The Latest
DoYeon Kim has announced Wellspring, her debut album as a leader, arriving May 1 on TAO Forms. Featuring Tyshawn Sorey, Mat Maneri, and Henry Fraser, the album weaves Korean lullabies with free improvisation through Kim’s gayageum playing. Lead single “The Beats of Distant Thunder” is streaming now, ahead of performances across New York and at Big Ears Festival.
L.Y.R. have shared a visualiser for Guernica Jigsaw, the latest single from forthcoming album Dark Sky Reservation, out April 3rd via Real World Records. A tale of unrequited love set amid commercialised art, the track features Pearson’s cascading piano motif carrying an unspoken beauty through vast, impersonal spaces. The band’s largest UK tour follows this spring.
The latest in the Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties series pairs AHRKH — the solo venture of Gnod’s A P Macarte — with Scottish/Turkish singer and sound artist Bell Lungs. Macarte delivers a satisfying slab of arhythmic, amelodic drone inspired by the Isle of Wight’s Mottistone longstone, while Bell Lungs weaves an extraordinary fifteen-minute folk opera from the cursed legend of Raggedstone Hill.
Deer Tick have announced their ninth album Coin-O-Matic, due 5th June via ATO Records, sharing ramshackle lead single Mary Singletary. Named after a mob front company, the album excavates the hidden histories of Rhode Island — mafia underworlds, working-class drama, and Irish-Catholic guilt. It’s the Providence band’s first self-produced record across a career spanning more than two decades.
BIG|BRAVE have announced their tenth album, in grief or in hope, due June 12th, sharing first single, the ineptitude for mutual discernment. With touring bassist Liam Andrews joining Robin Wattie and Mat Ball in the studio for the first time, the album promises to push their particular brand of massive minimalism into its most layered territory yet.
Canadian songwriter Cat Clyde comes flying in like a midnight courier, express‑delivering through Concord Records the most intimate dispatches of her life. Mud Blood Bone crackles with urgency even as Cat bares her soul. It is her most personal record yet and also her most electrifying, a pulse‑quickening rush, wrapped in confession.
Satnam Galsian has released her new single “Dishonour” on March 8th (International Women’s Day), reimagining the Irish folk song “She Moved through the Fair” from the woman’s perspective to highlight honour-based abuse. All proceeds from pre-orders (until April 6th) benefit Karma Nirvana, a Leeds charity ending honour-based violence. The British-Asian singer-songwriter, recently recognised for amplifying women’s voices, blends Punjabi folk with contemporary feminist storytelling on this powerful acoustic single.
Josienne Clarke releases Katie Cruel, a reimagining of the traditional folk song with two newly written verses aligning its themes of exile and endurance with the realities of an uncompromising artistic life. Built around electric guitar and recorders, the arrangement is spartan and resolute. The accompanying video finds Clarke as two figures on a windswept promontory — mourning black and ghostly white.
This week’s Monday Morning Brew features music from Aldous Harding, Josienne Clarke, Chris Brain & Natalie Wildgoose, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Natalie Jane Hill alongside selections from Shana Cleveland, Nora Brown, Cass McCombs, Marissa Nadler, Nadia Reid, Joan Shelley, Erin Rae and more. Highlights include Brain’s Yorkshire Dales-inspired Big Hill, Clarke’s spartan reimagining of Katie Cruel, and the lead single from Harding’s fifth album.
Our latest Mixtape pairs familiar KLOF favourites with a few artists that caught our attention recently. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Gregory Uhlmann, Jesca Hoop, Kris Drever, SUSS, Setting, Adam Ross, Brown Wimpenny, Trippers & Askers and Riley/Radley — from Louisville folk to ambient guitar explorations to widescreen Americana, it’s an hour of sideways beauty that earns your full attention. Press play and let it run.
“Seven Lefts” is a mammoth, tangible album of improvised drone, muscular riffs and deep-thinking ambition — unlike anything Nathan Bowles has done before. While on paper, it’s a real challenge with over an hour of improvised, scuzzy sound and insistent, burly refrains, it’s a surprisingly listenable, addictive set that demonstrates the range and ambition of this meticulous musician. Boom.