Albums

Laura J Martin’s Prepared is her strongest, strangest and most distinctive work yet, and proof that after an eight-year break, good things come to those who wait.

Produced by Jim Moray and featuring several special guests, Out of the Rain is a glorious, re-energised return from Blair Dunlop that should comfortably reinstate him among folk rock’s upper echelons.

Ship to Shore finds Richard Thompson enjoying the most vital of late golden periods, producing work to stand favourably alongside any from his previous fifty years.

Kaia Kater is not only a great musician but also a subtle and searching songwriter. Strange Medicine is her most diverse and complete album to date…a hopeful triumph from an utterly distinctive songwriter.

Lemoncello is one of those records that has a binding sound all the way whilst boasting an incredible range of tones, moods, and textures within each individual song…an ethereal, harmonious, ever-shifting sheen of a topcoat gliding across a tense, grinding underbelly of distortion and vibration.

Locust Land, Bill MacKay’s third solo outing for Drag City, is his most diverse yet, but also his most harmonious and satisfying, which is high praise, considering the quality of his past releases.

On Hex, Jon McKiel absorbs and repurposes a whole host of genres, but the overall sound – a trippy, fuzzy-edged pop – is strangely consistent, while the songs come from the realm of dreams, their edges softened by sleep but their message sharp and bright.

On her long awaited third solo album Wanderer, Ruth Moody’s striking vocals sketch out true life moments with a warm intimacy that stays with you long after the album’s end.

Convention has never been a preoccupation of either Jennifer Walshe or Tony Conrad, and In the Merry Month of May is unusual even by the standards of contemporary experimental music. It works as a showcase for two genuine greats improvising with fearless abandon.

Quintela is the debut album of Galician piper, teacher, composer and improviser Carme López. Building a nuanced world from minimal organic ingredients, it exists within and beyond the Galician piping tradition – reimagined through contemporary, avant-garde and feminist lenses.

Myriam Gendron’s art, for all its surface simplicity, harbours a wealth of emotional and aesthetic complexities which, when taken together, form a wholly unique sound. Mayday is the most moving and persuasive example of that sound to date.

Soundway return with another great compilation, Ghana Special 2: Electronic Highlife & Afro Sounds In The Diaspora, shining the spotlight on the innovative and creative Ghanaian burger highlife of the 80s.