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Back in 2024 perhaps the biggest senior artist returning news in The Quietus’ world was The Cure releasing Songs Of The Lost World, a comeback widely seen as one of their best records in absolutely years. For the first Portal of 2025, this got us thinking about the big names in tQ’s unofficial canon that we’d like to see blast back into our consciousness with new music this year. With Geoff Barrow retiring from touring with Beak>, a new Portishead album seems unlikely, but we can but dream. And with Nick Cave now adopting a new role as theological sage, would he really want to dive back into the horny despair of Grinderman’s mid-life male anxiety? We’d also love to see Vince Clarke and Martin Gore reunite for another record from slap & tickle synth supergroup VCMG, perhaps they could even give Andy Bell and Dave Gahan a bell to record some vocals? We’d also love to hear Grace Jones come back with a late period album that goes to further reaches – her own Bish Bosch, as it were. While Drew McDowall and thighpaulsandra have been busy in recent years, it’s probably Cyclobe out of the post-Coil diaspora who we’re most keen to hear more from. Will Ossian Brown wind his hurdy-gurdy for another album with Stephen Thrower? It’s a decade since Roots Manuva released his ‘return to form’ album in the shape of Bleeds and since then… next to nothing from one of the pre-grime stars of UK hip-hop. Fugazi never officially split up. They released an (arguably) career best LP in The Argument in 2001 and then simply moved too far away from one another to practice regularly. So here’s hoping the greatest post hardcore band of them all still have new material left in them. Time is pretty weird. We don’t know about you but we still think of Burial as a ‘new’ artist, but it’s sobering to realise that it’s now 18 years since his last LP proper, Untrue. Come on Mr Bevan! We deserve more than just 12″s! And finally, do we even have to say why we want another Kate Bush LP? She is one of the great English artists; a new album would be a salve for the collective soul. Head into The Portal to find archive Quietus writing on these nine artists we’d love to hear from in the near future.
Burial released his new EP, Kindred, though Hyperdub this week. In a piece that began as a simple review before spiraling out of control, Rory Gibb asks why he, out of all his contemporaries, has struck such a nerve with such a wide audience
Martin L Gore and Vince Clarke have reunited after three decades on new techno project VCMG. Luke Turner speaks to them both about rediscovering their collaborative creative energy for one of the best albums of 2012 so far
Compass Point Studios, and its house band the Compass Point All Stars, were going to be Chris Blackwell and Island Records’ defining statement to the world. Instead, they provided Grace Jones’s. And that, says David Bennun, looking back at the three extraordinary records she made there between 1980 and 1982, is more than enough
In a fascinating, in-depth interview, Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower of Cyclobe guide Russell Cuzner through their shimmering career, discussing the hurdy-gurdy, Derek Jarman, Nurse With Wound, live works and artistic collaborators. Thanks to Cyclobe for archive imagery
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