Guitarist and composer Mike Johnson has co-led or led Denver-based avant-rock ensemble Thinking Plague since 1982. The band’s music has been roughly within the aesthetic orbit of Henry Cow and Art Bears, but with a distinct compositional bent. In that sense, it is arguably a more “American” sound based on tightly notated angularity, abrupt pivots, and timbral choices that are influenced as much by 20th-century classical as rock.
This is Johnson’s first solo album that he seeks to distinguish from his work with Thinking Plague. While a number of familiar collaborators from that outfit contribute on The Gardens of Loss (e.g., Elaine diFalco, Dave Willey, Bill Pohl, and Mark Harris), so does an 11-piece orchestral section of strings, reeds, and brass.
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A powerful new archival release from the legendary experimental project Muslimgauze, titled Muslimlahore. This album continues the ongoing posthumous excavation of Bryn Jones’ vast and politically charged body of work, offering listeners a fresh immersion into his unique blend of ethnic electronica, dub, and tape-based soundscapes.
Muslimlahore presents a suite of tracks that reflect Muslimgauze’s enduring fascination with South Asian and Islamic themes, filtered through his signature style of layered percussion, field recordings, and hypnotic loops.
The album’s title evokes the city of Lahore in Pakistan, situating the music within a broader context of post-colonial identity, resistance, and cultural memory.
femtanyl’s method for cover art involves doing an illustration and then using a phone to take a picture of it on the computer screen, spawning cruddy little Moiré pattern grids. It’s a good analog for femtanyl’s digital hardcore music: bitcrushed, compressed, spewing and screaming to a doomsday drum thwack. But while the artwork — femtanyl’s trademark feline creature Token engulfed by flames — still teems with digital artifacts, the music on this debut album seems keen to transcend the screen. MAN BITES DOG might be at the laptop rave, but it’s thinking about body-bashing in a dank DIY venue.
Noelle Mansbridge is assisted here by Juno Callendar, who arrived as a live drummer and now plays multiple instruments and helps…
There’s a sincerely grounded quality to A Djinn and a Hunter Went Walking. The new album from balafonist Neba Solo and donsongoni (hunter’s harp) player Benego Diakité – their first as a duo – shines a light on two Malian musicians who are masters of their repertoires. Each performer hails from a different cultural background, with Solo trained in Senufo traditions and Diakité rooted in the Wassoulou region, and they come together here with an understated ease. It makes for a soothing work from start to finish, but with enough moving parts to reasonably grab and hold the attention of a range of audiences.
This is no ordinary celebration of genius. There is no bombast in this combination, at least not in the fully produced pieces. Solo’s and Diakité’s…
For years, Angel Du$t was Justice Tripp’s balmy reprieve from Trapped Under Ice. When he fronted the Baltimore hardcore band, he cursed out ice queens and swore he’d “stay cold forevermore” to protect his heart. These tormented songs were molded by the trauma and violence that Tripp endured during his hardscrabble upbringing. Angel Du$t’s 2014 debut, A.D., with its pink cover art and perky pop-punk sound, showed that he was learning to leave the past behind and warm up a bit. On subsequent Angel Du$t records, the music got even softer, the imagery cozier, and Tripp’s lyrics, which once focused almost solely on heartbreak and regret, became intoxicated by the fumes of romance (“Deep Love,” “Big Ass Love,” “Love Slam”) and rock’n’roll…
Long before Sister Hazel become a platinum-selling name, its future songwriters Ken Block and Drew Copeland are just two friends chasing small gigs, harmonizing for the sheer love of it. That early spark finally surfaces with Ken & Drew’s: Lost Cassette Covers, a lovingly restored time capsule that pulls ten cover songs from tapes the duo recorded back in 1993.
