New album: Soaring, delicately innovative, beautiful piano-based soft-sheen pop and electronica by the London artist in her debut under her own name, with some flavours of 70s Karen Carpenter and a dash of early Kate Bush, and themed around types of communication
Read moreArt 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
Read moreDot Allison: Consciousology
New album: With easily the most beautiful and delicate LP of the week, the Scottish singer-multi-instrumentalist returns with a gorgeous blend of psych-folk, her gentle voice poetically capturing nature’s patterns with threads of orchestral strings, electronica, and some guest guitar by Ride’s Andy Bell
Read moreThe Clientele: I Am Not There Anymore
New album: More than three decades in, and after a six-year gap, the London now trio return with a fabulously eclectic, esoteric ninth 19-track LP mixing psychedelia, Eastern classical music, poetic, jangly, jaunty indie pop, and more
Read moreMadeline Kenney: A New Reality Mind
New album: Sensitive, experimental, dreamy, highly original electro-pop in this fourth album by the Oakland artist, songs reflecting on mindset after from splitting with her partner, and a theme of perceiving reality, referencing John Berger’s book Ways of Seeing
Read moreHENGE: Alpha Test 4
New album: A third album of ingeniously brilliant keyboard blips ‘n’ beats, squelchy, catchy, funky fun from the electro-psych-pop space alien band (actually from Manchester) packed with entertaining tunes about robots, the climate crisis and more
Read moreBeing Dead: When Horses Would Run
New album: Mischievous fun by the Austin, Texas experimental indie and art-rock band of songwriters Falcon Bitch and Gumball, packed with fantasy, satirical settings in this debut full LP
Read moreJulie Byrne: The Greater Wings
New album: Gorgeously delicate, serene, thoughtful, intimate acoustic folk by the ethereal, breathy-voiced New York singer-songwriter, her third studio album and first for six years capturing a variety of moods and emotions across times of isolation and change
Read moreLittle Dragon: Slugs of Love
New album: An inventive, very eclectic, enjoyably experimental seventh studio album by the Gothenburg quartet, mixing electronica, soul, pop, hip-hop and R&B with guests including Blur’s Damon Albarn and East Atlanta rapper JID
Read moreVarious: The Endless Coloured Ways - The Songs of Nick Drake
New album: An enthralling collection of 23 cover versions of classic numbers by the legendary British folk singer who tragically died in 1974, featuring diverse artists including Fontaine’s D.C., Emeli Sandé, Aldous Harding, Guy Garvey and John Grant
Read moreKNOWER: Knower Forever
New album: A third jazz-funk tour de force LP of outstanding musicianship, infinite energy, humour and invention by the LA duo of singer Genevieve Artadi and genius drummer and multi-instrumentalist Louis Cole joined by a host of brilliant players
Read morePJ Harvey: I Inside The Old Year Dying
New album: Seven years after The Hope Six Demolition Project album, Polly returns with mysterious, experimental, beautiful, alluring release in which she adapts poems from her book Orlam into songs immersed in the otherworld-underworld of her home Dorset countryside, laced with local dialect and unusual acoustic instruments
Read moreAngelo De Augustine: Toil and Trouble
New album: Beautiful, acoustic otherworldliness aplenty in this fourth album by the California singer-songwriter in a realm of tender songs of gentle fingerpicking ethereal, whispery falsetto, glass xylophone, flutes, mellotron, oddball sound effects and animation
Read morebdrmm: I Don't Know
New album: With elements of krautrock, and echoes of Mogwai and Radiohead, the Hull experimental rock quartet’s new album has a dark, yet uplifting, mesmeric momentum, moving between stormy guitar ferocity, to wistful shoegaze and meditative electronica
Read moreDo Nothing: Snake Sideways
New album: Wonderfully offbeat, playful, original, witty post-punk with superb, sweeping melodies, warped experimental guitar, swinging, alternative rhythms, and laced with wry, clever ironic lyrics in this dynamic debut by the Nottingham quartet
Read moreBen Howard: Is It?
New album: Lush yet innovative, introspective folk-pop by English singer-songwriter and composer in his sixth album, influenced still by John Martyn, this LP is filled with unusual sounds, rhythms and effects and electronica to reflect his shock experience of two mini-strokes in 2022
Read moreSwans: The Beggar
New album: This 16th album in just over four decades by the veteran American experimental band fronted Michael Gira brings brooding, dark menace, written in lockdown, a moving, powerful contemplation of mortality that’s oddly stirring
Read moreDjango Django: Off Planet
New album: A 21-song mega-release by the innovative, experimental London-based art-rock and pop quartet features a variety of great guest vocalists with music that plays around more in the electronica-dance genre and various world music beats, but overall feels more like four EPs
Read moreMeshell Ndegeocello: The Omnichord Real Book
New album: Classy, supercool and stylish, the revered German-born American bassist and vocalist returns with an album of distinctive and varied fusion of funk, jazz, Afrobeat, electronica and hip hop with a variety of distinctive guests
Read moreUrsa Major Moving Group: Ursa Major Moving Group
New album: A stellar, innovative and absorbing debut LP project by London multi-instrumentalist, composer and writer Ursula Russell fusing folk, chamber pop and gentle post-punk
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