Cal Cashin

UK-based music critic and historian, exploring weird and beautiful music.

"The Drift"

My monthly column for Loud and Quiet, exploring all types of weird, experimental and avant-garde music.

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The Drift #16: Hesse Kassel, Tara Clerkin Trio, and more

Loud And Quiet took a short summer break there, but as of today we’re back, meaning that paid subscriptions are open once again. Sign up/upgrade below to support L&Q and receive all future articles and podcastsAfter a lengthy absence, owing to Summermaxxing (a term which, here, means eating nothing but blueberries, having Covid, and harbouring a Godspeed You! Black Emperor obsession that has made writing about other music impossible), I return sunburnt to my desk at The Drift Towers.Since my las...
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The Drift #15: For Breakfast, Or Sobre Blau, and more

This month’s Drift – the fifteenth edition, if you can believe that, has a fantastic array of experimental springtime sounds, for you to will the Solstice in with. Old faces and new are here to see in Gemini season, and once more we are faced with an overwhelming and unnavigable amount of vital new music.Oftentimes, the new releases slow down as summer approaches, but not this month – it’s a bumper Drift today. I have so many new releases to share with you all, all weird and Drift-worthy in thei...
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The Drift #14: Dionysios Tabakis, Kaátaìra, and more

The top of the evening to you, comrades of The Drift. We’re into our fourth edition of the year and starting to gather a bit of steam; weird, experimental music is everywhere for those with the ears to hear, and a few Album of the Year candidates are beginning to make themselves known.I want to start this month’s column with a very happy birthday to this column’s namesake, because, as I write this on a packed CrossCountry train, Scott Walker’s 21st century magnum opus – this very column’s brothe...
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The Drift #13: Akkajee, Antropoceno, and more

G’day fellow Drifters. Look alive.This is the 13th ever issue of The Drift, but we’re anything but unlucky here. Ushering in Springtime 2026 has been a litany of instant-classic records in our weird little Driftosphere, and suddenly all systems are go. Narrowing it down, rather than sourcing enough, has been tough, and a whole manner of recurring characters from this column have been up to their old tricks.Before we begin on our journey into last month’s best weird and experimental music, though...
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The Drift #12: MPTL Microplastics, Shane Parish, and more

2026 is finally getting up on its feet. War, instability, power, corruption, lies'; who’d have thunk it? There are weeks where decades happen, and February had four of ‘em.Personally, though, my month has been business as usual. I have been diving deeper into the films of Francis Truffaut, and the music of Ukraine’s Novaya scena – a brilliant scene from the nineties, where all the jazz heads went nuts and started making pop music that sounded completely wrong.This year’s new releases, too, have...
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The Drift #11: DJ Ramon Sucesso, Martinez/Roach, and more

A belated, exhausted and dazed happy new year, fellow Drifters. Finally, we can start to pull ourselves out of the post-list season haze and start to dig into 2026’s first new musical offerings. I, myself, have had a very slow start to the year, and these are the first words I’ve written in a serious capacity since 1 January, but I have been always on the lookout for the best, strangest and most creative new music in the world.To anyone reading this column for the first time, including new L&Q s...
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The Drift #10: leather.head, Noura Mint Seymali, and more

Hello fellow Drifters. The Moon has passed around the Earth for the, if you can believe it, TENTH time since the very first edition of this column.As you can imagine, this is a very busy time of the year to be a weird music writer on the Internet. End of year lists have, of course, returned with a vengeance, and lots of publications have turned their attention away from brand new music. I am absolutely not free of sin: I have put my own end of year list up on my Substack, and contributed some wr...
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The Drift #9: Anna von Hausswolff, Širom, and more

It’s a weird time of year, isn’t it? The weather has become harsh and unsympathetic, and every item of news matches that. Phrases like “my long johnathons” and “at least Lidl have brought back the lebkuchen” have left my mouth in the last week, and it always seems to be dark, suddenly. The first few weeks of bad weather and shortening days always seem to knock me back a bit, but I think I’ve settled into it by and large.But the end of the year does have its perks. Gigs pick up. All the films com...
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The Drift #8: Titanic, Ciśnienie, and more

It’s our Last Jedi! The Fate of the Furious! The Muppets Most Wanted! Live and Let Die, my brothers and sisters. The eighth edition of The Drift is here, for a stupendously busy September.I think everyone is well aware that September is a real boom time in the year for music, but I don’t think it was until I started writing a monthly column that I realised the true extent of this. During the Summer months, I was combing the weirdest forums and Facebook groups, and watching Reels, and asking the...
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The Drift #7: Squanderers, DJ K, and more

Happy Wednesday, fellow Drifters. How has summer treated you? I can’t lie to you all, it’s been maybe the best summer of my entire life, and I have spent so much time outdoors, hiking, swimming (which I only learned how to do last year) and camping. I am also packing, right now, for a short city break to San Marino, and following that I will happily settle down into the golden din of Autumn.Musically, I’ve rediscovered my supreme love for ’70s jazz fusion. Billy Cobham, Chick Corea, and South Yo...
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The Drift #6: d. silvestre, Chuquimamani-Condori, and more

Good afternoon, fellow Drifters. Can you believe we’re already onto the sixth edition of this column? It’s been a wild ride, but I really feel like together we’ve already been to some very weird and worthwhile places. This month, we’re off to some pretty crazy outer limits too, in search of the most beautiful and interesting music released over the last month or so. We’ll explore Baile Funk for the first time, delve into some epic collage club music and hear what a group of 7-11 years have to sa...
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The Drift #5: Osmium, Skin Theory, and more

Summer is in full force, and, perhaps predictably, my listening habits have returned to old, familiar patterns. Everyone has their own particular flavour of ‘Summer Music’; my drug of choice is a cocktail of the vernal melancholia of Rocksteady, the scorching thwomp of P-Funk, and the ebb and flow of ‘90s Post-Rock. Others are, of course, available.But whilst I have spent the long summer days in the company of Alton Ellis, George Clinton and Talk Talk, the warm summer nights have been spent delv...
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The Drift #3: Shearling, Milkweed, and more

A note: view this post on the site to play all music in one windowIt’s a very strange time to be alive, isn’t it? A lot has happened on Planet Earth this month, but, perhaps obviously to those who regularly read my writing, the thing that has stayed with me is the recent passing of David Thomas, the American post-punk iconoclast. For me, Thomas’ work, both with Pere Ubu and his other solo ventures, has always been a sense of divine inspiration, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that w...
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The Drift #2: Huremic, Hekla, and more

And so we have, quite possibly, arrived out the other end of the longest of winters. For weeks, nay months, it felt like the sun would never shine again. But, dear reader, the gloom is lifting, the dafs are growing, we are so back.Having survived the Ides of March for another year, it is with great pleasure that I can share with you the second edition of The Drift, Loud and Quiet’s number one spot for everything weird, wonderful and avant-garde.If you know where to look (here, here is where you...
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The Drift #1: Weed420, Klein, and more

In the seven years I have been writing for Loud And Quiet I have taken great joy in platforming the strangest, most far-out and far-flung music the planet has to offer. I have covered soulful Gqom from South Africa, pummelling dance music from Uganda, and rip-roaring punk from Japan, whilst also profiling some of the capital’s boldest iconoclasts, like Black Midi, Wu-Lu and Lunch Money Life in all their glory.As the publication enters a new chapter, I have pledged to continue this drive to champ...