The Latest
Fourteen tracks moving between Bamako and Belize, Dakar and Geneva. Cymande’s nyah-rock, Orchestra Baobab’s 1975 Afro-Cuban swing, Bonobo remixing Ghanaian funk. Oumou Sangaré and Fatoumata Diawara hold the Malian centre, Songhoy Blues the edge. The Garifuna Collective answer a bird. Sudan Archives folds Sudanese fiddle into her beats, Yalla Miku start funky and end heavy. A cratedigger’s delight.
Sam Blasucci premieres his video for “Creature”, the latest single from his new album “Black Rose”, out 21st July on DoublePlay Records. Recorded mostly in the middle of the night in Ojai, the ten-track album is an invitation into shadow and a darkness that could be groovy. It follows April’s 28-track double LP, “Physical Dream”.
Adrian Crowley’s “Quinn The Adventurer” follows James Quinn, who left Belfast in 1920, surfaced in Hollywood as a silent-film extra, and was sentenced to San Quentin over a collection of shrunken heads. Out today on Dimple Discs with Bring Your Own Hammer, it precedes “From The Tombs”, a 21-song double album on the history of crime, law and order in Ireland and its diaspora.
Inviting a sense of ultimate calm, Luluc’s “Sweet Thief” is a gorgeous, contemplative exercise in quiet isolation and self-reflection. Randell’s vocals mirror those of the calmest stream, barely creating a splash, with J Mascis adding percussion. Ten songs that embody a lighthouse in a storm, a point of connection anybody can relate to.
Sailing Stones’ “Slow Magic” is one of the most satisfyingly complete collections of songs I have heard this year. Built around matrescence, the transitions a woman goes through at the time of bringing new life into the world, the whole record plays like a kaleidoscopic whirligig, shimmering in and out of focus, crafted with a crackly analogue, hands-on human touch. Her best album yet.
On “Pt. Roadknight”, Leah Senior leans into the hazy fog of late-sixties, early-seventies folk rock, recorded with a natural analogue texture that lends these songs a human touch. It turns its inward gaze outward, offering her reflections with a clarity of purpose. As she reminds us in ‘Talk To Me,’ there is a fine line between focus and withdrawal, and this album walks it with rare grace.
Radie Peat of Lankum and ØXN releases her debut solo single, “Still I Love Him”, via Rough Trade. John Francis Flynn found the song in the Irish Traditional Music Archives and wrote a new melody; Peat reshaped it around her contralto, holding elation and devastation at once. Robbie Mailler Howat directs the video.
London cellist midori jaeger shares “hunted”, the second single from her new EP “(Re)planted”, out 26th August. Built around the piano rather than her pizzicato cello, it trades rhythmic push for something smoother and more rippling. “(Re)planted” follows this year’s “(Un)planted”, turning her groove-led writing softer and more expansive as she transmutes a life of uprooting and replanting into song.
Elanor Moss shares the video for “The Way That it Feels,” the second single from her debut album “The Knife, The Needle,” out August 21st on Merge Records. Sung over birdsong and classical guitar, it’s the last song she wrote for the record, and the accompanying video was shot on 16mm film in the Greek Peloponnese by Matthew Thorne.
Duffy x Uhlmann’s “Doing It for Me” is their first new material since 2023’s “Doubles,” both out via Orindal Records. Built from layers of processed guitar loops, the track is busier and more restless than the duo’s earlier work; watch the accompanying visualiser, which was illustrated by Christina Huang.
Prison share “Sunset Park,” the second single from “Big Rigs on the BQE,” out July 31st via Drag City. Cut from a nineteen-minute album track, the single edit comes from a session recorded at a Sunset Park studio overlooking the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The video, directed by guitarist Matt Lilly, follows a hazy, dreamlike logic. Prison tour the US in August.