'I hadn’t realised how much of a medieval cult the Baebes are. The singers, lighting, cloaks and fire ritual procession [of their festive performance] make it a magical alternative' The #MedievalBaebes – ‘Coventry Carol‘ - Laura Cannell’s Guide to Early-ish #ChristmasMusic buff.ly/zVxAILf

'His performance was a study in frustration and bravery (the stuff of everyday disabled life). Gone was the clown prince of darkness - in place of such slapstick was an intensity never seen before.' Quietus Best of 2025: #BlackSabbath Live at Villa Park buff.ly/D3fBkQG

'If you’re a fan of Bill Orcutt, check Cyrus Pireh’s Thank You, Guitar. It’s all gnarls and whorls and earworms, his tone is killer... all fidelities jimmying up together, perfectly capped with a locked groove on the LP' Cyrus Pireh -Thank You, Guitar - Rum Music: The Best of 2025 buff.ly/RekOkQL

'Dawn Bothwell, Rhodri Davies, Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington make music that is beyond compare. Who else could deliver an 8-and-a-half minute lo-fi synth pop pastoral political anthemic rap track?' Hen Ogledd - Scales Will Fall is a Quietus Track of the Month for Nov/Dec buff.ly/anIfoc6

'It is bleak, and beautiful, and feels like it could be sung in the stony reverb of a medieval village church, or a field or woods.' Maddy Prior and The Carnival Band – ’The Truth Sent From Above/ Shepherds Arise’ - Laura Cannell’s Guide to Early-ish #ChristmasMusic buff.ly/zVxAILf

'Dry Cleaning’s forthcoming third LP Secret Love is a considerable step forwards, as demonstrated by the strength of all three singles released so far this year.' Dry Cleaning - Let Me Grow And You’ll See The Fruit is a Quietus Track of the Month for Nov/Dec 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

'Formed behind the wall in Hungary in 1980. It’s full of promise and invention, ambition that exists in samples of orchestras, worked around by elevating fairly minimal means into lucid bedroom pop songs' Trabant - Trabant II - Rum Music: The Best of 2025 buff.ly/RekOkQL

'The MT-40 offered the musician something new, in the form of a miniature sub-keyboard either for playing bass notes, or allowing the main keyboard to be played along with pre-programmed basslines...' Quietus Best of 2025: Attempting to Uncover the Real Sleng Teng Story buff.ly/6ar7fnk

'An exquisite psychic noise cancellation scenario where nerve-jangling sound design, delirium tremens percussion skitter and sick comedown bass combine to produce one of the most life-affirming bangers of recent years' aya - off to the ESSO is No2 in The Quietus Tracks of the Year buff.ly/9dtflPo

'Horses power comes from a deep eroticism, one that doesn’t mimic the machismo of the male Beat poets and rock heroes Smith counted as peers and luminaries, but reshapes it into something more fluid, vulnerable, and untameable' Quietus Best of 2025: #PattiSmith’s Horses at 50 buff.ly/1rn6gsb

'Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1 is a manic delight from start to finish. For now content yourselves with their takes on Daniel Johnston and The Runaways.' Xiu Xiu - Some Things Last A Long Time / Cherry Bomb is a Quietus Track of the Month for Nov/Dec 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

Looking for a last minute Xmas gift for the music/culture fan in your life? We've got you covered. Gift a Quietus membership. Details here: buff.ly/vgTgTcD

'Future Days is the least well-known of the trilogy and the most cinematic. It is also their botanical album. This is not exotica, so much as the vernacular music of an undiscovered planet, less Les Baxter and more Ursula K Le Guin' Can’s Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi & Future Days buff.ly/ufUSjM0

'Centred on sweeping orchestral arrangements and Rosalía’s jaw-dropping, sometimes operatic vocal chops, these songs touch on the intense give-and-take of romantic relationships, heartbreak and present-day femininity' Rosalía - LUX is a Quietus Album of the Month for Nov/Dec 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

'It feels like this group has been assembled by Lias as a reaction to the folly that followed the band during its Saoudi-Saoudi-Adamczewski era, and whilst that has its perks, it also has its pitfalls' Fat White Family - Konk If You're Lonely: Fat White Family Live At Konk Studios buff.ly/dYQxf9m

'Suzuki-era Can was interested in shaking off the tyranny of meaning and moving towards depicting sonic worlds. This would inspire later bands like Talk Talk and Radiohead to partially free themselves of the strictures of songwriting' Can’s Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi & Future Days buff.ly/ufUSjM0

