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Ela Minus: DÍA
New album: A wonderfully eclectic, inventive, darkly ecstatic, introspective yet musically expansive electronica and dance music follow-up to 2020’s debut, Acts of Rebellion, on the theme of light and self-discovery by the Colombian singer-songwriter, musician and producer
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Ethel Cain
New album: Dark, challenging, otherworldly, experimental, ethereally oddball but at times alluring electronica and ghostly vocalisations? It’s the Tallahassee artist Hayden Anhedönia, who after the successful 2022 LP Preacher’s Daughter, pushes the musical envelope into most unusual territory
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Alice Hebborn: Saisons
New album: Released last month, a vivid, stirring, experimental debut LP of piano and electronica by the Belgian composer in seven movements, exploring humanity’s relationship with the natural world
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The second part of our favourite albums of 2024
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 2. Part 1 can be found here. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but please dig into this rich seam of originality and quality, and even suggest more of your own
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This year’s selections include some returning veterans at the top of their game as well as some fabulous newcomers
Favourite albums of 2024: Welcome to The Song Bar’s favourite albums of 2024 Part 1. There’s no such thing as ‘best of’ and everything is subjective, but rich seams of originality and quality are certainly here to be enjoyed. Peruse away …
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Aphex Twin: Music From The Merch Desk (2016-2023)
Album review: A decade since his last album, Syro, electronica’s brilliant British outsider and pioneer Richard D James returns with a surprise fan-pleaser, a mass compilation release of 38 numbers played at festivals, and previously only on limited-edition vinyl sold at the merch desk of select events
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Izumi 'Mimi' Kobayashi: Choice Cuts 1978-1983
Album review: Out of many compilations released in 2024, this Time Capsule collection is a highlight, picking some of the fabulously fun, inventive, hybrid jazz-funk-Latin-reggae-electronica pop of the innovative Japanese composer and pianist
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A wonderfully twinkling, clockwork vitality: Human Error
New album: Ingenious, playfully inventive electronica by Jeremy Barnes, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, inspired by the idea of how errors lead to invention and discovery, written while teaching music to incarcerated teens at YDDC juvenile detention
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Legowelt: A Field Guide To The Void
Album review: The Netherlands electronic artist Danny Wolfers returns with a delightful mixture of old-school-influenced synth pop, crafting textured soundscapes, nostalgic, futuristic, eccentric and eclectic, steering somewhere between robot voices, cosmic exploration and the dancefloor
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Image inside a carriage of sound from E.U.E.R.P.I’s 1971 album
New album: A truly evocative, alternative experimental project of the Bulgarian composer Mirian Kolev from Tryavna, here combining music with detailed field recordings of an old Soviet train, one still running on trips along the Bulgarian railway line Gabrovo-Tsareva Livada
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Saint Etienne: 'The Night'
New album: The London trio of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs returrn with an strange, dream-like, ambient ‘headphones’ release, one that hovers across their career as if perceived through rain-soaked glass, designed to capture the essence of the after-hours
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The Bloodstreams: Eat Your Heart Out
New album: After last year’s excellent debut LP, How To Be A God, the south-east London quartet return with another heady swirl of stylishly swaggering, stomping, darkly visceral 60s garage rock, psychedelia and with tasty echoes of 70s Bowie, Stooges, Cramps and Birthday Party-era Nick Cave
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Angel Olsen and various: Cosmic Waves Volume 1
New album: A novel form of “compilation reimagined as a dialogue” LP by the acclaimed, serene-voiced American singer-songwriter, showcasing five different lesser-known artists on Side A, and then covering other songs by them on Side B
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Tristan Perich and Ensemble 0: Open Symmetry
Album review: Released on the wonderfully innovative, independent London label Erased Tapes, the New York-based composer joins with the French group on a mesmeric, 50-minute work of seven instrumental tracks for three vibraphones and 1-bit electronics
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Clarissa Connelly: World of Work
Album review: Originally released in April, this beautiful, sensual, mysterious, mystical alt-folk release by the Scotland-born, Denmark-raised and Copenhagen-based composer and singer is filled with long, rapturous notes, piano, strings, church bells, and themes of solitude and death, and evocative of sparse Scandinavian landscapes
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Doechii: Alligator Bites Never Heal
Mixtape review: Originally released in August, and more recently as a sample-rich, funk-jazz-sourced Flipout label edit version, this third Mixtape by the American rapper Jaylah Ji'mya Hickmon is fabulously feisty, filthy and packed with clever, witty wordplay
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White Denim: 12
New album: Austin, Texas’s brilliantly inventive proggy experimentalists James Petralli and co return with an appropriately named 12th LP, one which, created in the lockdown restrictions of 2020-21, needed a different, more DIY approach, but weaves a fabulous mix of rootsy swing, jazz and influences from Scritti Politti to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Nick Lowe to Jonathan Richman.
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Juanita Stein: The Weightless Hour
New album: This fourth solo album the the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of Australian indie band Howling Bells deals with heavy subjects with a light touch, a sparseness of style, and emotional potency
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Papa M: Ballads of Harry Houdini
New album: The alt-rock LA-based musician from Louisville, Kentucky, aka David Pajo, returns with six long-ish numbers, not necessarily themed around the famous escape artist, but packed with ear-catching, meaty, thrumming, sometimes looped, and always dynamic guitar work and rhythmic experimentation
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Jack Cheshire: Interloper
New album: Following 2020’s acclaimed Fractal Future Plays, the British experimental musician returns with his sixth LP, an excellent exploration across pastoral psychedelia, lysergic polyrhythms and beautiful field recordings on tricky themes of belonging in age of post-Brexit and gentrification
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