Your Custom Text Here
Ichiko Aoba: Luminescent Creatures
New album: A magical, transportive, gorgeously meditational evocative release by the Japanese singer and multi-instrumentalist with a celestial musical landscape LP inspired by the Ryukyu islands that stretch southwest of Japan towards Taiwan
Read more
HONESTY: U R HERE
New album: Moody, dark, atmospheric, cross-genre inventiveness comes aplenty in this debut LP for Partisan Records by the Leeds-based collective who bring a hard-to-define fusion of ambient, restless electronica, shoegaze, goth, abstract industrial, krautrocky momentum, soulful trip-hop and alt-pop
Read more
Saint Etienne: 'The Night'
New album: The London trio of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs returrn with an strange, dream-like, ambient ‘headphones’ release, one that hovers across their career as if perceived through rain-soaked glass, designed to capture the essence of the after-hours
Read more
Angel Olsen and various: Cosmic Waves Volume 1
New album: A novel form of “compilation reimagined as a dialogue” LP by the acclaimed, serene-voiced American singer-songwriter, showcasing five different lesser-known artists on Side A, and then covering other songs by them on Side B
Read more
Underworld: Strawberry Hotel
New album: The veteran techno rave and electronica king pair Karl Hyde and Rick Smith return with one of their finest LPs of the 11 to date, a miasma of metronomic beats, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, ambience, energy and ecstatic elevation
Read more
Kelly Lee Owens: Dreamstate
New album: The London-based Welsh electronic artist, DJ and producer’s fourth LP takes a new mainstream turn, celebrating daydreaming and emancipated creativity through electronica and dance music, combining ambience and beats with guest collaborators Bicep, Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers, and George Daniel
Read more
The final, posthumous SOPHIE album
New album: This posthumous and final album by the extraordinary, innovative, experimental electro-pop and trans artist Sophie Xeon, who tragically died in 2021, is here finished by co-producer Benny Long and with a huge cast of guest vocalists, but also leaves the question of how much more there could have been
Read more
Nala Sinephro: Endlessness
New album: Mesmeric, experimental new work and the follow-up to 2021’s meditative Space 1.8 LP by the Brussels-born, London-based pedal harpist who mixes jazz and electronica and with extraordinary and unconventional results
Read more
Jon Hopkins: Ritual
New album: Originally commissioned for a multi-sensory Dreamachine installation, the British electronic producer’s latest is a continuous 8-part immersive experience, slow to build, and at times challenging, but in an appropriately dark, recumbent setting, rewarding. In world of distraction, this is all about being present in the moment
Read more
Chrystabell & David Lynch - Cellophone Memories
New album: Haunting, meditative, dark, mellow, beautifully atmospheric, dream-like sounds and vocals colour this third collaborative album between the American singer and film-maker, with some final co-writing and synth work by the late Twin Peaks theme composer Angelo Badalementi
Read more
Kiasmos: II
New album: A decade after their acclaimed debut, the award-winning duo of Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds and Faroese musician Janus Rasmussen return with an emotive, uplifting release of inspired, transportive electronica
Read more
Four Tet: Three
New album: British musician Kieran Hebden returns, with his first album since 2020’s Parallel, with a new syncopated electronica beats, twinkling, rippling textures and rumbling ambience to invigorate the spring season
Read more
Nailah Hunter: Lovegaze
New album: Slow, sensual, simmering, lingeringly beautiful numbers in this debut LP of experimental, ambient, will-o'-the-wisp, dream-like quality by the Los Angeles multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer and harpist with Belize ancestry
Read more
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 …
Read more
Part 1 selection of 2023 favourite albums
Welcome once again to the annual tradition of Song Bar’s favourite album releases of 2023. This is Part 1, and Part 2 is also out here. There’s no such thing as a chart rundown or ‘best of’ here, and these come in no particular order. This is all about quality and innovation …
Read more
André 3000: New Blue Sun
New album: The actor and former half of superstar hip-hop duo Outcast makes a very surprising return after 17 years – a lengthy low-key, instrumental album built around his love of flute playing – minimal, meditational and relaxing
Read more
Vince Clarke: Songs of Silence
New album: The legendary synth-pop songwriter best known for Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure releases, at last, his first solo album, a mesmeric, ambient, darkly sci-fi cinematic work made from modular synthesisers
Read more
Hania Rani: Ghosts
New album: The Berlin-based Polish singer, pianist and composer returns with her bewitching voice, elevating, ethereal, minimalistic, ambient electronica and classical, with guests Patrick Watson, Ólafur Arnalds and Duncan Bellamy of Portico Quartet
Read more
Art 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 more
Sigur Rós: ÁTTA is their first album for 10 years
New album: With climate change ever on on the horizon, a beautiful, moving, melancholy, ethereal and dynamic LP by the elemental Icelandic experimental band, their first for a decade, with Kjartan Sveinsson rejoining since he left 2012, to complete the trio with frontman Jónsi and bassist Georg Holm
Read more