theartsdesk on Vinyl 90: Small Faces, ESKA, Luvcat, Dope Lemon, Celia Cruz, Monolake and more

VINYL OF THE MONTH

Emily Saunders Moon Shifts Oceans (The Mix Sounds)

It’s de rigeur nowadays, if you love music, to love Joni Mitchell. She is, of course, a great soul, but her music never connected here. That said, I have a favourite Joni Mitchell song. It’s the 1975 number “The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines”. I also have a soft spot for the parent album, Mingus. Mitchell was accompanied on it by Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius. A red hot line-up. Jazz fusion usually goes down like cold sick round here but Mitchell's foray is the exception to the rule. A decade ago Emily Saunders released Outsiders Insiders, her second album. And there it was, that Mingus jazz fusion sound updated. It was and is gold. I assumed Saunders would blow up, become a gigantic star. It didn’t happen. It should have. She was struck down by a chronic form of arthritis that made everything impossible. And yet, here she is, back again, with a fabulous return. Over the course of seven tracks, accompanied by guitar, bass, trumpet, congas, drums, percussion and keys, she builds on what she did before, adding a zestier dancefloor zing, a touch of Brazilian spirit, but still her breathy light voice, the jazz fusion scat-vocalising. It’s intoxicating, not at all theartsdesk on Vinyl’s usual thing but achieving soaring lift-off, nonetheless. Comes in photo/lyric gatefold on rich red vinyl.

VINYL REVIEWS

Raúl Monsalve Y Los Forajidos Sol (Olindo) + Trinka Trinka (Agogo)

Paris-based septet Raúl Monsalve Y Los Forajidos are originally from Venezuelan capital Caracas, led by the titular bassist-percussionist. They’ve been together a while but this is only their second album (excluding one Monslave made with another unit entirely a decade ago). Produced to a fantastic liveliness by Monsalve and Paris Conservatoire professor Olivier Prouvost, they work up a thoroughly original percussive sound bed, a stew of Venezuelan and Afro-Caribbean, a samba energy with thrusting jazz horns and outrageous funk. Of all the records this week, it’s the one that has the most dancefloor oomph. If it doesn’t make you dance, you’re dead. Also on a Hispanic tip but lighter in tone, comes the eponymous six-tracker by Portuguese trio Trinka. Lisbon is a European melting pot of South American styles and this trio – voice/guitar/synth/percussion – muster the feeling of wandering into a cave-like bar in that city and discovering Afro-Brazilian energy whipping suddenly off a couple of musicians in the corner. The band’s singer Dandara Modesto also practices Candomble, which can only add magic and mystery to proceedings. A tasty brew.

Keg Fun’s Over Now (Alcopop!)

The joy of certain bands is that they’re hard to capture in words. Genres are, after all, merely categorization to sell records or to help enthusiasts discover music. London collective Keg are such a band. They have surrealist lyrical sensibilities and there’s an angular no wave free-jazz-with-guitars sensibility… but it’s not to the forefront. “I’m in love with Robert Wyatt,” runs the closing chorus of “I’d Fly Tip for You” and, yes, maybe there’s Soft Machine in there too. Certainly there are horns and there’s jazz, the stop-start rhythms of prog but more Cardiacs than Yes. Electronic wibbly moments. And bucolic indie songwriting chops. Bit of musical theatre. There. Are you any the wiser? Best go and have a listen, then. Comes in wonky art-photo inner sleeve.

War Why Can’t We Be Friends? 50^th Anniversary Collector’s Edition Boxset (Rhino)

War have just announced a European Tour and, despite having only surviving original member (renowned jazz-funker Lonnie Jordan), bet it’ll be worth a look. The band first achieved success when a lysergically altered Eric Burdon of The Animals adopted them as his support band in 1969. This formation laid down some raw grooves (as well as excruciatingly “of-their-time” cuts) but didn’t last long. By 1975, when Why Can’t We Be Friends? appeared, War were making the charts on their own and, from this album, “Low Rider” remains their most deathless hit. The album was reissued as a boxset on Record Store Day this year but arrived at theartsdesk on Vinyl afterwards. The original album is more groovily mellow than some of their work, albeit featuring slinkin’ Sly Stone-like slowies such as “Heartbeat”. It arrives with two other records containing worthwhile outtakes, notably “Zorro”, which is full of wiggle, and original unedited versions, such as a smashing nigh-on-10-minute original jam of “Low Rider”. The final side being a 23-minute audio documentary, featuring songwriter-manager Jerry Goldstein, is a curious thing to commit to plastic, but the rest of this boxset is rife with California sunshine funk.

Luvcat Matador/He’s My Man (AWAL)

Liverpudlian pop-star-of-the-future Luvcat, the name taken by singer Sophie Morgan and her band, à la Blondie released these two songs last year but they now appear on a limited edition 7” single. Check my live review of Luvcat at The Great Escape last week here for a full description of their vibe but these two numbers sum it up, the overwrought, monstrously catchy torch song “Matador” and the subtle exotica-easy murder ballad “He’s My Man”. It would be a travesty if toenail clipping detritus like “Show Me Love” by WizThemB + Bees & Honey can stay in the Top 10 for weeks and Luvcat can’t even make the top 40.

Small Faces The Autumn Stone: 3LP Deluxe Boxset (Nice)

When Small Faces imploded as 1968 turned into 1969, their label, Immediate, rush-released The Autumn Stone (so hastily they forgot to put the band’s name on the cover!). It collected their hits together with a Newcastle concert recording, and cuts intended for their never-realised fourth album. Kenney Jones, the band’s drummer (and later The Who’s) has put together, on his Nice label, a boxset version to remedy what he’s always felt was an unrepresentative release. Thus, alongside newly remastered versions of biggies such as “Itchycoo Park”, “Watcha Gonna Do About It” and “Lazy Sunday”, there’s previously unreleased fare such as the smashingly stoned, bluesy “Red Balloon”, which follows on from their more psychedelicized previous album, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, and stripped-down acoustic versions of songs such as “Show me the Way” and “I Can’t Make It”. The three records, particularly the last one, reveal this as Jones’s labour of love, arriving with an exclusive Gered Mankowitz print and a 68-page hardback book, full of background into and photos. It’s a rich treasure trove for anyone who wants to check this seminal Sixties band’s final moments, before the members went on to form Humble Pie and The Faces.

