Alex Gallacher
Alex Gallacher
KLOF Mag Founder, Editor-in-Chief, Head Janitor, Mix Master & Playlist Curator, Music Hunter, Film Photographer, Avid Reader/Listener, World Cinema, Beat Generation, Underground Culture. On this ship full-time...Steady Ahead
Radie Peat’s debut solo album, “No Human Tongue Can Tell”, is due on Rough Trade Records on 13 November. Her new single is “Hares on the Mountain”, a traditional folk song she learned from Shirley Collins. As the protagonist in this song, she anthropomorphically ponders the unjust gender dynamics of courtship.
Gwenifer Raymond shares her new single “Bird Songs for Atomic Skies”, marking her signing to Fat Possum. Raymond calls it a mutant rag, a blues gone awry, with lyrebirds in irradiated nests and foxes whose barks are all wrong. The folk horror reaches post-apocalyptic levels. She supports Geese across America and Canada, then headlines in the UK.
A new Monday Morning Brew Playlist on which individualism shines through, plus four new album recommendations. Featuring Play Time, Geir Sundstøl, Xylouris White, Laurence Crane, Benedicte Maurseth, Miles Davis, Six Organs of Admittance, Erlend Apneseth Trio, Lena Willemark & Ale Möller, Sara Parkman, BITOI, Mariam Wallentin, Zodiacs on the Wing and more.
Our latest Mixtape features the recently interviewed Ohtis and Martin Simpson (our Artist of the Month), plus Good Habits, Garefowl, Shovel Dance Collective, Charlie Parr, and Macdara Yeates. And new to KLOF: Powtes from Newcastle’s folk underground, Esther’s Mood Ring, Tomáš Niesner and Aldana Duoraan, Adela Mede & Štefan Szabó, and Cathal Caulfield.
Following last year’s scarily accomplished debut album, New Thing, Avery Friedman returns with her new single “You Move”, a song about savouring the unexpected fruits that reveal themselves amid times of uprootedness. Watch the accompanying tomato-themed video directed by Dylan Friese-Greene. Friedman kicks off her first UK/EU shows this month.
Garefowl recorded “Things That Vanish” at night on Hirta, the main island of St Kilda. There are no synths this time: field and hydrophone recordings and X-ray diffraction drones take their place. In this Track by Track, the band introduce the seabirds behind the tunes. “It is not too late to learn the lessons of the past.”
Shovel Dance Collective’s “Everything in Readiness” is due 23 October on Glitterbeat’s tak:til imprint. “Jer the Rigger” is their third single, part of an opening suite that is accompanied by a video from Tim Plester and Rob Curry featuring footage from the Doc Rowe archive. The band say the arrangements were constantly tinkered with on the road, sometimes paying off, sometimes not.
New tunes from Jude Brothers, This is the Kit, Rayland Baxter, Sheherazaad, Sam Burton and more. Plus recommendations ranging from an album inspired by Slovak-Hungarian heritage to a late-80s Manchester band inspired as much by madrigals and liturgical music as Joy Division. And Will Oldham provides food for thought on the music algorithm.
This week’s Mixtape features several obscure labels: Glasgow’s Greater Lanarkshire Auricular Research Council, Australian Cassette label Burgan Triangle Tapes, and artist-run Joshua Tree imprint Searching Records. We’ve also got tracks sung in Irish, creative music exploring the outer reaches of the harp and lap steel guitar and more.
James Yorkston announces “La Magnifica”, a career-spanning double album, out November 27th on Domino. It picks from his 15 albums for the label, from the early Athletes days to his most recent Swedish collaborations with Nina Persson and Johanna Söderberg. The first of two new songs is also out today, accompanied by a video directed by Lewis Baillie.
Jason McNiff talks through his latest album, Ten Blue Songs, which was recorded and produced live by Trevor Moss. Clarinet, double bass, piano, and violin accompany him on an album whose influences include Italo Calvino, Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, and guitar legend Davy Graham. “This album is evidence of our working life and couldn’t exist without the gigs”.
Fermanagh-born, Dublin-based composer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist RÓIS, aka Rose Connolly, has signed to Domino Records. Her critically acclaimed 2024 album, MO LÉAN, will be reissued globally – remastered with a brand-new track, “PORT NA H-EALA”. Watch her performing “WHAT DO YOU SAY (LIVE FROM A WAKE)”.
Smithsonian Folkways will reissue Michael Hurley’s 1964 debut “First Songs” on vinyl on November 6th. Frederic Ramsey Jr. originally recorded it at home in New Jersey on the reel-to-reel machine he used for Lead Belly’s Last Sessions. Mike Monseur has remastered it, and it comes in the original black gatefold. Watch the video for his classic ‘The Werewolf Song’, which was animated by Hurley’s friend Drew Christie.
Mayo Thompson’s “Quiet Days in Cliché” is his first solo guitar album and his first solo record in fifty-six years. Out December 4th on Drag City, it was recorded on a smartphone. Mayo calls it just some strumming and notes to self. Drag City call them “acoustic improvisations that draw threads through space, looking for what more could happen.”
This week’s extra-long mixtape features 21 tracks spanning folk, psych, and experimental, led by The Owl Service’s first album in a decade. It also includes music from Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s live album “Ghosts of American Psychonauts,” plus new tunes from Sourdure, Trá Pháidín, Dean McPhee, Steven R Smith, Michael Cloud Duguay, a new single from Belfast’s Córas Trio, and more.
From his forthcoming studio album Oceanic, due out on October 16th, Declan O’Rourke has shared a thought-provoking new video for Earl Grey and Edwin, his third album single. About two kindred souls brought together by a love of music and art, it’s one of the most beautiful videos and songs I’ve seen/heard in a long time.
Paris-based cellist, composer, and producer Gaspar Claus will release his new album Cells this Friday (September 25th) via InFiné. On the surface, his final album single, Ecstasy, appears to be the most obvious departure into electronic territory. But it’s less about departure and more about transformation – as all the sounds originate from his cello.