Alex Gallacher

Jeffrey Silverstein has signed to UK label Full Time Hobby, sharing new single and accompanying video Coming Back Around. Last covered on KLOF for 2023’s Western Sky Music, the Portland-based songwriter sits at the intersection of loner-folk, cosmic country and kraut-laden choogle. Coming Back Around finds him immovable, intentional, and most of all, at peace.

Beverley Martyn, the British folk singer-songwriter whose career ran from the Levee Breakers and Monterey Pop to a hard-won late return, has died at 79. KLOF Mag made her our Artist of the Month in 2014 around “The Phoenix and the Turtle” — the record that confirmed her, in Helen Gregory’s words, as a musical phoenix rising from the ashes.

Brighton’s Phantom Limb give American composer Michael F. Hunt his first-ever commercial release. Passage of Time, out June 19th, gathers three longform works recorded between 1980 and 1985 — pitched as a missing link between New Age, American minimalism and large-scale ensemble composition. The lead single, an edited version of the epic opener “Music for Multiple Keyboards,” is available to stream now.

London folk singer-songwriter Charlie Franklin has shared ‘Patchwork of Colours’, the lead single from her forthcoming self-titled debut EP, due 27th May. Produced by Natalie Wildgoose, the EP was tracked live to tape with guitar and vocals on first takes — feather-light folk in the lineage of Laura Marling and Kate Wolf.

Nina Winder-Lind, the Brighton-based, Swedish songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known as a member of “Hagstone rock” band The New Eves, shares new solo single and video “This is Our Life” via Transgressive. Blending folk-pop warmth with an upbeat, driving pulse, the song foregrounds her magnetic vibrato and instinct for melody, balancing intimacy with the exuberance that runs through her work.

Cole Berliner shares ‘Bongo Syndicate’, the second single and video from his Drag City debut The Black Door, out May 29th. Guitar and bass push and pull through interlocking lines at a glacial pace — fingerstyle weave evoking an ’80s Leo Kottke session at ECM. Brian Bartus’s accompanying video patches in mystic grasslands, with Berliner’s silhouette glitching from biome to biome.

Australian duo Luluc — Zoë Randell and Steve Hassett — announce their sixth album “Sweet Thief,” out 10th July on Community Music, and share the video for lead single “Rewarding Melody.” Sketched out in Brooklyn last summer, the record takes its title from a Shakespeare sonnet and prises apart the shiny surface of modernity. J Mascis adds jaunty drum percussion.

Monday Morning Brew #152 is open to everyone this week. The playlist opens in Tucson with Howe Gelb’s expanded Giant Sand, lingers with Vetiver, Micah P. Hinson and Bill Callahan, then dives into the Swiss underground via Les Disques Bongo Joe — Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, Cyril Cyril, Meril Wubslin — alongside The Black Angels’ Alex Maas and French improviser Romain Baudoin.

KLOF No. 81 opens with Hannah Peel and Beibei Wang’s rhythmic duet from The Endless Dance, moving through Cocanha’s radical French trad, Leenalchi’s pansori allegory for their Luaka Bop debut, and the first album of Himba music ever released from Northwest Namibia. Plus Shye Ben Tzur and Jonny Greenwood, Marisa Anderson, Mama’s Broke, Jim Moray, BCMC, Zoh Amba, Emily Portman, Anna McLuckie, Myer U Clark and more.

The Dublin-based duo Lemoncello, Laura Quirke and Claire Kinsella, open up their homes and pick ten objects — a borrowed fiddle, a hand-painted notebook from Mexico, a wood-carved swan, a Simpsons fridge sticker — that tell small stories of places returned to, gifts received, and the things that sustain a creative life between records.

Alex Zhang Hungtai has announced Orion/Mother, a new double album due June 19 on American Dreams. Across the two records, the Taiwanese-Canadian artist alchemises past and present by sampling home recordings made with New York improvisers and composing over them. Lead tracks Sidewinder and the title piece from Mother introduce a project Zhang describes as an exploration of the primordial unconscious.

Arborist, the project of Belfast songwriter Mark McCambridge, has shared a video for new single “Looking 4 Love”. Arpeggio harp and a piano motif borrowed from Jacques Brel’s 1961 song “Marieke” puncture a taut, straight rhythm and droning harmonium. There is menace in the atmosphere, but McCambridge offers a hand to guide the listener through Belfast’s darker corners.