Down at the Mill: Islington Mill's autumn season

As much thought and effort can go into programming a venue as curating a festival line-up, and Islington Mill's autumn music programme is an exercise in quality over quantity. Regulars will tell you that the Mill's strength lies increasingly in hosting and promoting uncompromising artists in one of the city's most unpretentious, welcoming spaces – making experimental clubnights like the essentially terrifying Gesamtkunstwerk a simultaneously fearsome and inclusive experience – but if you haven't paid a visit before, October and November offer several opportunities to discover why the venue occupies such a firm place in the hearts of its frequenters.

The next two months kick off with neurotic Baltimore chuggers and Dan Deacon buddies Ed Schrader's Music Beat on 1 Oct, a treat for Wham City aficionados and anyone who's picked up The Skinny on the day of publication i.e. today (quick! Run!), but perhaps less of one for anyone who can't stomach the sound of the name Schrader right now, which is most of us.

On a less whacky tack, Manchester's leading contemporary music ensemble Psappha team up with local producer and DJ Sam O'Neill, aka TCTS, on 6 Oct (9pm, £6). The notion of a 'classical clubnight' has been explored with varying success over the past couple of years, with Gabriel Prokofiev's Nonclassical among its most notable proponents; given O'Neill's developing track record as a selector (check out his 20-minute mix for Eton Messy over on his SoundCloud), hopefully this partnership'll do something equally innovative – and moodier – with the concept. Things get properly dark, though, when cult German doom-jazz quartet Bohren & der Club of Gore arrive on 22 Nov (7.30pm, £15); props to promoters Fat Out Til You Pass Out for presenting 'em in their only UK date, and generally continuing to plough their own very particular furrow through the nocturnal and half-twisted (they also bring Enablers to Kraak on 6 Nov, and Jarboe to Sacred Trinity Church on 21 Nov).

The next night offers introspection of a different hue in Anticon's Will Wiesenfeld, aka Baths, who in an interview with The Skinny earlier this year described the themes of his recent, glistening Obsidian LP as “brutal” and influenced by everything from research into the Black Death, Dante's Inferno and Silent Hill 2 – but wrapped it up in electronic pop and thick, lush, slushing arrangements (23 Nov, 8pm, £8).

The sturdy profile of the Mill as an artists' studio and exhibition space perhaps means its other occupants are occasionally overlooked – but on 27 Oct, it brings together the labels that have their base there for a free live show and market from 2pm, so you can browse the output of the likes of Gnod's cassette label Tesla Tapes, Gizeh Records (home to Ghostly International friends Fieldhead and the up-and-coming Shield Patterns), Baptists and Bootleggers and Tombed Visions.

And then it's Christmas. God knows what they've got up their sleeve for those of you who haven't been behaving.