!!!

Mentions of Pony Express in Guildford *and* Underage Festival within the same breath in Jamie Campbell Bower's Baker's Dozen have spun me the fuck out thequietus.com/interviews/b...

I cannot handle another Wuthering Heights hot take. There are too many Wuthering Heights hot takes

Great article about the Black British Folk Collective, founded in our very own basement! @thequietus.com @angelcakepie2.bsky.social thequietus.com/quietus-revi...

'Throughout the project was an idea of 'retracing the journey of the banjo from West Africa to the plantation in the Caribbean, to the American South.' "It feels really significant to re-establish the connection to that instrument and where it comes from." Folk Music for Winter buff.ly/faSJA4o

New folk column has arrived!!! I spoke to the good people of the Black British Folk Collective, and reviewed some amazing new records including an absolutely nuts 20 min Occitan pipe drone freakout, joyous psychedelic reworks of Polish folk dance, a harsh noise/bodhran mashup AND MORE

New folk column has arrived!!! I spoke to the good people of the Black British Folk Collective, and reviewed some amazing new records including an absolutely nuts 20 min Occitan pipe drone freakout, joyous psychedelic reworks of Polish folk dance, a harsh noise/bodhran mashup AND MORE

Lovely morning in the Greenwich mud, found my new favourite pipe with a mysterious figure carved into the side, another with a lovely thistle

New Silvia Tarozzi is absolutely sublime

😤

Reliably on brand

I'm (obviously) all for people paying so that quality music journalism can continue, but surely P4K's 'readers-pay-to-review-albums' thing just devalues its own writers? I want the music journalism I read to be an authoritative voice to cut through noise, not yet another social media debate vessel

very into scandi prog folk atm www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCq8...

I can't handle any more albums of pleasantly distorted saxophone loops. Thank you but I am full.

From the way I'm feeling this morning, I'm starting to wonder whether the independently brewed stouts consumed last night shouldn't have tasted quite so much like beef McCoys

'Whether an angular groove so watertight that it can serve as a song’s foundation, or a little lick of slide guitar that ups the sweetness just the right amount, Dry Cleaning have never felt so closely intertwined, nor as broad in their capabilities' Dry Cleaning - Secret Love buff.ly/Glktbc9

Reviewed the first great album of 2026 which is the new Dry Cleaning For @thequietus.com

Horrible, horrible news. RIP Matt.

Today is 10 years to the day since I started at @thequietus.com as an intern (!) here’s me around then, greasy and hungover and looking annoyed about something in the dodgy stairwell leading up to the freezing old office

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?

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Please help tQ - and by extension me - survive!