Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 10 May (2024)

With Death Jokes, for the first time since the project's incarnation in 2006, the spiritual reflections and meditations of Amen Dunes are turned away from himself, and out sharply towards the world. The album is also a drastic turn musically and thematically, rooted in the electronic music of raves and of rap music he grew up with but never imagined himself able to make, playing like a scathing electronic essay on America's culture of violence, dominance, and destructive individualism. The work on Death Jokes began just weeks before the first word of the pandemic came in the winter of 2019; it was completed three years later as we began to emerge from the worst. The album's meaning morphed as the pandemic went on, first a reflection on our attachment to form, and to ourselves, and then shifting into a solemn indictment of our culture's blind spots as we misjudge and attack, veiled self-centeredness and self-importance masquerading as morality.

Following their critically-acclaimed 2021 album “As Days Get Dark”, Arab Strap return with their 2nd long player for Mogwai’s Rock Action Records with the excellent titled “I’m totally fine with it ? don’t give a fuck anymore ?”. Almost 28 years after their debut, Arab Strap have never sounded more essential, and this new record is a fierce testament to their laser focus on wider horizons. Written and performed exclusively by Malcolm Middleton & Aidan Moffat, and finessed with longtime collaborator Paul Savage, the album furthers the band’s transformation from swooning, slow-core romantics to raging, alt-pop chroniclers.

.Dehd kicks off 2024 by releasing their fifth studio album, Poetry via Fat Possum Records. Following the whirlwind success of Dehd’s fourth album Blue Skies and hit single “Bad Love”, they first gathered at Kempf’s off-grid Earthship in Taos, New Mexico where they chopped wood to stay warm and wrote songs during the daylight. They then travelled to a cabin on the Puget Sound to set up their second writing camp where surrounded by chilly waters, time was marked only by the movement of the tides. “Eating, Sleeping, Breathing, Living - our only purpose was to write,” Kempf recalled.  This was the first time the band travelled to distinctly notable locations to write and inspire themselves. Leaving Chicago proved to be a watershed moment. They finalized the songs that became Poetry back in Chicago in the warehouse they’ve called home for nearly a decade, where they rehearsed and wrote their entire catalogue. Friend and producer Ziyad Asrar, who co-produced all three Whitney albums, co-produced the album alongside the band’s Jason Balla at Palisade Studio. 

.Produced by Brian McTernan (Circa Survive, Be Well, Senses Fail). Hot Water Music will be embarking on their 30th anniversary tour this year with support from Quicksand in North America.

In his 13 years recording as How To Dress Well, LA-based musician Tom Krell has played with the concept of what we hear and how we communicate in order to create music that exists somewhere between celestial transcendence and an outsider approach to what pop music can be. In Krell’s musical world, the weight of a sample comes from his history with it, the meaning of a lyric fragment is stretched and distorted, its core skirting universal interpretation in favor of specificity. On new album "I Am Toward You", his first new music in nearly six years, Krell was in search of a return to the open-hearted, uncynical approach to music making that he adopted as a kid, and carried through the release of his haunting breakthrough debut, 2010’s Love Remains, when he was making music in relative anonymity with little external pressure. He sifted through hundreds of snippets he’d recorded in the preceding decade, finding inexplicable samples and snatches of audio that began to cohere into an album that stripped back the density of previous albums to create some of his noisiest, most free, and most poetic music to date,

Grammy-award nominated Jordan Rakei is a renowned multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, producer, and songwriter who, over soon-to-be-five studio albums, has been on a wide-ranging journey that explores the outer reaches of his inner psyche, traversing themes of emotional evolution, personal growth and family with unwavering sincerity. Always positioning himself in and amongst the bigger questions in life, he has navigated his musical journey with passion and precision, unveiling something new about himself through his songwriting at every turn. The Loop is by far Rakei’s most cohesive and evolutionary work to date following an impressive career of previous releases, each of which have demonstrated his natural curiosity and capabilities in exploring new sounds.

Keeley Forsyth is a singer, composer and actress from Oldham, UK. A frequent presence on primetime TV since the mid-'90s, over the past few years she has forged an unusual parallel career as a unique and uncompromising new presence in contemporary music. Described by Pitchfork as "arid and beautiful", by Uncut as "astonishing" and The Sunday Times as "one of the most remarkable in years", Keeley's debut LP, Debris (2020) and follow-up, Limbs (2022), drew unanimous critical praise, prompting comparisons with Nico, Beth Gibbons, Aldous Harding, Nick Cave, Anohni and even Scott Walker. The bleak and foreboding landscape surrounding Keeley's North Yorkshire home seems to inhabit her third LP, The Hollow. The moors, visible from her studio window, impact upon a music that feels made of these places: windswept, rain-soaked and blinking through the low-lit landscape. The album's title derives from discovering a long-abandoned mining shaft whilst out walking - the past lurking within and haunting the present we now occupy. Keeley's unique elemental voice again sits centrally within this world-building. Taking aspects of sacred music, minimalist post-classical, dark ambient, film and theatre soundtracks, she layers her vocals into chamber choirs, applies pitch shifts and other digital processing, moves from clear articulate intention to mumbled numb utterances; her cathartic reflections are exorcisms in song.

