Barney Keen might well be your favourite musician’s favourite musician. He’s worked at some of the top studios in London, and has been cited by an imposing array of top tier songwriters. Barney Keen has worked extensively with Kae Tempest, but along the way he’s also developed his own instincts – his own take on songwriting. Airy, bright, and dominated by spiritually uplifting grooves, debut album Harbinger is a delight, an unexpected knockout first time from a talent who has been slept-on for too long.
With connections to musicians in both Brazil and Portugal, it’s perhaps no surprise that there’s an airy feel to the material on Harbinger. Very much a labour of love, there’s a bossa brightness to his musicality, while he operates with…
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Regardless of standing on the political spectrum, there’s no denying that the current state of the world is a dire one, and lately there’s been no shortage of bands willing to call it out – from the trending Kneecap and Bob Vylan to more established acts like Idles or Sleaford Mods. Black Country duo Big Special now follow in their footsteps, their lyrics and themes tackling issues from class warfare and mental health to addiction and working jobs you hate.
The Fateful Symmetry is the posthumous eighth solo album by the groundbreaking and influential artist 
Silken ambience is the name of the game on this set from Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds and dream-pop singer Talos, aka Eoin French, who tragically died in August last year, aged 36. Arnalds completed the album after his death.
To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Parisian independent imprint 
All music is inherently syncretic, traditional and contemporary alike, and it’s impossible (not to mention undesirable) to maintain complete musical purity. If this wasn’t the case, there would be no mystery to the nature of music, and no power. That being said, there can be a thin line between a genuine musical dialogue across borders and treacly garbage.
Detroit-based duo 
As the popular understanding of psychedelia has expanded beyond the strictures of traditional blues and folk-based guitar rock, so have the ranks of bands who could be categorized as psych without everyone assuming they wear jean jackets and smell like beer. One such band is 
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Champaign/Urbana, IL, gained some notoriety as a college town with a surprisingly great independent music scene (along the lines of Athens, GA) — one of the bands that pioneered and set the tone for the town’s scene in the ’80s was the Vertebrats, whose occasionally wonderful post-punk tunes gained enough recognition for the Replacements to cover one of them.
Some bands change intentionally, while others have change thrust upon them. Over the course of the past ten years, this Belgian band first changed its sound subtly, then dramatically. Witness the evolution of 
For 
Dorididae, a taxonomy term for the sea slug family commonly referred to as a “sea lemon,” feeds on sponges. 
The recently minted Black Hole imprint from Rocket Recordings is a space for those willing to take the darker, less travelled path. For their fourth instalment, they’ve invited Cork’s 
Fans of drummer/percussionist 
“Light-spirited hard rock” isn’t what you expect from a band ornery enough to call themselves Shitbaby Mammals. Yet it’s hard to describe the crudely named Swedish band’s latest, Godspeed, any other way. The album springs up, humbly and suddenly, from a heretofore unknown confluence of militant goofiness and earnest impressionistic nonsense — scrappy songs about British crime dramas, Bob Ross, and the only Halloween film without Michael Myers.