James K follows up on AD 93 with her third album, 'Friend'. The oneiric fogs of James K lifting into vision have stirred and shaped the landscape of contemporary music since her first release. It is not hyperbole to say that K has consistently beta-launched sounds and perspectives that have rippled across many mediums for years, defining a way that is both singular in vision and marked by collaboration and shared dreaming. Known for her polychromatic hypersensitivity, K’s hauntological dream pop is making ‘music that slows the anxious heart while holding a mirror to {the} deep-rooted angst we prefer to leave unspoken.’

An opening of the portal, 'Friend' is the culmination of a decade of K’s work; the gates of which gleam like a slow drip of melodic infusion, at once a remedy and an inquiry. Friend encapsulates a lifelong praxis of intuitive music making, delivering a more precise and controlled sound, with versions of songs shifting into focus like recovered memories. Feeling her way through textures, a return to, and a melding of, the voice and technical mastery, these soundscapes lay down a framework over time that traces the history of her practice. James K has been a cosmic point of the aesthetic underground across the world, as a vocalist, producer, artist and collaborator. Her breathy, lilting vocals have floated across some of the past year’s best music. Expanding and ethereal, they make you feel like the call is coming from inside the house.

You can trace touch points across her lengthy catalogue, spanning from the foundational urgency of 2013’s debut 'Rum' EP, to the prismatic elasticity of PET (She Rocks!/Dial), to the strange-faced, visceral and, at times, sepulchral intoxication of Random Girl (Incienso), from the universal ecstasy of trip-hop lullaby ‘Scorpio’ (AD 93). To this day, her transmutative career has led K to amass a bouquet of collaborations with artists like Heith, Moin, Fergus Jones + Huerco S., Priori, Yves Tumor, Drew McDowall, LEYA, and others.

Friend is K’s return to the core; with a vault of hard lessons and inimitable love to draw from. Based in New York where she was born and has lived most of her life, there is a constant evolution of the city which she embodies sonically, like the growth, decay and push, pull of relationships and spaces. At the crux of these crossroads is the homespun and ever-evolving DIY rave culture which continues to embody and cycle through lives of its own. This ecology spans across geographical lines and remains the touchstone and core of the james K vocation: the backbone and infrastructure from which her distinctive command of interwoven guitar and electronic arrangements ultimately coalesces. Grafting fragments of the real and the surreal is the provenance she draws from in her thoughtful and emotive international performances including Dekmantel, Sustain Release, Mutek, iii Points, and more.

TRACK LISTING

1. Days Go By
2. Blinkmoth (July Mix)
3. Doom Bikini
4. Idea.2
5. N’Balmed
6. Rider
7. On God
8. Peel
9. Lude (Unwind)
10. Play
11. Lung Slide
12. Hypersoft Lovejinx Junkdream
13. Collapse (Falling Forward Blissfully All The Time)

Illuminated with breathtaking vocals and uncanny poetics, ‘Goodness’ is an open, impressionistic assemblage of drone, ambient, experimental electronics, improvisational music and minimalist dance music. Across protean forms and voices, feeo explores an ever-evolving counterpoint between connection and isolation, the city and the natural world, the external and the internal. Contrasting beauty with volatility, communion with disintegration, feeo creates an album of absorbing tension between distinct contrasts.

With eleven interconnected pieces of music, each engaged in symbiotic dialogue, ‘Goodness’ represents a sinuous yet uniform work. Each track is like a link in a chain, with each piece revealing its lustre when held up to the light.

feeo describes the album as “an exploration of simultaneous yet opposing states of being; darkness and lightness, obscurity and visibility and most fundamentally, solitude and togetherness. Each song is an adumbration; a partial sketch of one aspect of the LP - each finding its complete meaning when read in the context of the whole.”

Mirroring the push and pull of perception and contemporary experience, ‘Goodness’ oscillates between disparate moods and intensities, reflecting moments of interiority, intimacy, seclusion, collective experience and exterior turbulence.

With gentle lyricism and mercurial musicality, the album carries us through multitudes, from the ruptured spoken word noise of ‘Days pt.1’, to the elemental close-mic ambient of ‘The Mountain’, through the arhythmic electronic soulfulness of ‘Win!’ and the aching piano loops of ‘Sandpit’, to the languid lap steel abstraction of ‘There Is No I’ and the luminous improv cycles of second single ‘The Hammer Strikes The Bell’. Together, these tracks form an album of profoundly emotive, radical resonances; music both tender and fearless.

