Morning Star finds Këkht Aräkh arriving at a truer, more refined version of himself. Recorded between Berlin and Stockholm, the album emerges from a period of intense personal and artistic growth, blending aggressive black metal passages with immersive, textured soundscapes that feel both intimate and vast.
Since his origins in Mykolaiv, Ukraine, Dmitry (a.k.a. Crying Orc), the sole mastermind behind the project, has sought a distinctive path within black metal. This vision unfolded through his debut Through the Branches to Eternity EP (2018) and the albums Night & Love (2018) and Pale Swordsman (2021), establishing a signature tension between ferocious, visceral black metal and delicate, introspective ballads.
Latest Entries »
Haiku Salut are one of a kind and always have been from the moment their debut EP, How We Got Along After the Yarn Bomb, landed in the summer of 2011. Fusing elements of folk, classical, chamber pop, lo-fi indie, and electronica, the trio — Louise Croft, Gemma Barkerwood, and Sophie Barkerwood — have made creating the unconventional into an artform. They’ve been lauded by both music fans and critics alike, not to mention other artists — some of whom have collaborated with them over the years, such as Public Service Broadcasting.
Over the course of the band’s 16 years of existence, they’ve put out five albums plus a handful of EPs and singles of music that refuses to conform to any structured genre or fad. As multi-instrumentalists of various facets themselves,…
Shinichi Atobe’s arresting house and techno beams with inimitable candor, built from bright, phlegmatic loops that run on an eccentric internal logic. Now a quarter century into a career largely characterized by mystique and a seeming avoidance of the public eye, Atobe has spent the better part of the 2020s slowly opening up, with some bemusement. His laconic interview with Tone Glow in 2024 — most noteworthy for being the first time anyone had asked the alleged recluse to go on the record — revealed an artist with little interest in extended introspection or narrativization beyond a few quaint details. (His favorite hobby? “Sleeping.”) Accordingly, Atobe’s sound has evolved laterally over the course of the decade, reupholstering the artist’s quirks into a series of…
Kinshasa isn’t the kind of city that waits for you to be ready, the city just takes over your experience. It is a metropolis of staggering contradictions, where the ghosts of Belgian colonialism collide with the relentless, vibrating hustle of hyper-capitalism. To attempt to capture the essence of this place on tape seems like a fool’s errand, yet this is exactly what the Kinshasa-based street art collective KINACT have achieved with their debut LP, Kinshasa in Action. Founded in 2015 by Eddy Ekete, KinAct first made their name not on stage, but in the gutters, markets, and intersections of the Congolese capital. They transformed public spaces into living, breathing theatres of the absurd, constructing elaborate regalia from the city’s discarded detritus, bottles, wires, tires, and dismembered…
Dream pop is a genre that takes a great deal of attention to perfect. It’s not enough to write idiosyncratic lyrics set to a jangly beat; there are holes to be filled between drum cymbals and bass chimes. Burning at Both Ends aims to hit that sweet spot between wakefulness and drowsy activities. The finished work is a more palatable equivalent to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, a facet that will enthrall some and disappoint others. Nonetheless, Hit Like a Girl take no prisoners, presenting a well-formed record that resides comfortably in the dream pop canon. Led by Nicolle Maroulis, an artist who uses they/them pronouns, the group achieve a sonic meditation on 21st century living.
“Only Have Myself,” an angry rocker, is dotted with ferocious exhibits of screaming from…
After more than a decade of relative silence, Diana Darby’s Otterson offers a new chapter of the singer/songwriter’s uniquely haunted sound. The insular style Darby found on previous albums remains consistent throughout Otterson, but this time around the construction was a little different. Pieced together from new songs and some older material while Darby was making the transition from recording on four-track to working with Digital Audio Workstations. Though the overcast character that has defined much of her discography doesn’t change much with these technological advances, there’s a different tint to Darby’s muted colors throughout the album.
Opening track “April” is spare, with clinks of a lonesome tambourine keeping time for…
…There’s a moment on Sluice’s new album, Companion, where frontman Justin Morris sings about being a kid reading in a bunk on a tour bus, crying and asking “what happened to it all feeling so good?” It’s a question that drove him out of music entirely — and, eventually, back into it on very different terms.
