News

The Huntress and Holder of Hands, the musical project of MorganEve Swain, have shared Doctrine, the second single from their forthcoming album, Babylon, due June 5th. Written in 2017 and reshaped through several iterations into this thumping protest song. “Honestly, I was hoping it would be obsolete by now,” Swain says.

Cinder Well returns with new album “A Blooming Body,” out July 17th via Hen House Studios. Lead single and video, “While the Womb Screams Silently” is out now — inspired by Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire — “about listening to your inner knowing, which often screams loudly but is ignored for the sake of conforming -constantly trying to break out of the restraints and projections of patriarchy…”

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.

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.

Jim Ghedi thrusts folk further to its edge on The Hungry Child, drawn from a 19th-century German poem translated by Judith Piepe. A starving child pleads for food and is told to wait until too late — a story Ghedi connects to the oppression of innocent people today. Watch Jordan Carroll’s accompanying sinister video set in the Peak District – out now on Basin Rock.