On House of Sugar, his third full-length for Domino and ninth overall, (Sandy) Alex G inhabits a diverse range of musical and emotional points-of-view (often simultaneously), in turn illuminating the tension that hides in the shadow of desire. Giannascoli began writing these songs in the fall of 2017, having just finished a tour for House of Sugar’s acclaimed predecessor, Rocket, and moved into a new apartment in Philadelphia. Whereas with earlier efforts, such as 2011’s self-released Winner or the landmark 2014 release DSU, he’d write numerous songs fairly quickly, with House of Sugar Giannascoli worked at a steadier pace, concentrating on fewer songs and laboring over each one more than before. Throughout the process Giannascoli worked closely with Jacob Portrait, who mixed both Rocket and its predecessor, 2015’s Beach Music, and here helped to balance each of House of Sugar’s dense, multi-faceted tracks. As the product of extended focus and planning, House of Sugar emerges as Giannascoli’s most meticulous, cohesive album yet: a statement of artistic purpose, showing off his ear for both persistent earworms and shifting textures.

The Bravest Man In The Universe is Bobby Womack's first album of original material since 1994's Resurrection. Co-produced by Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, Blur) and Richard Russell, the album was recorded at Albarn's Studio 13 in West London and New York's Manhattan Center between October and December 2011. The album features guest vocalist Lana Del Rey on the song, Dayglo Reflection . Bobby Womack's musical career has spanned 50+ years during which time he has written songs recorded by The Rolling Stones, Wilson Pickett, Janis Joplin (to name a few) and has played on sessions for Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Dusty Springfield and more. Nicknamed The Preacher and The Poet , Bobby Womack's work has topped the singles charts many times over and his collaborations with artists from Patti Labelle to Mos Def to Gorillaz to The Rolling Stones showcase a legend who has and continues to influence musicians across genres. Bobby Womack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009.

tUnE-yArDs' forthcoming LP, w h o k i l l, out April 19 on 4AD, aims to clean up her sound a bit while maintaining the rawness that made BiRd-BrAiNs so lovable.

Foam Island, the third studio LP from Darkstar, is a beautiful contemporary electronic pop album, dealing with powerful themes of ambition and hope against the odds in the 21st century.
Since their early dancefloor 12”s on Hyperdub from 2008 and through two vocal-led albums in 2010 and 2013, Darkstar have been an influential force in the UK’s electronic scene. With the release of Foam Island they prove, as we move into the second half of the decade, that they remain at the cutting edge of artists pushing its form.
Following collaborations with the likes of Actress, Wild Beasts and Zomby, and taking cues from peers such as Jon Hopkins and Four Tet, it is an ambitious record, buzzing with the energy and excitement of all the possibilities inherent in electronic music in 2015. Yet it is also one which has been shaped by the prevailing social and political climate at this point in time. The band say: “it’s a culmination of everything we’ve written up to this point, the club and electronic side but also trying to tell a story”.
During trips to visit family in Northern England, founder members Aiden Whalley and James Young noticed a change in the area’s social atmosphere. This climate began to increasingly influence the duo’s writing sessions, and they began a three month project of documenting this by talking to local young people in nearby Huddersfield. The lyrics and the sound palette for Foam Island were shaped by the people and emotions they encountered there, and their recordings of interviewees’ speech have been compellingly woven into the tracks.
“We wanted to talk about life for people in their late teens and early 20s in 2015, but avoid that ‘grim-up-north’ clichéd perception,” Young explains. “We wanted a full picture, not just something that was heavy on the heart, but something that reflected a positive as well as an ambivalent side to how young people feel right now. These themes should be recognisable to anyone in the world right now.”
As such the record is in parts severe and beautiful; combining hard digital rhythms and live percussion with colourful synths. Having sung lead on several Darkstar songs to date, Whalley’s voice is now full time, his heavily treated vocals integrating with enveloping yet direct compositions. The production is perfectly controlled throughout, covering expansive uptempo pop (’Stoke The Fire’ and ’Through The Motions’), immersive ambience (title track ‘Foam Island’), mutated Neptunes-style R&B (‘Pin Secure’), and free-form electronic experimentation (‘Javan’s Call’ and ‘Days Burn Blue’).
Similarly, thematically it cycles through motifs of disillusionment, political isolation and apathy, alongside hope, happiness and pride. It creates a world in which there is a definite stoic comfort in routine, tradition and community, but in which there is also anger at a lack of opportunity for personal progression and a lack of investment in their collective futures. Final writing on the album took place in May 2015, with the lyrics to closing track ‘Days Burn Blue’ written as the UK election votes were being counted, and ’Cuts’ pieced together in the weeks following.
With Foam Island Darkstar have created an album which could only have been made in 2015; an album with a voice that encourages a generation to stand up and be counted.

