Anenoa is Chilean-German artist Matias Aguayo‘s first album since relocating to Mexico City, and one of his most collaborative efforts to date. Sung mainly in Spanish, the record embraces a wide variety of Latin American dance styles, and returns to the playful absurdity of his earlier albums, rather than the stark, skeletal rhythms of 2019’s Support Alien Invasion. One thing that remains from that album, however, is Aguayo’s embrace of different cultures, and here he works with producers, musicians, and vocalists from multiple continents while changing styles with seemingly every track. “Sentimientos Encontraos” is a perky, cumbia-inspired shuffle that Aguayo wrote with the intention of it becoming a future wedding staple. “Asuca, Rock, Roll” starts out as…
Category: indie
When Carlos Niño sits behind an arsenal of percussion instruments, he isn’t there to create pockets, lay down grooves, or keep a strict meter; he’s laying out a billowing textural blanket for other instruments to settle upon.
“I’m going to have a lot of bells,” he once told me, “a lot of metals, plants, wood, wind. I’m gonna open it up like it’s a little forest.” If he does create a pulse, it’s reminiscent of the way cicadas’ buzzing can sound like an LFO filter sweep, or how toad calls can sync with firefly illuminations on a warm summer evening. His playing expands and contracts at an intuitive pace, helping guide other players further into the moment and listeners further into themselves.
On a day off from tour in November 2025,…
Thirst, originally released in 1981 is a stone-cold post-punk classic. While still retaining the sharp experimental edge of their debut, White Souls in Black Suits, Thirst stretches out and offers up some cleaner and more hooky moments as it moves away from pure improvisation. “Between White Souls and Thirst, the guitarist changed from David Hammond to Paul Widger,” explains Newton. “David introduced the perfect guitar sound for DVA, whereas Paul brought in a more rhythmic style more towards early Ry Cooder. The material we were developing was a more defined series of pieces, more structured and exact than the improvised works on White Souls.”
45 years on from its original release (on Fetish), it’s a record from the era that sounds like no other.
The Chemical Brothers have released a new compilation called Go: Apex and Beyond. The career-spanning collection arrives just as their 2015 track ‘Go’ explodes again on streaming, thanks to its inclusion in the Netflix film ‘Apex’.
“Beyond ‘Go’… Welcome to The Chemical Brothers’ universe,” the duo wrote on Instagram. “Listen to the new collection.”
Crucially, ‘Go’ has seen a 429% jump in Spotify streams since the ‘Apex’ release. As a result, the track has soared past 150 million plays. Furthermore, it now leads the new compilation.
Notably, the tracklist pulls from across their career. The picks include ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’, ‘Galvanize’, ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’, ‘Let Forever Be’, ‘Star Guitar’, ‘Setting Sun’, ‘Out Of Control’…
Black Editions presents the expanded and definitive edition of White Heaven’s brilliant third album Next to Nothing. Originally released in 1994 by Tokyo’s Noon Disk, the full album was only ever available in a limited vinyl pressing of 250 copies. Since then, it has become one of the most sought after artifacts of the 90’s Japanese underground and is regarded as a highpoint of Japanese psychedelic rock. Led by vocalist, songwriter and conceptualist You Ishihara, the album finds the group in a phase of refinement. Taking a more intricate and open approach, the music is buoyant and light yet at the same time, nocturnal and introspective. Next to Nothing marks the first time guitarists Michio Kurihara and Soichiro Nakamura appear together on record after having separate turns as lead…
There’s a peculiar tension running through Obsidiana, the third studio album under Rocket Recordings for Mexican artist J. Zunz. Lorena Quintanilla has always worked within spaces where dream-pop haze curdles into industrial unease, whether through Lorelle Meets the Obsolete or her solo work, but here the balance feels newly severe. The album moves like a process of extraction, each track scraping away another psychic layer until only pulse and residue remain.
