Support The Quietus
Our journalism is funded by our readers. Become a subscriber today to help champion our writing, plus enjoy bonus essays, podcasts, playlists and music downloads.
Forty years ago this week Marc Almond released the album that almost finished his career. Derided at the time as an overblown, self-obsessed indulgence, Torment and Toreros is now considered a flawed masterpiece in the lineage of Lou Reed’s Berlin, Big Star’s Third, and Nick Cave’s Your Funeral…My Trial. Here the people who made the record tell its story in their own words.
*Conform to Deform: the Weird and Wonderful World of Some Bizzare* is an in-depth oral history of the legendary record label and its founder, Stevo Pearce. Techno pioneer Karl ‘Regis’ O’Connor – a huge fan of the label – met the book’s author Wesley Doyle to discuss how Some Bizzare impacted popular culture in the 80s
Ghetto blasting synth punk in Rugby. Lending pyjamas to Mogwai. Writing to Nick Drake’s sister. Finding psychology theory in music. Pranked by Robin Guthrie. Rocket Girl Records label head Vinita Joshi takes Will McCartney through the 13 records that have shaped her life
Karl O'Connor guides Luke Turner through the 13 teenage hits that made him Regis, with tales of smelling like a badger on the mail train to Brum and what happens when you get a member of Einstürzende Neubauten the wrong gravel on the way