Dowdelin Tchenbe! (Underdog) + Kin’Gongolo Kiniata Kiniata (Hélico) + BOM Nation Àṣẹ (BOM)

As ever, theartsdesk on Vinyl has received a bunch of Afro-tastic material in all kinds of styles. The third album from Dowdelin, a French group centred on singer Olivya Victorin and producer David Kiledjian, mingles Creole flavours and Victorin’s Caribbean Martinique heritage. An accessible jazz-funkiness is stewed into percussive grooves, adding the Afro touch. Unlike their previous albums, it was created in real time in-studio rather than via electronic fiddling about. It’s sometimes too R&B smooth for these ears but is original and cooly Gallic. Offering a very different mood is Kinsasha five-piece Kin’Gongolo Kiniata, represenring Congolese street-punk, redolent of Konono No.1. Alongside stringed instrumentation, the group play scrap materials – metal, plates, plastic bottles and so on – and sing about the brutal ongoing Congolese civil war, another bloodbath caused by the West’s greed for rare materials hidden under Africa’s earth. Kiniata mingles clattering raw-funk grooves with heartfelt singing in the Lingala language of the Northern Congo. It’s thrilling stuff and comes with a 12” x 12” insert in English and French. Loosely connected to Manchester’s longstanding home to classy underground house music, Paper Records, comes something different, the gqom-flavoured debut from BOM Nation, an outfit consisting of Malian hip hop producer Luka Guindo, AKA Luka Productions, London spoken word dude Sirius Rush, and Liverpudlian drummer-vocalist Felix Ngindu. The trio create an Afro-lectric stew that twerks and wobbles around on the dancefloor and off it. The production has crispy electronic punch. Something about it also suggests that, with the right tail wind, once they aim more at pop radio and TikTok, they could have the heft of Faithless or similar. For the moment, though, one for big speakers and smart clubs and late nights. Comes with a sticker and 12” x 12” logo insert.

Henry Badowski Life is a Grand (CTR)

Life is a Grand is a glorious find, a true cult album. A major label release from 1981, I’d never heard of it, undoubtedly because it sank without trace until an internet cult built around it. Henry Badowski first appeared during London’s 1977 punk explosion, as bassist with Chelsea, later serving time with The Damned, Wreckless Eric and others. None of these references are musically relevant to his sole album. Journo Piers Martin’s informative sleeve notes, which include interviews with Badowski and others, posit various solid reasons why success evaded the singer despite the backing of A&M Records and Police manager Miles Copeland. He suggests, for instance, that choosing “Making Love with my Wife” as lead single was unwise as it had already been out as an indie release, so most who wanted it, had it already. But, perhaps, the real reason, is that, neither new wave nor new romantic, Life is a Grand absolutely doesn’t fit the early-Eighties zeitgeist. Imagine, instead, Roxy-flavoured synth-pop fronted by Syd Barrett and boasting the eccentric whimsy of The Soft Boys, more acid-wacky than Eighties. It is a lovely thing, every song a delightful curio. Badowski, incidentally, vanished afterwards, eventually working in the BBC archives for the decades since.

Celia Cruz Son Con Guaguanco (Craft) + Celia Cruz & Johnny Pacheco Tremendo Caché (Craft) + Johnny Pacheco Cañonazo (Craft) + Julia Mestre Marvilhosamente Bem (Mr Bongo)

Four albums that loudly emanate Latin zip and charm. By the time she released Son Con Guaguanco in 1966 Celia Cruz already had a storied career behind her. She’d been the singer for Cuba’s hugely successful Sonora Matancera band since 1950, then left with them to Mexico after the Cuban Revolution. Son Con Guaguanco, a collaboration with percussion giant Tito Puente, is her moving to New York and, in essence, kicking off the salsa boom that would see her become one of the most beloved Latin stars of all time. With its piercing trebly horns and relentless drive, it still maintains a zest that’s manic, but I prefer her second album with Fania Records founder, salsa ultra-don Johnny Pachego, which Craft Records are also reissuing for its 50^th anniversary. It’s less frenetic but has more roll to its conga-maracas-tambora rhythms and wonderful piano lines from Papo Lucca. Also available, again via Craft and on its 60^th birthday (released 1964), is the first album by Fania, the label that would eventually become the defining giant of Latin music in the USA. It’s a rhumba-tastic, solidly shimmying outing that sets out the stall for what Pacheco and Fania would build. Quite the sexiest performance I saw last year was Brazilian quartet Bala Desojo on a sunny afternoon at the WOMAD Festival. And quite the sexiest member of Bala Desejo was the slinkin’ Julia Mestre. Unsurprisingly, her third solo album, which tips its hat to the aforementioned artists of long ago, drips with breathy-voiced bedroom grooves, liquid, Hispanic and slow-funky. The songs glow with post-coital ease, like dust motes caught in sunbeams viewed from the crumpled sheets of an afternoon tryst. Laidback and lovely, this is easy listening with a sensual edge, and gentle rhythmic propulsion. Comes with a four-page 12” x 12” photo/lyric/info insert.

