The Quietus Albums of the Year 2025 (In Association with Norman Records)
Here are our favourite albums of the last 12 months, as voted for by tQ staff, columnists and core writers
Reviews
AICHER
Defensive Acoustics
Liam from My Disco's solo project proves both a hostile environment – and a fertile playground
Columns of the Year
Rum Music: The Best of 2025 Reviewed by Jennifer Lucy Allan
Jennifer Lucy Allan picks out 10 of the best from another Rum year, from lucid bedroom pop made in 1980s Hungary, to wild new sounds out of Lancashire produced on self-built wooden instruments, via accordions, kanteles, lap steel guitars, modular synths and much much more
Reviews
DJ Narciso
DENTRO DE MIM
The Angolan-Portuguese producer's first foray on an international label provides a perfect entrypoint – not to just to one artist's sound, but to the thrilling, pulsating, grinding world of batida
Reissue of the Week
Reissue of the Week: Gary Numan’s Telekon
Toby Manning gets to grips with the Beggars Arkive reissue of Gary Numan's often overlooked second solo album Telekon, and its smart man/machine reversal
Reviews
Ghold
Bludgeoning Simulations
Ghold’s latest is an expansive, trudging voyage through deep, dark reverie, with proceeds from Bandcamp sales going towards SkatePal, a charity supplying skateboarding equipment and training courses to underfunded communities in Palestine
Low Culture Essay
Low Culture Essay: Tariq Goddard on Jeremy Brett, the Perfect Sherlock Holmes
Tariq Goddard declares that in Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, the actor delivered one of the greatest TV performances of all time – one that was so total, it arguably destroyed him
Reviews
Review Columns
Cassettes
Spool’s Out: Cassette Reviews for November by Daryl Worthington
From radical dance music to triumphant, intricately layered synth pop and a levitating collaboration between a Ugandan embaire ensemble and a Japanese dub producer, Daryl Worthington finds rays of joy on cassette to blast away the impending winter entropy this November
Baker’s Dozen
Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives
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Low Culture Essay
Low Culture Essay: Tariq Goddard on Jeremy Brett, the Perfect Sherlock Holmes
Tariq Goddard declares that in Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, the actor delivered one of the greatest TV performances of all time – one that was so total, it arguably destroyed him
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News
Anniversary
Been Around The World: The Magical Odyssey Of The Avalanches’ Since I Left You
A concept album that transcended its concept, a stealth mix-CD, global disco, sampledelic exotica, yacht rock by other means: the Australian group’s debut was many things, writes David Bennun - and above all it was, and remains, a joy. This article was first published in 2020
The Portal
Explore 15 Years Of Cultural Wayfinding
Each week we conjure up a miscellany of tQ writing from the mists of time for you. Most often random. Sometimes themed. Always enthralling.
Explore The Portal
Culture
Books
The Lodger In Me: Bid from The Monochrome Set on the Aneurysm that Changed His Life
In an exclusive extract from his new book, Strange Young Alien, the founder member and principal songwriter of the Monochrome Set discusses the ruptured cerebral aneurysm that changed the way he thought about music and the creative process
Books
Stroppy, Optimistic, Overdressed Young Men: Robert Elms Remembers the Blitz Club
Blitz: The Club That Created the Eighties, a new book by Robert Elms, returns the reader to a bygone London of squats full of future popstars and cans of Red Stripe to recall the nightclub that birthed Spandau Ballet and Visage and might just have invented the future
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