The Durham, North Carolina quartet — Morris on guitar and vocals, Oliver Child-Lanning on bass and various instruments, Avery Sullivan on drums, and Libby Rodenbough on fiddle — release Companion, their third album and Mtn Laurel Recording Co. debut, on March 27th. It follows 2023’s Radial Gate, the album Morris made after fleeing New York for a Craigslist house in Hillsborough with then-stranger Child-Lanning, tracking…
…Love These Days by Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Karen Dahlstrom is a strong collection of songs rooted in contemporary folk, with dalliances into country, blues and even jazz. You wouldn’t be remiss if you were wondering why you hadn’t heard of Dahlstrom until now. To be fair, she is a bit of a late bloomer, but having spent some time as a member of the americana trio Bobtown, Dahlstrom returns with her first proper solo record. Brimming with beguiling songs that could only have been penned by someone with the life experiences to do them justice, it’s a discerning, mature worldview of life and love.
The charming opener ‘Can’t Help Myself’ asserts itself immediately with an irresistible guitar and bass groove, punctuated with subtle…
At the age of sixty-eight, Jim Lauderdale is in top form, his voice as good as ever. The iconic songwriter, now a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, is showing no signs of slowing down, and in his own words: “I feel like I’m writing and recording more than ever, and that’s such a favourite thing of mine”. After featuring on Dallas Burrow’s The Way the West Was Won last year, Lauderdale is back with a record of his own, Country Super Hits Volume 2.
For those unfamiliar with his Country Super Hits Volume 1, released back in 2006, despite its title, it’s not a compilation of old hits, but rather a studio LP featuring a batch of songs that were new at the time. In the same way, with Volume 2, you are treated to thirteen fresh songs ready…
Stefanie Drootin and Chris Senseney are music lifers, married parents of two who have been the core of the band Big Harp essentially since they met two decades ago. As a teenager in the San Fernando Valley, Drootin committed to the DIY scene early, joining bands as a bassist before she could drive and bailing on high school with only a year left in order to tour. After Senseney met Drootin on the road in 2007, they accidentally moved to California together, got married, had their first kid, and then started Big Harp. They are lifers, and lifers make it work.
Big Harp’s fourth album, Runs to Blue, does not feel overdue. With songs of wanderlust and loss, love for your children and love for your lover, accepting one’s increasing age while also…
Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke from unheard tapes recorded in the ’70s, Echo Park is a snapshot of Los Angeles life from helium-voiced mainstay Tommy Peltier that foreshadows the blue-eyed soul that would emerge just a few years later.
Now 90 years old, Peltier is still playing relatively regularly for a nonagenarian, but he cut his teeth as a jazzman – he’d never really intended to make pop music.
Born in New Orleans, Peltier relocated to Los Angeles as a teen and quickly established himself on the jazz circuit, playing cornet in his band the Jazz Corps and even recording an album with Roland Kirk. But it wasn’t to be; Peltier suffered an injury in 1970 that ended his horn playing career so he retrained as a singer-songwriter…
The initial plan for guitarist Robben Ford’s first solo studio album in about five years was supposed to be a tribute to Jeff Beck. But a move to the UK changed direction for what became Two Shades of Blue. The title references not just the locations (London and Indiana) and different musicians used to support jazz, blues, soulful singer/songwriting guitarist Ford (ex-Tom Scott’s LA Express, Yellowjackets and others), but how his approach to the blues genre is wider and more inclusive than most.
Three US recorded songs aim at a Jeff Beck-inflected ‘Blow by Blow’ and ‘Wired’ instrumental groove. He’s joined by veterans bassist Daryl Jones (Rolling Stones, Miles Davis) and drummer Gary Husband (John McLaughlin,..
This is a huge undertaking, an eight-CD set comprising all the band’s official studio albums released between 2006 and 2014, with a few added extras. It features not just the original albums, remixed and remastered (and notably not by Steven Wilson, prog’s ‘go-to’ man for this task), but also rarities, bonus tracks and acoustic reinterpretations, as well as new stereo and immersive mixes. Together, these highlight the journey The Pineapple Thief has been on since taking their early formative steps.