‘Goodness’ marks an evolution in feeo’s artistic practice, both as her first full-length release, and as a product of wider collaboration after several years working independently. Welcoming close collaborators and select affiliates into the fold, the process of making ‘Goodness’ was very much like the record itself; a deeply personal, special convergence of expression and artistry.

Hailed by The Wire as ‘part of an exciting new wave of London experimental artists and improvisors’, ‘Goodness’ signifies a culminationin feeo’s output, which spans an acclaimed run of solo releases as well as collaborations with Loraine James and bassist Caius Williams.

TRACK LISTING

1. Days Pt. 1
2. The Mountain
3. Requiem
4. The Last Great Storm
5. Win!
6. Sandpit
7. Here
8. Days Pt.2
9. The Hammer Strikes The Bell
10. Night Forgives Those Black As Her
11. There Is No I

'Songs For Nothing' was written upon Olan Monk’s return to the west coast of Ireland. The album is imbued with the influence of sean-nós singing, Irish language songs in the “old style” that often proclaim tales of love, loss and landscape; and also heavily indebted to the late Sinéad O’Connor’s confessional songwriting.

Reconstructing these influences through their unique perspective has resulted in a fragmentary album veering between co laged pop, machinic rock and slow airs, “dedicated to Conamara and all who have called it home”. The western, Atlantic-facing edge of Ireland has a particular feeling and energy, one that permeates the release: the granite pulsates, the ocean and sky reflect intensities, seaweed rots on shingle shores, plants bloom, ancient trees come up for air from the drowned forest in Galway Bay, the sun splinters through the low clouds. The album’s title suggests a one-way transaction, an offering to the listener expecting nothing in return, but also a devotion to nothingness; and the realm of infinite possibility that springs from its well: singing out into a sparse landscape, which once was home to long-lost forests and communities.

A departure from Olan Monk’s previous, more electronic work, the instrumental arrangements of 'Songs for Nothing' delve deeper into the "gothic art rock" descriptor (coined by Irish writer Eoin Murray, Anois Ós Ard), with elements of shoegaze, witch house, cloud rap and Irish traditional music bleeding through the wals of the studio. Never straying too far from the vocal refrains and guitar riffs of their previous collaborations over the past few years; from co-writing and performing vocals with fellow AD 93 act Moin on 'Guess It’s Wrecked' from their wide-reaching album 'You Never End' in 2024, performing in the same year on the acclaimed Princ€ss debut; to recording guitar on Maria Somerville’s 4AD debut 'Luster' and contributing guitar and production to Ghost Mountain’s 'Haunted Mound' return on October Country, both released earlier this year.

'Songs for Nothing', in melding influences old and new feels at times absurd, but never ironic; it is from the heart, and its respect for song traditions and dedication to process are felt in two arrangements of older songs embracing this new trajectory: 'Fate (Reprise)' is an earlier recording reimagined as a doomer ballad with Maria Somerville singing in a duet, and 'Amhrán Mhaínse' is a Conamara anthem slowed down as a duo of accordion performed by Peadar Tom Mercier accompanied by heavy guitar drones. Folding in other Irish neo-traditional expressionists and experimentalists, the record also features Michael Speers, Dylan Kerr, Aindriú De Buitléir, Risteárd O'hAodha and Róisín Berkeley. The addition of the tin whistle across the album, full of intention, captures the uncomfortable relationship between our love as a people for our traditions with a long-standing alienation from our own language and culture. 'Songs For Nothing' rejects today’s disconnect with this heritage; they ca l for us to collectively work our way back out of this void. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Corp
2. Down 3
3. 10 Days
4. Blank Page
5. Drón Feadóige
6. Oatmilk
7. Can’t Wait
8. Pomegranate
9. Fate (Reprise)
10. Amhrán Mhaínse 

