Johnny Marr
The Age of Everything
Former Smiths guitarist settles some scores - with himself, and others
When I spoke to Johnny Marr for Huck in 2019, all Morrissey talk was off the table. Marr is a very affable interviewee though, and given that the conversation was going so well, I couldn't resist slipping in a cheeky question about how an unnamed "certain person" was chipping away at the legacy of The Smiths with his increasingly unhinged pronouncements. "Honestly? I'm not concerned, is the answer," he replied, generously. "I'm just not. I'm concerned about so many other things in my day and in the living of my life, you know, that that just isn't one of my concerns. I go out and play...
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@
Autosmile
Philadelphia duo with an ungoogleable name create dreamy psychedelic worlds with Waterboys flutes adn Beach Boys harmonies
Autosmile by @
It's a great time and a nightmarish time to be an @ (pronounced 'at') fan. It's exciting that the Philadelphia art-folk band's second album has just been released, but it's also a faff trying to explain to friends who @ are. Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak are making fresh, entrancing music that communicates places and mindsets in contemporary ways that can't quite be reduced to any generic label or category.
Selfishly, when you listen to the self-proclaimed SEO wet dream's latest album Autosmile you almost want to keep them to yourself, to simply eat your comforting slice of @ pie, and sit there...
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Ten years after its original release, we revisit a defining album for both artist and label.
Originally released on October 26th, 2016, as the fourth artist album on ASIP, Dennis Huddleston, aka 36's The Infinity Room would go on to become a landmark release, amassing over 12 million streams and earning a devoted following, with many calling for a repress soon after its original release.
Written during a period of ill health that left Dennis housebound, the album became an exercise in escaping physical limitations through music. Working with a deliberately restricted sound palette, each track opened the door to another, establishing an approach to the album format that Dennis would continue to explore in the decade that followed. As he recalls, "My body was stuck in one room, but my mind journeyed to the infinite rooms beyond it."
For this tenth anniversary edition, Dennis has returned to the original project files, revisiting the mixes and correcting technical limitations while preserving the character of the original recordings. Newly mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri, who also mastered the 2016 edition, the album is presented alongside The Further Rooms — a collection of recordings originally hidden behind a secret URL and password etched into the runout of the first pressing, now appearing together on vinyl for the first time.
The new artwork comes courtesy of Davy Evans, whose visual work first caught the label and Dennis' attention in a custom 36 video in 2021. Combining hands-on techniques with digital experimentation, Davy's intricate process culminated in a new interpretation of the original orb motif and a fitting evolution of an album that has become an important part of ASIP and 36's history.
A decade on, some things are worth rediscovering, and some, were never meant to end.
Available to preorder now on Bandcamp, with new UK/EU shopping option.
Global stores and distribution to follow soon…
'Contrary to what the law might say, building a castle on common land doesn't stop it being common land. Its past haunts its present' writes Nick Hayes in his latest book, 'The Medicine Tree' — a beautiful exploration of the journey the Hardwick Estate is taking to repair its colonial roots, and our October Book of the Month. In this month's author interview, Nick speaks to Tallulah Brennan about the countryside as Arcadia, how education comes into the problem of land ownership and reparations, and what a reassertion of a commons culture might look like.
Read an extract from the interview below.
I'd like to start by talking about homes, which are a constant theme in The Medicine Tree. There's the huge house of the Hardwick Estate, but there's also the homes on neighbouring land whose inhabitants are facing eviction who you follow throughout. Yet, as you say, 'eviction is so commonplace that it is not a news story'. Can I ask if you find England to be an easy home, given your growing knowledge of how well practiced it is in destroying the homes of others?
