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Marc Riley, Craig Scanlon, Paul Hanley and Steve Hanley speak to Daniel Dylan Wray about a new release of archive recordings capturing Slates performed live in its entirety, how it’s helping them regain agency in a world awash with ropey Fall bootlegs, and what Mark E. Smith might have made of their plans
On its 40th anniversary, Eden Tizard explores The Fall’s Perverted By Language, an album where Mark E. Smith turns his focus to the suburbs and its inhabitants. A key record in The Fall saga, featuring a group at a crossroads, on the hunt for a new mode of attack
With her new book The Melancholia of Class just out from Repeater Books, author Cynthia Cruz talks to Enrico Monacelli about identity politics, class consciousness, and why Mark E. Smith was one of the great working class militants of the 20th Century
Trudging through the inverted worlds of Staten Island, Putney and Prestwich come a crew of rappers, a poet/ engraver and a dyspetic singer, says Tom Ellen. They steel themselves against the disappointment of the surface world - the feeling of 'Is this it?' - by doodling on the maps of their cities, adding monsters and demons, gods and angels, hidden passageways and secret portals.
A band featuring Mark E Smith's ghost writer, an ex-member of The Fall and Bill Ryder-Jones' guitarist are genuinely great and commendably angry, says Fergal Kinney. But should they really be punching in and down instead of out and up?
Coming just a year after Mark E Smith's death, Cherry Red's wonderful reissue of Hex Enduction Hour and Paul Hanley's engrossing book, Have A Bleedin Guess, forced John Doran to reassess the most notorious lyric in The Fall's four decade long career
Mark E Smith shared an artistic vision with William Blake, says Alex Weston-Noond and The Annotated Fall online resource of the group's (oft overlooked) tenth album, but its real power lies in the way it deals with more standard themes of politics and breakup
From Rock's Backpages this month, an infamous NME pop summit from 1989. James Brown and Sean O'Hagan took Mark E Smith, Nick Cave & Shane MacGowan to the Montague Arms (RIP) in New Cross. Great merriment ensued... (republished 24th January 2018)
Sod the first few EPs, we say a band's real hidden gems are buried at the end, among the ill-advised career moves and last grasps at fading relevance. Here, tQ writers fight the corner for their favourite unloved and underrated records from the tail-end of their favourite artists' discography.
As he prepares for more post-Shane MacGowan shows with The Pogues following a triumph in Hackney earlier this year, Spider Stacy takes Patrick Clarke through 13 records that shaped him, from post punk classics through to the new wave of folk music, via jazz, hip hop, roots reggae and more
From 90s grunge and hip hop to contemporary ambient electronica, DJ Tom Ravenscroft tells Ben Graham about the 13 albums that give him the most listening pleasure, and developing his own musical interest away from the influence of his dad, the late John Peel. Tom Ravenscroft image courtesy of the BBC.
Paddy Shine is one of the most relentless instigators in the underground, both as part of Gnod and in myriad other projects. Ahead of the release of the debut album by his weird folk group Moundabout alongside Phil Masterson on Rocket this summer, he guides Harry Sword through 13 vital slabs
In a self-penned Baker's Dozen, DJ and producer Justin Robertson recalls the thirteen pieces of music that soundtracked his rise from home counties obscurity to the outer edges of dance music, via run-ins with Jimmy Page and Mark E. Smith
Ahead of his excellent latest album, Great Spans of Muddy Time, William Doyle - fka East India Youth, whose debut EP was first ever record released on The Quietus Phonographic Corporation - talks us through his Baker’s Dozen. William Doyle photo by Ryan MacPhail
With Aidan Moffat's excellent new record with Bill Wells just out, we sent Daniel Dylan Wray up to Glasgow to meet the former Arab Strap man/Quietus sex columnist to discuss his top formative albums. And, with the help of beers, a record player and one powerful deployment of the phrase "get to utter fuck", here's what he picked
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