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As cultural publications around the world continue to collapse due to advertising revenues running dry, we’re ever more reliant on direct support from you to continue bringing you the best writing there is..

Exceptional art deserves exceptional insight from thoughtful critics. By supporting The Quietus, not only do you help us keep the number of ads on site to a minimum and the lights on at the great server farm in the cloud, you ensure we can continue to pay our brilliant writers.

There are no corporate media owners or shareholder profits to pay out. 100% of your subscriptions goes directly to those who contribute, keeping The Quietus independent and focused on never watering-down our cultural coverage.

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Monthly Playlist

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Monthly Spotify, Apple Music & Tidal playlists rounding up the music we’ve been writing about on the site.

Recent Monthly Playlist

tQ’s Exclusive Monthly Round-Up Playlist: August 2025

Catch up with everything we wrote about last month

Subscriber Playlist: What we Wrote About in July

Catch up with the sweet, saucy and stern sounds of tQ's summer 2025

tQ’s Exclusive Monthly Playlist: Catch up with June 2025

Four hours of sounds from the month that was

tQ’s Exclusive Monthly Playlist: Catch up with May 2025

Catch up on the sounds we wrote about last month

tQ’s Exclusive Monthly Round-Up Playlist: April 2025

Here's a playlist of everything we've covered at The Quietus this month, compiled for the listening pleasure of tQ's subscribers
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Bonus Playlists

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Three specially curated bonus playlists each month to accompany Baker’s Dozen, A Quietus Interview and Strange World Of…

Recent Bonus Playlists

The Strange World Of… Saint Etienne

After 35 years of reinventing British pop, Saint Etienne’s Bob, Pete and Sarah are hanging up their samples, synthesisers, feather boas and football strips for good. Jude Rogers offers 10 ways into their always surprising, genre-splicing back catalogue, from their early days with C86 bands and Andrew Weatherall to their final, star-filled album

“Being Different isn’t Something to Take Lightly”: Jarvis Cocker Interviewed

Pulp are back with their first new album in nearly a quarter of a century; Jarvis Cocker joins us to talk about More, but also outsider art in America, an attic full of wonder in London and revolution versus violence in Sheffield. Words by Darran Anderson. All portraits by Tom Jackson

The Strange World Of… Fugazi

Ahead of the release of a documentary film, JR Moores laments Fugazi’s absence yet remains wary of a comeback, offering some “stupid fucking words” on the band that never ceased getting better until they stopped altogether

The Strange World Of… Laurie Anderson

As the avant-garde legend unveils her epic new multimedia performance ARK: United States V, Alastair Shuttleworth picks out ten key tracks from her otherworldly discography

The Strange World Of… Yoko Ono

Despite the predictably & performatively negative reaction the Japanese artist inspires in some critical quarters, it is clear she has been responsible for a cavalcade of bangers over the decades. With a new retrospective at the Tate Modern, Jeremy Allen explores her back catalogue
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Low Culture Podcast

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The Quietus founders & editors Luke & John discussing an essential album, book, telly series or film each month

Recent Low Culture Podcast

Low Culture Podcast: Metallica’s The Black Album

In this month’s podcast, John Doran and Luke Turner let their ears submit to the heftily roving riffs of Metallica’s 1991 colossus, a record that changed the trajectory of American mainstream rock

Low Culture Podcast: David Cronenberg’s Crash

In this month’s subscriber podcast, John Doran and Luke Turner rev up to discuss a 1996 erotic thriller based on the writings of JG Ballard 

Low Culture Podcast: Alice Coltrane’s Journey In Satchidananda

In this month’s pod, John Doran and Luke Turner discuss Alice Coltrane’s 1971 classic of personal, spiritual and musical transformation and transcendence

Low Culture Podcast: Doctor Who – The Daemons

In this month’s episode of the pod, John takes Luke to a Wiltshire village for his first introduction to the time-defying Doctor

The Low Culture Podcast: PJ Harvey’s White Chalk & Let England Shake

In this month's pod Luke Turner and John Doran celebrate two of the finest records of the c21st thus far
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Low Culture Essays

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An exclusive monthly long read on a cultural artefact by some of our favourite writers.

Recent Low Culture Essays

Low Culture Essay: Marie Le Conte on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

When Marie Le Conte moved from Nantes to London she rejected her French identity, along with a teenage infatuation with Phoenix' fourth album. Years later, she reflects on how the "youth and hope and enthusiasm bottled inside ten neat and clean little songs" actually allows her to have a conversation with her past self about life, love and becoming.

Low Culture Essay: Ian Wade on Queer As Folk

In this month's subscriber essay, Ian Wade writes on how pioneering British gay drama Queer As Folk, screened by Channel 4 in 1999, reflected a generation's experiences of coming out and discovering their identity

Low Culture Essay: James Cooray Smith on David Lynch Sitcom, On The Air

Although David Lynch's 1992 sitcom was a quickly forgotten flop, James Cooray Smith argues that it has enough of the director's mercurial strangeness to be considered alongside his finest work

Low Culture Essay: A Tale of Two Normans – Wrongtom On Beats International’s ‘Dub Be Good To Me’

In this month's Low Culture Essay, Wrongtom weaves the life of his jazz pianist grandad into his encounter with Norman Cook & co's 1990 hit single, and explores how it changed his own musical trajectory

Low Culture Essay: Jonn Elledge on The Good Life

In April's essay, Jonn Elledge explains why everything you thought you knew about the popular self-sufficiency sitcom, first broadcast 50 years ago this week, is wrong.
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Organic Intelligence Newsletter

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A monthly newsletter deep dive into the fantastic but neglected music of a time, scene or place.

Recent Organic Intelligence Newsletter

Organic Intelligence XLVII: Microtonal Jazz

In this month's antidote to the algorithm, Stewart Smith explains how microtonal jazz can help dissolve Western preconceptions of how music is constructed and understood

Organic Intelligence XLVI: The UK Industrial Diaspora

In this month’s antidote to the algorithm Mat Colegate rips it to shreds with the ‘orrible racket that emerged in the early-80s, from S.P.K to Ramleh, Whitehouse and 23 Skidoo (pictured)

Organic Intelligence XLV: Zamrock

In this month’s antidote to the algorithm, Francis Buseko takes us back to mid-70s Zambia and the radical sounds of artists like WITCH, pictured below, who blew the minds of his parents' generation

Organic Intelligence XLIV: World-Building-For-One AKA DIY Synth Music for Getting Off-Planet

In this month’s antidote to the algorithm, exclusive to tQ subscribers, Jennifer Lucy Allan guides us through a selection of transportive releases from DIY synth voyagers of the near past

Organic Intelligence XLIII: South African Mbaqanga Girl Groups from the 60s and 70s

In our latest antidote to the algorithm, Stephanie Phillips guides us through the South African girl groups who resisted apartheid oppression through the joy of their song
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