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Countless young men in the 1980s and ’90s doubtless dreamed of what it would be like to go out with Susanna Hoffs, the lead singer with paisley underground charmers turned multi-platinum hitmakers The Bangles. Since Hoffs has been happily married for over three decades, the window of opportunity to make that happen has passed, but Hoffs gives us a faint insight into what it could have been like on her 2026 album The List. The LP’s inspiration came when Hoffs was looking through an old notebook and happened upon a list she’d made of all the men she’d dated since her first high school boyfriend. Most of the songs on The List are memories of moments in relationships, some happy, some wistful, some bittersweet. Anyone hoping Hoffs will offer…

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There is a particular kind of light that only exists after rain has finished falling but before the sun has arrived – a grey-gold hour where the wet ground holds more colour than the sky. Space Afrika has always made records that live inside that hour. Honest Labour, the pair’s breakout 2021 statement, was full of it: shortwave murmur, tower-block wind, the feeling of being simultaneously inside a crowd and entirely alone. Five years on, Joshua Tarelle Reid and Joshua Inyang return with Quiet Storm, a record that doesn’t so much follow Honest Labour as walk out of its shadow into wide open air. Theirs has always been a music of texture and grit – ambient hiss, trip-hop’s slow pulse, techno’s drive, classical’s structure – folded into dubscapes built from wherever they happen to be living.

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Affection, issued in 2024, trailed the first proper Bullion LP by eight years, making the 2026 follow-up Nearly rather unexpected. Its arrival was likely closer to a shock for those who track Nathan Jenkins’ behind-the-scenes activities. During the two-year interim, Katy J Pearson, Meg Mac, and Avalon Emerson released albums co-written and/or produced by Jenkins, who concurrently had a hand in songs by Oliver Sim and “Rare” duet partner Carly Rae Jepsen, and also mixed an album by Orlando Weeks. All of this outside work perhaps inspired Jenkins’ more openly collaborative approach – akin to that of a production job – yet Nearly comes out sounding just like a Bullion project. While bearing some strong resemblances to Jenkins’ most commercially successful productions…

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Leeds, England’s Adult DVD reignite the ’90s rave bonfire on their 2026 eponymous debut. The group, lead by singer Harry Hanson and keyboardist Greg Lonsdale, has garnered buzz for their swaggeringly irreverent, throwback style of indie dance music. It’s a vibe that fits nicely next to more contemporaries like LCD Soundsystem and Soulwax (the band have intimated as much), but which cannily evokes the brash, Dayglo aesthetic of classic ’90s acts like 808 State, Happy Mondays, and Prodigy. Much of this is due to Hanson’s thick Yorkshire-accent and brash, rap-like delivery. He’s the perfect conduit for the kind of cocky, Madchester-esque, British two-finger salute energy Adult DVD bring in spades. It also doesn’t hurt that Lonsdale and the rest…

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Los Angeles-based pianist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Kiefer Shackleford has appeared on the Blue Note label twice in 2026. In July, he was part of the eponymous debut by FATHERS, a jazz quartet that also includes drummer Nate Smith, bassist CARRTOONS, and producer Kenneth Blume (aka Kenny Beats). Memory Bomb is his 13-track leader debut for the label. It presents a sound he calls “Over the Breaks,” after a J Dilla concept balancing modern jazz warmth with the rhythmic pull of hip-hop, improvisation, and neo-soul. Memory Bomb showcases many collaborators, but there isn’t a moment where Kiefer doesn’t shine through and hold everything together. He shares production duties with best friends and creative partners CARRTOONS…

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Back in 2018, Kaia Kater‘s third album Grenades sent a ripple through the folk and roots music world, earning her Polaris and Juno nominations and helping to reinvigorate the mesmerizing quality of banjo-focused music. The album was raw and stripped back, employing a more traditional western folk style for Kater to sing about her Caribbean heritage and her father’s struggles as a young political refugee.
Now, six years later, Kater is back with Strange Medicine, which feels more like a cinematic odyssey than a straight folk album. The songs on Strange Medicine feel fully realized, featuring strings, melancholic horns, R&B synth work, frenetic jazz drumming and of course, some expert banjo playing from Kater. Kater’s vocals…

