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Arca’s Kick ii album, one of four visually arresting covers
After 2020’s Grammy-nominated KiCk i Venezuela-born, Barcelona-based cyber-looking trans electronic artist Alejandra Ghers doesn’t do things by halves – returning with a daunting but fascinating quadruple release of albums of various styles with 47 songs across 147 minutes
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Richard Dawson and Circle’s collaborative album Henki
New album: An entrancing, uplifting, brilliantly crafted and epic-feel mix of folk, prog and krautrock through tales of seeds, botany, history and myth by the Newcastle artist in collaboration with the Finnish metal band in a fabulous album unlike any other in 2021
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They Might Be Giants’ John Flansburgh and John Linnell
New album: New York’s original alt-rockers John Flansburgh and John Linnell return with their 23rd studio album of clever, whimsical, absurd and amusing songs, part of a project with an 8-track tape, another EP, and a bumper book of lyrics set in concrete poetry
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Radiohead’s KID A MNESIA
Reissue albums: An anniversary edition of two landmark albums, Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001) combined, but with a difference, with added tracks and alternate versions, harking back when the band expanded from rock into more experimental, krautrock and electronica territory
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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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New album: Perfect for long, dark, wintry nights, a beguilingly beautiful mix of medieval, folk, ghostly tales and fables mixed with the modern by Katharine Blake of Mediaeval Baebes and Miranda Sex Garden, collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Michael J York
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Going back to go forward: Nation of Language
New album: The follow-up to Introduction, Presence (2020), the Brooklyn trio continue in very likeable new wave synth vein, but dipping more into style of the 70s pioneers such as Kraftwerk and Neu! as well as early Human League and OMD
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Marta Del Grandi’s debut album Until We Fossilize
New album: This delicate, beautiful debut by the Italian singer from Milan with a jazz background infuses her songs with folk and classical and eastern elements in an LP inspired by the Greek myth of Amethyst who defies the patriarchy
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Sam Evian’s third album, Time To Melt
New album: Warm, woozy and fluid, an appropriate title for this super smooth third album by Sam Griffin Owens, the Brooklyn based artist, decorated with light funk, 70s psychedelic soul and lush, orchestral instrumentation
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Mysterious beauty: Fun House by Hand Habits
New album: New York-born Los Angeles-based artist Meg Duffy returns with her own distinctive form of electro-pop and Americana folk with very refined, dreamily sung songs that build on her excellent single Aquamarine
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La Luz, self-titled, is the band’s fourth studio album
New album: LA’s Shana Cleveland and co return with a fourth, self-titled LP of wonderful, atmospheric numbers of gentle, surf-noir folk-psychedelia of tremendous melody, rich vocal harmony, and guitar and sitar-pedal sheen
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Rebecca Taylor’s back
New album: Rotherham’s Rebecca Taylor returns with a second LP under her liberated moniker after Compliments Please with an even greater triumph of darkly humorous and caustic honesty topped with glorious gospel harmonies, big drums, orchestration and a celebration of emancipated womanhood
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Sympathy For Life by Parquet Courts
New album: After 2018’s acclaimed LP Wide Awake!, the Brooklyn band return with a sharp collection of post-punk intermingled with dance music that mixes funk, electronica, psychedelia and krautrock with improvisational energy
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Vanishing Twin’s Ookii Gekkou
New album: After 2019’s brilliant The Age of Immunology, a wondrously evocative and playful new LP by the London-based psychedelic experimentalists tinkering with krautrock, jazz and the avant-garde with sprinkles of Sun Ra to Alice Coltrane, Martin Denny and Ennio Morricone
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Talk Memory by BADBADNOTGOOD
New album: Mind-bending, mesmeric and complex but also accessible sixth album of jazz and prog by the band from Toronto, much via improvisation but also with a collaboration by legendary Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai
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Life of Mammals, the second album by Museum of Love
New album: Second album by the New York duo of drummer and founding LCD Soundsystem member Pat Mahoney and singer Dennis McNany, aka Jee Day in a work that builds beautifully in that distinctive DFA style of art rock and dance music
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Kit Sebastian’s second album – Melodi
New album: A magical, mesmeric second album by the London-based French and Turkish pair of Kit Martin and Merve Erdem is a unique fusion of vocals, jazz, funk, psych, featuring zithers, harpsichords, congas, bongos, bulbul tarang, balalaikas, organs, and saxophone
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Astro Tough
New album: Wonderfully eccentric, humorously droll and inventive second album by the highly original duo of producer and instrumentalist David Wrench and artist and vocalist Evangeline Ling filled with pathos as well as energy
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Public Service Broadcasting’s Berlin album
New album: The historical archive-inspired band’s fourth LP is entirely centred around the city of Berlin, and is a far more impressionist and instrumental than previous, with German language vocals and a nod to Weimar era and David Bowie’s Low album
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Witty, vivid, dramatic: Hamish Hawk
New album: Theatrical, wittily delivered and filled with wonderfully literate and emotive narratives and images, the new album by the Edinburgh indie singer-songwriter very much keeps up the striking, thrumming single Caterpillar, previously highlighted on Song of the Day.
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