…features seven previously unreleased bonus tracks from the same period, as well as a comprehensive selection of remixes from artists like Max Cooper, Robot Koch, and Aparde.
Christian Löffler’s second album is a lovingly sculpted and likeable collection of electro moodworks. Recorded in a log cabin on the Darss peninsula in the north-east of his home country, the isolation of the writing and recording process is party reflected in the bare-bone arrangements. For the most part, it works and less is more.
Mare models deep house grooves with minimal ornamentation and much of the album’s musicality manifests itself in warping loops, barely-there synth washes and deftly employed vocals. For the latter, Danish singer Mohna ghosts…
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On their 2026 album do you love the color of the sky? the intrepid shoegaze explorers Dummy continue to alter their template and come ever closer to fully integrating the Avant Garde and dreamy pop instincts that are their guiding tenets. Their previous album Free Energy saw them adding new age and experimentally soft sounds to the mix, here they strip them away and go for a more direct, if still at times challenging, approach. Pairing cloudy drifts of lush shoegaze guitar with thrumming drum & bass-inspired rhythms on many tracks, the overall feel of the record is more immediate. Tracks like the grindingly propulsive “Full Spectrum Dominance” delivers the kind of punch Curve did on their early records, which is a very good thing to emulate.
June McDoom grew up in a Jamaican household in Florida, and her family was a musical one. Her father was a DJ and carpenter who built his own speakers and multi-room sound systems — she grew up hearing amplified basslines from his DJ sets through the floor — and her grandfather was a mento musician who built his own rumba boxes and gave June her first access to a guitar. While her own music takes further influence from everything from 1960s and ’70s folk-pop and pop-soul to Cocteau Twins, the significance of mentioning her upbringing becomes evident upon hearing her unusual spin on eerie indie folk. She landed on Jagjaguwar’s roster on the strength of early short-form releases, and she constructed Follow the Light, her full-length debut,…
…includes eight previously unheard demo recordings captured solo by Shelley on a reel-to-reel tape recorder in late 2014 before the formal album sessions.
The third solo outing from the spell-casting Kentucky songstress, Over and Even is a breezy, lyrically bold, sonically beautiful soft barrage of bucolic country-folk that evokes Linda Thompson, Joni Mitchell, Vashti Bunyan, and Hem. It would be easy to peg Joan Shelley and crafty six-string co-conspirator Nathan Salsburg as the Bluegrass State’s answer to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, but they lack that duos’ trad-folk stridency and penchant for dust bowl pageantry, and their particular brand of mountain music feels much more rooted in the immigrant-rich…
If you were asked to vote in a poll of the most activist artists in modern popular music or were minded to vote in a poll of the best singer-songwriters or greatest guitarists, it is most likely that you would leave off the name Bruce Cockburn, the Canadian from Ottawa who has flown largely under the radar, despite having possibly been the most awarded singer in Canadian music; many Juno awards for his albums, honorary doctorates from several universities, lifetime achievement awards and a member of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. As an acoustic fingerpicking guitarist, he is almost without peer, as anyone who has listened to his instrumental albums Speechless in 2005 and Crowing Ignites in 2019, or who has seen him perform live, can attest.
There’s a hollow space surrounding the guitar solo on “Shiver,” an absorbent deep cut on the second studio album from British indie-pop darling Rachel Chinouriri. The production is both distant and overwhelming as it mirror the 27-year-old’s inner turmoil. She’s feeling alone again, haunted by memories, and it’s like her words are vanishing into thin air before reaching anyone who will listen. Still, she sings, “Life goes on, and on, and on.” But what does she want that life to look like?
Chinouriri realizes she needs to make some changes on I Think I Spoke Too Soon. It’s reflected in the BPM spike across the record, a bold shift from her debut, 2024’s What a Devastating Turn of Events. She spends most of the album physically on the dance floor — sometimes…
The extended edition adds 4 previously unreleased tracks to the original 11-song 2025 tracklist.
The well-decorated Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, with only three albums to his name, makes a bold move to control his artistic direction while providing a home for the next generation of artists on his Red Zero Records. The native son of Clarksdale, MS, still in his mid-twenties, is a global star who has quickly moved past ‘the next big thing” to become arguably the foremost blues artist today, blending tradition with contemporary. He is an ‘old soul” who knows where the music came from, with the ability to reshape it and attract a younger audience.
Hard Road, executively co-produced by Kingfish and Ric Whitney, has three producers in…
Illustrious Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, a longtime force on the European jazz scene, returns with his Fearless Five ensemble, welcoming guest saxophonist Joe Lovano, a powerhouse improviser who had collaborated with the bandleader on the live recording Roma (2019). All members of the quintet contribute compositions, trusting the bandleader’s candidly investigative approach that opposes rigid perceptions.
Rava’s “Certi Angoli Segreti”, an exceptionally beautiful tune first recorded in 1998, gracefully materializes with beautiful color shades. Francesco Diodati’s guitar gives it a particular touch, later soloing with motivic ability and acerbic distortion; Francesco Ponticelli’s dynamic bass builds a solid foundation with drummer…
Flatlands is a new John Zorn project for rock power trio, in the tradition of Simulacrum, Naked City and Insurrection: twelve short pieces that turn on a dime, built on infectious riffs, atonal melodies, shifting rhythms and virtuoso solos, intense, quirky and ecstatic.
The trio is made of three of Zorn’s closest collaborators of recent years: Matt Hollenberg (Shardik, Secret Chiefs 3) on electric guitar, Simon Hanes (Gargantua, Tredici Bacci, Tsons of Tsunami) on electric bass and Ches Smith (Clone Row, We All Break, Laugh Ash) on drums.
