Blawan – aka Jamie Roberts – will release his long-awaited debut XL Recordings album, SickElixir, out Friday 10 October. Crafted between Berlin, Leeds, Paris, and Lisbon, the 14-track record is his most personal work to date; a manifesto for the way he sees music and himself. Channeling grief, family trauma, and seismic life shifts, SickElixir expands on the sounds of his recent EPs – BouQ, Dismantled Into Juice, and Woke...
On September 26th, two decades and seven albums into his career, American musician, composer, and academic John Maus will release his most transcendent work yet: Later Than You Think. Arriving via his new label YOUNG, the album explores themes of grief, justice, rebirth, transformation, and spiritual warfare – coalescing into a work of confession and confrontation: an aural metaphysics where affect, intellect, and spirit converge in search of the beautiful,...
bar italia return with essential summer banger ‘Cowbella’. The first new music from the band since 2024’s The Tw*ts EP sees a transcendent vocal blunt rotation between members Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton unfolding over a wiry, shapeshifting rocker that culminates in an explosive and chilling skywards coda. It’s a multi-pronged anthem that only bar italia could conjure. The last two years have seen the London trio release two critically acclaimed albums on Matador only several months apart...
Isaiah Hull – the self-proclaimed “stand-up tragedian” from Old Trafford, Manchester – unveils his extraordinary new body of work: POCOMANIA. The ten-track project marks his first album for Young Recordings, and is both a spiritual reckoning and sonic eruption. Co-created with acclaimed producer Kwes Darko, POCOMANIA sees the pair exploring what mania sounds like in today’s Black Briton. The title POCOMANIA references a Jamaican spiritual practice that creolises African ritualism...
David Byrne is proud to announce Who Is the Sky?, his first new album since 2018’s acclaimed and award-winning American Utopia, which will be released September 5th. The album was produced by the Grammy-winning Kid Harpoon (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus), while its 12 songs were arranged by the members of New York-based chamber ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra. Musical friends old and new, including St. Vincent, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, The Smile...
Jamaica Moana announces her new EP BUD & DENI, released August 1st. Following a first play on triple j Unearthed’s TOPS, she releases fierce new single, and ode to Western Sydney, ‘LIVIN’ OUT WEST’. “I’m extremely proud to be from The West. It’s a beautifully diverse melting pot of cultures, with a plethora of connections to home as diasporic people. I had to honour this with a sound that took me...
John Maus returns with a new single and music video: ‘I Hate Antichrist,’ his first new music in 7-years, which arrives via his new label home YOUNG. Built around a rhythm that feels both ritualistic and futuristic, ‘I Hate Antichrist’ is a spiritual confrontation – part protest, part prayer, part digital exorcism. Delivered with Maus’ distinctive raw conviction, repetition of the titular phrase becomes more like a mantra than a lyric – its...
Out now, Ripped and Torn is the eagerly awaited debut album by Chicago trio Lifeguard. Also released is the band’s churning third single ‘Like You’ll Lose’. The dub-inflected track takes inspiration from Lee Perry’s tight drum sound and expansive lo-fi atmospherics, with Asher Case’s bassline providing a center of gravity for skittering rhythms and tumbling echoes. The band has also been profiled by Rolling Stone, who write “Ripped and Torn...
It’s a Beautiful Place, the new full-length from Water From Your Eyes out August 22, opens with zero-gravity instrumental ‘One Small Step’ – a fitting prelude for what is one giant leap for the New York duo. The album is a gleaming megalopolis: a satellite view of eras and musical forms, a reframing of the y2k songbook that is at once awe-struck and mindful of its place in the vastness....
Patrick Watson announces his new album Uh Oh, to be released on September 26, alongside sharing new single ‘Peter and the Wolf’, a menacing, dream-like song inspired by the ghosts of New Orleans and the pitch black-ness of being in the forest in the dark. The pulse-pounding new video, directed by Patrick Watson and SAM WOY was shot in the Quebec countryside. The new album finds Watson meditating on the...
Planet Rami releases his latest single ‘Mother Eye’. The captivating alt-pop track is about those moments when you’re being thrown around by the universe – whether that be through failed loves, friendships, or jobs – and the only balm can be comfort from your mother. Written with ARIA nominated record producer, composer, mixer and songwriter Tony Buchen. “When I wrote this track, I was going through some major changes in...
“‘Love’ is a word I was unable to say until I was approaching 40,” explains Jarvis Cocker. “I listened to love songs all the time but couldn’t use the word in real life. The words to this song are me having a word with myself about this state of affairs. I gave myself a real talking-to. I have now learnt how to say it whilst keeping a straight face. ‘You’ve...
“The Sophs arrived out of the great blue yonder,” says Rough Trade co-founders Geoff Travis and Jeannette Lee of the label’s newest signing, LA six-piece The Sophs. The band’s brutal honesty, flamingly intrusive thoughts, and broad genre-spreading caught their attention immediately. Rough Trade heard the sort of creativity and variety — and “don’t expect me to act pretty” sentiment — that could get The Sophs — including frontman Ethan Ramon, Sam Yuh (keyboards), Austin Parker Jones (electric guitar), Seth Smades (acoustic guitar), Devin Russ (drums), and Cole Bobbitt (bass) — a slot...
Tune-Yards, the dynamic duo of Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner, have released their new album Better Dreaming. The final single ‘How Big Is The Rainbow’ is accompanied by a music video featuring comedian and actress, Star Amerasu, and directed by Dominic Mercurio. Merrill shares “The title lyric came out in a flash, and felt more sincere than I’ve ever been lyrically, maybe. But in this day and age, there is no...
Arca returns with a new double-sided single, ‘Puta / Sola’. While each track exists in its own distinct sonic world, they are released together to symbolise the complementary force of the liminal, the beauty in androgyny, and integration of both masculine and feminine energies that can harmonise in each person. It is a gesture in response to dualistic thinking – spanning the spectrum between binaries – a quantum entanglement between...
Standing On The Corner returns to give birth to a new single ‘Baby’, along with accompanying B-Side ‘Friends 2day Enemies 2morrow’ and one piece of poetry entitled ‘R U Scared?’. A limited edition 7” vinyl is available via standingonthecorner.com and the XL Recordings webstore. Hand-drawn white label 7” with risograph artwork print in clear plastic sleeve. Standing On The Corner is an Earth-based Art Ensemble founded in 2016 by Shamel Cee Mystery,...