GRAMMY award-winning, multi-platinum rock band Kings of Leon are coming back big with their 9th full-length studio album, Can We Please Have Fun. As the title suggests, it's a document of one of this era's great rock n' roll bands cutting loose, trying new things, and, yes, having some fun. Recorded at Dark Horse studio and produced with new collaborator Kid Harpoon (Harry Styles, Florence + the Machine) the album sees a new side of Kings of Leon. On the new album, the band harkens back to their gritty origins while simultaneously finding new gears. It's the sound of a band unified in vision and purpose, freed from any expectations, and the album the band says they've always wanted to make.

You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To - Knocked Loose / As Knocked Loose chipped away at what would become their third album, they felt the pressure from all sides. Internally, there was the need to challenge themselves as songwriters while retaining the merciless intensity and unflinching honesty that have always been their calling cards - and to also live up to the sizable expectations that followed in the wake of 2019's A Different Shade of Blue, one of the most acclaimed metallic-hardcore albums in recent memory. Externally, there was a whole new set of eyes on the hard-touring Louisville quintet, following a banner year on the road, during which they'd brought their underground-seasoned sound to some of the world's biggest stages, finding themselves the unlikely viral darlings of both Coachella and Bonnaroo. - Across 10 tracks and 27 gripping minutes, You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To answers that question time and again. These songs are still hardcore, still Knocked Loose, but they explore new vistas of emotion, texture and sonic strategy. Everywhere they've been is here on this record, but so is everywhere they may yet go. 

Almost out of necessity, Les Savy Fav’s sixth LP was born in a pocket reality: singer Tim Harrington’s Brooklyn attic. “A freaky barn,” as he calls it, the room was built over the ruins of black mold and plywood, a de facto studio. Different from anywhere they’d ever recorded, the space allowed for a much-needed rebirth for the long-running post-hardcore band. In that in-between, they pieced together what would become their latest evolution, OUI, LSF, growing the album’s title and cover art out of a patch of grass. “The record grew organically — literally and figuratively,” Harrington notes wryly.

.With an inimitable presence as loud as his instantly identifiable voice, Sebastian Bach has left a San Andreas Fault-size imprint on music, theater, film, television, and culture. Moreover, his influence only continues to magnify.He has penned and voiced some of the most iconic anthems in rock history, crafting a catalog highlighted by generational hits such as “18 and Life,” “I Remember You,” “Youth Gone Wild”,” Slave To The Grind,” “Wasted Time,” and “Monkey Business,” to name a few. He has made history as “the first heavy metal singer on Broadway” with a now legendary turn in Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical in addition to leading roles in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Jesus Christ Superstar. He has appeared in dozens of television series and films, ranging from Trailer Park Boys and Robot Chicken to Spongebob Squarepants, The Masked Singer, and Hell’s Kitchen. Speaking to his versatility, he’s the rare force of nature who can duet with Axl Rose and reprise a seven-season recurring role on Gilmore girls.After selling tens of millions of albums, generating billions of streams, toppling charts, and packing arenas and amphitheaters around the world, he does what he does best on his long-awaited sixth full-length album, Child Within the Man [Reigning Phoenix Music]. "'Child Within the Man' sounds like an album from the '70s in a video from the '80s on the internet in 2024" he leaves off. “It was made by real musicians, a real producer, and mastered with real dynamics. It’s meant to sound big. In some ways, I’ve been working on this one for 35 years. I’m coming to unite everyone under this album, and we’re going to have a rock n’ roll party. This album represents my whole career so far, now, and the future. It’s just me, my friends, my family and all of YOU who have been rockin’ HARD with me since 1989…. the FIRST 35 years that is!”

In January 2023, Tom Skinner and his ensemble performed material from his recently-released album 'Voices of Bishara' (Brownswood, IARC & Nonesuch, 2022) at London club “mu”— a venue founded by the curators at Brilliant Corners and named after the seminal Don Cherry live album. Their performance was augmented by three pieces by Abdul Wadud, whose 1977 self-released solo cello album, By Myself, was a primary inspiration for Voices of Bishara.