The record’s title proves instructive. Obsidian, being volcanic glass historically used for weapons and scrying mirrors, becomes both thematic anchor and sonic blueprint. Quintanilla builds these tracks from hard edges and reflective surfaces, bass frequencies grind against flickering…
The Pale Fountains make a strong claim for being one of the great “lost” bands of the first half of the 1980s on this career retrospective — The Complete Virgin Years — which gathers up their two albums (1984’s Pacific Street and 1985’s …From Across the Kitchen Table), all the singles and B-sides, plus a healthy number of extended versions, rough mixes, and demos.
The group were equally inspired by the mystical garage rock of Love and the sophisticated craft of Burt Bacharach while sharing the smooth production of contemporaries like the Style Council, the psychedelic shimmer of Teardrop Explodes, and the take-no-prisoners approach of Dexy’s Midnight Runners. Their songs — like quite a few bands of the day — were full of fretless…
Jolanda Moletta has been described as a “one-woman electronic choir”, creating wordless compositions or “sonic and visual spells”, as described on her Bandcamp, through extended vocal techniques. On her two previous albums, Night Caves (2025) and Nine Spells (2022), she created gorgeous, cavernous worlds with layers of impeccable singing.
On her third release, Oceanine, she expands her vocal universe through collaboration, with each track featuring a different female vocalist. At the same time, the foundational elements are generated entirely by her own voice.
Moletta’s Bandcamp page describes the record as “representing a musical practice that is distinctly feminist”. The album harkens back…
Chicago-based sound artist Kikù Hibino collaborates with Japanese noise pioneer Merzbow (Masami Akita) on Rococo ∞ Echomatter, released by Superpang. Exchanging material between Chicago and Tokyo, the duo cuts spoken voice and instruments into dense noise fields.
The album opens like a thunderstorm. The voice that echoes around you (Alexandra Cupsa’s ASMR-modulated French vocals) becomes the green-gray sky, and suddenly, there are flickering tremors of distorted chaos, coming at you in bursts, like lightning. You hear the sounds of a tape rewinding, appropriately enough, since the album starts with the end (‘dB.XYZ’) and ends with the beginning (‘abcdefg’), as if the whole thing is being played backwards. ‘dB.XYZ’ in particular…
As we pick our way through the scurf and scree of the modern world, outraged and numbed at every turn, we can maybe agree that Russell Haswell’s new record, Let It Go, is a useful corrective and something of an unlikely balm. Here, with Haswell at the controls, we are just living in a world of shit, some of us are in the gutter but looking at the kerb, we’ve just roasted an Alsatian’s leg in our thirtieth-floor apartment, and so on.
Let It Go is a total heap of noise and openly addresses the listener as such. That’s the record’s narrative, and its liberation; our irritating anthropological longings to join the dots or see patterns can do one. Opening track, ‘Exit Downwards’ is a recording of an old, forgotten overheating generator doing its own…
Following the success of 2025’s first Singles Live compilation, Popstock Records present The Fall: Singles Live Vol. Two 1980-83 in association with Bella Union. Commenting on the release Paul Hanley says: “In marked contrast to Singles Vol. One this compilation showcases an altogether more stable line-up – the one that recorded Hex Enduction Hour to be precise, notwithstanding some to-ing and fro-ing on the kit between me and Karl. As with previous releases, there are some revelatory versions here, and the mastering is a wonder to behold, or whatever the aural equivalent of ‘behold’ is. The earliest, ‘Putta Block’, from May 1980 was recorded at the Beach Club, a short-lived Manchester venue that also saw New Order’s debut gig. The latest, ‘Ludd Gang’, comes…
Above all else, Widemouth’s debut LP, No Gasoline, is a record about friendship. Born out of the basement of a Northwestern University dorm where two/fourths of the band would meet to play Paul Simon and Big Thief covers, the band approached this album as a team, writing all of the songs together. And thematically, it sounds like an oral history of a foursome building a chosen community, with the songs brimming with emotions and shared inside stories.
