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Ben Howard: Is It?
New album: Lush yet innovative, introspective folk-pop by English singer-songwriter and composer in his sixth album, influenced still by John Martyn, this LP is filled with unusual sounds, rhythms and effects and electronica to reflect his shock experience of two mini-strokes in 2022
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Swans: The Beggar
New album: This 16th album in just over four decades by the veteran American experimental band fronted Michael Gira brings brooding, dark menace, written in lockdown, a moving, powerful contemplation of mortality that’s oddly stirring
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Django Django: Off Planet
New album: A 21-song mega-release by the innovative, experimental London-based art-rock and pop quartet features a variety of great guest vocalists with music that plays around more in the electronica-dance genre and various world music beats, but overall feels more like four EPs
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Meshell Ndegeocello: The Omnichord Real Book, out on Blue Note
New album: Classy, supercool and stylish, the revered German-born American bassist and vocalist returns with an album of distinctive and varied fusion of funk, jazz, Afrobeat, electronica and hip hop with a variety of distinctive guests
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Ursa Major Moving Group
New album: A stellar, innovative and absorbing debut LP project by London multi-instrumentalist, composer and writer Ursula Russell fusing folk, chamber pop and gentle post-punk
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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
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Another landmark: Squid’s second album, O Monolith
New album: The second album by the Brighton-formed experimental post-punks after 2021’s Bright Green Field sees them push into abstract prog, folk, jazz and other musical territory of light and shade, loud to intimate and intricate, all with sharp sense of life’s tragedy, comedy and absurdity
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Christine and the Queens: Paranoïa, Angels, True Love
New album: French artist Héloïse Letissier aka Chris, now using the he/his pronoun, returns with a passionate, epic, sensual, existential synth-pop triple LP odyssey, fuelled by the grief over mother’s death, and expressed through concepts of inner angel voices, including a guest appearance by Madonna
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Baxter Dury: I Thought I Was Better Than You
New album: Droll, dark, crisply phrased, downbeat, self-deprecating, sleazy and funky? It can only be the West London artist, in a candid, unflinching sixth solo album that draws on his strange childhood as son of famous Ian, echoing his brilliantly funny and painful 2022 memoir Chaise Longue
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Water From Your Eyes: Everyone's Crushed
New album: Uncategorisably ear-catching, experimental indie-pop by the Brooklyn duo Rachel Brown and Nate Amos, in a fifth LP filled with oddball, interweaving sounds, textures and landscapes, electronica to distorted guitar rock, absurdist clever lyrics and melodies
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Clark - Sus Dog
New album: Themed around ideas of trust, enthralling, intelligent experimental electronica alt-pop by the British artist Christopher Clark in a work that has occasional echoes Radiohead, flavoured by guest vocalist Thom Yorke who is also executive producer
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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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Kesha: Gag Order
New album: Filled with rage, simmering visceral self-hatred and raw emotional examination, but also many beautiful harmonies and dynamics, the fifth album by Kesha Rose Sebert (formerly Ke$ha), is fuelled by the fallout of a music industry lawsuit, but also her restless creativity
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Rahill: Flowers At Your Feet
New album: Cool, stylishly original trip-hop, jazz, alt-rock and pop by the New York Iranian-American singer-songwriter Rahill Jamalifard on a deeply personal release which also includes guests Beck and Jasper Marsalis
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Comfort: What's Bad Enough?
New album: Truly original and arresting cross-genre electronica-postpunk-hip-hop by the Glasgow sibling duo of vocalist and transwoman Natalie and instrumentalist brother Sean McGhee who challenge gender norms and ideas of beauty
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The Orb - Prism
New album: The veteran dance music and ambient noise duo still with co-founder Alex Paterson return with a vibrant release of cosmic electronica, dub and reggae, house, drum n’ bass, guest vocalists plus newscaster and other sampled voices
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GoGo Penguin: Everything Is Going To Be OK
New album: An evocative, imaginative, cinematic ninth LP by the inventive Manchester experimental jazz trio this time with track ideas first utilising electronica turned into their vibrant acoustic playing of interweaving piano, drums and bass
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Tiny Ruins: Ceremony
New album: Gorgeously intricate, beautifully paced experimental folk comes in this fourth LP by the band of New Zealand’s Hollie Fullbrook, with songs that are poignant, melancholy, but also intelligently uplifting
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Skinny Pelembe: Hardly The Same Snake
New album: The eclectic experimentalist from Doncaster, aka Doya Beardmore, with roots also in Birmingham and Mozambique, comes up with a powerful, visceral new LP, spanning indie, avant-pop, hip-hop, rock, electronica, gospel and soaring soul
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Avalon Emerson’s new LP: & The Charm
New album: The San Francisco-born, Arizona-raised DJ and producer’s debut LP, after 2020’s Rotting Hills EP, is indeed a charm, one of dreamy electro-pop, not the first or last to be influenced by Cocteau Twins, but one also with lots of oddball originality and vivid, photography-like lyrics
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