Various Gather in the Mushrooms: The British Folk Underground 1969-1975 (ACE)

It’s not surprising Saint Etienne are splitting up (after one final album). The members spend all their time curating compilation albums in any number of obscure retro micro-genres. Happily, it’s something they’re good at. This one is Bob Stanley pulling together a two-record set representing Brit hippies who, five decades ago, embraced folk music. With extensive, detailed, dense notes on the gatefold, it’s a snapshot of an era when acid-beguiled longhairs turned away from the joys of consumer capitalism and sought other ways. Among these was retreating to rustic life, communal and self-sufficient, owing less to “the man”. Alongside this came an interest in the music of pre-industrialised society, or, at least, a pot-smoking freak version of that. Much such fare is self-consciously, earnestly naff but Stanley does a fine job balancing folkishness with post-Sixties headiness. It’s performative and po-faced but often deliciously so. More familiar names such as Roy Harper, Bridget St John, Keith Christmas and Vashti Bunyan are here, but as much pleasure is to be had from the likes of Trader Horne, whose “Morning Way” is laced with stoned-out electric auto-harp noodle, or the in-yer-face found coastal sounds laid over Christine Quayle’s “The Seagulls Scream”. Not all of it hits the spot but more than enough does. People often speak of those old hippies as delusional innocents but, really, they just had a better suggestion of how to live than the endless pursuit of material wealth.

Alex Zethson/Johan Jutterström It Could / If I (Thanatosis Produktion/Astral Spirits) + Building Instrument Månen, Armadillo (HUBRO)

Scandinavia is home to the widest variety of bizarre jazz experiments the world has ever seen. Labels and artists sit on a dividing line between jazz, modern classical, the avant-garde, and the plain peculiar, consistently firing out music that ranges from the tediously tricksy to the fantastically intriguing. These two albums veer towards the latter. It Could / If I by pianist Alex Zethson and saxophonist Johan Jutterström, both from Sweden, is sluggishly chilled but also a solid listen. The central conceit is that the duo work around a set of songs whose titles begin “It Could” or “If I”, four written by Jutterström, but also including numbers by everyone from Leonard Cohen to Pet Shop Boys (a delightfully sad take on “It Couldn’t Happen Here”), as well as offbeat versions of classic American songbook fare such as Frank Loessner’s “If I Were a Bell”. It’s an exercise in minimalist low pace, the piano reverbed and slothful, the saxophone Mogadon’d to a sad wheezing. Unattractive as that sounds, it’s all sits together in a satisfying late-night fug. Comes with a strange 12” x 12” art/numbers insert. HUBRO Records are kingpins of Scandy weirdness and so are Norwegian trio Building Instrument. Member Mari Kvein Brunvoll was responsible for one of last year’s top tunes, the outstandingly jolly alt-pop of “Nils Klim”, which she made with Stein Urheim and Moskus. The fourth Building Instrument album is the result of a festival commission and is based around the concept of the moon (“månen”) combined with the idea of armadillos as analogous to the human condition. It’s more electronic than what they’ve done before and twinkles with a plinky-plonky ambo-pop loveliness. It’s quiet but not as lethargic as the other reviewed here. Some of it’s actually catchy – check the bubbly “Saunte” – but for the odder end of things, drop the needle on “Bilverden”, wherein the listener is taken on a strange trip to an outer space filled with car horns and broken starter motors. Comes in yellow lyric inner sleeve.

Baby Said BS (PAL)

Rising rock band Baby Said centres on Portsmouth Italian-Punjabi teenage-or-nigh-on-teenage sisters Veronica and Jess Pal. I saw them live last year at The Great Escape, which you can read here and they’re clearly a honed performing unit. The seven songs on their debut mini-album, cowritten with LostAlone’s Steven Battelle, Ocean Colour Scene’s Damon Minchella and others, sound polished and ready to blow up everywhere from Download Festival to the USA, the country that most springs to mind when these catchy, stadium-friendly heavy rock power pop chunkers hit the ears. Comes in photo/lyric sleeve.

ESKA The Ordinary Life of a Magic Woman (Earthling)

London singer Eska Mtungwazi is a favourite of music journalists. With good reason. She’d been around the block a few times before her eponymous Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut album a decade ago and is very much a Renaissance woman, working in film, radio, opera and more, alongside projects with Kae Tempest, Esperanza Spalding, Shabaka Hutchings and others. Her second album, a decade after its predecessor, hops about stylistically, dipping into heavy electro-rock, lighter alt-pop, whatever she fancies. Something about The Ordinary Life of a Magic Woman brings Prince to mind; creative impulses, funk, broken relationships, sincere odes of resilience. The album was released on vinyl first, a rarity, and arrives on transparent vinyl in gatefold and photo/info inner sleeve and two 12” x 12” art inserts.

Monolake Gravity (Field)

Holland’s Field Records have built themselves a solid reputation for presenting serious electronic music that usually has an interconnect with the artistically conceived end of techno. A case in point would be the 2001 third album from German duo Monolake. In fact, when this was released, Monolake was transitioning to become Robert Henke’s one-man operation (his partner Gerhard Behles’s Ableton Live DJ tech business was starting to take off). Gravity is a wonderfully controlled exercise, over two records, of deep, dub-techno-adjacent sounds, Basic Channel-touched, but showing an awareness of the boom in so-called “Minimal” which the likes of Richie Hawtin and Ricardo Villalobos would soon lead to prominence. Not really a dancefloor record, it mingles industrial-sounding ambience with electro pulses and grinding depth charge beats. It’s stern and spare but also rich.

Phil Cook Appalachia Borealis (Psychic Hotline)

Phil Cook was founder and keyboard-player for the fascinating folk-adjacent Megafaun, who busily put out a bunch of stuff around 15 years ago, then went silent, A pal of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, he’s since worked with Waxahatchee, Hiss Golden Messanger, Mavis Staples and others, but Appalachia Borealis is a very different project. Living alone on a North Carolina farm, near forest and fields, he was inspired to respond to birdsong via his piano. The result is that VERY rare thing, a solo piano record worth listening to. Sometimes the birds are audible, often not, but these plain heartfelt pieces have an in-the-room-with-him feel. There’s a hint of both classical minimalism and, more weirdly, Dixieland jazz, the latter completely reconceived as an ambient form. Given everyone is so stuck on being soothed these days, like anxious babies, I’ve become dubious of that whole direction, but occasionally an album makes a persuasive case. This is one such. Comes in art/photo inner sleeve with a three-page fold-out insert containing sheet music for one piece.

