There's a band in Mexico called Rëslip making heavy Zeuhl with the intensity, but not the virtuosity, of Koenjihyakkei. Thrilling stuff noizumx.bandcamp.com/album/warth-k

Let’s do this. (I have - to Tidal a while ago)

Well this looks fascinating www.faber.co.uk/product/9780...

I know a lot of us have feelings about Bandcamp’s changes in ownership over the last few years. But it’s still true that buying music directly from independent labels and artists on Bandcamp remains one of the best ways to support the musicians you listen to.

This reads like WeTransfer will train LLMs on all the stuff we transfer, royalty-free forever. You know, the stuff you’ve slaved over that has some value.

BLUE FIFTY-FOUR: BEN RICHTER Deep listening accordion drone on tape or digital from here: bluetapes.bandcamp.com/album/blue-f...

BACK IN STOCK: 'La Planète Sauvage (Expanded Original Soundtrack)' by Alain Goraguer Iconic score to the classic sci-fi animation. 2LP blue vinyl housed in a gatefold sleeve. Includes a zine. www.normanrecords.com/records/1986...

Some cracking tapes/DLs forthcoming/out on @cruelnaturerecs.bsky.social, incl Summer by Beckton Alps2, "the second in a four part series of albums imagining Stone Age people reacting to the changing seasons" and this new one from Nicholas Langley cruelnaturerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/one-sq...

An album of experimental music made by Todmorden school children evokes The Necks, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and a series of exotic locale. The kids are all right, says @spinal-bap.bsky.social Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra - Places We Have Never Been buff.ly/9gUDPkC

Artists/bands with most albums in my collection (5 or more): A Tribe Called Quest Can Sea Power Daniel Avery Echo & The Bunnymen Gong Heldon Low MF DOOM Magma Mogwai Scott Walker Stereolab Sunn O))) Teeth Of The Sea Wrekmeister Harmonies

Well this is marvellous. Mid-1980s Nigerian abstract SF electronica

So the UK Met Office is inviting people to suggest up to 5 names for storms. And apparently lots of people have been suggesting "Storm Bigoil", along with BP, Equinor, Exxon & Shell... This is obviously appalling & definitely not to be emulated via this link: www.metoffice.gov.uk/forms/name-o...

Tomorrow, in London, for free thanks to @babayagashut.bsky.social. Always trust @organmagazine.bsky.social’s recommendations

Wikipedia nugget du jour.

No one seems to remember when the internet - and Twitter - wasn’t about ‘engagement’ but just… having fun. How we’ve internalised the Growth Delusion as individuals, treating ourselves as brands requiring outreach, is beyond me, and deeply cringe.

RIP Ariel Kalma, citizen of the world who was part of so many great French things, not least tenor sax in the gang Cyrille Verdaux got together to record this soundtrack youtu.be/Be_OKxwqh-g

I've been loving the new Caroline album and just realised that there's a touch of them in Wapassou's track Rien from 1973 youtu.be/ne6Z_33k5RM

We are currently just a few short of our target 2000 subscribers that'll help sustain The Quietus over the coming year. Will you edge us over the line by taking advantage of the huge discounts in our spring sale? thequietus.com/news/the-qui...

AI advocate: “AI is a crime scene”

WE WON! The Supreme Court has upheld the right to wild camp on Dartmoor. This is a huge win for access to nature. But we're just getting started. It was never just about Dartmoor. We’re fighting to extend the right to roam, swim, and sleep under the stars - across all of England.

I've been in touch with Bernard Szajner (Zed), who has confirmed that this beautiful poster was designed by Moebius (yes, THE Moebius) for Bernard's company Laser Graphics in 1977, around the time they were doing light shows at the Planetarium at the Palais De La Découverte in Paris.

*Of course* @skingraftrecords.bsky.social do stuff with Lyon's amazing Dur Et Doux label, like this split release pilicoit.bandcamp.com/album/split I've played little else for the last fortnight. Try 'Karseh' by Pili Coït: echoing the finest moments of These New Puritans & Tune-Yards, say my ears.

I did this for @thequietus.com subscribers back in 2022, because their subscription model keeps the site going. Please consider joining if you possibly can. Organic Intelligence XII – French Dystopian Sci-fi bangers steadyhq.com/en/thequietu...

Way back when, I wondered out loud what the original tune is for the rhythmic chant “Ce n’est qu’un début, continuons le combat”, popular in Paris in May '68. Hear it on the last ten seconds of this video. It's familiar as the rhythm of an old school (English) football chant youtu.be/hBQX3cpIs8Y 1/2

This sounds like the predecessor to all that electronic ‘hauntological’ music of the last decade. It’s a film soundtrack from 1977 by Mike Ratledge of Soft Machine, unreleased at the time. It’s all good, but track 10 especially mikeratledge.bandcamp.com/album/riddle...