Written between painting sessions and also whilst raising a child, 'Blurrr' is a record of loose and playful intuition. Robertson’s vocals and guitar drift, murmur and whisper across the record; fostering a deep intimacy as unknown emotions rise up from the well. Robertson’s intuitive approach to music making co-exists alongside her improvisatory and collaborative nature. She has collaborated regularly with artists such as Elias Rønnenfelt on 'Heavy Glory', Dean Blunt on 'Backstage Raver' and 'Black Metal', and Sidsel Meineche Hansen on 'Alien Baby'. In 'Blurrr', Robertson turns to previous collaborator and friend: cellist, composer and producer Oliver Coates.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ghost
2. Why Me
3. Friendly
4. Exit Vendor
5. Always Were Feat. Oliver Coates
6. Peaceful
7. Gown Feat. Oliver Coates
8. Doubt Feat. Oliver Coates
9. Last Hay

Drummer, percussionist and composer Valentina Magaletti (Moin, Holy Tongue, Vanishing Twin) has combined forces with musician, producer and composer YPY (aka Koshiro Hino of Goat) for their LP, Kansai Bruises.

The pair crash through Osaka’s neon-lit streets with abrasive drums and handcrafted Japanese electronics that hit like pavement against skin. This is bliss carved from bruises—hope and fear tangled in metallic percussion while dreams of pesto float through sake-soaked alleyways.

TRACK LISTING

A1. One Hour Visa
A2. Kansai Bruises
A3. Float
A4. Lantern Lit Run
B1. Her Own Reflection
B2. Silhouette
B3. Interlude For Fog Days
B4. Pesto

Biosphere’s album 'The Way Of Time' takes loose inspiration from Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ novel The Time Of Man, sampling Joan Lorring’s voice from the 1951 radio play adaptation of the novel. Biosphere’s signature ambient loops, soothing arctic synths and melodies combine with Lorring’s sweet, wistful and deep-south wonderings to create a record that is both deeply human and searching.

TRACK LISTING

1. TIME OF MAN
2. THE WAY OF TIME
/3. LIKE THE END OF THE WORLD
4. ALL STARS HAVE NAMES
5. THE OLD WAY WAS GONE
6. THE WAY OF TIME (ON AND ON)

'The Rising Wave' marks the debut collaboration between singer-songwriter Marlene Ribeiro (of psychedelic band GNOD) and electronic producer Shackleton under the name Light Space Modulator.

Ribeiro’s ethereal voice—part singing, part incantation—feels both distant and intimate, humming just behind the horizon. Her experimental soundscapes flow like a streamlined river, intertwining seamlessly with Shackleton’s deep, textural production and intricate percussion. Shackleton’s percussive production ebbs and swells, conjuring a hypnotic, trippedout atmosphere. At 'The Rising Wave’s core lies a sense of intention, a cleansing ritual designed to shift perception and inspire transformation.

TRACK LISTING

1. SECRETS KEPT
2. BURNING WITHIN
3. HER NAME
4. I DREAMED OF A LOVER
5. ONDA / DO YOU BELIEVE?
6. THESE THINGS
7. THE LONG BURIED HOPE
8. THE LAST TIME

Formed in Bristol, 4-piece LICE have become one of UK experimental rock’s most inventive and ambitious outliers. Their second album ‘Third Time At The Beach’ – a three-part epic exploring our struggle to better understand the world around us – arrives via AD 93. Darting between minimalism, rock, techno and more, it sends us hurtling us through time and space: featuring a cast of astronauts, cavemen and dinosaurs.

This follows LICE’s internationally acclaimed debut album ‘WASTELAND: What Ails Our People Is Clear’ (2021). Praised as “exciting, alive, packed with musical ideas” by Financial Times and “a welcome lease of life for British avant-rock that plays with expectation at every turn” by CRACK, it also gained radio support across BBC 6Music, BBC Radio 1 and KEXP. The album led LICE to perform at major festivals including Reading & Leeds, Green Man and End Of The Road, embark on an extensive EU tour supporting Sleaford Mods, and tour across the UK & EU.

‘Third Time At The Beach’’s concept is expressed through three movements. The first (‘Unscrewed’, ‘White Tubes’, ‘Red Fibres’) presents the child being introduced to the world, hammered into shape through prevailing culture, and realising they have reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world. The second (‘To The Basket’, ‘Wrapped In A Sheet’, ‘Scenes From The Desert’, ‘Mown In Circles’) is a disorientating, alien sequence: reevaluating fundamental concepts including money, time, nationhood and language. In the third (‘Fatigued, Confused’, ‘Third Time At The Beach’, ‘The Dance’), the individual embraces these new ideas – granting them a changed understanding of the world, and more agency in the path they take through it.

