An ultra busy week with lots of tantalising releases. Here is our summary of what’s what.
Xeno & Oaklander Via Negativa (in the doorway light)
Refined retro-futurist synth pop with a tension between Teutonic, utopian synthetic pop and lyrical narratives of ghosts in silos, ruined mills, and the traumas of mineral excavation.
The Green Child Look Familiar
They still draw heavily on a refined psychedelic pop, with Raven’s scenically measured vocal often shadowing the ebb and flow, but the energy of having four people in the room resulted in making the songs more upbeat.
Becky and the Birds Only Music Makes Me Cry Now
The record’s exploratory, desperate, passionate, romantic, and heart-wrenchingly vulnerable lyrical backbone supported by a varied collection of sampled audio-bites from her everyday life (from old demos and phone recordings to natural city noise).
Tanhai Collective In Lane
Six-piece instrumental outfit taking inspiration from jazz funk and the jazzier end of post rock, their groove heavy, melodic sounds utilise 70’s production and recording techniques, resulting in an explosive, dubbed out sound and showcases their reverence for the post-bop era, carving their own stamp in the UK Jazz scene.
Various Small Pond Presents: Emerging Vol 4
A project that gives 16 talented young acts (aged 16-25) from Brighton and the South of England the opportunity to rehearse, record, and release their music via Small Pond’s professional studio, label and PR set-up.
Michael Kiwanuka Small Change
The follow-up to his Mercury Prize winning album was produced alongside Danger Mouse and Inflo, the same studio team behind the globally acclaimed “KIWANUKA”.
Julián Mayorga Chak Chak Chak Chak
Avant-garde Columbian performer with a clattering, absurdist slice of post-cumbia psychedelia. ‘Chak Chak Chak Chak’ is a feverish mix of angular electric guitars, circuit-bent beats, found percussion and rapid-fire incantations, with influences that include Tom Zé, Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart.
Peter Alexander Jobson Burn The Ration Books of Love
A collection that blends genres as diverse as country-flavoured psychedelia and cocktail jazz with the spirit of the Northern variety circuit. With his Northumberland accent and a voice that tells the tale of two decades in smoke-filled rooms followed by late-night drinking sessions, his vocals answer the question: what if Serge Gainsbourg had been born in the North East of England?
Various Super Disco Pirata
A dive into the golden age of Mexico City’s mobile soundsystems, a journey filled with 23 tropical floor-fillers sourced from the finest and strangest pirata LPs.
E/I Explicit Isolation
An intergalactic spiritual jazz record by international collective E/I led by composer and percussionist Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek. Three pieces moving in the geological rhythms of formation and dissolution, density and lightness.
Lou Terry Building A Case
Through his quirky vocals and meticulously crafted folk soundscape, Lou’s music paints a picture of the people, events, feelings, doubts and misgivings of the everyday – often finding beauty in the mundane.
Phantom Sugar Habitual EP
Their sound can be described as a feel-good blend of The Strokes meets Still Woozy featuring dream-like, hazy melodies over fuzzy vocals.
Solak Atlas
Listen to SOLAK and you’ll hear similarities with Feist, Jack Johnson, Elliott Smith and Blake Mills
Fightmilk No Souvenirs
A riotous combination of riffage, pop hooks, angst, heartfelt emotions, wit, and wisdom crashed out with infectious, gleeful abandon.
Ciaran Lavery Light Entertainment
Singer-songwriter with an “apocalypse record”, into which he has poured all of the paranoia, deceit, conflict and desperation that crashes like a tidal wave across our lives.
Tomo Katsurada Dream of the Egg EP
Kikagaku Moyo founder on whose debut EP’s 20-minute narrative a variety of instruments come into play, drifting between notes and embracing the beauty of imperfection. By incorporating free-form sounds in a highly technological age, the record aims to reconnect listeners with the tangible, human-made quality of sound.
Mark Wirtz Dream Dream Dream: The Anthology
5CD, 131 track compilation spans from 1963 through the 1970s. It highlights his collaborative work with a diverse range of artists, including Caroline Munro, Sheila And Jenny, The Soul Brothers, Miki Antony, The Matchmakers, Tomorrow, and many others as well as a plethora of Mark’s solo works as a singer/songwriter.
Murcof Twin Color – Vol 1
An album that sees him embracing a cinematic, dystopian sound influenced by 1980s sci-fi films like Blade Runner.
Vera Sola Ghostmaker EP
A collection of reworked (or re-remembered) songs from her Peacemaker LP.
Kylie V Crash Test Plane
Artist with an operatic voice and appetite for the devastating, their discography is a blast of sonorous and explosive indie folk.