Throughout the dozen tracks that make up this LP, the Chicago band manages to offer hints of everyone from Phoebe Bridgers and Bright Eyes to local band Ratboys. There is a moodiness to the mellow opening track, “I Wish You Passed On a Little Anger,” with Mak Carnahan…
Colin MacIntyre, the man behind Mull Historical Society, is enjoying a productive streak of late – and as his MHS series continues he moves behind the lens for inspiration. The idea of writing a song cycle with contributions from a range of authors dates right back to early classical music, yet MacIntyre is successfully updating it with pop flavourings, modern settings and a refreshingly wide geographical scope. The previous instalment in this series, 2023’s In My Mind There’s a Room, successfully got its authors to picture an important room; this one goes to personal depths by asking 12 authors and poets for their thoughts on a photograph of personal importance.
Settings range from China to Gaza, from Botswana to Glasgow, and yet common ground…
In a rather alarming development, electronic duo Digitalism – Hamburg-based Jens Moelle and İsmail Tüfekçi – are into their third decade as a musical concern. How did that happen?!
For clues, look no further than Optimism, their first album of the 2020s. In news that will come as no surprise, it delivers exactly what the title promises. On one hand it harks back to the mid-2000s, when we were saturated with the filtered electro / rock hybrid that labels like Kitsuné threw at us like an invigorating drink. Standout Digitalism tracks of the time were ‘Pogo’, ‘Zdarlight’ and ‘2 Hearts’ – and now they can be joined by the likes of ‘Starburst’, which still offer these highs as Digitalism bring the party to yours. The assertion is that although our world and quality of life might not…
The onetime solo project of Columbus, Ohio singer/songwriter Mark Allen Scott, villagerrr officially became a band with the project’s fifth album, 2024’s Tear Your Heart Out. That record’s five-piece lineup — which includes three guitarists — allowed Scott to expand villagerrr’s reflective mix of ambling alternative country-rock and atmospheric shoegaze into something at once more open and organic and more texturally layered. The album landed the group on Winspear (Slow Pulp, Wishy, Barrie), which reissued Tear Your Heart Out before presenting villagerrr’s proper debut for the label. The subsequent long-player Carousel is an even more collaborative record, whose development involved Scott sharing newly penned songs with some of his musician friends,…
Fall of 2023, Andy Hull & Robert McDowell took up residency at Union Chapel in London for 3 nights of unprecedented, intimate duo performances spanning the history of Manchester Orchestra. Andy’s voice paired with Robert’s meticulously plucked strings, eerie instrumentation, & understated harmonizing echoed against the gothic walls & stained glass windows of the chapel. A liturgical experience of introspection & sound community, transforming their most beloved songs into an iconic piece of music.
Recorded live during the band’s sold-out three night residency at London’s historic Union Chapel during the fall of 2023, the sweeping 21-track collection is a raw, vocally-centered liturgical experience of introspection…
Producer and composer Hannah Peel first worked with percussionist Beibei Wang on Manchester Collective’s 2023 album Neon, which included compositions by Peel as well as Lyra Pramuk and Steve Reich. The two artists then performed a fully improvised concert together as part of Peel’s artist residency in London. Afterwards, they spent five days improvising and recording at Real World Studios. The result is The Endless Dance, a playful, exploratory record inspired by the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism. The music takes several forms, from atmospheric soundscapes to galloping techno workouts. Wang’s spirited percussion and guest musician Hyelim Kim’s colorful playing of the daegeum (a large bamboo flute from Korea) bridge Asian traditions and contemporary…
L.A. band Dogstar (guitarist/vocalist Bret Domrose, drummer Robert Mailhouse and bassist Keanu Reeves) return with their fourth album All In Now, produced by Nick Launay (IDLES, Amyl And The Sniffers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds).
“The album really sets up the energy at the heart of this album and the fun that we’ve always had playing together,” Mailhouse shares. “We couldn’t fucking wait,” Reeves says about Dogstar’s collective desire to get right back to the studio. “Personally, I loved it all. For me, the attitude was like, ‘let’s work hard and let’s GO.’ ” “It felt like our last album was our ticket into a party,” says Bret Domrose. “And now we’ve shown up to the party – the three of us.”