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Africa Express Presents ... Bahidorà
New album: The collective that brought Blur’s Damon Albarn together with Malian musicians 20 years ago now assembles artists from four continents, though particularly plants the roots of this superb 21-track double album in Mexico, with a feast of numbers spanning cumbia, hip-hop, kuduro, soul, salsa, pop, reggaeton and more
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Favourite LPs of 2023, Part 2.
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 2, and Part 1 was yesterday. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order …
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Bombay Bicycle Club: My Big Day
New album: The London indie band fronted by Jack Steadman return with an expansive, playful, humorous. experimental new album across a catchy range of styles, folky pop but also into psychedelia that at times echoes The Flaming Lips
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Always clouds on the horizon: Blur’s ninth album, The Ballad of Darren
New album: Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and co return with their ninth LP, and first since 2015, a reflective, melancholy mostly slow-paced release of vivid, wistful beauty
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Fatoumata Diawara: London KO
New album: The Mali star returns with an third LP, mixing Afro-futurism and feminism wassoulou traditions and western, but also celebrating her links the UK and and collaborations, notably with co-producer Damon Albarn, and other guest including Angie Stone and Roberto Fonseco
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Gorillaz’s 8th album: 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
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Darkly beautiful: Damon Albarn’s new album
New album: The frontman of many bands from Blur to Gorillaz returns with a new solo album suffused with slow beautiful, tender melancholy, falling piano chord progressions, jazz elements, electronica, gentle beats and wistful images
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More of Tony Allen’s work posthumously in collaboration with guest artists
Album review: Entertainingly diverse posthumous album bringing together recordings by the great drummer and Afrobeat pioneer with Femi Kuti, here matched here with guests from soul to hip hop, including Sampa The Great, Skepta, Damon Albarn, and Lava La Rue
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Album reviews roundup: This selection features many an eclectic style, from the cartoonish band headed by Damon Albarn with guests, clever hip from Open Eagle Mike, disturbing new sounds by Young Knives and mesmerising beauty from Snowdrops
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Another nine albums to explore …
Album reviews roundup: This week’s selection includes an exquisite gem from Bill Callahan, clever dance music from Disclosure, a stark reworking of her last album by Angel Olsen, and a second helping of a previous by My Morning Jacket
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Trash Kit arrive at new Horizons
The latest roundup includes more collaborations via Damon Albarn’s African Express, sharp postpunk from Trash Kit, sensitive songwriting from Jesca Hoop, a classical masterpiece, and more from veteran country singer Willie Nelson
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Vera Sola, from the video for The Colony, from her debut album, Shades
The first of two roundups this week of album releases from the past month includes Damon Albarn reuniting with old friends, an upbeat Wave Pictures, the brilliant DUDS. Anderson Paak, and a debut by Vera Sola
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Furiously great: Kamasi Washington
A bumper crop of recent and new releases includes Damon Albarn back in 2D, Florence toning down the volume, an industrial political comeback from Nine Inch Nails, and a colossal work by a modern jazz great
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Sitting comfortably? Gorillaz return with a new album … Humanz
This week includes some of the finest and funkiest collaborations, including Gorillaz, Thurston Moore, Dan Auerbach, Feist with Jarvis Cocker, Mark Lanegan and DJ Format with Abdominal
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