Well, no. Unless you own land in England, which actually very few of us do outright, then the notion of home is always married to a precariousness. That's not just a weight on our shoulders in terms of our security and how we feel about setting down roots, but it also affects how we view our responsibilities to a place too. If you really are rooted in a place, it becomes very clear that it's your place to defend. What the book is about is trying to look at England from a kincentric philosophy, inspired by indigenous nations, who, in spite of colonisation and imperialism, still have this real sense of themselves as guardians of the land they're on. That's a very healthy lesson which England should seek out; very awkwardly, from the very people we owe the most reparations to. Whilst we're watching our rivers be polluted by, say, chicken farming corporations, we're all aware that the government is not doing their bit to protect these natural resources. What we lack, through having been enclosed out of nature for so long, is a sense that it is our duty and responsibility not to wait for organisations and institutions to rise up and defend them, but to actually do it ourselves.
Also, being a guardian of your land when you're having to guard your own stability, whether that's through fighting an eviction or paying your extortionate rent, makes for an almost impossible task. People regularly have to move on from their homes, and so people cannot stay attached to somewhere. Even if you can stay somewhere, a consistent theme throughout my life is that there are lots of things I could get involved with, but to make rent, I don't have the space in my life outside of work to commit to my surroundings, which also would sew my life into other people's.
I was blown away by the statistic that on average we're paying 2/5ths of our earnings just to exist in the space that we do. That's every Monday and Tuesday, say, of our week going to someone who already has the privilege of exclusively owning the home. Therein lies the trap. When they took away our commons, they took away our autonomy over our time, our work and our wage. Now we find ourselves working incredibly hard to stay afloat, let alone do activities that would forge community. This is why policies like a universal basic wage would free people. It is in a way, a reassertion of a commons culture. We have our subsistence sorted, and we can do less work for someone else, and more work for our community.
With this in mind, something I thought it was really interesting to read about the owner of the Hardwick Estate's desire to relinquish ownership for a sense of 'relief'. The heiress says she wants to 'release future generations from the tie of inherited land which has been a painful burden to several generations of our family.' This idea of a burden, I might expect to hear in the campaign materials of the rentier class, from people who are regularly evicted, but not from the landowners. I think my assumption was that the huge house, the acres of land and so on, are containers of stability and privilege and therefore a contentment with life. Could you speak about why that isn't the case, not just at the Hardwick Estate, but across the landowning class?
What it does is dissolve the idea of goodies and baddies. Actually, this is a system and an ideology that neither serves the people who work under it, nor the people who operate above it. One of the landowners interviewed in the Right to Roam documentary, Our Land, is lovingly looking on at his three children playing, and saying that at one point he has to decide which one of those three gets full title to the land. Therefore deciding which of the other two will be essentially disinherited. That was a very good example to me that customs of exclusionary ownership set divisions right through families as well. It leads me to say that you can quite happily call this exclusionary ownership model ecocidal. As with the Hardwick's history, you can see how mining and industrial agriculture has been used to make profit out of land, but even for the people who oversee this, it fosters paranoia, and isolation from the community who resent this person's power over them. I say in the book, of all the people who are connected to the land, the people who are most ostracised are the very people who own it. Even if they're at the village fête, they are excluded by their right to evict. There is a clear resentment there. It reminds you why the commons is so much more than areas of land, it's a political paradigm that sees people united. No one has the right to exert power over someone else. As a basis for a community, this is a very healthy foundation.
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'The Medicine Tree: Repairing the Rotten Roots of England' by Nick Hayes is out now and available here, published by Allen Lane. Read an extract from the book here.
Nick Hayes is an award-winning writer, illustrator and land justice campaigner. In 2020 he co-founded Right to Roam, the influential campaign group advocating for public access to nature in England. He is the author of, among others, the Sunday Times best-seller 'The Book of Trespass' and co-editor of 'Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You'. An acclaimed artist, he has published four graphic novels and exhibited across the country, including at the Hayward Gallery. He lives on a canal boat with no fixed address.
Tallulah Brennan is a writer based in England, interested in the relationships between humans and their environment, and how they in turn shape each other. She is also a contributing editor at Caught by the River. Follow Tallulah's Substack here.
