New album: After the swaggering playful rock of 2020’s Superstar, the sassy New York singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist returns with a fifth LP of inspirational, but more sensual, introspective, experimental pop
Read moreLucinda 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 moreDepeche Mode: Memento Mori
New album: With one of the best in over 20 years, Basildon’s veteran electro-pop specialists Martin Gore and Dave Gahan return, now sadly without Andy Fletcher who died last year, but with a album about sex, death and mutability that is also a tribute to their lost longtime colleague
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 moreM83: Fantasy
New album: Over two decades in, this ninth LP by the French electronica band of Anthony Gonzalez is epic, big-scale 70-minute sprawl of smooth, retro-synth pop and ambient indulgence, that has an almost cinematic scale
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 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 moreFever Ray: Radical Romantics
New album: Sweden’s Karin Dreijer returns with her first Fever Ray LP since 2017’s Plunge, this third packed with rich, eerie, complex, multifarious songs about the bewilderment of love
Read moreKate NV: WOW
New album: A wonderfully oddball, playful and original LP by the Russian electronica artists Kate Shilonosova, whose palette of sounds include 90s video game bleeps, blips, pings, cat meows and snippets of other disembodied vocals
Read moreSteve Mason: Brothers & Sisters
New album: The former Beta Band main man returns with one of his finest solo albums yet, a groovy protest record (“a big fuck off to Brexit”) drawing in different cultures and throwing a party for Britain’s rich heritage from an immigrant population
Read moreLowly: Keep Up The Good Work
New album: On a smaller, more intimate scale than previous album Hifalutin, as previewed on Song of the Day, Seasons, the Danish experimental quintet’s new album is filled sensitive, vulnerable, textured, beautifully building electro-folk-pop
Read moreMiss Grit: Follow The Cyborg
Debut album: Sensual, strong, intelligent, highly original indie-electro-pop debut by the Brooklyn-based Korean-American artist Margaret Sohn with songs that explore the idea of identity and what it is to be alive
Read moreGorillaz: Cracker Island
New album: The eighth studio album by the cartoon personas of Damon Albarn is one of the shortest and most musically coherent, catchy, clever and poignant, with guests including Thundercat, De La Soul, Stevie Nicks, Beck and Tame Impala
Read moreMaps: Counter Melodies
New album: A mesmeric fifth electronica LP by the English musician and producer James Chapman filled with clever, catchy melodies, interweaving, shifting textures and classic sounds from the clubby to echoes of Kraftwerk
Read moreOrbital: Optical Delusion
New album: Electronica dance veterans Phil and Paul Hartnoll’s 10th studio album is musically varied and dynamic, and powerfully examines the self-deceiving chaos of the last few years with a variety of guest vocalists
Read moreAnna B Savage: in|FLUX
New album: Following 2021’s superb debut LP, A Common Turn, the London-based singer-songwriter returns with an exquisitely beautiful, bittersweet, intimate, candid personal set of songs about the difficulties of love
Read moreLiv.e: Girl In The Half Pearl
New album: A dizzyingly indefinable and innovative debut by the Dallas-born singer-songwriter Olivia Williams, mixing experimental R&B, gospel, neo-soul, spoken word, electronica, cosmic jazz, and pop
Read moreHifi Sean and David McAlmont: Happy Ending
New album: Crisp, soulful, lush, soaring pop, with a Bollywood flavour, as one of the finest ever British vocalists releases a first collaborative full LP with producer and musician Sean Dickson
Read moreYoung Fathers: Heavy Heavy
New album: There’s nothing quite like them. Joyous energy and endless invention, the Edinburgh trio’s fourth LP is filled with soulful, emotional vocals, fabulous oddball, dynamic beats and sound textures, and already an album of the year contender
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