ALSO WORTHY OF MENTION

Tugboat Captain Dog Tale (Crtl P) + Buffet Lunch Perfect Hit! (Upset! The Rhythm): Two quirky indie oddities. South London six-piece Tugboat Captain are very prolific. Their latest album, of I know not how many, is Dog Tale and covers musical territory somewhere between indie, folk and the sort of territory once owned by Prefab Sprout. It is literate, witty, and deals calmly with the prosaic. With strings and small ensemble instrumentation, "baroque pop" is another term we can throw in the mix. It’s a bit tea'n'tank-top for theartdesk on Vinyl but is done with class, tunefulness and a very British sense of the forlorn and poetic. A smidgeon of the latter is shared by Scottish outfit Buffet Lunch but the music on their third album, Perfect Hit!, is more skronky and awkward, the ghost of Stump and Big Flame gently influencing their guitar lines, albeit a flavour, nothing as abrasive as those bands. It’s an indie mingling of the cussedly awkward, the conversational and the catchy. Comes on garish yellow-orange vinyl with a 12” x 122 art/lyric insert.

Vegyn Blue Moon Safari (Parlophone): French duo Air’s entire career is well due a re-evaluation, as they created some of the loveliest albums of the early 2000s. Perhaps the first step might be this. Joe Winger Thornalley, AKA Vegyn, is a London electronic musician who’s made inroads into the more interesting end of American pop, working with Frank Ocean, Travis Scott and JPEGMafia, amongst others. Air gave him permission to reimagine their debut album and he has. He reduces the spacey Moog loveliness in favour of a less retro-electronic exoticism, more upbeat, tethered to sharply toned hip hop beats, and boasting a phased indie feel. It comes on double on power blue vinyl in gatefold and, while it doesn’t touch the original for this listener, it’s interesting and welcome as an experiment. Comes in gatefold in blue transparent plastic wrap.

Mclusky the world is still here and so are we (Ipecac) + Silverfish BBC Radio Sessions Vol.2 (Beggars/BBC): Surrealism-touched Cardiff noisy guitar iconoclasts Mclusky split up 20 years ago, reformed for live dates with a different line-up 10 years ago, and now, finally, return with a 34-minute album. A cult band, who combine wit with spike-riff cacophony, they were a favourite of the late Steve Albini and I suspect they still would be, were he around today. “Delicate seeds come from delicate flowers/That was the horseshit she fed me for hours,” run the opening lines, rather brilliantly, and the rest holds its own against what came before, mingling weirdness, sarcasm and a jovial kind of nihilism. One of a kind. Comes in pale blue vinyl in art/lyric inner sleeve. Also dealing in punk-metal, but in a slightly earlier era were Silverfish, a London outfit that existed in the late-Eighties and early-Nineties. Fronted by raucous Scot Lesley Rankine they somehow infiltrated the Camden indie scene with feminist politics (“Hips, Lips, Tits, Power”, not on this set) and a sound that was closer in scope to the likes of demented psychedelic hardcore such as Terminal Cheesecake and God. The newly released second volume of Peel Sessions showcases them around the time of their 1989 TFA EP, from which there’s a fine version of “Driller”. Shame they never made it. Comes on transparent vinyl.

Dope Lemon Golden Wolf (BMG): Aussie Angus Stone was once in a successful duo with his sister Julia but his solo Dope Lemon project has long since eclipsed those origins. Adopting a persona somewhere between Empire of the Sun, Tame Impala and Jimmy Buffet, he’s grabbed big name fans across the world (including, famously, Post Malone), for his hazed-out strummy indie-pop songs, with the emphasis firmly on the pop aspect. His fifth album holds fast to the tuneful template and won’t do him any harm. It comes in an appropriately tropical beach gatefold, with 12” x 12” 24-page lyric booklet featuring kitsch retro imagery. The vinyl is especially fantastic, eye-boggling zoetrope imagery of an exotica volcanic desert island.

The Ballistic Brothers The Ballistic Brothers V The Eccentric Afros Volume 2 (Acid Jazz) + Graham Dee Mr Super Cool (Acid Jazz): A couple from Acid Jazz Records. First, and tastily remastered, the 1994 second album of funkin’ grooves by DJ-Producers Ashley Beedle, Rocky, Diesel, keys-player Uschi Clansen, and Nuphonic Records’ David Hill (who wasn’t on Vol.1). Listened to now, someone younger than me might ask, “Why didn’t anyone add some vocals to these meaty instrumental rollers?” Well, that’s just the way things were done in the mid-Nineties (although there might be tasty vocals samples, as on “Divine Fact <Blacker 2>”). There was a lot of this about back then, sampledelic bubblers which could hold a club but also be listened to at home. The Ballistic Brothers, though, did it first and were among the more musically informed to attempt it. For a dip, check the Dirty Harry-featuring “Anti Gun Movement”. A very different release is Mr Super Cool by Graham Dee. Acid jazz boss Eddie Piller is a musical obsessive, happy to dive deep to get what he wants. Such is the case here where, via a series of unlikely, fortuitous events, which are described on the back cover, he came into possession of a lost album by Sixties/Seventies session guitarist Graham Dee (who played with everyone from Small Faces to the Allman Brothers). Laid down circa 1972-73, it's a set that oozes sunshine boogie and smiley post-Sixties hope, lots of brass backing up songs that sound like contemporaneous hits, pop but flavoured with funk, soul and British Caribbean sounds. An ultra-rare treat rediscovered,

