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
Read moreSissoko - Segal - Parisien - Peirani: Les Égarés
New album: A gorgeous genre-spanning jazz-folk-Anatolian LP featuring Malian kora maestro Ballaké Sissoko, specialist improv cellist Vincent Segal, accordion virtuoso Vincent Peirani and French soprano saxophonist Émile Parisien
Read moreJames Holden: Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space of all Possibilities
New album: As exemplified in a January Song of the Day, Contains Multitudes, with loops, tabla and violin, the British producer’s fourth LP is a wondrously inventive landscape of imaginative electronica, bells, birdsongs, bleeps and heartbeats
Read moreA Certain Ratio: 1982
New album: The Manchester post-punk veterans Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson, return with a sparklingly eclectic record of electronica, dance, jazz, funk, Afrobeat and more with a retrospective feel on their history
Read moreboygenius: the record
New album: After 2018’s EP, a fabulous LP debut of folk, Americana and indie combining the talents of American singer-songwriter trio of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, who have each also released three successful solo LPs
Read moreJPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown: Scaring The Hoes
New album: A frenetic, eclectic, mischievously ironic and culture-bashing collaboration between iconoclastic Brooklyn rapper Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks, and his Detroit counterpart Daniel Dewan Sewell in a crazed mish-mash of samples, voices and rhythmic restlessness
Read moreCaroline Rose: The Art of Forgetting
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
Read moreLana Del Rey - Did You Know That There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
New album: The queen of noir returns with her ninth LP – steeped in powerful, beautiful, piano-based numbers of melancholy and rich vocal harmonies, with rumination about dangerous love, religion and of course, death
Read moreDeath & Vanilla: Flicker
New album: The trio from Malmö, Sweden return with another selection of smooth, delicate, vintage Moog synth dream pop and psych-folk, more upbeat than 2019’s Are You A Dreamer, but still creating a musical “melancholic utopia”
Read moreEmilíana Torrini and The Colorist Orchestra: Racing The Storm
New album: Charming, beautifully arranged acoustic intricacy in this crisp collaboration between the clear-voiced Icelandic-Italian singer-songwriter and Belgian multi-instrumentalist duo Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans and friends
Read moreYves Tumor: Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume: (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
New album: A mouthful of a title but another striking, genre-spanning fifth LP by the unique Knoxville-raised Sean Bowie, whose extraordinary non-gender presence adorns this mix of thrumming postpunk, indie R&B, trip-hop, funk, glam, sensual soul and psychedelia
Read moreTechnology + Teamwork: We Used To Be Friends
New album: Sarah Jones and Anthony Silvester’s debut brings experimental electro-pop, new wave, R&B, disco and more, from brilliant bangers to the oddball and bizarre, and influences from West Coast 60s synthesis movement to late 70s and early 80s Cabaret Voltaire with little dash of Yello
Read moreUnknown Mortal Orchestra: V
New album: New Zealand’s Ruban Nielson and co return with a post-lockdown double album, a fifth LP keeping that distinctive dirty mic vocal filter, and a mixture of the upbeat and downbeat
Read moreFrankie Rose: Love As Projection
New album: Dreamy, sophisticated, literate, soft-sheen new wave electro-pop in this fifth solo album by the long established New York artist and former member of Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls
Read moreDutch Uncles: True Entertainment
New album: Vibrant, tight, bright, excellent toe-tapping indie electro-pop with a darker undercurrent by the Manchester quartet in their sixth full LP and first for six years, echoing influences such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and The Blue Nile
Read moreShana Cleveland: Manzanita
New album: A sublime third solo LP by the singer and La Luz co-founder, a beautiful selection of Californian-style folk, named after a native evergreen tree with medicinal properties, and awash with pristine acoustic guitar and her mesmeric voice
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