These early sessions—now presented as Recovered Recordings: The Pre-Hazel Tapes—capture Ken and Drew in their most unfiltered form. There’s no polish, no grand ambition, just the sound of two voices locking in and discovering their chemistry in real time. The first two tracks to surface, tender takes on “Closer to Fine” by Indigo Girls and “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by Eagles, immediately…
Bob “Slim” Dunlap epitomized the journeyman musician who plays for the fun of it when his day gig allows. However, even casual listeners know his name for one reason: landing the “hot seat” assignment of succeeding the Replacements’ late, troubled guitarist Bob Stinson. But there’s more to Dunlap’s story than his experience with that legendarily star-crossed Minneapolis quartet might indicate.
Slim Dunlap’s two obscure yet adored mid-90’s solo albums “The Old New Me” & “Times Like This” have been remastered and packaged on a new double-CD entitled Every Little Word. In full cooperation with Slim’s family and Peter Jesperson’s Medium Cool – Twin/Tone Records imprint especially for Curation Records.
Wild Horses originally formed in 1978, when guitarist Brian Robertson left Thin Lizzy after the legendary ‘Live And Dangerous’ record, and bassist Jimmy Bain left Rainbow following the double live ‘On Stage’ album, joining forces to create this melodic, hard rock supergroup.
Originally featuring drummer Kenney Jones (Faces, The Who) and guitarist Jimmy McCulloch (Wings, Stone The Crows), the line-up stabilised when Robertson and Bain were joined by drummer Clive Edwards (Uli Jon Roth, UFO, Pat Travers) and multi-instrumentalist Neil Carter (UFO, Gary Moore).
They were signed to EMI following their appearance at the 1979 Reading Rock Festival, releasing their Trevor Rabin (Yes) produced debut ‘The First Album’ in 1980. Featuring the singles…
Singer-songwriter Jeremy Ivey has released his new album, Its Shape Will Reveal Itself, via Soggy Anvil Records. The record is an intimate, home-recorded collection that leans into warmth, imperfection, and raw emotion rather than polished studio sheen.
Alongside the album’s release, Ivey has shared its first single, “Edge of Darkness,” recorded live to a single microphone with his wife, Margo Price. The track premiered through Back In The Garage, a stripped-down session project founded by Luke Pelletier and his brother Tristan Pelletier. Originally not intended for public release, the album was recorded at Ivey’s home on a refurbished Tascam 388 reel-to-reel machine, giving the songs a lived-in, analog warmth.
“I recently refurbished an old Tascam 388…
Is any chore more humbling than cleaning the refrigerator? Every few weeks, I cringe as I scrape up leftovers that never met the microwave and toss produce that never saw the stove. Philadelphia indie rockers Remember Sports have long documented mundane shames like this; their sophomore record All of Something ended with a song about washing blood out of bedsheets.
Their fifth, The Refrigerator, takes many more passes at the humiliating cycles of domesticity: shoes you tie that will come undone, food waste you forget and then-ew-rediscover. “Say that there’s more to life than cleaning up my room,” singer Carmen Perry belts and pleads on the fuzzy single “Bug,” a song in which she steps on a leftover chip from a bowl she ate days earlier.
Lucy Kruger & The Lost Boys build a captivating sonic world tinged with intimacy on Pale Bloom. The Berlin-based band’s seventh studio album maintains a hauntingly atmospheric quality, ultimately honing the gothic art-pop sound the group have become known for.
Opening track ‘Bloom’ establishes the album’s persistent eeriness, initially playing with the melodies and lyrics of nursery rhymes. This almost ghostly nostalgia for childhood is evoked throughout Pale Bloom, supported by a mesmerising viola part courtesy of Jean-Louise Parker. The song’s instrumentals build, combining strings with electric guitar effectively. Like its title would suggest, ‘Bloom’ unfurls organically – a manifestation of slowly…
In every form of music there are the giants, the ones whose talent and ambition strut across the world stage, dazzling critical and commercial considerations alike.
Then there are the quiet geniuses, the folks who display equal creativity and range to their more famous compadres, but with little interest in the spotlight – simply going about their business making music that doesn’t sound like anyone else. These folks’ music may likely be less-heralded, but will have an equally broad and meaningful impact in the years to come.