Lou Donaldson Say It Loud! (Blue Note) + Andreas Tillander & Goran Kajfeš Cmin (Kontra-Musik): Two very different slices of jazz, old and new. Those who didn’t know better might assume that Lou Donaldson is one of the Afro-haired ladies on the cover of 1969 album Say It Loud!, which reappears in gatefold, well-mastered. In fact, Donaldson was a bebop saxophonist in his prime during the Fifties and Sixties. Say It Loud! Was not well-regarded at the time, but that may be because it was being appreciated by pure jazz critics. Listened to in 2025, it’s clear Donaldson was reaching towards Black Power and the rock’n’pop explosion of the time. Whether on a laidback cover of “Say It Loud, I’m Black and Proud”, his own, “Brother Soul” and “Snake Bone”, or a pared-back cover of “Summertime”, there’s an approachable yet minimal, organ-backed, grooviness to it all. Andreas Tillander is sometimes known as TM404 and Mokira, under which names he creates techno-adjacent electronica, while trumpet-player Goran Kajfeš is a member of multiple jazz units, such as Oddjob and Subtropic Arkestra. The Swedish duo come together to record an album which is devoted to the moon, or, in fact, the very idea of moons as both physical and mythical things. As one might expect, these tracks feel desolate, submerged in emptiness, Kajfeš’s horn a plaintive note of humanity amid soundscapes that reverberate with sinister isolation. Head music for the advanced. Quite a listen.

Wings Venus and Mars (Capitol): By 1975 Paul & Linda McCartney’s Wings were in their imperial mid-career phase, coming off the back of their most successful album, Band on the Run. Venus and Mars didn’t quite match that but did extremely well by most band’s standards, spawning a US chart-topper in the jolly “Listen to What the Man Said”, a song defined by the yacht rock soprano sax solo-ing of Tom Scott. Contrary to lazy definition as Mr “Yesterday”, Paul McCartney has many musical sides. But on Venus and Mars, while there’s the occasional pub boogie, he’s clearly too comfortable, too content, having too nicer a time, even larking about. Great for him and fans of light, Los Angeles-touched, pre-punk Seventies multi-tracked grinny pop. I am not one such. Comes on double, half-speed mastered.

X-Ray Cat Trio Out For Blood (Property of the Lost): X Ray Trio are pure, twangin’, garage rock’n’roll. They are a band that needs to be seen in concert, as their Hastings-based label recognised, putting out last year’s Live at the Jenny set. So enthused is this label, Property of the Lost, that, as well as releasing their last album, Haunted, they’ve now dived right back to the start of the Leeds trio’s career, a decade ago, to resurrect their debut album. Anyone missing The Cramps needs to get involved. Instrumental or vocal, this is messy, surfin’ rockabilly scuzz of the best kind. Comes on bright blue.

De La Soul The Grind Date (BMG) + Harry Shotta Odyssey (High Focus): A couple of sharp hip hop releases, one old and one brand new. De La Soul’s The Grind Date is receiving its 20^th anniversary release, on splattered vinyl, no less. It was their last vital album (not that the two since were bad). Who knows, with the death of Trugoy a couple of years back, whether there will be more (the band still exists as a live unit). In the meantime, The Grind Date holds up, classic rap stylings paired with production by the likes of Madlib and Jake One, and guests including MF DOOM, Ghostface Killa, Flavor Flav and Common. Back when it was released, fans were expecting the third volume of the group’s three-in-a-year A.I. project but instead this arrived. No-one complained. Spread over two records, the fourth side features bonus track instrumentals. Fast forward two decades, then cross the Atlantic, and we come to drum & bass MC Harry Shotta who’s been given the chance by Brighton hip hop mecca High Focus Records to lay down four sides of his most crafted recorded music to date. He effectively showcases his rap abilities on beats by producers such as King Kashmere, Leafdog and Forest DLG, and there are guest appearances by Rag’n’Bone Man, Fliptix & Verb T, Killa Kela and R&B singer Terri Walker, but it’s the range on display that impresses. Whether revealing emotional vulnerability on “Breathing Under Water” or throwing down ballistic rave on Side C’s gnarly opening trio of songs (my favourite bit), he creates an album experience. It's dense but full of life lived.

Manuel Pasquinelli Hearbeat Drumming: Bellmund Session (April 25^th 2025): Swiss jazz-rock drummer Manuel Pasquinelli releases a 37-minute-long album of his drumming live to his own heartbeat in front of a crowd at a venue in Bellmund, Switzerland. He’s backed only by drones that were pre-recorded and which he played along to. While the whole project holds interest, I have no idea why anyone would bother cutting this to vinyl and imagining it would sell a bean. Such is the strange world of art project vinyl. But it gladdens me as Heartbeat Drumming is weirdly involving, hypnotic, as it ebbs and flows, the percussion of human being. Comes in photo/info inner sleeve.

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine Worry Bomb: 2LP Expanded Edition (Chrysalis) + Gary Numan Berserker (BMG): Reissued albums by two artists who did something different with punk’s influence, had success, but were, by the time of this pair’s release, past their commercial peak. When Worry Bomb appeared in 1995 indie-punk tunesmiths Carter USM were still very much a going concern; the album made the Top 10 and the singles had vim – notably “The Young Offender’s Mum” – and scraped into the Top 40. It was, however, their last album for Chrysalis and their last one to chart. Their sound has less theatre and more rock’noll heft than what came before, partly as result of finally using a live drummer. Songs such as “My Defeatist Attitude” hold their own, but the world had moved on (I was a fan circa 1989-1992 but by this was release was fully immersed in the gnarliest techno, and Carter seemed another long-ago planet). The 2LP Expanded Edition comes on gatefold and has four worthwhile bonus tracks on Side D. A decade earlier, in 1984, Gary Numan’s high-flying career went off a cliff with Berserker (admittedly partly because it was his first album on his own label, Numa). It was his first studio album not to make the Top 40 since his career took off in 1979. Numan’s less-loved material from the 1980s deserves reassessment. His experiments with curious Japan-like funk on 1981’s Dance album, for instance, sound pretty decent in 2025. Berserker attempts to go to new places too but with less success. It's a mutant mash of Cameo slap bass electro, then-new studio trickery, Numan’s usual sci-fi doom, and a dash of Frankie Goes to Hollywood Hi-NRG, but it doesn’t really gel. Fans, though, will welcome the five bonus tracks. Comes on double in gatefold in photo/lyric inner sleeves.

