Patrick Clarke

Liverpool, London

Deputy Editor at The Quietus

Culture Journalist at Freelance

Articles

Hyperspecific: Electronic Music for June Reviewed by Jaša Bužinel

4 days ago | thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke

The first thing that came to mind – a psyop to win over the public. The second – perfect.
Soft Cell's Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing

1 week ago | thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke

In the liner notes to a new reissue of Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing, Marc Almond calls it “the first sign of a band becoming undone.” It was, he says, the point at which the balance first tipped between necessary hedonism and gradual self-destruction – though as he concedes “that’s me speaking with the benefit of hindsight.” At the time, working against the backdrop of a thriving New York club scene, fuelled by then-legal MDMA (introduced to them by their elusive guide to the night, Cindy...
Patrick Wolf's Favourite Albums

1 week ago | thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke

Crying The Neck, Patrick Wolf’s seventh album, is shaped by the folklore of the county of Kent and inspired by the lessons learned and home truths discovered during his 10-year absence from releasing music. As has widely been reported in the press around the release of this excellent record, it was a fraught period of bankruptcy, addiction, and over it all is the death of his mother from cancer.
Patrick Wolf's Favourite Albums

1 week ago | buff.ly | Patrick Clarke

This has been with me for so many private moments. It’s a suite of nocturnal harpsichord and piano music. I really haven’t heard anything like it, before or since. It’s another artist where I thought ‘one day me and Rachel Grimes are going to be best friends and work together’, but they stopped making music 15 years ago. There’s one particular song which has a spoken word part that’s basically a lady telling you ‘you will be safe, someone will have their hand running through your hair’.
Patrick Wolf's Favourite Albums

1 week ago | buff.ly | Patrick Clarke

Up until I was 15 I was writing a lot, but I didn’t really know what to write about – my lyrics were about the Japanese garden in Holland Park, or butterflies. I didn’t really have an identity at that age, if something had happened to me emotionally, I would just say it as I felt it. I hadn’t really grasped the concept of metaphor.
Everything Wide Open: An Interview with The Messthetics

1 week ago | thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke

From his home in Washington, DC, where guitars hang off every visible wall, Anthony Pirog is trying to explain The Messthetics’ polymorphous spree of sound.
Columnfortably Numb: Psych Rock for June by JR Moores

1 week ago | thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke

As someone who’s written books about both the history of heavy music and the creative genius behind ‘We All Stand Together’, I was more than hoppy to discover the ideal Venn-diagram band for me: FROGLORD. They’re an amphibian-based conceptual project who perhaps ought to play hip hop but actually specialise in sludgy stoner doom. Realising the band were playing nearby, I stepped into my open-toad sandals and leapt straight to the venue.
INTERVIEW: Florian Hecker on FAVN at Terraforma Exo

2 weeks ago | thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke

Florian Hecker is an artist who explores the sensual and psychological side of the listening process. FAVN is a distillation of that exploration, with almost a decade of shapeshifting history, from its early imaginings in 2016 at Alte Oper, Frankfurt, to the exhibition Halluzination, Perspektive, Synthese in 2017 at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, and a forthcoming reimagining for Terraforma in Milan on 28 June.
INTERVIEW: Florian Hecker on FAVN at Terraforma Exo

2 weeks ago | buff.ly | Patrick Clarke

Florian Hecker is an artist who explores the sensual and psychological side of the listening process. FAVN is a distillation of that exploration, with almost a decade of shapeshifting history, from its early imaginings in 2016 at Alte Oper, Frankfurt, to the exhibition Halluzination, Perspektive, Synthese in 2017 at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, and a forthcoming reimagining for Terraforma in Milan on 28 June.
Straight Hedge! Noel Gardner Reviews Punk & HC For June

2 weeks ago | thequietus.com | Patrick Clarke

In June 2025, and in the moment of listening, Sublux are the greatest hardcore punk band in the world and Disorder In The Machinery by Sublux is the greatest hardcore punk release in the world. Perhaps you think this an implausible statement, about a group who have not released anything prior to this seven-song tape and played but a handful of London support gigs, or think I am engaging in hyperbole for cynical reasons.