I felt dreadfully.

Shovel Dance on very fine form indeed at this year’s festive show, my favourite part of the Christmas gig onslaught 4 years in a row

Personally, in terms of physical/mental health, housing, loss of loved ones, skintness, creative knockbacks etc, 2025 was deeply grim It might be trite to say, but helping build the best AOTY chart and full of so much good music that I really believe in means that even still 2025 ends on a high

tQAOTY is here plz read it’s a killer list

Bonus bump for my latest folk music column for The Quietus - plz read if you enjoy radical and interesting and strange takes on traditional music and/or instrumentation thanks

I absolutely love the latest entry in our new North American music column

Just seen this band live at the Windmill and it’s blown my head clean off - they’re doing Bristol, Liverpool and Leeds next and if you live even slightly near those places you’d be insane not to go

#Folk fans! 🥁🥁🥁 More of that Radical Traditional from @paddyclarke.bsky.social — always essential nourishment. Really glad to see Greet on there – we performed in Lore last year with him (www.sunnybankmills.co.uk/lore/). Not to mention them Goblins, who we had a show with in Colchester Castle...

The new edition of my folk music column has just come out on @thequietus.com! 10 of my favourite new releases, from abstract banjo freakouts to Japanese court music via Herefordshire hauntings, the King of Zulu Guitar, Occitan psychedelia and much much more! (this time with the correct link)

Friends fear he's considering a folk podcast

One of my favourite regulars on @thequietus.com is deputy ed @paddyclarke.bsky.social's folk column, this month opening with fine reflections on a recent event devoted to Martin Carthy. Looking forward to digging into the ten contemporary selections that follow too: thequietus.com/quietus-revi...

The new edition of my folk music column has just come out on @thequietus.com! 10 of my favourite new releases, from abstract banjo freakouts to Japanese court music via Herefordshire hauntings, the King of Zulu Guitar, Occitan psychedelia and much much more! (this time with the correct link)

I don’t know why I bother trying to make notes when reviewing dark gigs when I’m left with this to work with the following morning

A wonderful, heartfelt tribute to Dave Ball by @paddyclarke.bsky.social for @thequietus.com. It acutely reminds us what a musical trailblazer Dave was, is, and always will be.

This is great from @paddyclarke.bsky.social: thequietus.com/news/remembe... My memories of Soft Cell from back in the day circle around just how transgressive and strange they were. In part cos they created their own world. And it was, errm, different to where I grew up in rural North Devon.

Lovely tribute by Patrick Clarke, author of the definitive Soft Cell book Bedsit land. thequietus.com/news/remembe...

"Ball wasn’t just a bloke from Blackpool – he, too, was a radical, as bold and as forward-thinking as any of his contemporaries." Thanks to @paddyclarke.bsky.social for this lovely tribute to Dave Ball of Soft Cell and The Grid thequietus.com/news/remembe...

I wrote a piece on the late, great Dave Ball for @thequietus.com

My favourite soft cell record is This Last Night in Sodom, and that’s because it was the first where Dave sacked off the label and did all the music himself, it’s incredible youtu.be/dpQaX4mB5qI?...

Just gutted about Dave Ball. When I was working on my Soft Cell book he was unbelievably generous, a warm and mischievous and outrageously funny interviewee. My book would have a fraction of the quality were it not for his help.

For The Guardian I reviewed Sigur Ros, a show which was very lovely but too smooth around the edges for me - that was until they got Anna Lapwood on the Albert Hall's 9,999 pipe organ for a fuck-off blast of enormous noise at the end that very much hit the spot www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

Currently prepping the next edition of my Radical Traditional column for The Quietus - keen for any and all tips on new music that focuses on both tradition and experimentation

Bookmarked this a while ago and only just got around to reading it. Surprisingly moved by morris dancing at the 2023 BRIT awards to Chaise Longue.

I've just been told I've got pleurisy - unenjoyable experience, enjoyably medieval sounding disease

Missed the news that the brilliant Širom are back - this is wonderful

This album is indeed very great

As braindead nationalist wankotrons deface one of our Wiltshire white horses I'm reminded again of Mr Clarke's essay on the subversive nature of our folk traditions which entirely pass by the above mentioned wankotrons.

This week marks an entire year since the publication of my book Bedsit Land, something I still can't quite believe happened. I still get an incredible thrill seeing it in the wild, and on my own bookshelf too. HB 2 my baby – buy one perhaps?

What is it ?

Please help tQ - and by extension me - survive!

Missed this in August - I always love a Paddy Clarke @thequietus.com folk column. I always find things I've never heard before. Recommended! thequietus.com/quietus-revi...

“Conservatives don’t actually like English culture. They don’t care about it.” absolutely nails it

Still thinking about Richard Dawson's cover of Michael Hurley's Wildgeeses at Supersonic this weekend

Yes, this is about morris dancing….but what a great essay! It includes the connections to early C20 music and to the suffragettes; explores the role of women; the gendered dynamics; & the complexities of navigating ‘Englishness’ whilst remaining progressive.

Excited to represent as 'The Quietus DJ' at this year's Supersonic where I will be soundtracking a Saturday afternoon at the marketplace

"a record that is a celebration of creativity itself, how delving into the past allows us to prod and probe at the nooks and crannies of the present" Honoured to be included in @paddyclarke.bsky.social's summer edition of Radical Traditional for @thequietus.com. thequietus.com/quietus-revi...

I'm supposed to do some DJ'ing in the marketplace at Supersonic Festival next weekend but after two weeks of writing about nothing but morris dancing and slowly losing my mind I might just whack on the entirety of Morris On instead

This is always the real deal.

Cluness gets it

Patrick Clarke's guide to the best in strange, left-field and underground traditional music returns, with reviews of 10 essential new releases that take in everything from Irish fairy forts to Japanese rivers, strange parallel worlds and stark protest songs Folk Music for Summer buff.ly/PQAlEHz

“It makes me think of how the Tories gave nothing to the EFDSS, and how if they really loved England as much as they say they do, it would be a national institution...Conservatives don’t actually like English culture. They don’t care about it.” *slams NAILED IT klaxon*

Here are 10 of my favourite new experimental trad folk releases, compiled and reviewed for your pleasure in my latest Radical Traditional column over at @thequietus.com !

Radical inclusion 🥹♥️

For @thequietus.com today, I wrote an essay about why we should stop scoffing about morris dancing, and instead view it as something radical, transgressive, and powerful enough to completely alter one's brain

For @thequietus.com today I spoke to @nadeemdingabisi.bsky.social about his utterly superb new album Offshore, whether the aesthetics of Englishness can be reclaimed for the left, antagonising the far right, the 2002 World Cup and a lot more thequietus.com/interviews/n...

On superb new album Offshore, Nadeem Din-Gabisi speaks through a football kit clad alias to explore issues of belonging and identity as a second-generation immigrant in the shadow of empire... England is Mine: An Interview with @nadeemdingabisi.bsky.social buff.ly/JmJWlAO

“The far right will use the flag as a means to alienate people and to make them feel scared. ‘No. This is a country I live in. It’s a country that my ancestors have paid a price to be in and to belong to.’” A great interview by @paddyclarke.bsky.social on 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 & identity thequietus.com/interviews/n...

For @thequietus.com today I spoke to @nadeemdingabisi.bsky.social about his utterly superb new album Offshore, whether the aesthetics of Englishness can be reclaimed for the left, antagonising the far right, the 2002 World Cup and a lot more thequietus.com/interviews/n...

A band's bio i'm using for research has been sent to me with all the petty squabbles about terminology between writer, label and musicians still in the margins - wonderful