Everything is always changing in ‘Third Time At The Beach’. The album shifts from lush piano balladry to crushing industrial, and from swampy avant-garde compositions to triumphant rock freakouts. Employing vocal manipulation and field recordings, as well as cutting together studio recordings and home demos, the band produces a spatially elastic, collage-like effect. The album, like the ideas being reached within it, presents a work-in-progress. Lyrically, the record employs a scattershot style to present the experience of learning (or ‘unlearning’). The listener visits ancient civilisations, the Industrial Revolution, outer space and the land of the dinosaurs: encountering mediaeval farmers, silver miners, cavemen, Napoleon and Satan.

Speaking on the record, the band say: “This album’s about trying to understand the world and everything in it: history, science and the way we explain it all to each other. It’s a celebration of feeling confused or intimidated by the processes that shape our lives.”

Of the album’s muscular, agitated lead single ‘Red Fibres’, LICE explain: “This song is about realising you’ve reached adulthood with a blinkered understanding of the world, and feeling confused and frustrated. After visiting some key moments in the history of language, science and the human eye, we arrive at a campsite: where two shipwreck survivors are about to have a fight.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The UK has a bit of a burgeoning avant-rock scene at the moment, and Lice are (for me) the most immediately appealing of the whole bunch. We get the weird noises and syncopated industrial scree of Black Midi or the hardcore thump of Fat Dog, but with a keen sense of melody and most importantly, songs that flow beautifully, weirdness or no.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
A1. Unscrewed
A2. White Tubes
A3. Red Fibres
A4. To The Basket
A5. Wrapped In A Sheet

Side B:
B1. Scenes From The Desert
B2. Mown In Circles
B3. Fatigued, Confused
B4. Third Time At The Beach
B5. The Dance

‘You Never End’ is the third album from Moin, a London trio made up of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead (Raime / Blackest Ever Black) as well as long time collaborator and percussionist visionary Valentina Magaletti. Its title alone expresses the teetering and shifting nature of both the album and band. This record marks the Moin’s shift into a new phase with vocal collaborations across the album from Olan Monk, james K, Coby Sey and Sophia Al-Maria.

The album’s collaborators all have voices that are alluring in their own right whilst hard to pin down: from james K’s ethereal, reverb drenched vocals, Coby Sey’s words that bounce and echo across London’s concrete streets and Olan Monk’s emotive songwriting, while artist Sophie Al-Maria’s voice and thoughts are known to stretch across her multidisciplinary practice as an artist, filmmaker and writer. The unique mystique of each collaborator is maintained throughout the record while simultaneously opening Moin up to new possibilities, in a gentle shifting alchemy.

Continuing their enigmatic re-configuring of the traditional band, Moin use a mix of conventional and unique production and compositional techniques. Subtly re-framing the current conversation about what band in 2024 needs to be, Moin walk the line between what's reassuringly familiar and what's unsettling and inquisitive. ‘You Never End’ is a more sensitive record in sentiment, it re-contextualises grunge, shoegaze and indie rock with a weirdly comforting melancholy while still sounding direct and alive.

Showing Moin at their most accessible, the vocal collaborations bring the most articulate moments and lucid emotion while still remaining uniquely within Moin's established world. Alongside this, the record fine tunes the elements of electronic production that have always been a feature of the band's unique sound in a deeply subtle way. Elements are simpler and more direct, offering robust functional support as well as textural and emotional resonance. Together they show the potential for both practices to intertwine.

‘You Never End’ is both produced and mixed by Tom and Joe, demonstrating the extended range of control the pair have over the band's sound, and their ability to truly hold together Moin’s intricate world.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: This new one from Moin is an absolute must! Bursting with proper interesting mathy and angular textures, the atmosphere on this thing is mega! For fans of Slint, Sonic Youth or anything slowcore/no-wavey, you need to get all over this!

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1. Guess It's Wrecked Feat. Olan Monk
A2. Cubby
A3. Family Way Feat. Sophia Al-Maria
A4. What If You Didn't Need A Reason Feat. James K
A5. Lift You Feat. Sophia Al-Maria
A6. It's Messy Coping

Side B
B1. We Know What Gives Feat. Coby Sey
B2. C’Mon Dive
B3. Anything But Sopo
B4. Happy In The Wrong Way
B5. Just Married