The debut album from Lloyd and the Leftovers joins the recent wave of Australian-flavoured Americana. Hailing from Walyalup on the west coast, their sound leans as much towards indie-tinged folk as it does any strand of country. Opener ‘Fruit and Wine’ is the closest the record gets to a strumming singalong, while ‘Kaarta Koomba’ is as near as it comes to a rocker – though neither track quite sets the tone for what follows.
The heart of the album is more whimsical, its frequent tempo changes sometimes unsettling the flow when a little more of that early crunch might have been welcome. Lead single ‘Tried It on Tuesday’ is a case in point: “I say it with a grin, I say it with a smile / Mumble my way through it, wiping tears out of my eyes” as the singer…
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There’s something compelling about hearing the songs live before you hear the album. Before Megaflower showed up as a fully formed record, its crazy shapes had already blown minds in several cramped gigs on Full Flower Moon Band’s first UK and European tour. Word-of-mouth recommendations pushed spaces well past their limits, crowds edging uncharacteristically closer to the stage, jammed into the sweaty corners of spaces whose low ceilings didn’t dampen the volume. It felt like an early warning: whenever these songs finally came out on record, the band wasn’t going to stay underground for long.
Coming in hot after that extended tour, when Megaflower did arrive last summer, it dragged the Brisbane cult outfit into a spotlight…
Tomasz Stańko, Poland’s most famous jazz musician and world-renowned trumpet virtuoso, had been a regular guest at Polish Radio recording studios for years. During longer and shorter sessions he was accompanied by leading improvising artists. The desire to present an unknown part of the legendary Desperado’s oeuvre to jazz lovers turned to the idea of releasing a unique collection – a radio portfolio of the artist from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The entire collection comprises of six records.
Considering needs of the listeners, box-sets come out in several formats. Next to the regular black-vinyl edition we have a limited white vinyl box edition for collectors. For digital enthusiasts, there is a CD box-set.
If you’re into roots reggae or dub, you’ve probably heard the names The Revolutionaries and Roots Radics tossed around more than once. These two bands shaped the sound of Jamaican music in ways that still echo today.
The Revolutionaries, sometimes called the Mighty Revolutionaries, came together in 1975 as Channel One Studio’s in-house band. The Hoo Kim brothers ran that studio, and it became a serious hub for creativity. The group helped define the tight, driving rockers style riddims that gave reggae a fresh, energetic edge. Sly Dunbar’s crisp drumming and Ranchie McLean’s heavy basslines set the pace, while also players like Robbie Shakespeare, Dougie Bryan, Robbie Lyn, and Ansel Collins added their own spice. Between 1975 and…
…includes seven bonus tracks.
South London sound system owner Lloyd Coxsone ably assisted in raising the Royals’ profile in the U.K., eagerly spinning dub plates of the group’s Ten Years After album. The attention helped Royals’ frontman/producer Roy Cousins land a deal with United Artists, whose Ballistic imprint eventually picked up both that vocal set and Israel Be Wise, as well as Freedom Fighters Dub (a set Cousins dedicated to Coxsone in gratitude) and Liberated Dub. The latter set was Israel‘s counterpart, and what it lacked in imagination for track titles (did someone leave a map of Kingston and its environs on the mixing desk?), was more than made up for the music within. Israel was produced by Cousins himself, with the riddims…
Singer and songwriter Morgan Wade has extended her celebrated recent album ‘The Party Is Over (recovered)’, adding five new tracks for a Deluxe version.
The Party Is Over (recovered) follows Wade’s recent album, “Obsessed”, which was released in August 2024. In a time of self-reflection, Wade revisited her earlier writing sessions to revitalise past songs that still spoke to the person she is today. She has also been playing some of its tracks on the road to sold-out shows across the US, UK and Europe. These songs, which so many fans have gravitated to live, will, for the first time ever, be made available, connecting Wade’s past and present and breathing new life into her earlier songs.