Sunnsetter Heaven Hang Over Me
Sunnsetter is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist, composer, and recording engineer + Zoon/OMBIIGIZI collaborator Andrew McLeod.
Aursjoen Strand
A classically trained singer and multi-instrumentalist whose musical past is steeped in genres ranging from Celtic and Nordic folk to darkwave and progressive metal.
Stranger Cat Slow Jam Love Letters To My Body in Pieces
Miami/NYC-based musician, producer and multimedia artist with a record that tracks her recovery from a serious accident.
Morpho Morpho Season EP
The process of making the record — which incorporated different studios, producers, and techniques — mirrors the EP’s wider themes of dichotomies, change, and freedom.
Vlad Holiday My Favorite Drug
There’s an optimism to Holiday’s current chapter as he builds out his next body of work while collaborating with other artists in Music City. Most recently, he co-wrote Cage The Elephant’s “Neon Pill,” “Metaverse” and “Over Your Shoulder” before being joined by Kacey Musgraves on “I Don’t Wanna Party Anymore.”
Bryan Adams Live At The Royal Albert Hall 2024
A box set, featuring complete performances of three of his iconic albums: Reckless, 18 ‘Til I Die, and So Happy It Hurts.
Various Dearly Beloved… A Prince Songbook
3CD boxset. The most expansive compilation of Prince songs recorded by other artists. 52 tracks include major pop hits penned for The Bangles, Sheena Easton, Martika and more, plus R&B smashes for Patti LaBelle, André Cymone and Meli’sa Morgan, as well as lesser-known latter-day collaborations with Shelby J, Ana Moura and Van Gogh.
Earthen Sea Recollection
A fusion of live band acoustics and downtempo loops, sculpted into nine smoke-and-mirror dubs of fractured jazz, soft-focus noir, and trip-hop dust.
Children’s Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death
A vinyl & CD reissue of 1984 demo cassette, the post-punk teenage band of Guided By Voices’ guitarist Doug Gillard with vocalist Fraser Sims
Sergeant Thunderhoof The Ghost of Badon Hill
Rock band with a folklore inspired concept album about a battle between Britons and Anglo Saxons in Bath.
Emei Rabbithole EP
Pop singer-songwriter whose glossy, high-octane third EP, is a journey within a journey, thematically traipsing through the darkest depths of her psyche, touching on anxiety, insecurity, and madness with hyper-relatable lyricism, wit, and perspective.
Overhead, The Albatross I Leave You This
Dublin post-rock quartet offer cinematic soundscapes and atmospheric grandeur, coupled with surprising new textures that challenge and inspire.
The Wood Days
Liverpool-based duo bring rock solid grooves, creating melodies full of beauty, passion, pain and the power of real soul.
Kappekoff Old Spring
Lush, sophisticated soft rock and chilled, mellow nu-disco.
Zaumne Only Good Dreams For Me
Crystalline melodies cut across textures culled from field recordings taken in transit: a train between Zürich and Milan, a wooden elevator in Antwerp, birdsong outside a Warsaw window.
Sly & the Family Drone Moon is Doom Backwards
A properly noir thing, as notable for its long stretches of quiet atmosphere as it is for its pummeling skronk.
Full of Hell & Andrew Nolan Scraping the Devine
A collaboration between Love Ghost (an enigmatic Los Angeles-based indie rock band) and Tim Skold (a musician and record producer perhaps best known for his work with KMFDM, Shotgun Messiah, Marilyn Manson, and Motionless in White.)
Indignation Meeting A Model World
Leeds punk band with songs informed by a love of railways. They are led by 15-year-old Peter, he’s the drummer and lead singer, writes most of the songs, and also plays bass and trumpet on the album. His dad joins on guitar.
Fazerdaze Soft Power
Playfully described as a “bedroom stadium record,” it melds synths and electronic beats with classic rock touches.
George Harrison Living in the Material World
Completely remixed from the original tapes, this is a 50th anniversary edition of Harrison’s second solo album.
Mike Viola Rock of Boston
Producer, musician, songwriter and singer best known for his work with Panic! at the Disco, Andrew Bird, Dawes, Ryan Adams and Jenny Lewis.
Sodom Tapping The Vein
Expanded reissue of 1992 album from one of the originators of thrash metal.
Lynn Rosenblood Ascent
Her musical roots run deep; raised in a musical family, she grew up immersed in a world of opera, jazz, and poetry, eventually working as a radio producer and voice-over artist. Inspired by her mother’s passing, Lynn turned fully to poetry and songwriting, shaping her music as an introspective journey through both light and shadow.
