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ELIZA: The Darkening Green
New album: The London artist Eliza Caird (formerly under the mainstream pop moniker Eliza Doolittle) returns with more of the cool, slow, sensual, gentle, sophisticated experimental soul-funk style evolving from her 2022 album A Sky Without Stars, here with particularly polished, silky, stripped back grooves and vocals
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waterbaby: Memory Be A Blade
New album: A delicate, experimental, understated soulful chamber pop debut by the pure-voiced Stockholm-born singer-songwriter (aka Kendra Egerbladh) in 25-minute, eight-track release of lo-fi, lyrically semi-improvised numbers about heartbreak and self-renewal in a world of gorgeous musical sensations
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War Child: HELP(2) follows 1995’s first compilation with another impressive range of music and artists
New album: Not only a timely and topical milestone charity record following the first in 1995 to help bring aid and wide variety of support to children in war zones around he world, but an impressive double-LP array of stellar British and international talent and powerful, poignant 23 songs from Arctic Monkeys to Young Fathers
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DEADLETTER: Existence Is Bliss
New album: This second LP by the South Yorkshire/London six-piece expands their post-punk sound palette with a collection of arresting, thrumming songs, often dark and challenging, with richly exploratory lyrics across dystopian and existential questions, yet despite a climate of difficult, shows how gasping for life’s oxygen is essential
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Lala Lala: Heaven 2
New album: Moving from Chicago to New Mexico, Reykjavík, then London and now Los Angeles, the UK-born artist Lillie West’s experimental indie dream pop is a fascinating release about restless escapism while trying to stay where she is
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Gorillaz: The Mountain
New album: Released with an art book, new games, and extended videos, a multicultural, multifarious and multilingual return for the collective cartoon pop-hip-hop project led by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, with many intercontinental guest appearances, and a particular Indian musical and visual flavour centred on fictional Himalayan peak as metaphor for life’s journey and illusionary truths
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Altin Gün: Garip
New album: The Grammy-nominated Turkish psych-groove quintet from Amsterdam return with a stylish and expansive sixth LP — a heartfelt tribute to the work of the legendary Turkish folk bard Neşet Ertaş (1938–2012), a legend of Anatolian music
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Peaches: No Lube So Rude
New album: Unapologetically brash, overtly sexual, crazily catchy and entertaining, the charismatic, colourful Canadian electroclash and musician and performance artist Merrill Beth Nisker returns with her seventh LP and first for 11 years, a striking mix of sex, gender identity, freedom of expression, and an antidote to miserable times
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Apparat: A Hum of Maybe
New album: The sixth LP and the first for six years by the German experimental electronic artist Sascha Ring (Grammy nominated for 2019’s LP5), on the theme of flux and uncertainty, balancing family and work life, and built on the back of stressful three years of writer’s block but filled with unusual sonic textures, sonic and acoustic and vulnerable emotions
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Hen Ogledd: DISCOMBOBULATED
New album: Wonderfully colourful, mystical and socio-political, the British psychedelic-folk-rock quartet return with their special brand of eccentric, oddball originality, here including Welsh poems, ‘bard rap’ and an a protest manifesto for social change and mental wellbeing in a world gone mad
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Hemlocke Springs: The Apple Tree Under the Sea
New album: Lauded by the likes of Chappell Roan and Doja Cat, and now with a big Tiktok fanbase for her oddball videos, a quirkily original, humorous, melodious DayGlo DIY-ethic 80s-influenced synth pop debut LP by North Carolina’s Isimeme Udu
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Daphni: Butterfly
New album: Following his 2024 release as Caribou with Honey, Canadian composer and musician Dan Snaith returns as his other moniker, the dance/electronica and instrumental side with a selection of fun experimental sounds loosely evocative of the gently fluttering insect
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Congratulations: Join Hands
New album: Enormously fun, inventive, experimental, colourful pop-art-rock by the Brighton quartet of Jamie Chellar (guitar), Greg Burns (bass), James Gillingham (drums) and Leah Stanhope on vocals, bringing a cocktail of 80s pop and 00s indie through humour, mischief and clever, quirky musicality
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Puma Blue: Croak Dream
New album: A mesmeric, experimental, otherworldly, hypnotic fusion of trip-hop, dub, electronica of nocturnal ambience, haunting, intimate vocals and sensual grooves by the south London/Atlanta multi-instrumentalist and producer Jacob Allen, centred around the existential theme of strangely knowing when and how were going to die
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Ulrika Spacek: EXPO
New album: Arresting, intelligent art rock and electronica, krautrock and psychedelia and a marriage of the analogue and electronic, all intermingle wonderfully different and intelligent new LP by the London band fronted by Rhys Edwards
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Mandy, Indiana: URGH
New album: An extraordinary second album by the Manchester experimental noise and electronica quartet of the visceral and playful, protest and cartharsis, in a fierce, throbbing, shape-shifting, genre-bursting tour de force that’s responds to very challenging times
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Geologist: Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights?
New album: The hurdy-gurdy never quite sounded like this before. Animal Collective multi-instrumentalist Brian Weitz is the final member of that experimental collective to release a solo album, and it’s a bizarre journey of oddball sounds and instruments looped through guitar pedal effects krautrock repetitive, meditational exploratory spirit, inhaled through the titular reference to his past as a smoker
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Delaney Bailey: Concave
New album: A highly absorbing, potent, intense yet understated, ethereally sound-sculptured debut by the Indiana-raised Chicago artist who crafts intimate noir-goth dream pop across themes of vulnerability and mental health
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Toni Geitani: Wahj
New album: A truly magical, highly original, otherworldly landscape of experimental Arabic, electronica, avant-pop, dark ambient and industrial forms by the Beirut-born, Amsterdam-based musician, sound designer, producer, film-maker singer and composer
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Plantoid: FLARE
New album: The nimbly inventive, experimental prog trio from Brighton return following their debut LP Terrapath, with an evolved, often catchier style of oddball riffs, licks, clever tempo changes, unusual rhythms, and unconventional chord progressions with a stirring of jazz inflections, dream pop, psych rock and shoegaze
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