“The Party Is Over (recovered)” sees Wade…
The deluxe includes 8 additional songs inclusive of Rein Me In (with Olivia Dean) and the new single Talk to You (featuring Elton John).
Sam Fender’s third album ends with a track called Remember My Name. It’s clearly a very personal song, about its author’s late grandfather – even revealing the address of his council house, 11 Wark Avenue. The northern British references – “Chasing a cross in from the wing / Our boy’s a whippet, he’s faster than anything” – are amplified both by Fender’s Geordie vowels and the backing, provided by the Easington Colliery brass band. It’s all very specific and individual – you really don’t hear brass bands, or indeed the mention of whippets in pop very often – and yet Remember My Name seems to have something of the self-fulfilling…
Globally acclaimed music phenomenon Africa Express is back with a brand new studio album titled ‘Africa Express presents… Bahidorá’, recorded in Mexico and bringing together artists and musicians from four continents. The boundary-breaking music collective has, for over two decades, united artists across countries and genres in radically creative collaborations in which anything can, and does, happen.
With the idea of bringing together artists from different cultures, genres, and generations to perform and make music, Africa Express was founded in 2006 with a trip to Mali connecting local stars Toumani Diabaté, Bassekou Kouyaté and Amadou & Mariam with artists including co-founder Damon Albarn, Martha Wainwright and Fatboy Slim.
At the beginning of the year, Jane Remover told Billboard they had thrown away an entire album of proper pop tracks: “If it came out,” they explained, “I was going to be, like, main pop girl. And I didn’t want that.” Even if a bit self-aggrandizing, the claim doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
They had first found a taste of fame with hyperactive pop mutilations, and even their subsequent pivots towards soupy digital shoegaze or pulverizing rage-pop-rap didn’t halt the 22-year-old’s ascent into cult stardom. Now, after their most prolific and prominent year yet, Jane Remover offers a small taste of that pop record. Full of perfect hooks and fresh dance-inspired beats, the six songs on ♡ back up Jane Remover’s claims as a master crafter of pop songs.
In countries with a bloody history, built on empire, it has long been the case that migrants, and the children of migrants, from formerly colonised countries are responsible for a disproportionate amount of cutting edge culture. In Britain, the examples are too numerous to recall; from lover’s rock and dancehall in the 80s, through to drill, grime, and… pretty much everything else.
Batida music is perhaps the most pertinent example of this in modern Portugal. The modern batida, practiced by the likes of DJ Nervoso and DJ Marfox, was born in the suburbs of Lisbon, and incorporates touches of old school African dance styles like Angolan semba and Cape Verdean funaná into visceral, percussive modern dance music. Fuelled largely by Portuguese…
Goldie has occasionally returned to early moniker Rufige Kru for his more straightforward, underground drum’n’bass releases rather than his ambitious, multi-genre albums. Malice in Wonderland and Memoirs of an Afterlife appeared on his Metalheadz label during the late 2000s, and were pretty much only heard by his most faithful followers, though both contained some excellent tracks. As Metalheadz celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2025, Rufige Kru returned with third full-length Alpha Omega, co-produced by Goldie and James Davidson (Submotive).
The same duo also works together as Subjective, but their albums explore house, downtempo, soul, and broken beat rather than strictly drum’n’bass. Alpha Omega touches on feelings…
The penultimate track on Kibrom Birhane’s Lisané Bahir, ‘AMEN’, has the voices of Ethiopian elders giving blessings over a slow swinging drum machine. A sequencer bubbles out a rubbery pattern beneath sparking keyboard flourishes, soaring pads arrive carrying a lofty vocal. The track’s origins came in a recent trip back home to Ethiopia by California-based Birhane, where he noticed he wasn’t hearing these blessings as much as he did when he was growing up there. He recorded them as a reminder for a younger generation.
Preservation is one of the motivations behind Birhane’s fourth album, continuation is another. Lisané Bahir’s title translates to ‘the sound created when earth and water meet’ in…
A pleasant and inoffensive hard bop record, Keith Oxman’s Home shows the saxophonist in fine form. But with a 70 minute plus run time, it’s also a record that overstays its welcome. It’s a good record where a little pruning and spacing out would have pushed it to a higher level.
