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Bas Jan: Back To The Swamp
New album: This third album by the quartet fronted by singer and harpist Serafina Steer, is another wittily droll, darkly humorous collection about love and modern life’s absurdities and mundanities, with influences from The Pet Shop Boys, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kate Bush, Heaven 17 and even a referential shake of Salt N Pepa
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Vince Clarke: Songs of Silence
New album: The legendary synth-pop songwriter best known for Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure releases, at last, his first solo album, a mesmeric, ambient, darkly sci-fi cinematic work made from modular synthesisers
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Marnie Stern: The Comeback Kid
New album: A joyously noisy return of proclamatory, zingy, explosively proggy indie-rock with the first album in 10 years since by the New York guitarist and singer, since 2013’s The Chronicles of Marnia
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Sen Morimoto: Diagnosis
New album: The Chicago-based Japanese singer, rapper and jazz multi-instrumentalist’s new LP comprises a richly eclectic, dynamic selection of songs with an overriding theme of seeking the right direction in life
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Quantic: Dancing While Falling
New album: Inexorably catchy, lavishly orchestrated 70-era disco, funk, gospel, soul and pop from the British New York-based musician and DJ Will Holland in his Quantic moniker, joined by great guest vocalists and collaborators, particularly Andreya Triana
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Aesop Rock: Integrated Tech Solutions
New album: The prolific and incomparably articulate American rapper returns with another sharpener, this time an intelligent, irony-laden, highly detailed concept-style album dissecting absurdist, infinitely excessive consumerism
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Anjimile: The King
New album: A breathtaking, beautiful, powerful, intimate fifth album by the American experimental folk singer Anjimile Chithambo whose rich, rangey, deep and high voice has an alluring androgyny, somewhere between Nina Simone and Sufjan Stevens
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Beirut’s Zach Condon at the Norwegian church organ
New album: A joyous, tremulously beautiful, restorative new LP by New Mexico’s Zach Condon, the title after old wooden church on the Norwegian island of Hadseløya from which he recovered his physical and mental health after pre-Covid career-threatening throat problems
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David Holmes: Blind On A Galloping Horse (featuring Raven Violet)
New album: After many collaborative projects, a brilliant first full solo album by the Belfast producer and musician since 2008’s The Holy Pictures, here featuring the vocals of Raven Violet throughout, this passionate, powerful, often political noir-synth pop release charts the unravelling of British society over the past decade
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Problem Patterns’ debut album: Blouse Club
New album: Belfast’s answer to Amyl & the Sniffers pull no punches and leave no prisoners with their angry, shouty, catchy, feminist, caustically sharp and witty debut LP, their fast furious songs of social critique, from the energetic Riot Grrrl punk quartet of Beverley Boal, Bethany Crooks, Ciara King and Alanah Smith
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bar italia: The Twits
New album: After debut Tracey Denim in May, the London trio release their second album of the year – moody, deadpan, drily witty, often dark, downbeat, sometimes frenetic, more often lo-fi, shoegaze indie influenced by The Cure and Slowdive
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Tkay Maidza: Sweet Justice
New album: Stylishly funky, slick and soulful hip-hop and R&B with dark twists and tender moments come aplenty in this alluring second album by the eclectically talented Zimbabwean-born, Australian-raised and now Los Angeles-based artist
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The Kills: God Games
New album: A first LP for seven years by the American-British duo of vocalist Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince is a gritty, glamorous thunder-crack storm of blistering garage rock and simmering noir-pop
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King Creosote: I DES
New album: Fife’s Kenny Anderson returns with his first solo LP for seven years, a glorious, delicate warm, eccentric release of indie-folk, vibraphones, accordions, e-bows, samplers, ungulates, scratched records and wine glass-drones
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Cody Pepper: Chemical Oasis
New album: An alluring, eclectic, eccentric jazz-pop electronica LP by the London-based singer-songwriter and Zebrah flautist Pauline Janier who brings a diverse set of sounds and musicians into this enthrallingly odd release
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Lol Tolhurst x Budgie x Jacknife Lee: Los Angeles
New album: The ex-Cure drummer and the acclaimed percussionist of Siouxsie, Creatures and other bands team up with the Irish producer for a wonderfully rhythmic, sharply witty, krautrock-style/synth pop-punk fusion with guest vocalists including LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy
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Bex Burch: There Is Only Love and Fear
New album: Charming eccentric, experimental debut by the Leeds-raised Berlin-based composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker whose LP conjures up delicate, rhythmic African-inflected jazz-folk-traditional magic with variety of acoustic-instrument collaborators alongside her very own handmade xylophone
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VV Brown: Am I British Yet?
New album: A powerful, poignant, proud, emotional, defiant first LP in eight years by the Northampton-born singer-songwriter, journalist and activist, with soul, reggae, spoken word, hip-hop and gospel numbers focusing on questions of Black British identity with guest poets and interwoven voice clips
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FIZZ: The Secret To Life
New album: Joyously playful, colourful, flamboyant, humorous, dynamic, grandiose but also tender pop-rock by the supergroup of solo artists, Orla Gartland, dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown, whose vocal harmonies exude emotion, but also unsinkable joie-de-vivre
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Gazelle Twin: Black Dog
New album: A welcome, and brilliantly dream-like, mesmeric return, by the British experimental electronica artist Elizabeth Bernholz, whose twilight world is extraordinary, innovative and otherworldly inspired by childhood visions of dark, bedside canine vision
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