On Sunday 4 October, Inverted Audio founder and editor-in-chief DJ Antepop took to the decks at Café 1001 on Brick Lane for a three-hour, all-vinyl
Continue Reading
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Ahead of an appearance at Deep Time, the Irish experimentalist gives Alastair Shuttleworth 10 entry points into a back catalogue which includes an opera with Barbie dolls, 12 fictional aliases and a board game for them to play
Jennifer Walshe by Blackie Bouffant
Flann O'Brien, one of Jennifer Walshe's favourite Irish writers, once wrote of speaking Irish "when it was neither profitable nor popular." Walshe has been ahead of the curve herself in speaking about the rise of AI, which brought her career-spanning questions about art, truth and technology into focus. A prolific improviser, composer and researcher, she is one of the most celebrated figures working in contemporary classical music today - but the scope of her catalogue may baffle newcomers. She...
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Oliver Leith
Doom and the Dooms
Based on transcriptions direct from tapes found at a jumble sale, the latest from Oliver Leith may be the ideal entry point to the British composer's oeuvre
Steady pulse, parallel melodies. Strings undulating with opulent vibrato. Percussive garnish that, clinking and clattering, sounds just like a five-year-old breaking a piggy bank. Endless vacillation between hope and despair. Endless vacillation between stately ceremony and soft frolicking. All processed as if through a stereo-widening plug-in. This is Oliver Leith's signature style, and it's easy to start taking it for granted - mostly because of how effortless he makes it sound.
Commissioned by Wigmore Hall, where it received its debonair premiere in June 2024, Doom and the Dooms offers a half-hour...
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In October 2020, I published the first OUT TODAY column. Even then, I couldn't keep up with all the new music, so in addition to my shorter SOUND BYTES write-ups, I started curating a collection of about a dozen albums and shared it with you about once a month. As everyone's attention span got shortened, fought for by algorithms, content scraped by bots, and fabricated with AI…
The London party series is aiming to take over a complex formerly used by London College of Fashion
Lost, the secretive London party series famed for its big-name lineups, has revealed its pursuing a 24-hour license for a new venue in the heart of Oxford Street.
Taking to Instagram yesterday (22 October), the team behind the party revealed that they had secured use of a building complex formerly used by London College of Fashion. Writing on social media, they said: "An entire block on Oxford Street to reimagine the heart of London, we want to build this with you."
In a further update to email subscribers issued today (23 October), Lost encouraged people to contact Westminster Council in order to support them in...
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He revealed that he is now in talks with a record label to produce an official box set of the group's material
Kevin Martin has taken to Instagram to reveal that he's successfully blocked an unlicensed reissue of Possession, a 1992 album by GOD, the band that he was part of from 1987 until 1996.
Updating his social media followers, Martin thanked people who had offered him legal advice on the matter and said he'd fought back against the planned reissue on "legal and moral grounds". He added that the process of blocking the release had been "difficult and stressful", but ultimately successful, and that none of the members of GOD had approved the reissue.
The dispute was over a planned new edition...
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Exploring the theme of Continuity, it will feature contributions from affiliates of the Príncipe label and tQ's own Jennifer Lucy Allan
DJ Marfox, photo by Marta Pina
Portuguese festival SQUARE has revealed the first details of the conference programme for its 2027 edition.
Returning to Braga for its third edition in January, SQUARE will host a number of panel discussions and artist interviews for the second consecutive year. The programming will revolve around the theme of Continuity.
One session will explore 15 years of Portuguese label Príncipe, with key affiliates DJ Marfox and Helviofox set to be interviewed. tQ's own Jennifer Lucy Allan will also moderate a panel discussion called Archives And Memory: Exploring The Unfamiliar, which will explore the practice of recovering sound...