Slung In Ways (Fat Dracula): Brighton is not a place that immediately welcomes heavy rock, most especially metal. This is irritating as I live nearby and it means most metal tours swerve it. So it’s great that Slung exist. They are based in Brighton and their debut album, In Ways, effusively fronted by singer Katie Oldham, dips into metal but maintains a stance that includes hints of everything from Royal Blood to grunge (Alice in Chains) to older Seventies rock to even a certain gothicism. It’s tinted with doomy down-tuning but has enough tunes and riffiness to move beyond pure Kerrang fare. Comes in photo/lyrics inner sleeve.

Joni Void Every Life is Light (Constellation): Prolific Montréal producer Joni Void (AKA Jean Néant) has dabbled in all kinds but his latest is a particular highlight. He’s an electronic experimentalist who utilises found sounds and Every Life is Light rather gorgeously combines dubbed-out late night rhythms with a whole raft of recordings of life happening in the streets, sometimes looped, sometimes just dropped in for effect. There are a couple of song-structured tracks but most of it is ear-interesting ambient wibble of a good order. Comes in art/info inner sleeve with a 12” x 12” art card.

Tom Hickox The Orchestra of Stories (Family Tree) + The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus Devotion to a Noble Ideal EP (Nine x Nine): Two records that draw on classical music and a sense of theatre. Tom Hickox is the kind of musician who would apply for an Arts Council grant and get it. On his third album he joins forces with The Chineke! Orchestra and Onyx Brass for an album that combines orchestration with his rich baritone voice on a set of songs that will appeal to people who enjoy seated gigs with eyes closed more than standing ones. It’s elegant, tuneful, erudite, and craftedly bridges the worlds of cabaret pop, musical theatre and light classical, as well as maintaining a chewy lyrical approach. Comes in lyrics inner sleeve. Liverpudlian collective The Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus are far from prolific, 40 years into their career, with a couple of albums decades ago and another three within the last five years. Their latest release is a remix EP with versions of three old tracks and one new one. Their solemn baroque orchestral folksiness is intact on Jon Lawton’s mix of “Equinox”, Dorothy Bird’s take on “After the Silence” gives Portishead vibes, international chamber ensemble The Orchestra of the Northern Territories render “Avatars” a rumbling melancholic Nordic thing such, akin to Wardruna’s mellow side, and Liverpool prog-rockers Blood of Achilles turn “Voices” into a gothic spaghetti western grind, redolent of the only good song Fields of the Nephilim ever did (the name of which escapes me). On white vinyl, it arrives with a double-sided art insert and an A4 insert entitled “Key to the meanings of colours”. They are not messing about, and this feels special and collectable.

Suzie Ungerleider Among the Evergreens (Stella): Until 2021 Canadian singer-songwriter Suzie Ungerleider was known as Oh Susanna. Dropping the name was a brave thing to do after years of albums and a small fanbase built. Her second album under her own name arrives in art/info inner sleeve and is filled with literate, sometimes personal songs, about life and love, country-tinted, led by a simple acoustic guitar. Her voices is lovely and so are most of the songs. A fine set.

Sami Galbi Yih Bye Bye (Bongo Joe) + The Lijadu Sisters Danger (The Numero Group) + Esinam & Sibusile Xaba Healing Voices (W.E.R.F.): Three releases affiliated in different ways with the continent of Africa. Sami Galbi sounds interesting. Swiss-Moroccan by origin, he apparently learnt his musical way both on the Moroccan underground and in the squat culture of Lausanne. His debut album melds 2025 electronic pulsing with much older North African rhythms and instrumentation. The result sometimes goes too far, for these ears, into Autotuned Afrobeats stylings (as in the slick R&B genre, not the Fela Kuti sort), but at its best, the juddering drums, attached to a meaty bassline and those Arabic-flavoured scalings, add up to solid dancefloor fare. Nigerian twins and cousins of the aforementioned Fela Kuti, Taiwo and Kehinde Lijadu, had quite a career in the 1970s and 1980s, both at home and more widely. Later on they embraced disco and all sorts of styles but initially, for their 1976 debut, Danger, backed by Biddy Wright, Ade Jolaoso and Johnny Shittu, they muster six songs of catchy Afro-pop that takes in funk, reggae, soul and social politics. Much of it is in English, in multiple styles, it sounds like an attempt at a crossover hit, earthily rough-edged but persuasively so. Comes with an 11” x 11” lyric sheet. Belgian-Ghanaian musician Esinam Dogbatse first collaborated with South African guitarist Sibusile Xaba on her 2021 album Shapes in Twilights of Infinity but now a whole album appears. It veers from the raucous, raw traditional “YeMa” to poetic flute-addled slowies to jazzy soulful pieces. From busy to laidback, it maintains musical interest. Comes with 12” x 12” art/info sheet.

