Luke Turner

Laïko (meaning ‘of the people’) is the popular music that has nursed Greek heartbreak since the middle of the 20th century. It grew out of rebetiko, the raw, syncopated music of Greeks displaced by the catastrophic population exchange with Turkey in the 1920s. The bouzouki, that pear-shaped long-necked lute, carried the music alongside its smaller cousin the […]

Back in the stressful early days of The Quietus John and Luke would often cheer themselves up by heading to the shops to purchase the constituent parts of a ploughman’s lunch – the traditional trio of bread, cheese and onions. But then, as the site expanded, so did their culinary horizons, and they branched out […]

Long-time readers of The Quietus will remember we were early supporters of London-based psychedelic shoey group Toy, putting them on at various gigs in our younger years. Now based in Berlin, Toy’s Tom Dougall is back with new group Luft, which also features Ani Mijatović, Sam Davies, Rob Henderson and Aaron Singh. The band first […]

A new song by The Fall group has appeared online today, part of a planned album of previously unreleased material under the name Post Script. Former Fall manager / accomplice Ed Blaney announced the news via Facebook last week, saying “Have spent most the afternoon today listening to the final mixes of the official final […]

The poet Allen Ginsberg is most famous for his long poem ‘Howl’, published in 1956. It’s a foundational text that – together with Jack Kerouac’s On The Road (1957) and William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1959) – kickstarted the artistic and cultural phenomenon that became known as the Beat Generation. But world-shaking as it was, the poem is perhaps […]

Everyone reading this will have their own Rough Trade history, picking out artists from their now 50 year history to create a personal radio station that’s entirely your own. Although, thanks to The Smiths, the label became synonymous with indie as genre, the true picture is far more diverse, taking in industrial, dub, folk, experimental […]

There is a ticking clock that could spell doom for an entire era of Nigerian cultural history, a countdown that with every passing second sees the brutal, unforgiving humidity of the West African coastline actively eating more and more of a vital, unofficial archive. VHS magnetic tape is incredibly fragile and has a limited lifespan, […]

SUBSCRIBE NOW HERE WITH 35% OFF! There’s something appallingly physical about the language that’s used to describe the radical changes that are affecting every aspect of our culture. AI slop. Enshittification. It’s all rather revolting. From our perspective, the acts of making music and writing about it are in fine fettle, but the systems that […]

It’s December 5, 1830, and 26-year-old French composer Hector Berlioz is debuting his Symphonie Fantastique at the Paris Conservatoire. The work is set to a loose narrative that follows its creator’s descent into opium addiction, sacrilegious nightmares and infernal Sabbaths, all inspired by Berlioz’ doomed and unrequited passion for Anglo-Irish actress Harriet Smithson. He will, however, later […]

As technology has developed in the last twenty years, it has brought with it a sense of enablement. Over time, access to nearly everything has become simpler, and as such, the message from Silicon Valley and its offshoots was that you can do it all.  I have worked in the music industry since the late […]