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Laurie Anderson: Amelia
New album: The veteran American experimental artist and musician returns with an evocative first-person narrative album charting the fateful summer 1937 six-week global flight of the pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart, with orchestral strings from Czech orchestra Filharmonie Brno and gorgeous vocals by Britain’s Anohni
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Susanna: Meditations on Love
New album: The experimental Norwegian singer and composer Susanna Wallumrød’s LP is a releases a striking, eccentric, beautifully bewitching collection about relationships, concentrating not on the giddy joy of falling in love, nor breakups, but the oddness in between
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Arooj Aftab: Night Reign
New album: An exquisitely dark, lingering fourth LP from the Grammy-winning Pakistani-American singer and composer with a mix of songs in Urdu and English, her resonant, pure voice accompanied by rippling piano, harp, guitar and more in a dark landscape of folk, jazz and traditional music
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Kelly Moran: Moves In The Field
New album: A beautiful, graceful and in some ways surreal seventh LP by the New York pianist, experimental composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, here adorned with an unusual self-duet - playing alongside a programmable Yamaha Disklavier programmable piano
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Moor Mother: The Great Bailout
New album: The American poet and musician Camae Ayewa returns with with a pointed, powerful release aimed at Britain’s murky, slavery-profiting colonial past, with a vivid, profound, visceral, declamatory narrative and soundscape that charts many injustices about wealth and compensation
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Strange Boy: Kieran Brunt and Matt Huxley
New album: After three EPs, the London experimental duo Kieran Brunt and Matt Huxley’s debut LP is an ethereally beautiful, impressionistic, distinctively delicate fusion of very pure, high falsetto vocals, and sparse, classically influenced electronica
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Luca D'Alberto - In Our Hearts
New album: A serenely beautiful third album by the Italian composer and instrumentalist with a cinematic, symphonic work of 17 tracks over three sections, largely with piano and strings, but with sprinklings of electronica and guest vocalists
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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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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 …
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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
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Public Service Broadcasting: This New Noise
New album: A tremendous noise indeed about radio, as the vintage footage-inspired experimentalist band led by J Wildgoose Esq release a remastered album version of their acclaimed 2022 BBC Proms performance from London’s Royal Albert Hall with the full BBC Symphony Orchestra
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Sufjan Stevens: Reflections
New album: An entrancing, rippling, nimble-fingered classical score newly recorded by the multi-talented New York singer-songwriter, written for two pianists, notably here Timo Andres and Conor Hanick, and originally commissioned for a 2019 ballet in collaboration with choreographer Justin Peck
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Ligeti Quartet x Anna Meredith: Nuc
New album: A dynamic, mesmeric collaboration as acclaimed modern classical string ensemble play career works by the Scottish experimental composer in multi-textured, polyrhythmic, interpretations, using arrangements by viola player Richard Jones
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Lucinda Chua: YIAN
New album: A beautiful, sensual, intimate debut LP by the Milton Keynes-raised singer-songwriter, themed around personal history and identity, the title (燕) meaning the swallow bird in Chinese, part of her given name, Siew Yian from her Chinese-Malaysian heritage
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Benjamin Clementine: And I Have Been
New album: Sublime third album by the British singer-songwriter, actor and 2015 Mercury winner, whose powerful, expressive, soul and gospel voice brims with elegance and stark emotion in stripped back, tender songs that capture many forms of pain, but also defiantly soar
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Sea Souls (live) by Anna Phoebe and friends
New album: Celebrating and inspired by the beauty and sounds of the ocean, the Kent-based violinist and multi-genre composer, reworks this beautiful, revitalised version of last year’s lockdown-created original album, now given new evolved life by an expanded group of instrumentalists and vocalists
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Gentle Sinners: These Actions Cannot Be Undone
New album: An intriguing, innovative new collaborative project by James Graham of The Twilight Sad and Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap culminates in this mysterious, genre-defying, experimental album of oddly poetic numbers
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Sault spring another surprise with sixth album Air
New album: A sixth album in just three years by the collective run by prolific producer Inflo, aka Dean Josiah Cover, has a striking new direction - instrumental, orchestral works with brass and largely non-verbal choir parts, yet this cinematic release still has echoes of the black experience
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Daniel Rossen’s debut solo album
New album: A mesmerically rich, beautifully swirling fusion of acoustic and flamenco guitar, symphonic folk, classic and jazz by by the Grizzly Bear guitarist and vocalist whose voice has the sensitivity, warmth and honest of Elliott Smith, in this wonderful solo debut
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Father John Misty: Chloë and the Next 20th Century
New album: Lavishly orchestrated, marrying the ironic and the romantic, filled with stories and profound lines, Josh Tillman’s theatrical fifth LP is perhaps his finest yet, a fusion of the cinematic, jazz, swing, country, and folk-pop
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