Retracing Our Steps is the second such release commemorating the legacy of The Pineapple Thief, following on from 2023’s How Did We Find Our Way, 1999–2006, which serves as almost the definitive guide to the band and their early…
Harriet Tubman is a vanguard electric jazz-funk trio composed of guitarist Brandon Ross, bassist Melvin Gibbs, and drummer J.T. Lewis. Together since 1997, Electrical Field of Love is only their sixth album and debut for Pi Recordings. It’s their second co-billed collaborative outing (their first was 2017’s Araminta with Wadada Leo Smith), this time with keyboardist, composer, and singer Georgia Anne Muldrow. She encountered them decades ago as a jazz studies major at New York’s New School; they were performing at a now-defunct arts space. She claims: “It was like the juke joint of my dreams. I heard everything in that music. And I was never the same after that.” Since then, Muldrow has released more than 20 albums. Harriet Tubman has always explored Black…
…the reissue features 20 tracks, including a bonus 7″ with the previously unreleased song “House” and a new remix of “Playboy of the Western World” by Dirick Cummins. The tracks were newly restored from original 1/4” tape reels and mastered by Josh Bonati.
Third Man Records is re-issuing Connie Converse’s only known collection of songs on vinyl and CD so that a new generation can learn her story and sounds. How Sad, How Lovely is an atmospheric collection of folk songs that contain a lingering sense of what could have been.
Her backstory is fascinating as she began recording these intimate songs in 1949 on reel-to-reel, pre-dating the NYC folk scene with inward-looking tunes that struggle against…
Only a year on from the release of their self-titled debut album, supergroup Butler, Blake & Grant have released the follow up, Murmurs, via 355 Recordings. The record sees the trio – Bernard Butler (Suede, McAlmont & Butler), Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) and James Grant (Love and Money) – reimagining songs from their respective back catalogues.
Butler, Blake & Grant formed when Scottish musician, Douglas MacIntyre, who promotes FRETS Concerts, invited them to perform a low-key concert in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, guessing that they would work well together. The trio then performed all over the UK and recorded a critically-acclaimed 2024 album of original material at Blake’s home on the banks of the River Clyde.
Paula Kelley emerges from her orchestral pop cocoon with her immaculately realized third album, 2026’s Blinking as the Starlight Burns Out. Her first solo album since 2003’s The Trouble with Success or How You Fit Into the World, it sees the Boston-bred/Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, and arranger once again underscoring her reputation as an indie rock auteur, merging her shoegaze roots with her love for cozy, ’60s- and ’70s-style AM pop. As on her past recordings, here Kelley not only sings, but plays most of the instruments. She also writes all of the orchestral arrangements, a skill that kept her busy with film work and away from pop music for most of the 2010s. That said, she did reunite with her former Drop Nineteens-bandmates for an unexpected 2023…
The breathless opener ‘How to Exist’ takes off at a breakneck pace, as if lyricist James McGregor is banging his head off the wall. The lyrics replicate pacing the floor, this stream of consciousness implying a pent-up frustration. The rapid fire start to The Clockworks second album The Entertainment ends abruptly with: “I’m looking for something to believe in”. It lays the groundwork for the rest of the album. Experience has provided The Clockworks with a shift in perspective, inevitable after all as these young men admit their debut album 2023’s Exit Strategy came as a result of four lads making a noise in a room. The world keeps turning and experience creates change which in turn seeps into their creativity. Rather than the micro-observations on the debut,…
Lou Gramm revisits his past with a compelling archival release that offers fans a ten-track glimpse into a formative creative period. Drawing from recordings made in the late ’80s—now remastered and, in some cases, newly completed—the collection feels less like a set of leftovers and more like a missing chapter in his solo career.
Much of the material appears to originate from the period between his first two solo albums, Ready Or Not and Long Hard Look, with at least one track tracing back to the underrated Shadowking project. The opening track, featuring Vivian Campbell on guitar, immediately sets a high standard. “Young Love” stands out as a quintessential Lou Gramm performance—strong, melodic, and instantly memorable—raising questions about…
Adult. have tracked the existential dread of late-stage capitalism, since Anxiety Always, but they’ve rarely done it with as much righteous anger as on Kissing Luck Goodbye. Following the more personal perspectives of Becoming Undone, Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus look outwards once again, decrying consumption, corruption, and creeping fascism as only they can. To meet the occasion, they pare down and sharpen up their music. Working with producer Nolan Gray and a new library of sounds, the duo offer some of their most cleanly recorded music with Kissing Luck Goodbye. The results, however, are far from commercial. Much like the forces they’re fighting, Adult.’s intent is disruption. “The chaos is what they want,” Kuperus growls on “R U 4 $ALE,”…