Oxman’s a player with a resume going back decades: his first record came out about 30 years ago on Capri and in recent years he’s worked with David Liebman and keyboardist Jeff Jenkins. For Home he’s using a quintet of guitarist Clint Dadian, trumpeter Derek Banach, bassist Bill McCrossen and drummer Todd Reid. It’s a nicely balanced group: Banach’s trumpet is a nice partner to Oxman’s sax, sometimes working in tandem and sometimes playing counterpoint, while…
In 2025 Dave Matthews Band hit the road for their 34th year of bringing their infectious energy to the stage. Live Trax Vol. 72 is from the second night of the bands two night stand in Chicago and captures a spotless and emotional performance from The Stones first notes to Pigs big finish. The creative and varied setlist includes songs like the powerful What You Are and Madmans Eyes as well as Daves haunting vocal deliveries on Gravedigger and Rye Whiskey.
Night two kicked off even bigger than the first, as “The Stone” worked the crowd into a frenzy and was immediately followed by “So Right”. The band leaned more into its newer material on Saturday, but still brought plenty of staples like “What You Are”, “You Might Die Trying”, “Blackjack”…
Although they emerged from Melbourne bayside outer suburbs onto the local live scene with their fresh and spirited indie-rock update of the garage-beat sounds of The Easybeats, Kinks and early Beatles only a year or so ago, Gnome actually started out as a bedroom solo project for teenaged singer/songwriter/ guitarist Jay Millar a few years back. Jay, playing everything himself, started recording and releasing a steady succession of material – quite a few albums’ worth – on his own Goblin Records label via Bandcamp. Realizing he needed a band to start playing out, Jay approached some like minded players from Frankston’s rehearsal hub Singing Bird, and with Jay on lead vocals and lead guitar, Ned Capp on guitar, Olly Katsianis on bass, and Ethan Robins…
Fuzz, the California based trio of Ty Segall (vocals, drums), Charles Moothart (vocals, guitar), and Chad Ubovich (vocals, bass), present their latest release Fuzz’s Fourth Dream on In the Red Records. This is the band’s first release in four years and is a collection of singles, unreleased demos, and rarities.
“I lived in a four-bedroom house in San Francisco that housed anywhere from six to ten people at a time,” Moothart explains. “Friends were always crashing when they were between spots, on tour, or just couldn’t make it home. It was a chaotic space, but a space that was cherished by many. Chad frequently crashed on our couch when on tour—surrounded by ashtrays full of cigarettes and joint roaches; beer cans and spray paint cans.
For the very first time, the complete studio recordings made by the iconic conductor Carlo Maria Giulini for Columbia and HMV (plus the two for Pathé and Electrola) have been remastered in high definition from original tapes and put together in a 60-CD box. Some recordings never published before are also included in the box: a Freischütz Overture from 1969, the stereo version of ‘Spring’ and ‘Summer’ Concertos from the 4 Seasons, plus a rehearsal of ‘Winter’ (1955), and excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony (1962).
This wide-ranging collection provides a comprehensive testimony of Carlo Maria Giulini’s collaborations with London’s most distinguished orchestras, his beloved Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic, later recordings…
Throughout The Vertical Luminous, shimmering vignettes of celestial melodies morph into unexpected shapes without concern for the verse-chorus form. While retaining a semblance of what came before on 2017’s The Unstruck Sound Centre, Paul Wilson’s new LP as F.Ampism enters a new frontier of direct-to-ear fidelity for the Brighton-based artist’s solo work.
The listener is routed through a sonic pipeline where the boundaries between the electronic and the organic have been smeared out of sight. Synthesizers and musique concrète form a symbiotic soundscape of collage and, through Wilson’s masterful mixing, a physical proximity to the sounds become nearly palpable, adding a sublime feeling of interiority.