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…The digital deluxe version adds 5 exclusive acoustic tracks.
It’s almost unbelievable to think that it’s been seven years since YONAKA released their debut album, considering the Brighton trio have shared two EPs and a mixtape in the time since. But on this second full-length, the band appear to be making a much more definitive statement. A record that – according to vocalist Theresa Jarvis – delves into matters of the heart in all their gory glory (or “the dirty bits and the harsh bits”), Until You’re Satisfied picks up where the grand ambitions of their debut left off, but this time, manages to make a return to the attitude and intrigue of their earlier works. Granted, there are still humongous, widescreen rock moments: take the stadium-sized…

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When the speakers are throbbing and rattling, spitting a filthy squeal, threatening to split open-do you bolt out of the room or step closer? If you ever attend a Gilla Band show, you will know instantly which their fans prefer. Discomfort is the baseline goal for a band that weaponizes its instruments to such earsplitting magnitudes that they rarely resemble the tried tools of rock music: guitar, bass, drums. “The trick,” bassist Daniel Fox said in a recent interview with Pitchfork, “is to be louder than everyone else.” This is a wild but typical understatement from the humble Irish quartet, which also comprises vocalist Dara Kiely, guitarist Alan Duggan Borges, and drummer Adam Faulkner. Volume-blown out to extremes or dampened before a deafening blast…

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Megiapa’s nutritive first album for Chicago’s International Anthem label would have made equal sense on progressive Los Angeles imprints such as Stones Throw and Brainfeeder. In a way, the Midwest native, who writes, arranges, and produces her material, is a child of the L.A. beat scene that gave rise to the likes of Georgia Anne Muldrow and Flying Lotus. Although she established herself in the Windy City while building up a considerable catalog of self-released material over the course of a decade, Megiapa has been in L.A. since 2023, allying with a host of players, many of whom joined her in the making of Intentions. A mix of live instrumentation and Megiapa’s progressive beatmaking, this set is laid out like a considered mixtape slash refined jam session…

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Oren Ambarchi’s Cooked brings together a wide cast of avant-garde luminaries, shaping improvisations into two sprawling, side-long pieces. The roster includes frequent and longtime Ambarchi collaborators such as Jim O’Rourke, Johan Berthling, James Rushford, and Will Guthrie, in addition to Eiko Ishibashi, Michiko Ogawa, Isak Hedtjärn, and others. “Hidden Tableau” starts the album out on a rather discomforting note, with an abrasive synthetic voice (courtesy of Konrad Sprenger) that brings to mind a malfunctioning, bit-crushed version of Robert Ashley’s Automatic Writing. This unnerving vocal texture continues to creak over sustained pianos and faintly glowing drones, with other instruments gradually taking form in the mix.

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Even some of the most obscure musical movements have their lesser-known players. One such example is the incredibly unseen group the Catburgers, a band from Edinburgh, Scotland who existed in the margins of the C-86 scene during the late ’80s, playing sparingly and recording a few times without ever officially releasing any music in their time. Galashiels represents the Catburgers album that never was when they were first active, recorded in 1989, shortly before they disbanded the following year, and then mixed in 2025 by Archie Moore from tapes that had sat in storage for decades. Like many of their peers of the time, the band’s sound sat in a conflicted place between melodic rock and punk abrasion. As the story goes, the band began in a burst of inspiration…

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Continuing the series of archival live albums documenting German experimental rock legends Can at their mid-’70s creative peak, Live in Arles 1975 captures a set recorded in August of that year at an amphitheatre in Southern France. As with other volumes in the series, the tracks are numerically titled, as the group mainly improvised in concert, though they often touched on riffs, ideas, and rhythms heard in the songs contained on their studio albums. Also like some of the other live releases, it sounds like it was sourced from private fan tapes rather than professional recordings, but the energy of the musicians’ performances mostly makes up for the murky sound quality. The group sound strong and energetic as soon as the record button was pressed…