Cellist and composer Tomeka Reid is definitely one of those quiet ones. She’s unusual just by virtue of her chosen instrument – the cello is not the first axe one thinks of when we think…
Kurt Elling joins forces with Germany’s WDR Big Band for the lush and swinging In the Brass Palace. Conducted by tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer since 2016, WDR Big Band has a long history of showcasing guest performers. What’s particularly generous about the WDR approach is how much they cater to their guest artists; curating arrangements and song choices that both illuminate and expand upon a performer’s career.
Here, they collaborate with Elling, digging into a nice cross-section of beloved standards and unexpected covers that touch upon all of the acclaimed vocalese singer’s stylistic touchstones from driving post-bop jazz and burnished ballads to funk-infused numbers. Elling and Mintzer are longtime associates and fittingly,…
Life feels a bit of a grind at the moment. Every news headline seems to suggest the world’s going to hell in a handcart, and rain has become an almost constant fixture during the early weeks of 2026.
So, as an antidote to indie navel gazing, here comes Brighton quartet Congratulations with a debut album that feels like a big day-glo shot of adrenaline. The four-piece have spent the last couple of years building a name for themselves as a band with a live show defined by chaotic energy – it’s not unusual to leave a Congratulations live show after witnessing frenetic ‘running on the spot’ dancing performed by a group in matching jumpsuits.
So can the frazzled, sweaty atmospherics of a Congratulations gig be accurately recreated…
Erik Vincent Huey is an Austin-based American singer-songwriter issuing his second full-length album, Fort Defiance. He collaborates with one of the best, Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, who plays his trademark electric guitar, produces the record, and recruits high-profile guests. Huey is hailed for his 2023 debut, Appalachian Gothic, a concept album, a kind of autobiography. Fort Defiance, however, is simply a collection of songs without a unifying theme. “This record is about achieving escape velocity out of Appalachia and into the larger world. Kinda like my own journey,” says Huey. Reference points run from Dave Alvin to Willie Nile to Steve Earle to Springsteen and Dylan, all of whom possess streetwise credos and punk tinges.
Huey, the son of four generations of coal…
The Clay Street Unit may have formed in Colorado, but you can hear the influence of Appalachia throughout their debut, Sin & Squalor. Blending bluegrass with folk, country, and Americana, echoes of everyone from Doc Watson and Earl Scruggs to more modern musicians like Chris Stapleton and Sierra Ferrell can be heard throughout the 11-track collection.
Building on the foundation that was laid with their EP — 2022’s A Mighty Fine Evening — this full-length finds the band expanding both their sound and their themes, delving into some weightier topics here and there. The album starts off modestly with two of their mellower offerings. “Nothing Else Matters,” the song that introduces the record, is a relatable and sweet…
Numero present ’90s shoegaze band Should’s ’98 debut ‘Feed Like Fishes’ + 10 period bonus tracks.
The folks in Phoenix’s Half String talked up this trio when they were Austin, TX’s shiFt (before they moved north to various universities and gave up their name because of another band called Shift). And it’s easy to see why: Should would have fit perfectly into Arizona’s former “beautiful noise,” post-dream pop scene.
Even without the interestingly sedate but grasping cover of the Wedding Present’s “Spangle” (and, on another record, 18th Dye’s “Merger”), their sound makes it apparent that they can match the English in pairing inventive, modern guitars to lulling tunes for nighttime singing. You could see “Sarah Missing” appearing on a Slowdive…
Like so many 20 year olds before him, Zion Battle found something transcendent in Joshua Tree National Park. Since age 16, Battle had been working towards becoming a musician, studying for a time at CalArts and New York’s The New School. Then, in 2024, he left behind his academic training to begin making music as Katzin, exploring a more intimate sound shaped by a healthy love for the bedroom dream pop of early Orchid Tapes releases and the fuzz of 1990s indie rock. He linked with friend and producer Max Morgen, and the duo temporarily decamped to California and set up a makeshift DIY studio near Joshua Tree to fine-tune Katzin’s debut.
The bright and sweet Buckaroo radiates sincerity. Battle’s biggest strength is his…