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David Balfe
Album review: Moving, passionate, angry, grief-stricken and tender, this mix of beats, samples and striking spoken word lyrics by the Dublin performer and producer David Balfe is a powerful tribute to a lost friend
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Wondrous wallowing: Great Spans of Muddy Time by William Doyle
Album review: Inspired by the work of Robert Wyatt, early Eno, Berlin-era Bowie and Syd Barrett, this is intriguingly experimental, challenging but at times beautiful electronica work by the artist previously known as East India Youth
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Ideas constantly sprouting: Chad VanGaalen’s latest album
Album review: An inventively eclectic homegrown release of tasty psychedelia, krautrock and folk by the Calgary songwriter and eccentric animator who uses a huge variety of instruments including his own invented lithophone
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House Music is Bell Orchestre’s first album in a decade
Album review: A wondrously absorbing and beautiful first release in a decade by the Montreal-based group of musicians with 10 tracks flow seamlessly into each other via coalescing classical and electronic instrumentation.
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A wonderful vocal new version of Gazelle Twin’s 2018 album Pastoral
Album review: An extraordinary reworking of one of the most brilliantly evocative albums of recent times, Elizabeth Bernholz’s 2018 LP Pastoral is re-animated with electronic drone choir NYX to create equally profound and disturbing versions of seven songs and a new title track
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Sunburned Hand Of The Man’s latest album
Album review: An eclectic and fascinating album of newly edited tracks by the prolific Boston Massachusetts collective, covering everything from gentle acoustic to thrash metal, indie, psych, electronica, krautrock and everything in between
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Jane Weaver’s 11th album, Flock
Album review: The Liverpool and Widnes-raised artist returns with a mesmeric and uplifting 11th album that takes a variety of elements - electronica, psychedelia and acid folk morphing into fabulous alternative pop record that really takes flight
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Smerz’s album Believer
Album review: From stark and abstract, to serene, ambient and dancefloor, the debut LP from the Norwegian duo Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg is an experimental adventure taking in everything from classical to techno
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In Quiet Moments
Album review: Partly released in December, now in full, this is a supreme soul and jazz crossover double album with a stellar cast of guest vocalists, by Bella Union boss Simon Raymonde and former Jesus & Mary Chain drummer Richie Thomas
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Nick Cave and Warren Ellis: symbiotic
Album review: "A brutal but very beautiful record nested in a communal catastrophe” is how Nick Cave describes this Covid-19 lockdown-inspired release with his longtime Bad Seed collaborator, and so it is
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As The Love Continues, Mogwai’s 10th album
Album review: The Glasgow band’s 10th album in a 25-year career is full of their usual dynamic contrasts and soaring cinematic, experimental passages, but strip back to older styles on which they build newer sounds
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Virginia Wing’s fourth album Private Life
Album review: Offbeat, eclectic, meandering electronica with oodles of oddball sax and percussion mark this absorbing and original fourth album by the Manchester trio with commentary addressing issues from consumer capitalism to social media and misogyny
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Shopping dilemma: from the video for Free From Gravity
Album review: This fourth LP by the Edinburgh-formed, London-based art-rock quartet contains many of their signature sounds but also contains space-travelling new textures, such as breathy guest vocals by Charlotte Gainsbourg
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Album review: Floating somewhere between semi-acoustic prog-rock, jazz, folk, modern classical and spoken word, the seven-piece experimental London band have long been lauded as the next great thing from the Windmill, Brixton
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Ann B Savage: nothing common about this turn
Album review: The London singer-songwriter’s cleverly titled, superb debut is bird-themed, exquisitely beautiful and intimate. It exposes her rich, deep, velvety voice, one that gently warbles snd smoothly soars from a nest of various mostly acoustic strings. Utterly gorgeous
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Album review: Liberating, refreshing, eccentric, with a playfully light touch and flourishes of flute and feminist theory garnish this solo debut by the singer who works with Holly Herndon singer and is half of Italian synth new wave duo Itaca
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Wide, Wide River
Album review: After his previous solo LP, 2019's The Route to the Harmonium, filled with experimental instruments, the Scottish singer-songwriter releases another beautiful LP of intimate, rich, wistful songs with new collaborators
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Emeka Ogboh: Beyond the Yellow Haze
Album review: The Nigerian sound and installation artist best known for his soundscapes of life in Lagos releases a fascinating LP that combines those sounds with electronica to capture the hustle-and-bustle of that busy city
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Isles, the second LP, but a long way from the second release by Bicep
Album review: After 2017's eponymous album, the London-based but Belfast born electronic/ dance DJ musical magpie duo of Matthew McBriar and Andrew Ferguson return with 90s rave nostalgia filled with eclectic twists
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A landscape of words and sounds: We Come From The Sun
Album review: A refreshing and inspirational release of 10 contemporary poets performing their work set to music and field recordings, including MA.Moyo, Lemn Sissay, and Adam Horovitz in collaboration put together by the singer and radio presenter
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