The Quietus counters current trends in music journalism with a regenerated website

13 May 2024 - Press release

Music and culture institution The Quietus is relaunching today (Monday 13 May) with a brand new website and a striking new design, bucking recent trends in music journalism for downsizing and closure. By creating the best possible platform it can for its readers, its subscriber community and the many artists covered in its editorial, The Quietus is now finally confident in thinking about a long-term future for the site. This will enable The Quietus to grow while focusing on supporting illuminating and authoritative writing about genre-melting artists, often outside of the mainstream. The new site has been designed with one eye on encouraging a voyage of discovery through the site’s impressively large and varied archive of interviews, essays and reviews via a brand new feature, The Portal.

Co-Founder John Doran said “This is all about renewing The Quietus website while retaining the things our readers tell us that they like most – great writing and being introduced to new music that they don’t find elsewhere. After struggling through the last 16 years with a barely functional website that sometimes felt like it spent more time offline than online, it’s a joy to finally complete this process of revitalisation and get match fit for the future. Luke and I have always believed passionately in the power of good cultural criticism to cut through the noise of the digital marketplace, of social media, of half-assed algorithms, but now we finally have the tools at our disposal to really knuckle down to the job.”

With an archive of more than 30,000 articles of quality longform writing from some of the biggest names in music journalism alongside emerging talent, the site appeals not only to long-time fans of cultural commentary but also to Gen Z looking to cut through the algorithms and curate their own taste from new sources. This is not just in the UK and Europe but also in the USA where the new site will be a platform to expand on its already-growing word-of-mouth readership.

The first month of editorial on the new site will feature cult writer John Higgs interviewing Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, a week of long reads devoted to the Pet Shop Boys, an essay by novelist Ben Myers on his teenage band, Kat Lister speaking to international superstar in the making Arooj Aftab, as well as The Quietus’ usual focus on new music, from Beth Gibbons’ solo album to banjo pieces by Jacken Elswyth of Shovel Dance Collective. Piper Brìghde Chaimbeul and Tony Njoku discuss their favourite music in the ever-popular Baker’s Dozen section. This will all sit alongside our regular round-up columns on metal, psych rock, club music and punk, and that’s before we get to the coverage of Azerbaijani guitar solos, Loaded founder James Brown on The Fall, and opinion pieces questioning the utopianism of the dancefloor and asking if the algorithm will kill the tired poptimism vs rockism deb ate.The Quietus’ loyal subscribers will be getting an exclusive essay by Cathi Unsworth on neo-prog heroes Cardiacs, and an entire brand new album by Mercury Prize nominee William Doyle, whose first record (as East India Youth) The Quietus released in 2012.

Keen to always make sure that subscriber funds go directly towards maintaining great writing and pioneering artists, the construction of the new site was achieved entirely through commercial, technical and financial help from committed fans of The Quietus stepping forward. Co-Founder Luke Turner said “We’ve tapped into some of our biggest fans for friendly strategic and funding support, and partnered with creative and technology studio 11:11, who have done an incredible job on the new site.” The team members at 11:11 have previously collaborated with Domino, Penguin Random House, Warp Records and The Independent. Turner added, “We’re confident that as well as opening up new commercial opportunities, the regenerated Quietus will enable us to keep on spreading the word about the music and culture that we love, but can otherwise feel overlooked, to the four corners of the globe”.