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Lambchop’s 16th studio album, The Bible
New album: Tender, strange, eclectic, Kurt Wagner returns with a 16th album a long way from those earlier heady day releases of of Americana and alt-country, but one filled with fascinating oddities, reflections on mortality, with fusions of jazz, electronica, soul, classical and modulated sounds and voices
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The Mars Volta return with their first LP in a decade
New album: After a decade of omertà and schism, the eclectic Texanprog-rock experimental duo of Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and band finally reunite with a mesmerically unique blend of funk, rock, psychedelia, Cuban and Afro-Cuban drumming and English and Spanish lyrics
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Fluid songwriting: Bret McKenzie: Songs Without Jokes
New album: A solo release by half of Flight Of The Conchords presents a challenge to escape the comedy schtick, but the New Zealander manages tuneful seriousness, particularly on eco themes, by echoing Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson and Dory Previn with mix of 70s piano pop, showtunes and jazz styles
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Laufey knows all about …
New album: An exquisite debut by the Los Angeles-based Icelandic-Chinese jazz-pop artist, whose pure voice, alongside mostly acoustic guitar or piano backing, brings a timeless collection of gentle, old-school, charming, candid, singer-songwriter love songs reminiscent of Karen Carpenter to Peggy Lee
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Delicately melancholy: Cass McCombs’ Heartmind
New album: This tenth LP by the American folk, psych and alt-country singer-songwriter brings songs of perfect, effortless poise and weight, with touching, melancholy, moving, philosophical tales of musicians and soldiers, karaoke machines and fast-food restaurants, and is dedicated to departed musicians Chet JR White, Sam Jayne and Neal Casal
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Kokoroko: Could We Be More
New album: Variously mesmeric, chilled, smooth, staccato, slow then pacy, after many gigs and smaller releases the eight-piece London jazz and Afrobeat band finally have an LP of stirring (mostly) instrumentals that mix a variety of influences from Lagos to London
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Mingus
New album: This vibrantly uplifting and energised concert album is a centenary birth celebration of the great upright bassist and composer by a nine-piece band performing his work at Berlin’s Philharmonie hall
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Tuck in to Pan Amsterdam’s tasty new salad of words, trumpet and beats
New album: Wonderfully entertaining, droll, humorous and articulate new LP by the persona played by Leron Thomas, the Texan New York-based rapper and jazz trumpeter who clever, food thematic hip hop with his chief instrument and beats by friend Damu The Fudgemunk
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Max Pope: Counting Sheep
Debut album: Smooth, finely crafted, lyrically thoughtful fusions of funk, pop, bossa nova, blues, jazz and rock with a cleverly summer, lazy understated feel by the 27-year-old singer-songwriter from south London and Brighton
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Black Midi’s Hellfire
New album: With heatwaves and wildfires ablaze globally, there could hardly be a more prescient title or dystopian theme by the London prog-rock-jazz experimentalist, whose third LP is strangely among their most accessible among its lightning riffs and stop-start energy of King Crimson or even Buckethead proportions
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Moor Mother’s Jazz Codes
New album: A mesmeric new album that began as poetry book by the American artist Camae Ayewa mixing jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop and spoken word in her own form of Black Quantum Futurism group, her multi-artform fusion of black history ontology
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Forgiveness’s debut album
New album: A mesmeric, magical and strangely beautiful debut fusing electronica, acoustic, jazz, and ambient in these instrumentals that conjure bucolic landscapes, twittering flutey birds and the natural world by Jack Wyllie of Portico Quartet, JQ and Richard Pike
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Moonchild Sanelly
New album: Stylish, charismatic, sexy, with a unique mix of South African dance music – gqom, amapiano, hip-hop, jazz and electronica, with a persona somewhere between Eartha Kitt, Nicki Minaj or Doja Cat, the starry, blue-haired Port Elizabeth-born rapper, model and designer’s fabulous second and double LP is all about ‘baddies’ and personal empowerment
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The prolific Shabaka Hutchings is behind many projects, but this is his debut solo record
New album: An exquisite debut solo album by the acclaimed British saxophonist, known for Sons of Kemet, the Comet Is Coming and Shabaka & the Ancestors, here with soft, shimmering, intertwining sounds including the kora, shakuhachi Japanese flute, and delicate percussion
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Obongjayar’s debut album
The Smile trio’s first album
New album: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner join forces in album of vivid, eerie, ghostly beauty, packed with fabulous guitar and bass riffs and rhythms, reminiscent of cinematic work as well as In Rainbows
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Everything Was Beautiful: the ninth Spiritualized album.
New album: Just the ticket – a terrific album of gentle psychedelic beauty by Jason Spaceman aka Pierce, with just seven songs but of inspiring, expansive space krautrock with a swirling orchestra of many instruments combined with an easy, but emotional vocal delivery
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Poppy Ajudha’s The Power In Us
Debut album: Powerful indeed, in voice and message, on the political, social and personal, and after five or more years of singles and EPs, the debut LP by the British singer-songwriter who fuses soul, dubstep, jazz and pop
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Daniel Rossen’s debut solo album
New album: A mesmerically rich, beautifully swirling fusion of acoustic and flamenco guitar, symphonic folk, classic and jazz by by the Grizzly Bear guitarist and vocalist whose voice has the sensitivity, warmth and honest of Elliott Smith, in this wonderful solo debut
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Father John Misty: Chloë and the Next 20th Century
New album: Lavishly orchestrated, marrying the ironic and the romantic, filled with stories and profound lines, Josh Tillman’s theatrical fifth LP is perhaps his finest yet, a fusion of the cinematic, jazz, swing, country, and folk-pop
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