Album Recommendations
Following a landmark year that saw his seminal 1980s band, The Loft, finally release their debut album, Everything Changes Everything Stays the Same, indie icon Pete Astor delves deeper into his personal archives with Unsent Letters (Home Recordings 1984-2024). Released on July 25th via Tapete Records, this new collection offers an intimate and unvarnished glimpse into a forty-year songwriting journey, a perfect companion piece to his band’s recent forward-facing return.
The World Is But a Place of Survival: Begena Songs from Ethiopia is the latest compilation offering from the London-based record label Death Is Not The End, which delves into the deeply spiritual and rarely heard music of the begena, a large ten-stringed lyre intrinsic to the Amharic heritage of Ethiopia.
Celebrated traditional musicians Cormac Begley and Liam O’Connor release their new album this month, Into the Loam. Listen to the opening track “Ryan’s Rant”, which, like the album, creatively engages with tradition, seeking to forge something new. The traditional reel is offered as a tribute to the legendary Dublin fiddler Tommie Potts, who “continually pushed the boundaries of genre and expression.”
In a powerful intersection of art and environmental science, sound artist Yoichi Kamimura’s new album, “ryūhyō,” offers a poignant auditory document of Japan’s dwindling sea ice. The record is a sonic elegy for a changing ecosystem. Locals recall a time when the ice was thick enough to walk on, emitting a whistling sound known as Ryūhyō-Nari. Today, that sound is gone.
Jazzman Records take us on a deep dive into the resilient, often defiant, spiritual jazz of the Soviet Bloc. From the early 1960s to the precipice of the 1980s, the tracks curated here reveal a fascinating dialogue between global modernism and deeply rooted local traditions. A radical, intoxicating brew that “no amount of guns, tanks or polonium tea could overcome.”
Never the Same Way Twice is a new album from The Memory Band, marking the twentieth anniversary of their debut EP. These previously unreleased recordings present a tantalising glimpse of two decades of hauntological and heartfelt collective excursions across the ancient and magical British landscape.