AND WHILE WE’RE HERE…

• Small Cornwall indie label Krautpop! have a great inclusive attitude and now spread their wings wider with new folk sub-label Kroustpop. The debut release is As It Fell Out, an album by Tealeaf, a trio from Falmouth and Penryn who, like the folk singers of yore, tackle the social injustices of their areas and our times. Traditional but delivered with a light touch and beautiful instrumentation, we will be hearing more from this lot (and their label).
• In the mid-Nineties Dorado Records was part of the moment, mingling jazz and spliffed electronic beats, music for dancefloors where people swayed and listened. Never breaking big, they nevertheless had artists such as Jhelisa and D*Note on their roster, the former recently having a well-deserved TikTok revival moment. So it’s nice to see their logo back on a record and that record is Swedish singer-trombonist Ebba Åsman’s second album, When You Know. It’s smoky-sounding and even later at night than Dorado’s old stuff. Very head-nod!
• A collaboration between Malian kora virtuoso Ballaké Sissoko and Brit singer-songwriter Piers Faccini holds water on their debut album Our Calling on No Format Records. Faccini’s gentle pastoral folk stylings are an unusual yet very good fit for Sissoko’s acoustic backing. Light, thoughtful and sunny. Comes on white vinyl in lyric inner sleeve.
• Río Abajo, the debut album from Venezuelan singer Rebecca Roger Cruz combines atmospheric, string-swathed avant-chamber stylings with flamenco-tinted musicianship, the whole topped off with her passionate vocals. Moody but rich, it arrives via the Airfono label and comes on transparent aquamarine vinyl with a four-page 12” x 12” photo/lyric insert.
• Also on Airfono Records and sounding ebulliently lively is Ekoya, the fourth album from Jupiter & Okwess, the foot-moving five-piece led by Congolese Afro-funk don Jupiter Bokondji. It is manic, mingling rock and funk flavours with their local sounds. Hemorrhaging energy at the seams, it’s also ripe with sweet singing. They sound like they’d be amazing to see live.
• Edinburgh mavericks Paul Vickers and The Leg major in skonk-indie that’s literate, tinted with folk, romantic in spirit, string-touched and generally not straightforward. Their latest, Winter at Butterfly Lake on PX4M Records, continues their trajectory with spirit untempered by time, five albums into their under-the-radar career. Comes on vinyl quartered in red and yellow.
• The New Soil label likes to explore the areas where jazz and electronic merge, often in a spacey, mellow manner. Such is the case with the latest from Glaswegian DJ-producer Rebecca Vasmant, Who Are We Becoming?, which features multiple guest vocalists and lopes about woozy but friendly liminal spaces for head-nodders. Comes in photo/lyric inner sleeve.
• Danish outfit Blue Foundation are probably most famous for the use of their song “Eyes of Fire” on the soundtrack to vampire blockbuster Twilight but they’ve been going for quarter of a century. Their latest album, Close to the Knife on KØИ Records, showcases their original shoegaze-meet-Angelo Badalamenti sound-wash. Within the haze are actual songs. Comes in gothy photo inner sleeve on transparent light aquamarine vinyl.
• For a moment in 1987 and early ‘88, Voice of the Beehive seemed a good crack. They were great fun live. Fronted by two American sisters, and with Woody from Madness on drums, their debut album was akin to The Go-Go’s. But by their 1991 second album, the nudge-nudge-wink-wink titled Honey Lingers, I’d moved far, far on. Their sound had too, drifting towards the polish of ex-Go-Go Belinda Carlisle. It now reappears via London Records and contains the still catchy hit “I Think I Love You” as well as more in a similar vein. On gatefold on pink vinyl.
• Ottawa composer and virtuosic musician Mark Molnar is committed to applying his love of “post-hardcore, post-punk, no-wave, free improv, power electronics and other independent/underground musics” to a post-classical soundscape. For his latest album, EXO on Constellation Records, this means combining harp, strings and piano in a gloopy, gloomy, minor key manner that would work in a film about post-partum depression set in a dark forest. Comes with art/info inner sleeve and a 12” x 12” art insert.
• Also on Constellation and also venturing into the post-classical world is Reverie by indie-alt-rocker Rebecca Foon & violinist Aliayta Foon-Dancoes, a Canadian sibling duo who veer between attack, contemplation and drone, mustering a fresh kind of chamber music whose mood ebbs and flows, sometimes at peace, sometimes perturbed, but is, of these two Constellation releases, the more-ish. Comes in art inner sleeve.
• As Seen on TV will be, if you are a fan of The Church or The Go-Betweens, a most welcome triple set (in gatefold). It collects together the collaborative work of two well-liked Australian indie sorts, Steve Kilbey of the former band and the late Grant McLennan of the latter, under the moniker Jack Frost. Thus collated are the eponymous 1990 debut album and 1995’s Snow Job, the latter appearing on vinyl for the first time, plus a couple of rare bonus cuts, the whole lot on Easy Action Records. It’s a whole lotta well-calibrated post-Byrds, psyche-tinted guitar pop.
• Melbourne jazz-funker Gordon Li, AKA Don Glori, releases his third album, Paper Can’t Wrap Fire, on Mr Bongo Records. It’s lightly tinged in Latin music but is mostly ultra-smooth soul-funk of the kind one might find at the very lightest end of the roster on Brownswood or Tru Thoughts Records. Too jazzual for these ears but slickly executed, nonetheless.
• By the time Washington DC experimentalist rock trio Unrest cut their final album, Perfect Teeth, on 4AD, their explorative, College Radio alt-rock had been usurped by a major label grunge hegemony. Featuring a wonderful Robert Mapplethorpe portrait of musical non-conformist Cath Carroll on the cover, it’s full of tricksy angular jangle and awkward indie tunery, perhaps prefiguring then likes of Electrelane. Comes in art/info inner sleeve.
• US funk-rocker Neal Francis initially moves closer to the funk aspect of that formulation on his third album, Return to Zero, on ATO Records. He delivers an efficiently retro sound that has enough heft to appeal to those looking for a latterday George Clinton fix, but then moves into a variety of guitar pop boogaloos. Comes on gatefold.
• Even those not too keen on Simple Minds would have to admit that, in concert, they are expert at sweeping the crowd along with their expansive sound. Such can be heard on the double gatefold set Live in the City of Diamonds on BMG, which was recorded in Amsterdam in 2024 in front of an audience of 17,000. An enthused performance, very much a greatest hits set, the crowd are audible in their appreciation.
