New album: Powerful, passionate highly accomplished fourth indie-rock album by singer/songwriter Louisa Roach and band from Wirral in Merseyside, one broadening her musical scope and perspective, not just socio-political and soul-searching personal, but also spanning eons, fuelled by some personal heartbreak
Read moreOrchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp: Ventre Unique
New album: Wonderfully energetic, rhythmic stylish, inventive and witty sixth album by the 12-piece experimental Geneva collective who sing politically in French and English, their music decorated with oodles of of clever brass, violins, double-bass, marimbas, percussion and more
Read moreWarmduscher: Too Cold To Hold
New album: The mischievous mayhem post-punk band of Clams Baker Jr.), Mr. Salt Fingers Lovecraft, Quicksand, The Witherer, Three Piece aka the Worm and Bleucifer return with more songs on the seedier side of life, but also one of their most musically adventurous LPs of their five, with guest vocalists including Lianne La Havas, Janet Planet and Coucou Chlo
Read moreFie Eike: Water
New album: A delicately beautiful distillation through fluid subject in different contexts by the Copenhagen-based artist composer and singer, Anne Sofie Strandheim Eike, with Norwegian roots, creating a soundscape from piano, electronic elements and natural field recordings
Read moreFriedberg: Hardcore Workout Queen
New album: A wonderful engaging, energetic third LP by Anna Wappel, aka Anna F, the Austria-born singer-songwriter and indie band, with witty, eccentric, warm, humorous, hair-in-the-wind LP with the feel of a road trip
Read moreTyler, the Creator: Chromakopia
New album: American rapper and producer Tyler Okonma’s eighth LP is an eclectic, electric, eccentric creation featuring his oddball masked persona, and addresses subjects such as fame, getting old, and with several songs featuring his mother Bonita Smith
Read morePeter Perrett: The Cleansing
New album: A golden late period by The Only Ones frontman continues with this third solo album, and having famously survived addictions, it muses on morbidity and other themes with a droll brilliance, aided guests including Johnny Marr, Bobby Gillespie, and Carlos O’Connell of Fontaines DC
Read moreFievel Is Glauque: Rong Weicknes
New album: A beautifully quirky, unique cross-genre, melodic, meandering experimental release of surreal lyricism of jazz-folk-pop by the Belgian-US duo of Zach Phillips and Ma Clément joined by an ensemble of six other musicians
Read moreUnderworld: 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
Read moreHalf Waif: See You At The Maypole
New album: Ethereal, shimmering, poetic, sensual delicate experimental folk and synth-pop in this substantial 17-track sixth LP, following 2021’s Mythopoetics, by the New York singer-songwriter and producer Nandi Rose Plunkett, with lingering release about pain, grief, but resilience and beauty
Read moreMarysia Osu: Harp, Beats and Dreams
New album: Truly gorgeous experimental work by London’s Trinity Laban-graduate harpist of Polish parentage, who as well as conventionally rippling the strings of instrument, creatively uses it with other effects, adds sea other nature sounds with electronica, with magical sprinkles of guest vocals, cello, woodwind and percussion
Read moreW.H. Lung: Every Inch Of Earth Pulsates
New album: The Manchester-formed synth-indie-pop five-piece return with fresh toe-tapping electro retro sounds, but also with a particularly big, live sound, achieved by relocating to Sheffield to work with producer Ross Orton (MIA, Arctic Monkeys, Working Men’s Club)
Read moreSilverbacks: Easy Being A Winner
New album: The Dublin sextet of frontman Daniel O’Kelly, brother Kilian and co return with a third album, one of mischief, eccentricity and no shortage of musical skill, witty lyrics and clever, intricate and powerful triple guitar riffing, co-produced by Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox
Read moreField Music: Limits of Language
New album: After various side and solo projects, Sunderland brothers Peter and David Brewis return with their very own inventive brand of classy, clever, quirky, and funky experimental pop
Read moreBlood Incantation: Absolute Elsewhere
New album: Appearances might partly deceive, as while this almighty release by the Denver, Colorado quartet of Paul Riedl, Isaac Faulk, Morris Kolontyrsky and Jeff Barrett has a grunting death metal tag, it also traverses a wondrously inventive landscape of dynamic prog, folk, rock, krautrock and beyond with an accompanying film
Read moreGoat: Goat
New album: The mysterious masked Swedish collective return with their third LP in as many years with a heady new dose of primal prog, funk, folk and psychedelic rock sitrred in a pot of guitar pedals, flutes, drums and ritualistic-style vocals
Read morePublic Service Broadcasting: The Last Flight
New album: Inspired by the same subject as Laurie Anderson’s Amelia album earlier this year, a the experimental news archive-digging British rock group formed by J Willgoose Esq return by paying tribute to the pioneering female American aviator Amelia Earhart
Read morecumgirl8: the 8th cumming
New album: Provocative in name, and after a couple of great EPs, the Manhattan four-piece are now fully released in LP form, with their infectiously catchy, witty, punchy, dirty electro-cyber-punk-pop, influenced in part by The Slits and girl-punk era of the late 1970s, new wave, horror and anime, and self-described as “a scantily clad Creature from the Black Lagoon”
Read moreHayden Thorpe: Ness
New album: The former Wild Beast singer’s new LP is a beautiful, experimental release inspireed by Robert Macfarlane’s book of the same name, an ode to the Suffolk coast’s mysterious ten-mile long shingle spit at Orford Ness, the now wilderness but former Ministry of Defence weapons development site
Read moreGodspeed You! Black Emperor: No Title As of 13 February 2024, 28,340 Dead
New album: Explosive but also expressive innovation by the returning veteran Canadian post-rockers, with a title that explicitly references the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, but on a larger scale expresses an apocalyptic vision through some extraordinary, prog-rock experimental instrumentals
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