Alex Gallacher

KLOF Mag’s Mixtapes and Shows page now features a persistent player — two new buttons, Play and Info, let you keep listening while browsing the archive, or swap between mixes freely. Older code going back to 2010 has also been updated. With over 450 mixes in the archive and new ones added weekly, it’s a good time to explore.

Our latest Mixtape opens to Frankie Archer, whose new album, The Dance of Death, is out today. We’ve also got new music from Zoh Amba, Simon Joyner, Johnny Bell, and a big finale from Brown Wimpenny. Plus: Iona Zajac, Stein Urheim, The Modern Folk, The Deadlians, Hack-Poets Guild, Naomi Alligator, Deer Scout, Josh Kimbrough, Nora Brown, anne annie, Jonny Kearney & Lucy Farrell, Robert Wyatt, Maxine Funke & more.

Helen Svoboda shares “Veins,” featuring Finnish vocalist Selma Savolainen, from her forthcoming album “Headwater” (out June 26th on Room40). The track draws Svoboda’s Finnish background into the vocal work, with Savolainen circling a single phrase about mother and daughter — “This short pondering is injected with raw emotion and melancholic beauty, as if she is bursting out of her younger self.”

Bring Your Own Hammer returns with two new singles, giving voice to figures the archive left in the margins. “The Cruel Father,” from Lavinia Blackwall and Neil Farrell with SJ McArdle, draws on an 1860s ballad about a father who abandoned his infant son. “The Girl from Spark’s Lake,” sung by Sophie Coyle, follows a runaway chasing bluebells.

Nora Stanley has spent years as a saxophonist and improviser on records by Cassandra Jenkins, The New Pornographers and Beth Orton. Now she steps out front. Her solo debut “Glass,” out July 31st via Worm Records and co-produced with Nate Mendelsohn, arrives with lead single “Noble Gas”, with Wendy Eisenberg calling her songs ‘subtly devastating.’

Our latest Off the Shelf guest is MorganEve Swain of The Huntress and Holder of Hands. Ahead of “Babylon,” out June 5th, she talks us through ten objects from LadyBird Cottage: a growing collection of hands, a javelina skull, moon phase prints, anvil rings, and a recording box, each carrying a story, and often touching on love and loss.

Memorial, the Brighton duo of Jack Watts and Oliver Spalding, share “Rest (& be thankful)”, their second release for Ólafur Arnalds’ OPIA Community, featuring Irish singer-songwriter Niamh Regan. Named after a Scottish valley and written in half an hour, it holds a steady, driving rhythm while layered harmonies build toward a release carried by Ben Bishop’s guitar and lifted by Regan’s voice.

Darren Hayman reissues “The Violence,” the double album he calls the most ambitious work of his thirty-year career. First released in 2012 and recorded with his sixteen-piece ensemble The Long Parliament, it closes his Essex Trilogy with songs about the 17th-century East Anglian witch trials and the English Civil Wars, now expanded with previously unreleased tracks and demos.

Brighton’s Hollow Hand returns with “Wish Road South,” out September 4th on Loose Music. Lead single “Here Are The Tulips,” a breezy slice of folk-pop built around Max Kinghorn-Mills’ daily bus journey to the studio, arrives with a self-directed video. A UK tour follows this October.

Horse Feathers reissue their long out-of-print debut, “Words Are Dead”, on August 28th via Kill Rock Stars. Recorded in Portland in 2006 by the duo of Justin Ringle and Peter Broderick, the album returns fully remastered, on exclusive vinyl, with a replica of the original six-song demo CD. Hear “Finch on Saturday”, the first thing the band ever committed to tape.

Prison pull up with their third album, “Big Rigs on the BQE”, out July 31st, a long way from last year’s “Downstate”. They’ve shared lead cut “Sunrise Highway” with a scorching single edit video from Johnny Celentano and Cliff Elor — a fast, garage-bred psych charge built live from guitars, bass, drums, fuzz organ and vocals. Two side-long trips, tracked overlooking the highway.

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.