The Latest
In our latest Substack Newsletter, you can find new music recommendations, an interview by Alex Neilson with Lavinia Blackwall, and the new Monday Morning Brew Playlist. This week’s Brew features tunes from Flaer, Dylan Golden Aycock, The Vernon Spring, Lone Mesa, R Loomes, Wau Wau Collectif, Romain Baudoin, Exploded View, Jake Xerxes Fussell & James Elkington, Prymek & Sage, Rob St. John, Cian Nugent, Henry Parker and more.
On first listen, REXEN sounds like an introspective singer-songwriter. He isn’t. “The Chauffeur,” his first full studio album, recorded at Real World Studios with John Parish on the mix, swings from intoxicated baritone croon to high register, bending faintly sinister Americana into one new shape after another. The result is an album designed for deep engagement, one that rewards close listening and lingers long after it ends.
A new 28-track Mixtape featuring Sluice, Twisted Teens, Magic Tuber Stringband, Dan Haywood & Harvey Lord, Frog, Lady Maisery and Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith, REXEN, Wendy Eisenberg, Jeffrey Alexander & The Heavy Lidders, Myer U Clark, Damien Jurado, Mike Gangloff, Marisa Anderson, Steve Gunn & The Black Twig Pickers, Kevin Farge, Family Stereo, La Cozna and Mary Hampton, Rowena Wise, Camille Camille, Dean Johnson, Alex Amen, and lots more.
A major archival release celebrates Martin Carthy MBE. “Along The Road Forever: Live At The BBC (1965-2022)” collects 328 recordings — 22½ hours across 20 CDs, spanning his solo work, his duo with Dave Swarbrick, with his daughter, Eliza Carthy, as well as Steeleye Span, Brass Monkey, The Watersons and Waterson:Carthy. It includes an 80-page book with a new Clinton Heylin essay.
Mama’s Broke announce their new album “Reunion,” out August 28th via Free Dirt Records and Forward Music Group, and share the 16mm video for the single “The Nameless.” Following the JUNO-nominated Narrow Line, the Nova Scotian duo hold a mirror to a fracturing world of broken communities and systems that no longer deliver. We trace the announcement through our archive.
LA quintet SML announce “Spontaneous Music Live,” out June 26th on International Anthem. After two studio albums collaged from live fragments, the band strip the editing away: two side-length pieces of unedited improvisation, recorded to analog tape during their December residency at Zebulon. Lead piece “Roundabouts,” the 24-minute B-side, is streaming now — SML in the room, fully in the moment.
Oisin Mod returns with “Mirror Mirror,” his first new music since 2022’s Honeycomb and again produced by Bill Ryder-Jones. The Galway songwriter pairs retro swirl with warm analogue keys and gentle vocals on his most introspective writing yet, calling the track a study in pretending and observing others do the same. The video is directed by Mod and Rory Ryan.
Rowena Wise announces her second album, Bad Things Feel Good*, and shares new single and video, Diamond In The Rough. The song, “about the pressures of being told that you’re special from a young age, creating an unattainable standard you must maintain,” is accompanied by a Didirri-directed video, the concept for which was inspired by Jamie Lee Curtis’ ‘The Last Showgirl’.
Family Stereo, the project of singer-songwriter Blake Watt, shares “Waiting On Nina,” the second single from debut album The Thread, out 31st July via Bella Union. The country-tinged folk-rock track turns on birth and innocence, lit by Dov Sikowitz’s lapsteel. Recorded over nine months in north London with producer Sam Hodder-Williams, the album is followed by four UK headline shows in September.
Scottish songwriter Jo Mango returns on June 12th with her new album “The Lightswitch,” a concept album about her love for music, but also the fall-out of love, the shadow behind it, the emptiness left behind when the music draws to a close. Taken from the album, watch her performing her latest single, The Clock, co-written with Louis Abbott of Admiral Fallow.
Aaron MF Olson shares “Who Do You Think You Are I Am?”, the second single from “Songs Album II”, out June 26th via Country Thyme Records. A rough-and-tumble pop progression that grinds immaculate ’50s and ’60s hooks into glittering noir. “I am the window, you are the breeze. I am the pollen, you are the sneeze.”
London-based cellist, composer and producer Oliver Coates releases “The History of Sound,” the original motion picture soundtrack to Oliver Hermanus’s period romance starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor. As well as singing on several tracks, Sam Amidon, a KLOF favourite, was also a music adviser and was tasked with turning the film’s two stars into seasoned balladeers in just three weeks.
The Handover return with “New Old Medicine,” out June 5th via Sublime Frequencies. The Egyptian-rooted trio of Aly Eissa, Ayman Asfour and Jonas Cambien follow their 2024 debut with a second long-form composition, recorded in Berlin by Rabih Beaini. Oud, violin and vintage organ move through one continuous piece into something psychedelic and strange.
Your next Monday Morning Brew Playlist has arrived, including new music from Le Ren, Laura Veirs, Mairearad Green and lots more. Plus, explore two visionaries: Sardinian guitarist Paolo Angeli and Lisbon experimentalist Ana Lua Caiano, whose 2024 debut, Vou Ficar Neste Quadrado, was one of my Albums of the Year.
KLOF Mixtape No. 84 ranges from folk to ambient experimental – featuring music from French composer Cécile Schott (Colleen), new offerings from Folk Police Recordings: “The Silent Harvest Volume One,” Ed Askew’s posthumous “The Final Painting,” Robin Katz’s “Hypnos,” plus music from Amarante-Cerisier, D. Rothon, The MerKaBa Brotherhood, Sailing Stones, Aure and more.