While we now have just about enough money to cover our day to day operation costs, without a new website that works properly we will cease to publish.

However the Quietus has faced two existential threats over the last half a decade and only one of them has been defeated. It is an amazing feeling to know that people care about the same kind of music and culture that we do, enough to donate their money each month, and at a time where disposable income is dwindling more than ever, to support the kind of coverage that we don't think is provided anywhere else. The fact that hundreds of readers like you chose to back us did not only completely saved our bacon during the coronavirus pandemic, but it was also incredibly validating. The only reason we're still here is because of the launch of our subscriber platform with Steady almost two years ago. Where in the past it's no exaggeration to say that we rarely looked further than a week ahead, and though the work to save the site is by no means over, there are even whispers of long-term forward planning. In terms of the writing we’ve published since then, tQ has always remained consistently great despite whatever technical disasters we may be facing, but in terms of the day to day business of running the site I have never experienced such a sense of optimism. The site might still crash from time to time, but things for the website seem to me at least to be going better than at any point since I came here for a work experience placement in 2016. Her question instigated a Pavlovian response, flashbacks to all the times in my six-and-a-half years and counting here that the existence of the site felt like it was genuinely on the precipice, our skeleton editorial crew – all of us working at least two other jobs in order to supplement the site's meagre incomings – spending as much time bailing out water to keep the ship afloat and batting away sharks as actually sailing it.īut then, I thought again. My immediate thoughts are about how, the previous day, the entire website had crashed for 24 hours because of a rogue piece of HTML code – the back end of our website is still so outdated that the slightest issue can cause the whole thing to collapse.

Amid the small-talk, one of them asks me how things are going at the Quietus these days. The transport has been organised by a number of journalists from several publications due to nationwide rail strikes.

As I write this introduction to our annual list of our favourite albums of the year at the halfway mark, I'm on a minibus bound for Glastonbury.

Far from Casual by Caroline King