• Futureheads singer Barry Hyde was commissioned by the city council in his native Sunderland to put together a solo set inspired by the local area’s mining heritage. The result is Miners’ Ballads on Sirenspire Records. I was expecting a bunch of none-more-authentic folk songs but, instead, the lyrics are traditional fare but combined with Hyde’s knack for a sweet indie-pop tune. The combination carries over well. Comes in photo/info inner sleeve.
• The fourth album from Glaswegian singer Kathryn Joseph is called We Were Made Prey on Rock Action Records. Recorded in the remote Outer Hebrides, it has a lonely, isolated feel, an electro-acoustic folk horror underpinning, but tied to a tune-making sensibility, the whole wrapped in a drone-flecked electronic palette. It’s not cheerful but, in its spooked, slightly threatening way, it’s morosely poppy. Comes on bright red vinyl in lyric inner sleeve.
• Who knew that Little Feat were still going? I certainly didn’t but they’ve been consistently at it since reforming in 1987, even featuring Bill Payne and Sam Clayton who were in the band during their most celebrated, Lowell George-centric incarnation. Their latest album, Strike Up the Band on Hot Tomato Records, is a blues-rockin’ American festival gumbo on double in gatefold, that may not be doing anything very original but still remains spirited
• Breton musician Yann Tiersen is probably best-known for his work that ended up in films, and for creating the soundtrack to much-loved cuddly-flick Amélie. His latest album is a double on Mute. The first part is called Rathlin From a Distance and is a set of peaceable solo piano pieces that are inspired by and named after a Northern Irish island, with every track named after a place he visited on a sailing trip. More interesting is the second record, The Liquid Hour, which is a set of cinematic electronica, occasionally underscored by beats, and fuller of verve.
• Canadian art-musician T. Gowdy says that his latest release, Trill Scan on Constellation Records, is inspired by seeing “the modal language of medieval Europe as a less distant cousin of indigenous traditional music”. He takes his studies into the matter and throws them into his electronic equipment, resulting in sounds that veer from dense technoid crescendos to spooked voice material, like incidental music from The White Lotus. Someone get him a film soundtrack to do. Comes in art inner sleeve with a 12” x 12” card of the cover art.
• Actor Andrew Gower is not short of TV work, from Being Human to Black Mirror, but is likely best-known for his role as Bonnie Prince Charlie in Outlander. He’s also long nurtured musical outlets. Right now this is through the moniker Gustaffson whose bluesy debut, Black & White Movie on Oneboat Records, he fronts with panache. Produced by Elbow keys-player Craig Potter and with an appearance by Sir Ben Kingsley, it’s has a melodramatic cabaret pizzazz. Comes on vinyl quartered into black and white.
• While there has sometimes been a Stooges element to the output of French husband’n’wife duo The Limiñanas, their latest album, Faded on Berreto Records, sometimes reminds of Iggy Pop’s solo output. That’s when it’s not going for a twangy punk-mariachi vibes. Or a kind of doomed Sinatra/Hazlewood-do-chanson thing. It also includes guests such as Bobby Gillespie and Jon Spencer. Much of it is pretty fine. Comes on gatefold double on transparent scarlet vinyl,
• There’s a great line on the sticker on the front of the latest album from prolific Argentinian cellist Violeta García: “An underground experience where the cello blends with the dampness of an old cistern”. Now there’s a sell! Titled In / Out, on Bongo Joe Records, it is, as you might expect from their own description, a droney, darkly shimmering set of pieces that are all about creating a drifting fog of solemn atmosphere.
• Also from Violeta García (see, told you she was prolific) comes an album made with Swiss composer/electronic experimentalist Hora Lunga. It’s called I’ll Wait for You in the Car Park on OUS Records. It would best be described as “challenging”. I enjoy the perversity and force of music that wilfully states its art credentials well before its listenability. However, I also prefer it in a live forum, where its visceral impact and visual element come into their own. Such might be the case with this set of clanking, noise and electronic hum which most will be unlikely to put on while they do the washing up. Arrives in the form of a transparent plastic sleeve with three 12” x 12” abstract photo-art cards and a small record label sticker.
• Silver Synthetic are an indie band from New Orleans and their second album, Rosalie, on Curation Records, is an easy-going affair. Woozy laidback vocals play out over a Californian yacht rock version of indie. Sonic kindred of The Oracle Sisters, they are in thrall to a cheerful, sunny version of the 1970s and have enough tunes to hold their corner for the moment. Comes on photo/art/info gatefold.
• Malian troubadour Salif Keita has been around the block a few times and is now 75. His new album, So Kono on No Format Records, feels like a body of music made by someone very comfortable with who they are and what they can do. It’s a stripped back nine-track collection that forefronts his voice over acoustic guitar and ngoni (a kind of calabash lute). It is both weight-free and substantial. Comes on white vinyl in info inner sleeve.
• At San Francisco’s The Lab in February 2024, long-term Afrofuturist jazzer and Sun Ra acolyte Idris Ackamoor (and his Ankhestra) presented The Underground Jazz Cabaret, which was recorded and now appears on double vinyl in info gatefold as Artistic Being on Strut Records. Along for the ride for spoken word pieces are actress and Cornell University Professor Rhodessa Jones and actor-activist Danny Glover (yes, indeed, him from Lethal Weapon). Loose but together where it needs to be, it's a jazz-orchestral memento of what sounds like an ambitious, crafted and memorable evening.
• Those after proper jazz-person’s jazz (as opposed to the sort which amalgamates more with other styles) might look to the debut album from saxophonist Donovan Haffner. Entitled Alleviate, it’s a dinner club-style showcase for Haffner’s talents. Backed by, guitar, double bass and drums, and a supremely on-point piano from Jay Verma
• Manchester indie band The Slow Readers Club have already achieved a Top 20 hit with their Out of a Dream album on their own label. It’s their fifth hit album in the last seven years. None were massive but they clearly have a fanbase and it’s easy to hear why. The songs are mostly too unpleasantly anthemic for me but they can write a tune.

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