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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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Hotline TNT: Raspberry Moon
New album: A third album by the New York indie-rock band fronted by Will Anderson, with rich, meaty, shoegaze fuzz guitars, subtly droll love songs and more of a live band guitar recorded sound rather than the previous studio-created layering of their first two LPs
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Van Morrison: Remembering Now
New album: After a series of cover albums, Belfast’s legendarily brilliant but also difficult, controversial, moody and mercurial singer-songwriter returns with an LP of love-song originals, full of much of the soulful warmth, tenderness, nuance and mellow fluidity many of his past classics
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HAIM’s I Quit
New album: The three LA sisters return with a biting, whip-smart, arresting fourth indie-rock LP based very much on a certain big breakup, laced with ire and caustic lyrics, fired by the former relationship of lead singer Danielle and Ariel Rechtshaid, the producer who worked on all three of the band’s previous albums
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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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Slick Rick - Victory
New album: The legendary English-American rapper, now 60, and one of the most influential in the hip-hop’s history, returns with his first for 26 years with a stylish, playful, talkative, narrative ‘visual’ LP featuring guests – the actor and sometime rapper-DJ Idris Elba, alongside Nas, Giggs and Estelle
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Matt Berninger - Get Sunk
New album: While fans of The National wait for a potential 11th studio album, their singer-songwriter returns with his second solo release, one that captures similar intimacy, melancholy and also expansiveness with songs about uncertainty and anxiety with a certain poignant catharsis
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The Bug Club: Very Human Features
New album: A tremendously catchy, lively, witty, humorous and poignant new LP by the Welsh trio of Sam Willmett, Tilly Harris and Dan Matthew with a terrific toe-tapping indie-rock-pop take on a whole spectrum of human contradictions
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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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Loaded Honey: Love Made Trees
New album: Like a huge soft-focus swoon, fabulous 70s retro Philly soul and sixties pop made new by the British duo of Lydia Kitto and J Lloyd (Josh Lloyd-Watson), better known from dance-pop band Jungle, with this debut side project, exploring and inspired by their own up-and-down romance with panache and a glorious sense of irony, melodrama, and style
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Shura: I Got Too Sad For My Friends
New album: With her first music since 2019’s acclaimed album forevher, the British singer-songwriter and producer Alexandra Denton returns with a third LP, one that embraces melancholy and addresses the self, capturing six years of uncertainty with a gentle, intelligent perspective, wrapped in refined, matured indie, pop, folk and Americana
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McKinley Dixon: Magic, Alive!
New album: Classy, literary, cultured, narrative-rich, experimental, dramatic, dynamic and stylish hip-hop by the Richmond-born, Chicago-based rapper in this follow-up to the acclaimed Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (2023) in a release exploring the fate of key characters and the idea of what constitutes magic in the turmoil of daily life
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Lucy Gooch: Desert Window
New album: Hovering and evolving in its own delicious, delicate, ghostly hinterland between folk, classical, jazz and ambient electronica, this exquisite debut by the British singer and composer from York is an ethereal, mesmeric tapestry of layered voices and acoustic instruments
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Aesop Rock: Black Hole Superette
New album: The acclaimed Long Island rapper Ian Matthias Bavitz returns with another rich pageant of ingeniously rapid rhymes, ideas, beats and riffs, this one themed around invisible forces that shape our lives and psyches, featuring guests Lupe Fiasco, Armand Hammer, Hanni El Khatib, Open Mike Eagle and Homeboy Sandman
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Little Simz: Lotus
New album: The Mercury prize-winning London rapper and actress Simbiatu Ajikawo brings a powerful, playful as well as personal issues, defiant rage-filled articulate new sixth album, broadening her musical scope with collaborator and producer Miles James with a title inspired by the flower that blooms, despite a harsh environment in mud and swamp
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Pulp’s More - their first studio LP in 24 years
New album: The beloved Sheffield Britpop band return triumphantly with their first LP in 24 years, bringing familiar themes – nostalgia, sex, life changes, chance encounters, time passing, also wrapped in metaphors of celestial astronomy, all now from a candid, middle-aged perspective, but still with some crowd-pleasing bangers as well as Jarvis Cocker’s whispery, witty intimacy
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MRCY: Volume 2
New album: Wonderfully uplifting, stirring, classic, soaring soul and dynamic jazz by the UK-based duo of singer Kojo Degraft-Johnson and producer Barney Lister, in this follow-up to 2024’s Volume 1, adding some more contemporary music elements but still with a positive energy to address our troubled times
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