Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 12 April (2024)

This iconic rock band delivers a captivating collection of songs that will transport you to another realm. With their signature blend of hard rock and heavy metal, Blue Öyster Cult takes listeners on a haunting journey through the supernatural. Ghost Stories features 10 tracks that showcase the band's incredible musicianship and storytelling abilities. From the opening track "See You in Black" to the closing anthem "Harvest Moon," each song is filled with powerful guitar riffs, intricate drumming, and mesmerizing vocals.

I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY! is the eagerly anticipated sophomore album from Norway born, and Oslo based singer-songwriter, girl in red. This 10-song album chronicles the artist’s last two and a half years with honesty and wit, and a willingness to play around with her music. With I’M DOING IT AGAIN BABY!, girl in red is building her music into something “more ambitious, and more exciting, and more idea-driven.” Exploring themes like confidence, criticism, self-esteem, and vulnerability, girl in red produced the album with frequent collaborator Matias Tellez.

The duo’s third album of instrumental guitar recordings pushes their sinuous compositions into labyrinthine new shapes, interlocking and interlocutory, supported by a cast of stellar collaborators. Interwoven among the dazzling original pieces is a fascinating array of covers, ranging from traditional Breton dance tunes to a deconstruction of Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance.”

Grammy Award-nominated songwriter / producer / performer Maggie Rogers releases Don’t Forget Me, her third studio album, via Capitol Records. She co-produced Don’t Forget Me with Ian Fitchuk (Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris) at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, writing eight of its 10 songs with him and penning two alone. There’s a warmth to Don’t Forget Me. It's an album that sounds like a Sunday afternoon. Worn in denim. A drive in your favourite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room.  An old corvette. Vintage, but not overly Americana.

On Up On Gravity Hill, the new album by Toronto power-trio METZ, the band creates a kaleidoscopic sonic world as tender as it is dark, aided once again by engineer Seth Manchester (Mdou Moctar, Lingua Ignota, Battles, The Body). For those who believe in the power of the rock band to exemplify the highest resonance of human connection, there is much on Up On Gravity Hill to lift the spirit, a puzzle worth repeated listening to unlock or just to get lost in again and again. The album contains some of the most spacious, sympathetic, and accessible songs-could we call them pop?-of their career. If this seems contradictory, well, METZ has always been something of a contradiction. In the words of guitarist/vocalist Alex Edkins, "We've never been heavy enough for metal or hardcore purists, but we're way too heavy for indie rock. We just don't have a lane-and that's okay. We exist outside the lines of delineation. I think this record is even more like that."

Nia Archives is the star at the forefront of the latest era of jungle. Since her emergence in 2020, her collagist soundscapes have helped bring the sound to a new generation of clubgoers (though fair warning: don't call her a revivalist - she's the first to point out that the scene never went away.) So, when it comes to talk of the 24-year-old DJ/producer/singer-songwriter's much-anticipated debut album, Silence Is Loud, the odds are you're thinking of a full-length record of weightless jungle tracks with basslines so intense they'll leave your ears ringing.

The Magic City is the third album in the Red Hot & Ra series. This entire album was imagined, produced & curated by Meshell Ndegeocello. The album is a features Marshall Allen, Immanuel Wilkins, Deantoni Parks, Pink Siifu, Stuart Bogie and Justin Hicks. It is a dreamlike strange & soulful interpretation of Sun Ra's composition, This record follows Ndegeocello's 2023 album The Omnichord Real Book, named the #1 jazz album of the year by NPR and nominated for Best Alternative Jazz Grammy.

After putting down the saxophone, the instrument he has become synonymous with, Shabaka returns with his first full length album under his own name. Expanding off the meditative 2022 EP Afrikan Culture, his new album Perceive its beauty, Acknowledge its Grace is a deeply moving suite of primarily instrumental music. The listening experience is reflective and contemplative, with passages flowering from one musical concept to the next, encouraging deep attention that rewards the listener with throughlines and motifs throughout the record. Shabaka is found playing the flute on this album, and has enlisted key artists such as Andre 3000, Lianne La Havas, Moses Sumney, Floating Points, and more to help build this all-encompassing aural landscape.

Following two revered albums, ‘Dissolve’ in 2017 and ‘Avalanche’ in 2019, London-based electronic songwriter and producer Tusks, aka Emily Underhill, has returned with her third. ‘Gold’ is out on April 12th 2024 via One Little Independent Records. ‘Gold’ took form slowly over several months spent rewriting and reworking; half created at home in the middle of London and half during two solitary trips to Devon, where many of the songs found their inspiration. In need of some space, away from a shared house that had just been through a pandemic together as well as from a relationship that was coming to an end, she travelled to the south-west. It was here that she would get the bulk of her writing done, recognising there were some things she would have to work through alone, and in no small part it came to her in the form of a torrential storm. Bringing the album back to London, Tusks partnered with producer Tom Andrews to bring the tracks to life from studios like Ten87 in Tottenham and SS2 Recording in Southend.