The voice murmuring in our ear, with shaggy-dog and other kinds of stories, is an old friend so fine to hear from again. Bill’s gentle, spacey take on folk and roots music is like no other; scraps of imagery, melody and instrumentation tumble suddenly together in moments of true human encounter.

In 2018, Low will turn twenty-five. Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker—the married couple whose heaven-and-earth harmonies have always held the band’s center—have pioneered a subgenre, shrugged off its strictures, recorded a Christmas classic, become a magnetic onstage force, and emerged as one of music’s most steadfast and vital vehicles for pulling light from our darkest emotional recesses. But Low will not commemorate its first quarter-century with mawkish nostalgia or safe runs through songbook favorites. Instead, in faithfully defiant fashion, Low will release its most brazen, abrasive (and, paradoxically, most empowering) album ever: Double Negative, an unflinching eleven-song quest through snarling static and shattering beats that somehow culminates in the brightest pop song of Low’s career.
To make Double Negative, Low reenlisted B.J. Burton, the quietly energetic and adventurous producer who has made records with James Blake, Sylvan Esso, and The Tallest Man on Earth in recent years while working as one of the go-to figures at Bon Iver’s home studio, April Base. Burton recorded Low’s last album, 2015’s Ones and Sixes, at April Base, adding might to many of its beats and squelch and frisson beneath many of its melodies.
This time, though, Sparhawk, Parker, and bassist Steve Garrington knew they wanted to go further with Burton and his palette of sounds, to see what someone who is, as Sparhawk puts it, “a hip-hop guy” could truly do to their music. Rather than obsessively write and rehearse at home in Duluth, Minnesota, they would often head southeast to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, arriving with sketches and ideas that they would work on for days with Burton. Band and producer became collaborative cowriters, building the pieces up and breaking them down and building them again until their purpose and force felt clear. As the world outside seemed to slide deeper into instability, Low repeated this process for the better part of two years, pondering the results during tours and breaks at home. They considered not only how the fragments fit together but also how, in the United States of 2018, they functioned as statements and salves.
Double Negative is, indeed, a record perfectly and painfully suited for our time. Loud and contentious and commanding, Low fights for the world by fighting against it. It begins in pure bedlam, with a beat built from a loop of ruptured noise waging war against the paired voices of Sparhawk and Parker the moment they begin to sing during the massive “Quorum.” For forty minutes, they indulge the battle, trying to be heard amid the noisy grain, sometimes winning and sometimes being tossed toward oblivion. In spite of the mounting noise, Sparhawk and Parker still sing. Or maybe they sing because of the noise. For Low, has there ever really been a difference?

In four relentless bouts of inspired fire music Irreversible Entanglements explore and elaborate compositional ideas drawn from the instrumentalists' deep individual studies of free jazz improvisation, but the tone of each piece is driven decisively by Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother)s searing poetic narrations of Black trauma, survival and power. The message is the undeniable essence of the music.

A brand new collaborative work from Mica Levi (aka Micachu) and Oliver Coates, Remain Calm showcases both musicians' backgrounds in classical composition as well as their restless impulse to blur the boundaries between contemporary genres, from grime to techno to drone. There's something very specifically British about the compositions, the soundtrack to a supermarket car park on a rainy weekday afternoon, whilst ghosts of pirate radio flicker in and out of earshot from passing cars. Shades of Iannis Xenakis, Aphex Twin, Burial, and Scott Walker's film music are suggested in certain passages, but the sum of its parts are a very singular sound-world and a stunning piece of work. Vinyl includes full color printed inner sleeves and download card.