What a joy it always is when @craigfortnam.bsky.social’s North Sea Radio Orchestra surface with their hard-to-classify steely delicacy youtu.be/fOaTVszhgYE Forthcoming album just announced

There was a small Zeuhl scene a bit south of Paris from around 1979, culminating in Shub-Niggurath (#8 in my top ten), including Aspara, Altaïs and Eider Stellaire, whose first album (1981) is intense, up-temp, with evocative high-pitched vocals by Véronique Perrault youtu.be/5t6YQiFjYr0

Evohé's work only saw the light of day in 2018, thanks to the Vapeur Mauve label, and is still available from them for not much coin vapeurmauveproductions.bandcamp.com/album/evoh

More Zeuhl bubbling under the top ten albums: Evohé from Toulouse in the late 1970s. Their reputation is built around one track, ‘K’A’, which evolved over a long period, many gigs consisting of just the one track. There’s a great 43 minute version, here’s an 18 minute variation youtu.be/wFjkNbO5a4I

So much great stuff in the responses. My pitch would be for Eliane Radigue as ur-drone. The level of precision and apparent simplicity is amazing, all the more so that none of her work, from late 1960s to 1983, was released at the time. That makes her hard "to buy" tho - the CD box set is perfect

More top early Zeuhl: Xalph who, like Potemkine, were from Bordeaux. Their 1974-75 tapes weren’t released at the time and are now the first four tracks on this 2018 album, on the brilliant Monster Melodies label youtu.be/W6VDmWVlTxo Like a lot of great French 1970s stuff, it’s not on the spotifies

What have I counted as early Zeuhl, from the groups immediately influenced by Magma at their 1973-75 peak? I’m including Potemkine and Xalph, their style more avant and choral than Univeria Zekt, Zao and Speed Limit, for whom the ‘fusion’ descriptor seems sufficient. It’s a mug’s game though :-)

Also bubbling under my Zeuhl Top Ten is Potemkine, in the first wave of bands influenced by Magma at their 1973-75 peak. On their first album Foetus (1976), it’s the percussion and Michel Goubin’s high register vocals that stand out youtu.be/7dM2B8mREC8

Another album bubbling under my Zeuhl Top Ten is Stoyz Vi Dozeveloy by Honeyelk (1979). Two side-long suites, side 2 in particular a wide range of textures, tempos and near-silences youtu.be/aHHJT1STzdU From Toulon in the South of France.

There are a few Zeuhl albums bubbling under my top ten, including an honourable mention for the somewhat cubist, slightly No Wave-y Noa for their self-titled album (1980) youtu.be/hZe3i9WpU3k

Links: 25 radio shows bit.ly/FRSradio Manifesto in tQ tquiet.us/CSFR On magma for Shindig! bit.ly/MagmaShindig Richard Pinhas Bakers Dozen tquiet.us/RP13 Zeuhl top ten: bit.ly/ZeuhlTop10 Later, Concrete Science Fiction Riot, forthcoming on @strangeattractor.bsky.social

My Zeuhl top ten albums right here in a single thread, all with links. Nine are French, of which four are by Magma. Seven from the 1970s, two from the 1980s, one from 2005. Please share / RT to help people discover this fine genre.

I'm doing (woke) bean chilli tonight for friends - couldn't resist after reading this yesterday

The SF sleeve was the work of the group's Basque vocalist Klaus Blasquiz, who also made and taught comic art. His drawing had also graced the cover of Magma's Üdü Ẁüdü

This weeks' Radiodiffusion weekly post is a great psych track from 1972 South Korea. Looping repetition then upbeat. I recommend getting on Radiodiffusion Internasionaal's mailing list radiodiffusion.blog/2025/02/09/%...

Quatre Visions was initially a short-run cassette put out by American fanzine and label Eurock, their second release but recorded before first album Ardeur.

Köhntarkösz was Magma’s most recent album when Alejandro Jodorowsky was planning his big budget adaptation of Dune in the mid 1970s. You can hear why he wanted Magma to soundtrack the House of Harkonnen (while Pink Floyd would soundtrack Atreides).

Something diverting for a wet and miserable Friday afternoon...? How about the time that Hawkwind played a gig inside Wandsworth Prison... "The prisoners yell for more, but time has run dry..."

Also worth noting that this is the only non-French album in my Ten, and the only one from this century.

One of the things you notice with Magma is how the sound of their invented language Kobaïan changes: on the relatively funky Üdü Wüdü, it sounds looser than, say, on the more martial Mekanïk Destruktïẁ Kommandöh.

I need regular news like this, feeding my sense of wonder, at times like these. (Also, it reminds me tangentially of the linguistics module I did at university on Ferdinand de Saussure)

For a decade from 1987, Zeuhl was dominated by Lovecraft-botherers, and the sound became appropriately menacing. There's more Lovecraft influence to come in the Zeuhl top ten

Attahk is less coherent than the group's great works, but it succeeds on its own terms. Blasquiz, though, saw Attahk as a bits-and-pieces album, "not really Magma any more", but he stuck with the project for another year, to complete a decade with the group.

This album is (Frank Herbert's) Dune-obsessed, at the point it was going in France from being a low-selling countercultural novel to a mass-market paperback

Starting at #10 then: 10. Eros by Dün by Eros (1981) youtu.be/KHgOdOI6e2o, half a generation younger than the soixante-huitards, they had a subtler sound than Magma, whom they loved, but just as narrative.