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Nandu returns to our mix series more than a decade on from his first appearance for MIX088 back in 2016, this time handling curation duties for MIX420. The Dannish artist delivers a tracklist that pushes his own forthcoming productions, alongside tracks from Several Definitions, Andre Lodemann, and Tim Engelhardt. It's robust, deep meets melodic club […]
Victor Neuburg in haybales, West Sussex, early-1920s. Photo copyright Justin Hopper
In 1924 the poet, publisher and occultist Victor Neuburg was visited by unidentifiable spirits in his cottage in a small Sussex town. As he later put it, these voices 'dictated' poems to him - streams-of-consciousness pieces of prose steeped in esoteric symbolism. He wrote them down, nearly 100 pieces of writing, into the form of a book he called The Water Bearer.
And no one would touch it. None less than Ralph Shirley, the editor of The Occult Review, told Victor that these were unique, wholly original, works, but 'what publisher would risk it?'
For the next 100 years these poems sat, mostly unread, in a family chest. Until now. Victor Neuburg is best known as the magical (and sexual) partner of Aleister Crowley; as the man who discovered the poet Dylan Thomas; as a funny name that comes up when mentioning just about any aspect of early-20th century British counterculture. (An anarchist who advocated for gay rights and prison reform; the living connection between the Decadents and the Surrealists; friend to Austin Osman Spare and inspiration to Peter Warlock; early champion of nudists and yoga; the list continues.) His published poetry books now sell for hundreds or even thousands, but perhaps his greatest-ever works - those which best espoused his bizarre hodge-podge of occult and spiritual beliefs - have been read by almost no one alive.
Vine Press will be publishing these works as one of the last wishes of Caroline Neuburg, the poet's granddaughter, who dove deeply into them - her copious notes on the symbolism in the works will act as introduction to the book The Water Bearer and Other Lost Works of Victor Neuburg.
You can pre-order, and help make it all happen - a century in the making - until 30th October via Kickstarter.
With the initial funding target reached, the project is now aiming for a stretch target of £18,500. If this amount is reached, a new reward will be added to the pledges (at no additional cost) — a zine of Victor Neuburg's unknown 1920s writings about his beloved county of Sussex, its folklore, history and landscape. Everyone who ordered a copy of the limited-edition hardback book of The Water Bearer will also get this zine, at no additional charge.
Victor Neuburg (almost certainly), Rites of Eleusis, London, 1910. (From The Bystander, 1910)
Futuristant returns to Obscura Music following a remix for Cafius and Victoria Rawlins' 'Stars Are Kind' back in March, and an August collaboration with Berny titled 'Movin' In'. Releasing a full EP with the label for the first time, he brings three new productions together for his 'Funky Circus' EP. Original titles 'Feels Like A […]
As far right ideology and misogyny make gains around the world, metal, a subculture with a troubled relationship to fascism, wonders whether more progressive ideals are still in reach, writes Antonio Poscic in The Wire 513
Metal used to be the music of outsiders. For teenagers who stumbled into it, the subculture offered a place to belong and legitimised intense emotions that had to be suppressed in daily life. Its lyrics and sonic density gave shape to alienation, despair and angst that many struggled to articulate. It offered acceptance for those rejected elsewhere, and an identity chosen rather than imposed. As sociologist Deena Weinstein's research in the 1990s showed, metal circles often acted as scaffolding for adolescent development.
Today, other subcultures have become fragmented by the internet and streaming, but metal remains a counterexample, perhaps precisely because of the strong sense of belonging on which it was built. At the same time, the very closeness and openness to extremes that made the genre a refuge also carry a cost, with the sense of brotherhood and outsiderliness at times tipping into hypermasculinity, sexism, misogyny and, at worst, ties with far right ideologies.
For any metalhead with misgivings about the subculture, the past two decades have brought growing signs of pushback, with countercultural threads rising within the once orthodox environment. Both the Red and Anarchist Black Metal (RABM) movement, born out of the collision of black metal and hardcore and punk, and a wave of under-represented and queer musicians - including black metal duo Ragana, sludge outfit Body Void and avant drone act Divide And Dissolve - subvert negative connotations of the genre, turning its tropes into an experimental language for new stories, reclaiming its obsession with transgression for radical self-empowerment. From a distance, the picture suggests steady progress. Up close, however, the view is different.
