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A Certain Ratio: 1982
New album: The Manchester post-punk veterans Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson, return with a sparklingly eclectic record of electronica, dance, jazz, funk, Afrobeat and more with a retrospective feel on their history
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Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus together as boygenius
New album: After 2018’s EP, a fabulous LP debut of folk, Americana and indie combining the talents of American singer-songwriter trio of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, who have each also released three successful solo LPs
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JPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown: Scaring The Hoes
New album: A frenetic, eclectic, mischievously ironic and culture-bashing collaboration between iconoclastic Brooklyn rapper Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks, and his Detroit counterpart Daniel Dewan Sewell in a crazed mish-mash of samples, voices and rhythmic restlessness
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Caroline Rose: The Art of Forgetting
Lucinda Chua: YIAN
New album: A beautiful, sensual, intimate debut LP by the Milton Keynes-raised singer-songwriter, themed around personal history and identity, the title (燕) meaning the swallow bird in Chinese, part of her given name, Siew Yian from her Chinese-Malaysian heritage
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Depeche Mode: Memento Mori
New album: With one of the best in over 20 years, Basildon’s veteran electro-pop specialists Martin Gore and Dave Gahan return, now sadly without Andy Fletcher who died last year, but with a album about sex, death and mutability that is also a tribute to their lost longtime colleague
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Lana Del Rey returns with her ninth album
New album: The queen of noir returns with her ninth LP – steeped in powerful, beautiful, piano-based numbers of melancholy and rich vocal harmonies, with rumination about dangerous love, religion and of course, death
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Death & Vanilla: Flicker
New album: The trio from Malmö, Sweden return with another selection of smooth, delicate, vintage Moog synth dream pop and psych-folk, more upbeat than 2019’s Are You A Dreamer, but still creating a musical “melancholic utopia”
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Emilíana Torrini & The Colorist Orchestra: Racing The Storm
New album: Charming, beautifully arranged acoustic intricacy in this crisp collaboration between the clear-voiced Icelandic-Italian singer-songwriter and Belgian multi-instrumentalist duo Aarich Jespers and Kobe Proesmans and friends
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Black Honey’s third LP, A Fistful of Peaches
New album: Frenetic, fuzzy-guitar shoegaze and punchy riot grrrl indie pop by the Brighton quartet in this strong third album with a running theme of fighting for good mental health
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M83: Fantasy
New album: Over two decades in, this ninth LP by the French electronica band of Anthony Gonzalez is epic, big-scale 70-minute sprawl of smooth, retro-synth pop and ambient indulgence, that has an almost cinematic scale
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Yves Tumor’s latest album: Praise A Lord Who Chews …
New album: A mouthful of a title but another striking, genre-spanning fifth LP by the unique Knoxville-raised Sean Bowie, whose extraordinary non-gender presence adorns this mix of thrumming postpunk, indie R&B, trip-hop, funk, glam, sensual soul and psychedelia
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Technology + Teamwork: We Used To Be Friends
New album: Sarah Jones and Anthony Silvester’s debut brings experimental electro-pop, new wave, R&B, disco and more, from brilliant bangers to the oddball and bizarre, and influences from West Coast 60s synthesis movement to late 70s and early 80s Cabaret Voltaire with little dash of Yello
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Tales of spoken woe: Hack-Poets Guild’s Blackletter Garland
New album: Marry Waterson of the famous folk family, singer Lisa Knapp and sound sculptor and film-maker Nathaniel Mann form a unique new trio in this engaging, but more often dark concoction of words and music of traditional and original material
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Unknown Mortal Orchestra: V
New album: New Zealand’s Ruban Nielson and co return with a post-lockdown double album, a fifth LP keeping that distinctive dirty mic vocal filter, and a mixture of the upbeat and downbeat
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Frankie Rose: Love As Projection
New album: Dreamy, sophisticated, literate, soft-sheen new wave electro-pop in this fifth solo album by the long established New York artist and former member of Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls
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Dutch Uncles: True Entertainment
New album: Vibrant, tight, bright, excellent toe-tapping indie electro-pop with a darker undercurrent by the Manchester quartet in their sixth full LP and first for six years, echoing influences such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and The Blue Nile
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Shana Cleveland: Manzanita
New album: A sublime third solo LP by the singer and La Luz co-founder, a beautiful selection of Californian-style folk, named after a native evergreen tree with medicinal properties, and awash with pristine acoustic guitar and her mesmeric voice
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H. Hawkline: Milk For Flowers
New album: Cardiff’s Huw Evans releases his fifth LP, a charming, tender, wistful, sensitive, intelligent, and beautiful collection of alternative pop with a folk/country hue, co-produced with Cate Le Bon, and players including Stephen Black (Sweet Baboo)
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Tubatsi Mpho Moloi and Msaki
New album: A gorgeously tender, stripped-back collaborative LP as South African singing star Msaki joins Soweto multi-instrumentalist and Keleketla! member Tubatsi Mpho Moloi, with accompaniment by Parisian cellist Clément Petit
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