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For Those I Love: Carving The Stone
New album: The Dublin poet, performer and producer David Balfe returns after his 2021 self-titled debut, less about specific grief, more powered with with rich, articulate anger and gnarly narratives highlighting injustice, poverty, high rents in his home city and dysfunctional modern life across an energised and emotional soundtrack
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Deki Alem: Forget In Mass
New album: Stockholm’s Swedish-Ghanian twin duo Sammy and Johnny Boakye Bennett bring a superbly stylish blend of sharp hip-hop, punk, dark, seething industrial, electronica and dance music with just a dash of the Prodigy, Alabama 3 and 90s trip-hop
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The New Eves: The New Eve Is Rising
New album: Experimental, eclectic psych-folk influenced in part by Cale-era Velvet Underground, Raincoats and Slits proto-feminist post-punk a dash of the village fete arts-and-crafts Midsommar look all conjure up in this exciting, passionate, theatrically entertaining debut by the Brighton quartet
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big long sun: whatever (whatever)
New album: A quirkily catchy, lo-fi, psychedelic-funk, dadaist-influenced, wonderfully oddball, original release by the Midlands-born, Brighton-based poet, painter, film-maker and multi-instrumentalist Jamie Broughton
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Editrix: The Big E
New album: A fabulous third LP of inventive, restlessly fast, angular, infectious experimental avant-rock by the dynamic Easthampton, Massachusetts trio of guitarist and singer Wendy Eisenberg, bassist Steve Cameron and drummer Josh Daniel
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Fever Ray: The Year of The Radical Romantics
New album: Disturbing, striking and brilliant, this is a mix of old kindled magically into new from the innovative Swedish artist Karin Dreijer, with live-to-tape studio highlights from her acclaimed third album, 2023’s Radical Romantics, plus new iterations from 2017’s Plunge and early classics, performed with her tour musicians
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Madeline Kenney: Kiss From The Balcony
New album: In this follow-up to 2023’s excellent A New Reality Mind, the Oakland indie artist brings expansive, experimental electronic dynamism and particularly rich texture to her music, working with friends Ben Sloan and Stephen Patota, and exploring themes of broken relationships, solitude, idealised romance, resentment, and womanhood
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Gina Birch’s second solo album, Trouble
New album: The veteran Raincoats co-founder, bass player, songwriter, film-maker and feminist artist’s second solo album is a passionate, political and personal release, outspoken, but also eccentric and eclectically introspective, mixing post-punk, dub, pop and experimental rock
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Disiniblud’s debut album
New album: Truly mesmeric, exquisitely beautiful, original, intimate, eclectic sounds are summoned up and simmer in this debut collaborative album project by the Brooklyn composers, producers and multi-instrumentalists Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith
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Gwenno: Utopia
New album: After three LPs looking back at her childhood upbringing, now 44, the Welsh singer-songwriter Gwenno Saunders’ polished, candid experimental fourth pop album recalls a period of young adulthood, from dancer in Las Vegas to a pub cleaner and also singer in The Pipettes in London, having adventures, experimenting and struggling with self-determination
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Poor Creature: All Smiles Tonight
New album: Mixing tradition and the contemporary with a transportive, striking sound and delivery, ancient, emotional elegiac folk numbers are revived and revitalised in this stirring, stylish debut LP by Irish musicians Ruth Clinton, Cormac MacDiarmada and John Dermody (from the bands Landless and Lankum respectively), produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy
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A tasty diet of clever lyrics: Big Special’s National Average
New album: Following 2024’s LP Postindustrial Hometown Blues, the Walsall duo of Joe Hicklin and Callum Moloney return with their distinctive, Midlands earthy drawl, drolly humorous, dark and oddly profound, poetic lyrics on the absurdity of life, filled with killer lines, many animal metaphors, spoken and sung to punchy post-punk and experimental sounds
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Kae Tempest: Self Titled
New album: A fifth LP by the acclaimed London writer and rapper brings further profound and passionate wordplay themed around their identity, personal story, and dark social issue themes, with a newer sometimes synth-pop sound and guests including Neil Tennant and Young Fathers
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Duo Ruut: Ilmateade
New album: A mesmeric, gorgeous new LP of experimental and traditional acoustic psych-folk songs by the Estonian duo of Ann-Lisett Rebane and Katariina Kivi, who write, sing and play facing each other, primarily on the kannel or (Estonian zither), using texts and repetitive motifs of runo song, oral poetry specific to the Baltic Finnic languages, here exploring the deep connections between weather and emotion
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Isaiah Hull: POCOMANIA
New album: The Manchester-born performance poet, rapper and self-defined “stand-up tragedian” releases a striking, distinctively styled experimental hip-hop debut with a title inspired by his heritage – meaning the Jamaican folk religion combining revivalism with ancestor worship and spirit possession
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Tropical Fuck Storm: Fairyland Codex
New album: The Melbourne quartet return with a fourth LP of unique, acerbic, eclectic post-punk and dadaistic psychedelia – droll, dark, menacing and humorous, here themed underworld of fateful characters facing the collapse of society
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Patrick Wolf: Crying The Neck
New album: Dramatic, flamboyant, emotionally charged, melancholy, powerful chamber pop by the English singer-songwriter blessed with a powerful high tenor voice, returning after a career lull, and inspired and recharged by his new home on the Kent coastline
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Endless musicianship: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: Phantom Island
New album: An impressive 27th album already by the unstoppably prolific Australian band, and this is one of their most experimental and theatrical releases yet, less prog- and riff-based, more harking back to the days of dramatic, full-on, 1970s rock operas and musicals with dynamic orchestral pop, funk and jazz
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WITCH: SOGOLO
New album: Zambia’s zamrock pioneers with (with the acronym ‘We Intend To Cause Mischief’) and still fronted by original member Emanuel "Jagari" Chanda, return with their special fusion of infectious psychedelic, 60s garage-inspired funk rock and and afrobeat, with a meaty, melodious, selection of catchy new numbers
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Tiberius B: NEVERYTHING
New album: After a series of striking singles and EPs, a debut LP of cleverly nuanced experimental pop exploring diametric forces of self and relationships by the London-based artist born as Frank Belcourt, from Cortes Island, BC, Canada, co-produced by Dan Carey and Jamie Neville
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