"The people welcoming new folks and marginalised groups into metal are new folks and marginalised groups themselves," says Bariann Tuite Smith, founder of the New York label Fiadh Productions. "Artists, supporters and fans who have always been there, just never given a place, and who stepped up to build that place for themselves and others - they exist outside the traditional metal community."
Some 8000 kilometres away in Athens, musician and antifascist Chris Daritsis aka Ayloss shares Tuite Smith's view. "The core of metal culture hasn't changed in a radical way," he argues. "There was an effect of liberatory politics in the mainstream scene and its politics have evolved, but quite often in a 'hiding the rotten stuff beneath the rug' way - metal culture has also found a way to keep some of the problematic stuff that it enjoys, using new methods and rhetoric."
These problematic aspects extend beyond ideology, but most are still related to black metal and its far right undercurrents. Whereas in the past, aligned groups wore their National Socialist black metal (NSBM, aka Nazi black metal) insignia proudly, now they expertly hide them, to the point where it's become a meme to have to check various lists of 'sketch' (ie fascist-leaning) groups and musicians before listening to any new band.
In 2019, the Polish black metal outfit Mgła, whose members have a history of controversial releases and NSBM ties, were allowed to play a sold out show in one of Zagreb's traditionally antifascist clubs in spite of cancellation calls from local activists. Similar confrontations happen worldwide. "Venues themselves haven't taken the proactive step that some promoters have, posting in antifascist groups to ask about bands, talking to other artists before booking," notes Tuite Smith. "Too often it's been left to fans to do that legwork: informing promoters, contacting venues directly, with pretty varying results."
This stems from the professed neutrality of large swathes of the metal scene. "We're constantly banging our heads, not at the presence of the fascists, but at the attitude of the apolitical fans," says Ayloss. "Whether they understand it or not, they protect the fascists themselves. I've seen extreme hostility towards antifascist praxis in the metal scene, meaning that these projects dissolve after most people realise that the cost in terms of cultural capital and mental health is too much."
Several trans musicians I approached asked to remain anonymous, citing the threat that speaking out publicly on these topics can pose to marginalised people, especially during Trump's second term and even within alleged safe spaces dominated by virtue signalling rather than actual work. Online, the situation is worse. "It's really hard out there for a lot of people right now, and if you're isolated and seeking some kind of support on the internet, the algorithm designed to feed you more anti-progressive content is only a click away from a fitness video or edgy meme," says musician Rylan Gleave. "Those are the people we have more of a chance of connecting with in showing them community."
With a background in the alternative chamber-classical sphere, Gleave came into metal fairly late, joining the Glaswegian antifascist black metal band Ashenspire as a vocalist in 2017, then using skeins of doom and extreme metal for his own project All Men Unto Me to interrogate transmasculinity within patriarchal systems.
"There's an important difference between genuinely ideological extremist bands and people who aren't necessarily extremists but use increasingly normalised dogwhistles, sometimes even unwittingly," he adds. "I do think we have a collective responsibility to have difficult conversations that I notice a lot of people still shy away from."
Often, though, inclusivity is less a matter of ideology or cultural hegemony than of stairs and doorways, as Gleave, who is disabled, knows firsthand. "Most DIY venues are up or down a flight of stairs, won't have an accessible bathroom, or won't have step-free access to the stage," he points out. "Either you don't see disabled artists onstage, or you see us compromising on our access needs to be there - physically getting injured - or operating at a huge net loss. Where do those missing people go? Do they revert to bedroom-only projects?"
Ultimately, the metal scene reflects the world around it, with enclaves of progressive thought existing within increasingly hostile surroundings. Pragmatic about the situation, Tuite Smith, Ayloss and Gleave operate under what Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, borrowing from Romain Rolland, called "the pessimism of the intellect, the optimism of the will".
Fuelled by the same appreciation of art and desire for community that originally defined metal, they keep building. "There's huge power in using your platform to find the strange, the marginalised, the experimental, and the effect that can have on those artists looking for a first step," says Gleave.
