New album: Joan Wasser and her long-time collaborator’s brilliant, beautiful, dark, and perfectly paced blend of funk-afro-jazz with vocals, bass, piano, strings, horns, and stored sessions from the great departed afrobeat drum pioneer
Read moreSam Evian: Time To Melt
New album: Warm, woozy and fluid, an appropriate title for this super smooth third album by Sam Griffin Owens, the Brooklyn based artist, decorated with light funk, 70s psychedelic soul and lush, orchestral instrumentation
Read moreSelf Esteem: Prioritise Pleasure
New album: Rotherham’s Rebecca Taylor returns with a second LP under her liberated moniker after Compliments Please with an even greater triumph of darkly humorous and caustic honesty topped with glorious gospel harmonies, big drums, orchestration and a celebration of emancipated womanhood
Read moreParquet Courts: Sympathy For Life
New album: After 2018’s acclaimed LP Wide Awake!, the Brooklyn band return with a sharp collection of post-punk intermingled with dance music that mixes funk, electronica, psychedelia and krautrock with improvisational energy
Read moreRemi Wolf: Juno
New album: This full debut by the charismatic 25-year-old Californian matches her persona – fluorescent, fizzy funk-psych-pop full of bright singing, bursting with sugary, almost wieldy but playfully imaginative energy
Read morePond: 9
New album: No surprise that this is the ninth album by the Australians psychedelic rock and pop band, a dynamic release with a wide variety of styles, intelligent, atypical lyrics, passionate delivery and wonderful unpredictability
Read moreThe Allergies: Promised Land
New album: Upbeat, vibrant new LP of old-school-type hip hop mining vintage funk and soul samples with added guest rappers, skilfully put together by the Bristol pair of Roy Spencer aka DJ Moneyshot and producer Rackabeat aka Adam Volson
Read moreKit Sebastian: Melodi
New album: A magical, mesmeric second album by the London-based French and Turkish pair of Kit Martin and Merve Erdem is a unique fusion of vocals, jazz, funk, psych, featuring zithers, harpsichords, congas, bongos, bulbul tarang, balalaikas, organs, and saxophone
Read moreKUNZITE: Visuals
New album: As groovy-funk-psych-pop as it gets. The single Frosty was previously a Song of the Day, and now this cosmos-themed album by by producers and multi-instrumentalists Mike Stroud (from Ratatat) and Agustin White (White Flight), follows keeps the fun, and the standard high
Read moreMatthew E. White: K Bay
New album: Dynamic, diverse and undefinable, this first solo album for six years by the witty Virginia songwriter, producer, and founder of Spacebomb Records founder spans genres from funk, electronica, piano pop and disco to the playful and experimentally cinematic
Read moreSuperstate: Superstate (Graham Coxon)
New album: An upbeat, wonderfully catchy and evocative new LP release by the Blur guitarist of pop-indie-disco-funk-prog numbers as soundtrack to a book of 15 graphic novel sci-fi stories, in a dystopian setting stemmed from his passion for the genre
Read moreJungle: Loving In Stereo
New album: West London’s Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland return with undeniably, strong, catchy selection of falsetto soul and disco pop that has strings, horns, hip hop and gospel elements that hit perfect, broad appeal notes
Read moreYola: Stand For Myself
New album: The title track was a splendid previous Song of the Day, and the rest of this second album by the equally stands up as excellent soul and funk by the singer and songwriter Yolanda Quartey from Bristol
Read morePrince: Welcome 2 America
New album: The third posthumous album since the Purple One’s untimely passing in 2016 stands out as the best for a long time, including when he was alive, packed with punchy funk, soul, and social commentary that echoes peak-period Curtis Mayfield
Read moreJoel Culpepper: Sgt Culpepper
New album: With an impressive, extraordinary vocal range, especially in falsetto, the south-east Londoner’s debut LP feels like an instant soul and funk classic, bulked great bass and brass, and shored up with a team of top-notch producers
Read moreL'Rain: Fatigue
New album: This second album by the Brooklyn-born multi-instrumentalist and singer Taja Cheek is an entrancing mix of keyboards, synths, and haunting vocals, a woozily wonderful and unique style of dream-like delicacy
Read moreHiatus Kaiyote: Mood Valiant
New album: This wonderful third album by the Melbourne band is a free-flowing beauty - like a butterfly garden of jazz, soul as well as Brazilian influences from time spent with veteran composer Arthur Verocai and Amazonian indigenous Varinawa communities
Read moreCola Boyy: Prosthetic Boombox
New album: Uplifting and also poignant 70s style disco-funk-soul debut by the Californian artist who is disabled by spina bifida and scoliosis since birth, but shakes his tail feathers with style, panache, very much like “a time-travelling Delorean with Prince in the passenger seat”
Read moreMatt Berry: Blue Elephant
Album review: Like a boy in a music shop let loose with all the toys, a thoroughly enjoyable and musically impressive psych-prog journey full of sonic humour and riffing adventure in this latest LP by the popular British comic actor
Read moreSt Vincent: Daddy's Home
Album review: This superb new LP by Annie Clark is inspired by the look, sounds and feel of grimy early 70s New York, creating a work of of sleazy sophistication, the sounds of electric sitar, a Steely Dan, and an edgy joke title referring to the release of her father from prison
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