Titles include ’69-68′, ‘Into the Dreamverse’, ‘Mabinogion’, ‘Priapus’, ‘Erotic Hyperbola’, ‘Almas Perdidas’, ‘The Blue Circle’, ‘Slipped Disk’ and ‘Greywacke’.
In 1988, The House of Love’s debut album arrived as a fully-formed piece of pop perfection, following two years of intensive writing, rehearsing and live performances. The Gift explores those two years, as the band leapt from the Camberwell squat scene into the centre of the UK’s indie world as it went overground.
Taken from the archive of bassist Chris Groothuizen and compiled by him with chief songwriter Guy Chadwick’s full approval, this 3CD set offers unprecedented insight into the development of one of the standout bands of the late ’80s British music scene. Featuring previously unheard rehearsal recordings and live shows captured in London and Paris, all of which has been carefully restored and remastered using…
…This release serves as a direct alternative to the controversial 2022 reissue, which was completely remixed by producer Chris Lord-Alge. According to the band, while the 2022 edition was a modern re-interpretation, it suffered from incorrect tape speeds. In contrast, the 2026 version is a true remaster sourced directly from the original studio tapes. It is designed to preserve the raw, urgent punk aesthetic and the “barely-contained chaos” of the original mix, while providing cleaner sound clarity across its 14 standard tracks.
A hyper-speed blast of ultra-polemical, left-wing hardcore punk, and bitingly funny sarcasm, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables stands as the Dead Kennedys’ signature statement. As one of the first hardcore albums, it was a galvanizing…
@ (pronounced “at”) is the art-folk project of Philadelphia-based multi-instrumentalist songwriters Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak. The band release their new album Autosmile, their second full-length record and first release with 4AD.
Across Autosmile’s 11 songs, @ reimagine the psychedelic folk tradition as an undeniably contemporary art form, carefully balancing beauty and pain and shifting between black hole heaviness and patient understanding.
Autosmile follows @’s 2021 debut album Mind Palace Music — displaying the duo’s penchant for confessional lyrics and affinity for blending digital and analog elements, the album was an organic success story via word…
What hits first about Manchester Orchestra’s debut, I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child, is how fully formed it already sounds. Recorded independently and driven by instinct, it captures the push and pull between Southern gospel tones, fuzzed-out guitars and the emotional candour that would come to define the band. From the swell of Wolves at Night to the fragile calm of Sleeper 1972, the record moves between hush and full-volume release with real purpose. Andy Hull writes with striking honesty, taking on spirituality, romance, identity and mortality with the urgency of someone living every word. For its 20th anniversary, Manchester Orchestra revisit I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child in a deluxe reissue with all-new packaging, plus a full second disc of reimagined versions.
Doo Wop in the Dark brings together a unique mix of Lou Reed‘s own compositions, spanning his career from the Velvet Underground onwards, along with Chris’s own songs. Together it details the creative and often turbulent path of Reed’s life, from his teenage years through to his death in 2013.
The album echoes his critically acclaimed 2022 release honoring Nico, Eulogy To Christa. In fact, the idea for this album began then, with the track Union Square West.
This is Chris, on why he wanted to make this album: For me, and many others, Lou Reed is one of the holy trinity of Bowie, Iggy, Reed. Mythologised by us, in our minds, each of these tempestuous spirits brought…
It’s hard to believe that, at this late stage, with dozens of Jimi Hendrix live discs available, there is anything decent left to discover. But Magic Boy-The Jimi Hendrix Experience Live at Berkeley (Experience Hendrix label) proves that’s not the case.
It’s odd that this “first set” appears now, especially since the second of two shows recorded at California’s Berkeley Community Center was released in 2003. There is no explanation of the two decade gap, but it’s clear that has nothing to do with the audio or performance quality.
These gigs, from Memorial Day 1970 (just three months before his passing in September) at the relatively intimate venue (only 3300 seats), were unusual because Hendrix generally played far larger stages. Riots broke out before…
Dave Alvin, singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, author, has touched so many forms of American music that it can be daunting to peg one’s favorite part of his career. Even today, with his psychedelic jam band The Third Mind, he is exploring jazz and early ’60s folk music. Yet the pure Americana audience likely gravitates to his mid-’90s period, when he released two straightforward acoustic folk albums and a third that was close to the same. The first, King of California (1994), a mix of covers and originals, shocked many who had long since labeled Alvin a ferocious rocker.
Four years later came Blackjack David, arguably when Alvin really found his vocal and songwriting chops. In 2000, he won a Grammy for traditional folk songs, Public Domain…
With a gap of 16 years between their first two records, it seems like The Avalanches have almost become prolific these days. Now expanded to a trio (new member Andy Szekeres joined Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi earlier this year), the group’s fourth album, No Bad Memories, follows a mere six years after We Will Always Love You was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
At first glance, it seems like No Bad Memories could be quite an intimidating prospect. There are no fewer than 31 tracks on the record, framed around a loose concept exploring nostalgia, childhood imagery, and the hypnotic power of modern advertising. However, ultimately it’s what you’d expect from an Avalanches record – meticulously crafted production, full of samples…
It’s hard to believe that Minneapolis-based blues-roots artist Charlie Parr has now released 20 albums. Parr has risen from a regional treasure influenced by Minneapolis blues greats Dave Ray, “Spider” John Koerner, and Willie Murphy to national and international status, buoyed by his signing to Smithsonian Folkways, one of the most selective imprints, six years ago.
First hailed for his blues-roots fingerpicking guitar, Parr has long since become a fully fledged troubadour with a world-weary voice, a champion of the downtrodden, perhaps best realized on this new folk opera, Rooming House. Parr plays his custom nine-string resonator guitar alongside drummer Dave King (from the recently disbanded The Bad Plus).
