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Underworld: Strawberry Hotel
New album: The veteran techno rave and electronica king pair Karl Hyde and Rick Smith return with one of their finest LPs of the 11 to date, a miasma of metronomic beats, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, ambience, energy and ecstatic elevation
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Kelly Lee Owens: Dreamstate
New album: The London-based Welsh electronic artist, DJ and producer’s fourth LP takes a new mainstream turn, celebrating daydreaming and emancipated creativity through electronica and dance music, combining ambience and beats with guest collaborators Bicep, Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers, and George Daniel
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The final, posthumous SOPHIE album
New album: This posthumous and final album by the extraordinary, innovative, experimental electro-pop and trans artist Sophie Xeon, who tragically died in 2021, is here finished by co-producer Benny Long and with a huge cast of guest vocalists, but also leaves the question of how much more there could have been
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Nala Sinephro: Endlessness
New album: Mesmeric, experimental new work and the follow-up to 2021’s meditative Space 1.8 LP by the Brussels-born, London-based pedal harpist who mixes jazz and electronica and with extraordinary and unconventional results
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Jon Hopkins: Ritual
New album: Originally commissioned for a multi-sensory Dreamachine installation, the British electronic producer’s latest is a continuous 8-part immersive experience, slow to build, and at times challenging, but in an appropriately dark, recumbent setting, rewarding. In world of distraction, this is all about being present in the moment
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Chrystabell & David Lynch - Cellophone Memories
New album: Haunting, meditative, dark, mellow, beautifully atmospheric, dream-like sounds and vocals colour this third collaborative album between the American singer and film-maker, with some final co-writing and synth work by the late Twin Peaks theme composer Angelo Badalementi
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Kiasmos: II
New album: A decade after their acclaimed debut, the award-winning duo of Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and Faroese musician Janus Rasmussen return with an emotive, uplifting release of inspired, transportive electronica
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Four Tet: Three
New album: British musician Kieran Hebden returns, with his first album since 2020’s Parallel, with a new syncopated electronica beats, twinkling, rippling textures and rumbling ambience to invigorate the spring season
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Nailah Hunter: Lovegaze
New album: Slow, sensual, simmering, lingeringly beautiful numbers in this debut LP of experimental, ambient, will-o'-the-wisp, dream-like quality by the Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer and harpist with Belize ancestry
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Favourite LPs of 2023, Part 2.
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order …
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Part 1 selection of 2023 favourite albums
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 1, and Part 2 is also out here. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order. This is all about quality and innovation …
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André 3000: New Blue Sun
New album: The actor and former half of superstar hip-hop duo Outcast makes a very surprising return after 17 years – a lengthy low-key, instrumental album built around his love of flute playing – minimal, meditational and relaxing
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Vince Clarke: Songs of Silence
New album: The legendary synth-pop songwriter best known for Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure releases, at last, his first solo album, a mesmeric, ambient, darkly sci-fi cinematic work made from modular synthesisers
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Hania Rani: Ghosts
New album: The Berlin-based Polish singer, pianist and composer returns with her bewitching voice, elevating, ethereal, minimalistic, ambient electronica and classical, with guests Patrick Watson, Ólafur Arnalds and Duncan Bellamy of Portico Quartet
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Art School Girlfriend: Soft Landing
New album: Absorbing, introspective, sensual, experimental indie-pop and electronica by London’s Polly Mackey, with a sound that evoke acres of wide landscape and sky, melancholy, wistful songs, and her breathy voice not unlike EBTG’s Tracey Thorn
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Sigur Rós: ÁTTA is their first album for 10 years
New album: With climate change ever on on the horizon, a beautiful, moving, melancholy, ethereal and dynamic LP by the elemental Icelandic experimental band, their first for a decade, with Kjartan Sveinsson rejoining since he left 2012, to complete the trio with frontman Jónsi and bassist Georg Holm
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The Orb - Prism
New album: The veteran dance music and ambient noise duo still with co-founder Alex Paterson return with a vibrant release of cosmic electronica, dub and reggae, house, drum n’ bass, guest vocalists plus newscaster and other sampled voices
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Nabihah Iqbal: Dreamer
New album: The London electronica artists and DJ, formerly known as Throwing Shade, brings a mix of dancefloor with the dream-like, sensual, breathy and ethereal, with echoes sometimes of Cocteau Twins, but also of New Order
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Fire-Toolz: I am upset because I see something that is not there
New album: Like a bizarre recipe filled with flavours that should not mix, but by some strange alchemy really work, an extraordinary fusion of electronica, ambient, drum’n’bass, jazz, prog, pop, and blasts of dark metal by the Chicago producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Angel Marcloid, a heady fusion that must been heard to be believed
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Lucinda Chua: YIAN
New album: A beautiful, sensual, intimate debut LP by the Milton Keynes-raised singer-songwriter, themed around personal history and identity, the title (燕) meaning the swallow bird in Chinese, part of her given name, Siew Yian from her Chinese-Malaysian heritage
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