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Poetic ends: friends Marianne Faithfull with Warren Ellis
Album review: Alongside music by the Australian composer and musician, the iconic singer recites well-known poems from Coleridge, Keats, Wordsmith and more, with addition sounds by friends Nick Cave, Brian Eno and cellist Vincent Ségal
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Matthew E. White and Lonnie Holley
Album review: This first collaborative release between the Virginia songwriter, producer, and founder of Spacebomb Records and the Alabama sculptor is an experimental fusion of jazz, funk, electronica and exclamatory spoken-word observation
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Ben Howard’s fourth LP Collections From The Whiteout
Album review: After 2018’s Noonday Dream, the British singer-songwriter returns with a collaborative LP with guitarist Aaron Dessner of the National adding other talents that help stretches his styles beyond folk into electronica and beyond
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Godspeed You! Black Emperor: G_d’s Pee AT STATE'S END!,
Album review: The Montreal post-rockers return with their seventh and among their best to date, expressing the all the doom and the defiance of recent times, using field recordings, atmospheric orchestration, drone sounds, swingtime crescendos, and rich layers towers of distorted clarion sound
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Ryley Walker’s Course in Fable
Album review: A 10th album of seven highly agile, experimental prog-jazz acoustic guitar-based numbers deftly performed by the Illinois-born, New York-based singer-songwriter and produced by Tortoise's John McEntire
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OH NO …
Album review: This 12th album by the Californian experimental electro-pop, postpunk band led by Jaime Stewart may be the most unusual of year, an oddball set of diverse duets with many guests that sometimes has the melodramatic quality of later Scott Walker
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Sketchy: Tune-Yards
Album review: Rhythmically complex, and restlessly clever, the latest release by California’s Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner wrestles with a variety of issues from gentrification to gender privilege and climate disaster
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Circularities and patterns in nature: Hannah Peel’s Fir Wave
Album review: The electronic music composer’s mesmeric LP is inspired by the cyclical and fractal patterns of nature with access to and reinterpretations of the original music of the celebrated 1972 KPM 1000 series: Electrosonic, the music of Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
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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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