For Tuite Smith, "We are still looking for joy, and finding it, in small things, in metal, in each other. And recognising that we can find those small joys in this community is a realisation I want to expand."
This essay appears in The Wire 513. Wire subscribers can also read it in our online magazine library.
Robbie Williams' hip hop pivot is widely seen as one of the most obnoxious failures in pop. Claire Biddles & Fergal Kinney deal with an LP which is experimental outlier, outsider art & baffling mess all at once
There's a moment in 2016 captured in Chris Heath's bestselling journalistic portrait of Robbie Williams where the singer is struggling with his infant child emotionally pushing his father away. "Maybe," offers his wife Ayda Field-Williams, "she's finally heard Rudebox."
The September 2006 release of the 'Rudebox' single remains the most controversial moment in Robbie Williams career, a turning point that decisively ended his imperial phase as Britain's biggest pop star that he had sustained since the 1997 release of Life Thru A Lens. Where...
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Rising Damp expert Sophie Sleigh-Johnson tunes in to the 70s pub sports telly series that celebrated regional specificity through a fug of cig smoke and the rituals of indoor combat
Something was afoot in the corridors of Yorkshire TV during the early 70s, fuelled by crates of Double Diamond beer. The chipboard sets of Rising Damp, a luridly claustrophobic set piece transmitted into the country's living rooms, shared production space (if not a specific studio) at Kirkstall Road Studios, Leeds with another domesticated strain of British culture: the pub.
Long before Luke Littler brought darts to the TikTok generation and Sky homogenised the arrows' presentation, The Indoor League brought pub-based sports to British living rooms. In 1972 audiences had been able to watch the...
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Shit And Shine
0 aa Riot
The ever-prolific Craig Clouse gives us four tracks of skipping needles and sporadic glitches, but it's the subtle details and small shifts that prove most beguiling for JR Moores
0 aa RIOT by SHIT AND SHINE
Paul Du Noyer compared Paul McCartney's "stylistic breadth" to Pablo Picasso. Will Gompertz eulogised David Bowie as "the Picasso of pop". Leonard Cohen saw Bob Dylan as "the Picasso" and considered himself a lower-rung Matisse. Kanye West and Madonna have likened themselves to the great master. Mike Skinner said he was "the Pablo Picasso of geezer garage". Notwithstanding this painter's stranglehold over Western aesthetic thinking and ignoring his personal shortcomings for a moment, whose output can truly be hailed as the musical...
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Discrepant founder Gonçalo F. Cardoso tells tQ about a stacked lineup celebrating the underground scene of the Canary Islands and beyond
Alejandra Cárdenas, aka Ale Hop
The last three days of October will see London's experimental music lodestar Cafe OTO host a three day program organised by Tenerife-based DIY label Discrepant and the annual Canary Islands festival Keroxen.
Taking place on 29, 30 and 31 October, a rammed schedule will see performances from more than a dozen acts. They include representatives from the thriving Canarian underground like psych rockers GAF Y La Estrella De La Muerte, experimental guitarist Paul Pèrrim, leftfield pop songwriter Akane and more.
International representation comes from the likes of Japanese turntablist DJ Sniff, making a rare appearance in the...
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Richard Foster considers the life of an artist who died on the day that The Damned's 'New rose' was released, and considers an unusual continuum in weird British culture
Those familiar with the popular British TV series Doctor Who will be aware that the unnamed Timelord protagonist occasionally transforms, 'dying' and reemerging alive once more within seconds, now portrayed by a new actor. This pareidolic process, alongside the sometimes ectoplasmic visual effects found in the programme's opening and closing credits (especially those seen in the mid-1970s) suggests astral travel and spiritual regeneration; new possibilities that nevertheless draw on old hinterlands.
On 22 October 1976, the English watercolour painter Edward Burra died in the Royal East Sussex hospital in Hastings. A happier and...
The post Picking a Quarrel: The death of Edward Burra and the birth of British punk appeared first on The Quietus.