'With NOS’ hard swung Prefuse 73 vocal cutups, juddering serotonin burst drum trills, pelvis-shattering bass and Trocadero computer game noise, Blawan puts the fun back in remorseless machine funk.' Blawan - ‘NOS’ is No 7 in The Quietus Tracks of the Year for 2025 buff.ly/9dtflPo

It's a seasonal special for the final antidote to the algorithm of 2025, as Laura Cannell guides us through melancholic Medieval, rousing Baroque and stolen carols Organic Intelligence LI: Laura Cannell’s Guide to Early-ish #ChristmasMusic buff.ly/zVxAILf

Our final incarnation of The Portal archive dive carries a selection of our favourite articles from the last 12 months. Over the course of the winter break we’ll be featuring more of these on our Bluesky and Instagram socials channels #ThePortal: Some tQ Highlights of 2025 buff.ly/6KZh8vB

'Saienko’s traditional Ukrainian singing delivers Hildegard von Bingen’s prayers in full voice. It contains loss, fear, but it plants its feet, has something to say of humanity in 2025.' Heinali & Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko - Гільдеґарда (Hildegard) - Rum Music: The Best of 2025 buff.ly/RekOkQL

'There's an insane array of producer talent here (Rob Playford, Dillinja, Marc ‘4Hero’ Mac, Photek). A quarter of a century later, Goldie’s debut album has clearly and comfortably grown into its name.' #Goldie - Timeless is No 16 in tQ’s Reissues Etc. of the Year 2025 buff.ly/J3GK4Dr

'Bean’s album is made entirely on the bass and 303, yet despite the restrictions that imposes, has made a record that flickers and murmurs, like military flares on Salisbury Plain haloing ancient stones' Dan Bean - Bassduets is a Quietus Album of the Month for Nov/December 2025 buff.ly/3XrK3Zf

‘House opens with John Cale’s two note violin and voiceover suggesting a soul stuck between worlds, before the track is swallowed by infernal goth noise lunges and a distorted Charli sing/screaming' Charli xcx - ‘House featuring John Cale’ is No 3 in The Quietus Tracks of the Year buff.ly/9dtflPo

“We need to recognise that language used in conversations about clubbing and music can become a barrier to entry. Instead of saying everything is dying, we should celebrate the people who are keeping the lights on” Why Reports of the Death of UK Nightlife are Greatly Exaggerated buff.ly/eaEnVha

'Undoubtedly Brown as his most pop – specifically hyperpop. After the insular mood of Quaranta, with its themes of addiction and depression, it’s refreshing to hear him having unabashed neon-lit fun.' #DannyBrown - Stardust is a Quietus Album of the Month for Nov/December 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

'Derek Bailey got to the point where he didn’t want to know anything about the people he was going to perform with. He didn’t want to bring any preconceptions. He just wanted to exist in the moment, listening to what they are doing.' Stewart Lee & EarthBall get Free buff.ly/aW3HP17

'The Alchemist makes for an inconspicuous partner, creating eerie soundscapes upon which Woods and ELUCID make things a whole lot eerier. Make no mistake, there are some hair-raising cuts here' Armand Hammer, The Alchemist - Mercy is a Quietus Album of the Month for Nov/Dec 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

'A potent garbage truck of controlled chaos. Two drummers back caustic no-wave guitar abuse and fingernails-on-the-blackboard tape manipulation whilst the vocals sneer at the listener with a confident indifference' Flesh Narc - Yokers: The Best Psych Rock of 2025 buff.ly/rrsc0ri

'As if you can imagine the power of his music as Surgeon detonated, and its soot and steel used to build the structures and feed the plants of a future garden, sunlight through leaves onto rust' Anthony Child - of the Beginning is a Quietus Album of the Month for Nov/December 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

'Relish in the dynamic wax and wane of its Slint-style hush, Khanate-style repressed aggression, and Godspeed-strength riffage; and that’s before we get to the sky-blistering guitar solo' Agriculture - ‘Bodhidharma’ is No 4 in The Quietus Tracks of the Year 2025 buff.ly/9dtflPo

'A warm and charming record of eddying folk made up of picked guitar, chanting and drones, with each track devoted to a different member of the Time Team.' Mark S. Williamson - folklore, facts and fables 6: three days to find out buff.ly/8YltTfa

'Rack Records, the boutique label set up by Steve Davis and Gaz Williams to showcase live improvised electronic music made by duelling synthesists, has just pressed up its first slab of vinyl' Steve Davis & Gaz Williams - Shipwreck is a Quietus Album of the Month for December 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

'Halt is controlled, deliberate, uncompromising. With the full arc now visible, Foetus stands as a living diary of obsessions musical, philosophical, and personal.' Foetus - Halt is a Quietus Album of the Month for December 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

