News
Charlie Wheatley has announced “Live at the Chapel”, out 22nd September, the first instalment in a three-part series reworking folk manuscripts from the British Isles through live performance. Recorded live at Stone Nest with two double basses and viola, it holds traditional dance tunes against devotional song, drone and minimalism. The lead single, a set of three tunes, arrives today.
“and remade” is Freda D’Souza’s looping sonic poem, drawn from an installation she built as an act of resistance against enforced clock time. Written across a solstice on a Mersea houseboat and sonified through a solar-powered cassette, each digital download comes with a one-off cyanotype stop-motion film frame.
Declan O’Rourke shares “Echo”, the lead single from his eighth album “Oceanic”, due 16 October. Produced with Jim Moginie of Midnight Oil, it’s a beefy, robust rocker — and its video offers a first look at “Almost With You”, the Australian feature in which O’Rourke makes his screen acting debut, premiering at Galway Film Fleadh on 9 July.
Skyjack’s fourth album, “Let The Sky Open Under Your Feet”, is out today on Kujua Records. The Swiss–South African quintet take the title’s image — feet on the earth, the sky opening below — and turn it into twelve tracks articulating their “deep roots into the earth with high branches reaching upward and outward”.
Deniz Cuylan shares “No Such Thing,” a gleaming electro-acoustic collaboration with Felbm, alongside an Ade Hanft-directed video — and announces new album “For Luca,” out September 18th via Hush Hush Records. A tribute to his late dog, it turns private grief into communal celebration, with Peni Candra Rini, Thor Harris and Casper Clausen among the friends who feature.
KLOF premieres “Scared to Love”, the emotional centre of Jason McNiff’s forthcoming tenth album “Ten Blue Songs”, out 28th August on Tombola Records. Stripped-back classical guitar and layered vocals frame a song about staying open-hearted in a culture that rewards distance. “This is the song I nearly threw away,” says McNiff — now one he loves to sing.
Laura Veirs has shared “Pulse”, the latest single from her self-made fourteenth album “Temple Songs”, out 14th August. It builds from nylon-string guitar and bare vocals into bold electric guitar and ‘Filthy’ Lucre’s saxophone, ending on a dissonant duet. The Twixx Williams-directed video sets it in a home gym, with cake, silly string and a nod to Veirs’s weightlifting.
SML have shared a live video of “The Drums”, the A-side of their new album “Spontaneous Music Live” on International Anthem. Filmed by Charlie Weinmann at Zebulon in LA, it captures one of two side-length improvisations recorded uncut to analogue tape — the band working through an idea in real time, with nowhere to hide.
Emily Portman shares a live video of “Fox’s Song”, a track from her album “Dominion of Spells”, filmed at Moonko in Sheffield. Inspired by a Siberian folk tale, it casts its narrator as a shape-shifting woman-fox, exploring feminism, midlife change and the pull towards a wilder form of life. Portman (voice, banjo) is joined by Louis Campbell and Lucy Revis.
Laura Cannell launches her new monthly Sound Hoard series with “Echoes of a Swan Bone Flute”, out now on Brawl Records, and accompanied by a Simon Nunn film. Inspired by swan-bone flutes from the 13th–15th centuries displayed at Norwich Castle, she performs on overbow and octave violin, bass recorder and synths.
BaBa ZuLa announce new album, out 25 September via Glitterbeat — thirty years on and still untamed. Lead single “Kutsal Zeytin Halayı”, a sunbaked motorik trance arriving with a visualiser that celebrates the olive tree as a sacred symbol — “We see nature under constant pressure. We want to stand on the side of those who defend it.”