Albums

While Blue Lake’s ‘Weft’ may be a mini-album, it feels like a major work with the delicate, complex music drifting away after five songs and leaving us grateful for the experience and wondering where this craftsman will take us next.

Musically, Ekoya is an engrossing listen in which Jupiter and Okwess succeed admirably in achieving a global outlook while celebrating their Congolese identity. 

Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra’s ‘Forest Party’ and ‘Noodle’ are fearsomely eclectic albums. Genre boundaries dissolve, and everything is suspended freely, creating its own universe with all the randomness and beautiful chaos it implies. He proves that home can exist wherever there is hope and community.

Chatham Rabbits’ fourth album, Be Real with Me, is an honest and open album veined with regrets and desires that moves beyond their bluegrass borders to explore new musical territory.

Following his collaboration with Calexico and the recent trilogy of EPs, Dean Owens finally gets to unveil the atmospheric and evocative Spirit Ridge featuring The Stone Buffalo Band.

Mr Luck and Ms Doom, the fifth album by Portland-based country-soul band The Delines, demonstrates a mastery of big lounge ballads and further proves why Willy Vlautin is rightly considered one of America’s greatest songwriters and novelists.

End of the Middle, as its name suggests, might mark the closing chapter of a particular phase in Richard Dawson’s career, but it does so with panache and potency, proof that he is still the most gifted and generous of songwriters.

Aesthesis is the debut release of Thorn Wych, an instrument maker and musician based in the Lancashire town of Bacup, where she creates the most unexpected music on instruments made from native trees, like an earthy and ancient-sounding form of off-grid music.

Released back in November, dessus oben alto up is the first collaborative recording between Andrea Belfi and Jules Reidy. A personal favourite is ‘alto’, which fizzes with a transformative vibrant energy.

Cole Stacey’s debut solo album, Postcards from Lost Places, is an album that repays repeated plays to dig into the weft and weave of his musical textures and discover the pull of these lost places.

The latest Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties series features a satanic brew from dbh and The Dark Pool that most contemporary stoner rock bands would sacrifice their grandmothers for and a satisfyingly devilish and wholly fitting companion piece from the Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra.

Within the meticulous nature of the sound of ‘Onilu’ is a paradoxically careful abandon, and the love of the playing and bouncing off of one another shines through brightly. I’ve not come across anything quite like it.