'Anna Von Hausswolff assembles a crack team to turn her foreboding darkwave compositions into maximalist gothic power ballads. ‘The Iconoclast’ is perhaps the high water mark' Anna Von Hausswolff - ‘The Iconoclast’ is No 9 in tQ's Tracks of the Year 2025 buff.ly/9dtflPo

"People don’t believe that improvisers really improvise. So I think you can get some of the spirit of that into comedy. If something happens in the room, try to go with it. I’ve got more from people like EarthBall than I have from Seinfeld.” #StewartLee & EarthBall get Free buff.ly/aW3HP17

Proud as we are of the main chart, we don’t view it as cast-iron; so often there are records that emerge as masterpieces just hours after we’ve submitted our ballots... Music of the Month(s): The Best Albums and Tracks of November and December 2025 buff.ly/anIfoc6

EarthBall's Outside Over There is one of this year's best albums. Because it opens with a sample of Stewart Lee talking about pear cider, it felt only right to introduce both parties for a feature... Conversational Improvisational: #StewartLee & EarthBall get Free buff.ly/aW3HP17

#Shackleton has a new album on the way. His first solo release for AD 93, Euphoria Bound, follows last year’s collaborative record with Holy Tongue, The Tumbling Psychic Joy Of Now, for the same label You can listen to lead track ‘Crushing Realities’ here: buff.ly/8eKk4K0

'Blue serves as both anchor and inspiration. It reminds us that the modernity of Afrobeats is not rupture but continuity, that today’s hybrids have long genealogies.' K. Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas - The Blue Album is No 12 in tQ’s Reissues Etc. of the Year 2025 buff.ly/J3GK4Dr

As festive season darts mania once again takes over the UK with the annual PDC World Darts Championship, Travis Elborough travels back to 1979 and John Samson's documentary about the rise of Eric Bristow Low Culture Essay: Travis Elborough on #EricBristow Darts Documentary, Arrows buff.ly/atfb6pn

Guitar strings are punished and reverb is smeared on #MYDISCO guitarist Benjamin Andrews' tribute to Robert W. Chambers's gilded age gothic Blarke Bayer - The King In Yellow buff.ly/jbT0j7g

'This band are a vital part of the Beirut hardcore punk scene: no-one who calls this a dead subculture should be taken seriously and this is why.' Ta2reeban - صاحب الموتور بيستند عليكن is No 10 in tQ's Best Punk and HC of 2025 buff.ly/jjOUNgT

From venue closures to VAT, conversations around the UK’s beleaguered nightlife sector have struck a singularly gloomy tone for more than a decade. But has that pessimism become part of the problem? Why Reports of the Death of UK Nightlife are Greatly Exaggerated buff.ly/eaEnVha

'Much has been made of the growing resurgence of shoegaze within the contemporary indie palette, but few are making quite such interesting use of it as No Joy does on her latest record Bugland' No Joy - ‘Garbage Dream House’ is No 16 in The Quietus Tracks of the Year 2025 buff.ly/9dtflPo

'Milkweed make recognisably folk music but dragged through all sorts of post-production mangles so the vocalist and her bandmate’s acoustic accompaniment are forced to reckon with wow, flutter, flotsam and jetsam' Milkweed - Remscéla is No 16 in tQ's AOTY 2025 Chart buff.ly/ybd91AH

'A remarkable, real-time display of what happens when an instrument with histories and expectations embedded into it is approached with convention-defying technique.' Zhang Meng - Noising Sheng - Spool’s Out: The Best Cassettes of 2025 buff.ly/UjKW0KW

'Recorded for £600, every farthing of which was impressively stretched. It has a certain rough, blunt, rehearsal-studio feel, but this is just one reason why it now sounds so good.' The Soft Boys – Underwater Moonlight is No 80 in in tQ’s Reissues Etc. of the Year 2025 buff.ly/ZXeAOoL

'Primitive Man let just enough light into their sound on this fourth full-length to revitalise it whilst staying true to their crushing roots, incorporating a host of psychedelic harsh noise textures...' Primitive Man - Observance is No 2 in tQ's Best #HeavyMetal of 2025 buff.ly/oXmbFmr

'There is absolute perfection in the tooth and drone of the strings on Melopea, moving in tandem with Cuni’s vocals - a hybrid of deep traditional vocal technique and the precision of microtones and partials' Amelia Cuni - Melopea - Rum Music: The Best of 2025 buff.ly/RekOkQL

'Choppy guitars, disembodied harmonising duets, and thwacking drum rhythms that oscillate in and out of time; the perfect introduction to the handmade world of caroline’s second album.' caroline - ‘Total euphoria’ is No 10 in The Quietus Tracks of the Year 2025 buff.ly/9dtflPo