New album: Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt return finally, after 24 years, with an album of smooth, but melancholy electro-pop/dance, walking a dark, nostalgic path through various niche musical trends through the decades since their 1984 debut, Eden
Read moreCinder Well: Cadence
New album: Beautifully stark, slow, vividly lyrical, bathed in warm resonator guitar with gentle percussion and violin, and the sensitive, resonant voice of Amelia Baker, whose folk songs are inspired by and capturing her Californian coast upbringing and beloved rural Ireland home
Read moreThe Bloodstreams: How To Be A God
New album: With oodles of swagger, theatricality and panache, a wonderful debut by the seasoned Deptford quartet, with witty, black-humoured 60s garage rock and stylish echoes of Siouxsie, Birthday Party-era Nick Cave, Stones, the Doors and the Kramps
Read moreOracle Sisters: Hydranism
Debut album: Classy, and timelessly classic piano pop and more debut by the Paris-based trio of Lewis Lazar, Christopher Willatt and Finnish musician Julia Johansen filled with melting, moving ballads, intimate folk songs, catchy bangers and generally vision of the world suspended in a timeless place
Read moreFire-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
Read moreSpencer Cullum: Spencer Cullum's Coin Collection 2
New album: Following 2021’s beautiful first coin collection, another delicious release of gentle 70s-style folk with light touches of country, jazz and pop by the Romford artist who has made his home in Nashville, Tennessee
Read moreLigeti Quartet x Anna Meredith: Nuc
New album: A dynamic, mesmeric collaboration as acclaimed modern classical string ensemble play career works by the Scottish experimental composer in multi-textured, polyrhythmic, interpretations, using arrangements by viola player Richard Jones
Read moreFenne Lily: Big Picture
New album: Crisp, stripped back, gentle, intricate and sensitive singer-songwriter folk by the Bristol artist with third album about the last two years of her life, capturing “worry and doubt and letting go”, treading a beautifully bittersweet line between the melancholic and uplifting
Read moreDave Okumu & The 7 Generations: I Came From Love
New album: A rich, complex and brilliant release about black history, identity, and channelling the idea of ancestry by British singer, songwriter, producer and guitarist joined by a stellar cast of fellow artists, including Wesley Joseph, Tom Skinner, ESKA and Grace Jones
Read moreFeist: Multitudes
New album: A beautifully intricate, delicate, intelligent and innovative new LP by the Canadian singer-songwriter with among others, a theme the many selves we possess and present, now, in the past and future
Read moreDeerhoof: Miracle-Level
New album: A 19th studio album by San Francisco the prog-punk-jazz experimentalists drummer Greg Saunier, guitarists Ed Rodriguez and John Dieterich, and bassist/singer Satomi Matsuzaki is another blast of brilliant musicianship, but also the first entirely sung in Matsuzaki’s native Japanese
Read moreHMLTD: The Worm
New album: Apocalypse: The Musical? This highly entertaining second LP by the British art-rockers could be thus described, but the concept is “an anachronistic version of medieval England” and features a 16-piece string orchestra and gospel choir
Read moreBlondshell: Blondshell
New album: Strong, confident indie rock debut by Los Angeles’ Sabrina Teitelbaum, with a set of powerfully candid numbers of full-on guitar, tender, emotional vocals, wrestling delusion and self-destructive relationships
Read moreDaughter: Stereo Mind Game
New album: The London-formed trio of Elena Tonra, Igor Haefeli, and Remi Aguilella return with their third album in a decade with a selection of powerful, breathy, indie-folk-shoegaze, their first since 2016’s Not To Disappear
Read moreBillie Marten: Drop Cherries
New album: A sublime fourth album by the singer-songwriter Isabella Sophie Tweddle from Ripon in Yorkshire, building on 2021’s excellent Flora Fauna with folk love songs blooming with exquisite beauty and intimacy
Read moreLondon Brew: London Brew
New album: A wonderfully rich, collaborative release of new music by a 12-piece group of leading UK jazz musicians including Shabaka Hutchings, recorded in 2020 in Paul Epworth’s Church Studios, inspired by and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’s landmark LP Bitches Brew
Read moreDesire Marea: On The Romance of Being
New album: An extraordinary, beautiful, passionate, spiritual and erotic new solo LP by the South African multidisciplinary artist, sangoma (Nguni spiritual healer), and previously part of queer gqom group FAKA, now with a 13-piece orchestral ensemble mixing soul, jazz, rock and Zulu chants
Read moreAltin Gün: Aşk
New album: The Amsterdam psychedelic and electro-pop-funk rockers make a fabulous fifth LP with their special interpretations of traditional Turkish and Anatolian folk, echoing the heavier sound of their earlier albums On and Gece
Read moreJen Cloher: I Am The River, The River Is Me
New album: Brilliantly passionate and powerful, this fifth LP by the Melbourne indie singer-songwriter celebrates their matrilineal line of wāhine Māori heritage in songs of heartbreak, defiance and joy
Read moreMo'Ju: Oro, Plata, Mata
New album: Passionate, theatrical soul with a serious concept by the Filipino Wiradjuri artist Mojo Ruiz de Luzuriaga with an LP named after a 1982 film by his late uncle, the director Peque Gallaga, translated as Gold, Silver, Death
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