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In the period following the release of her third album, PRE PLEASURE, and related touring, Julia Jacklin found herself no longer under contract to a label, and looking for a manager. Left to her own devices, she decided to record her next album in Melbourne for the first time (her home since 2017), with just a few friends. She called up Robert Muinos, the owner of Rat Shack studios, which is located upstairs from a local hangout from her earliest days in the city, a pub called The Gem. With Muinos as Jacklin’s co-producer as well as engineer and mixer, she recorded the album live in close quarters with the backing band of guitarist Jacob Diamond, bassist Mimi Gilbert, and drummer Jess Elwood. The resulting record, The Gem (which was ultimately released on 4AD)…

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Titled simply 3, Penelope Isles‘ third album and first in five years follows the release of both Jack and Lily Wolter’s debut solo albums, with Jack recording under the moniker Cubzoa and his sister going by My Precious Bunny. Perhaps expectedly, both projects reflect characteristics of their band’s tender, psychedelic sound, although Cubzoa’s Unfold in the Sky leaned further into experimental realms for its lush, other-worldly sound, whereas My Precious Bunny’s A Moment in My Eyes landed in a more personal, dream pop-oriented space. These qualities come back together for 3, although it’s a bit quieter, more reflective album than their previous ones. Relatedly, it’s their first LP to be recorded live in the studio, and their first as only a trio with drummer Joe Taylor…

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This expanded edition features six new recordings in total: four previously unreleased songs along with acoustic versions of two fan favorites from ‘Hen’s Teeth’.
For the best part of a quarter of a century North Carolina singer-songwriter Sam Beam has steadily released albums of depth and substance under his Iron & Wine guise, playing a form of indie-folk before that term was invented. Strictly speaking, Hen’s Teeth is the eighth Iron & Wine album but Beam’s collaborations with the likes of Calexico, Jesca Hoop and Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses comfortably takes him into double figures.
It sees him carry on from 2024’s Light Verse album with the songs broadly from the same period of writing and occupying similar…

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Horse Jumper…This deluxe version remasters the original album (or perhaps more accurately, masters it for the first time) and offers a whopping thirteen bonus tracks of never-before-heard songs, alternate versions, and demos.
Boston’s Horse Jumper of Love are a self- proclaimed “slow rock” trio that, despite declaring themselves a band, more strongly resemble a solo project. A few years into their career, the group’s already busted into the top tier of the Boston house show scene — a considerable accomplishment for any young rock band, considering the scene’s predilections towards snoozy folk and hostile hardcore. But while Horse Jumper of Love’s live performances recall the low, slow burn of bands like Silver Jews and Arab Strap,…

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1974-1977 brings together five CDs absolutely bursting with music covering the most overlooked, but arguably most pioneering, period of Marc Bolan’s glittering career. It rounds up the final three T. Rex studio albums – Bolan’s Zip Gun, Futuristic Dragon and Dandy in the Underworld – and a string of 10 peerless late-period singles (and B-sides) that included ‘New York City’, ‘Dreamy Lady’, ‘The Soul of My Suit’, and of course ‘I Love to Boogie’. Throughout the journey Marc’s restless muse and creative spark encompasses soul and R&B (‘Ride My Wheels’, ‘Dreamy Lady’), excursions into proto-glam metal (‘Zip Gun Boogie’, ‘The London Boys’) and nervy, spiky-sharp tracks (‘Think Zinc’, ‘Celebrate Summer’) that nod towards the punk explosion happening…

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One aspect of the obsessive fascination surrounding Joy Division is the scarcity of their music. Though they were technically active under different band names as early as 1976, the finalized lineup of the group played under the name Joy Division for less than three years, becoming one of the most influential and game-changing entities to ever shift the tides with just two studio albums. In this brief time, the band played somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 or so live shows, which have also played into their legacy. Innumerable bootleg recordings and a smattering of above-board releases have cobbled together as much footage as possible of the band’s extremely limited time on stages, hoping to uncover a better picture of what made them so important.

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