harsh noise and power electronics available to tape deck owners. She’s prolific. Notching up releases for the likes of experimental powerhouses Outsider Art, Eggy Tapes, Death To Dynamics, Hard Return, and Summer Interlude Records. Her live shows are formed from acts of violent catharsis, smashed scrap metal, ruinous feedback, and an apparent lack of care for self.
The Quietus •

Croation Amor & Lust For Youth – All Worlds | The Quietus

On August 20th 1977, the Voyager 2 space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA. A little over two weeks later Voyager 1 followed. Sealed in aluminium cases and attached to each device were the Golden Records: audio-visual discs containing photos of Earth and its lifeforms, scientific information, recordings of greetings in 55 different languages, and a selection of music, ranging from classical and jazz to folk and rock & roll. The discs serve as a time capsule and a message in a bottle, sharing a little bit of what it means to be human with any lifeforms that the Voyager space missions might chance upon. With All Worlds the forces of Croatian Amor and Lust For Youth have united once more to spread a little hope and joy of their own.
The Quietus •

Sandwell District – End Beginnings | The Quietus

Karl O’Connor seems to be enjoying getting his old bands back together. Last year he reunited with Surgeon for the long-awaited British Murder Boys debut and now he’s linked up with David Sumner (Function) for Sandwell District’s second full-length after a casual fifteen-year hiatus. I won’t say silence as, over the past year or so, they’ve treated us to a box set reissue of their masterful, scene-defining debut, and dropped an archival collection titled Where Next? late last year.
The Quietus •

"Waveforms that Vibrate like Distant Galaxies”: David Keenan's Volcanic Tongue | The Quietus

“I like art where the blood is streaming and the flowers are blooming like hell.” – Peter Brötzmann

Pitiful royalties. Chronic ticket gouging. Shuttered venues. Charts clogged with nepo babies. Generative AI. Slashed arts funding. Brexit red tape. If you’re looking for signs that music is struggling, you hardly need 20/20 vision. Fortunately, that’s not the whole story.

For music to survive all you need are two things: someone to make it and someone to take it seriously. In Scottish author...
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A Gilded Palace of Sin: Goldstar by Imperial Triumphant | The Quietus

1929, New York City. six months before the crash. Edward Bernays, inspired by the work of his double uncle Sigmund Freud, paid women to smoke cigarettes whilst marching in the Easter Sunday Parade. He called them ‘Torches of Freedom’, as if every puff were a hammer blow to the shackles of patriarchal oppression.The idea was to both break a social taboo and to increase the number of female smokers with a casual flick of a lighter’s flint.
The Quietus •

The Strange World Of... Room40 | The Quietus

As the 21st century roared into view, so did Room40. 

What started off as a pre-millennium zine cobbled together in Brisbane grew into a series of carefully curated shows promoting the type of artists very rarely seen in North East Australia, and has now evolved, a quarter of a century later, into a home for some of the most vital, compelling, and dream-like experimental records. Included on Room40’s discography are artists such as Kevin Richard Martin, Grouper, Tim Hecker, Alan Lamb, Celer...
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The Whole of the Dog: Decius Vol II – Splendour & Obedience is Our Album of the Week | The Quietus

“He watched the pale, speed-driven teenagers shiver around the dance floor. Droplets of light sprayed onto their faces and T-shirts. In alcoves, couples were frozen in the trance of foreplay. The beat was too quick to dance to, almost too deep to hear. It was like the roar of water in an underground cavern.” – The Window

Lifted from a particularly harrowing short story by the British author Joel Lane, the above paragraph depicts the initial meeting place of a burgeoning sado-masochistic sexual relationship. It could also double as a description of the notoriously selective Berlin nightclub where Decius’ Meat Divine first caught a taste of electronic music’s throbbing abandon.
The Quietus •

Deep Cabaret – Matchless | The Quietus

Certain music lends itself particularly well to specific physical media. For instance: Black Sabbath on vinyl, Autechre on CD, Aaron Dilloway’s tape manipulations on cassette. I don’t know if it’s due to the rugged, physical performances or the nagging sense that this is a fly-on-the-wall recording of a live jam session, but something rooted in Deep Cabaret’s Matchless demands the innate tangibility of analogue formats. It’s fitting then that this jazzy desert blues album, initially released on...

Top 25 Records of 2024

I swear these years are whipping by quicker and quicker. There’s a theory that a year feels shorter as you get older because 12 months are a smaller slice of your entire existence. So, in percentage terms, you’re dealing with a slimmer slither compared to those school days when the long summers seemed to stretch out way beyond the glittering horizon, almost into infinity. Endless, some might say. Christian Fennesz ought to write an album about that. Anyway, despite knowing all of that, this year flew. Here we are at the end and I’m once again writing that thing I do around this time each year… although I’m still not entirely sure why.
The Quietus •

Kemper Norton – Tall Trees (And Other Tales) | The Quietus

Recently, a friend generously shared a fairly rank video in a group chat. It featured an open manhole cover with a length of blue piping descending into an underground tunnel system. After a moment or two of faint gurgles and twitching hosing, a huge stinking brick of toilet waste sludged its way through the narrow duct like a giant faecal slug. It clogged up the entire opening, causing mud-coloured discharge to rise to the brim and threaten to spill out into the road. A series of flatulent sounds...
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