Notable vinyl releases out this Friday - 6 September (2024)

With their dulcet fusion of ‘60s French ye-ye pop, slinky Studio One reggae, and liminal Brazilian tropicalia, Claude Fontaine’s songs embody the best kept dreams of a globally connected world. The second album from the Los Angeles artist reflects the dream of creating the soundtrack for this utopia by the sea. Released on Innovative Leisure, La Mer is a mesmerizing portal. It’s impossible for it to exist outside of the modern moment, but it floats on the gilded dust of the past. At times, Fontaine channels Jane Birkin as backed by Jorge Ben. Francois Hardy locked into sonic reverie with Mulatu Astatke, or Margo Guryan making lovers rock. None of this is a happy accident. For her second opus, Fontaine assembled some of the most gifted musicians of the last five decades. First and foremost is her co-writer and producer, the multi-platinum Grammy-Award winning Lester Mendez, whose resume includes everyone from Grace Jones and Baaba Maal to Shakira and Nelly Furtado. As with Fontaine’s self-titled first album, the legendary Tony Chin appears on guitar, bringing the orphic tones expected from someone who has played with some of the greatest reggae musicians of all-time (King Tubby, Dennis Brown, Lee Perry, Jackie Mittoo, Max Romeo, Sly & Robbie). On bass, there’s Ronnie McQueen, one of the co-founders of Steel Pulse. Sergio Mendes’ percussionist, Gibi Dos Santos, supplies propulsive locomotion. So does Ziggy Marley’s drummer, Rock Deadrick. And that’s just the abridged list of storied instrumentalists who appear on La Mer. 

The brand-new album by David Gilmour, ‘ Luck and Strange ’ was recorded over five months in Brighton and London and is Gilmour’s first album of new material in nine years. The record was produced by David and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with ALT-J and Marika Hackman, with lyrics mostly written by Polly Samson, Gilmour’s co-writer for the past thirty years. The album features eight new tracks along with a beautiful reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers’ ‘ Between Two Points’, which sees Romany Gilmour, who performs backing vocals across the album, on vocals and harp. Musicians contributing to the record include Guy Pratt & Tom Herbert on bass, Adam Betts, Steve Gadd and Steve DiStanislao on drums, Rob Gentry & Roger Eno on keyboards and the string and choral arrangements are by Will Gardner. The title track also features the late Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, recorded in 2007 during a ‘Barn Jam’ at David’s house. The album’s cover image, photographed and designed by renowned artist Anton Corbijn, is inspired by lyrics written by Charlie Gilmour for the album’s final song ‘ Scattered ’.

Dummy is a rock band from Los Angeles comprised of Alex Ewell, Emma Maatman, Nathan O’Dell, and Joe Trainor. Their debut full-length “Mandatory Enjoyment” (Trouble in Mind) arrived in late 2021, becoming one of the year’s sleeper hits and garnering praise from Pitchfork, Stereogum, and more. Coming out of lockdown, the band spent two years touring in support of the record, and it is this transformational experience that pulses through “Free Energy”, the exhilarating follow-up to “Mandatory Enjoyment”. A creatively restless band, Dummy (Ewell: drums, synths, bass; Maatman: vocals, synths, organ; O'Dell: vocals, guitar, organ; Trainor: guitar, bass, synths) wanted to get harder, dancier, more psychedelic for their next record. This meant applying explorative potentials of electronic textures to the elemental qualities of rock i.e. more vocal loops, sampling, more crazy rhythms, and playful synths - but make those samples of Trainor’s guitar, let Maatman sing bolder, experiment with using cold mechanical elements in warm and sparkly ways, and lean harder into traditional-yet-still-awesome forms of rock guitar experimentation like feedbackThe result is a record that celebrates music’s ability to move the body, whether that be through a teeth-rattling wall of MBV-esque noise, a sticky pop chorus, or a joyous drum machine—or, if you’re Dummy, maybe all of them in the same song. Pop music has always been a big part of Dummy’s sound and it manifests in different ways all over Free Energy: the bubbly synth sequence made with a Korg EM1 popping all over “Nullspace,” the revved-up drone-pop inspired by second and third wave Dunedin Sound bands like Look Blue Go Purple and Dadamah, and the motorik beat powering “Nine Clean Nails,” perhaps the most confidently pop song Dummy has ever recorded and one that exemplifies “Free Energy”’s balancing of live performance intensity with electronic augmentations, the dancier rhythmic elements created out of a drum loop recorded by Ewell while the bridge recalls the Feelies with call-and-response guitars from O’Dell and expressive vocals from Maatman. “Free Energy” also features guest appearances from Oakland-based saxophonist and electroacoustic artist Cole Pulice (Moon Glyph) contributes saxophone and wind synths and Jen Powers of Powers / Rolin Duo (Astral Editions, Feeding Tube Records).

Fat Dog are the most exciting breakthrough band of the past few years, conjurers of the sort of frenzied and wild live shows not seen in the capital for years and now the creators of WOOF., a brilliant and mind-bending debut album. A thrilling blend of electro-punk, rock’n’roll snarling, techno soundscapes, industrial-pop and rave euphoria, WOOF. is music for letting go to or, in the words of frontman Joe Love, “screaming-into-a-pillow music”.

Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points has announced his new album Cascade will be released on 13 September via Ninja Tune. Along with the announcement Shepherd has shared lead single 'Key103' which comes with visuals continuing his ongoing collaboration with Tokyo based artist Akiko Nakayama. Cascade is an eruption of unfinished business. In late 2022, Shepherd – renowned for drifting between genres as freely as his stage name implies – found himself in the Californian desert working on something new. Mere Mortals, his first ballet score, created with the San Francisco Ballet, was to be a collision of sound and dance exploring the ancient parable of Pandora through the prism of technology. "It was one of quite a few left turns I was taking around that time", recalls Shepherd. You can say that again: Promises, his multiple end-of-year-list-topping previous record, released in 2021, had seen him swap his typical modular synth tapestries and intricate drum patterns for airy dreamscapes, crafted with late legendary saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra. It was a collaboration so popular, a Mercury Prize nomination and sold-out show at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2023 followed. Between these projects and an upcoming anime score for Adult Swim - from the outside it might have seemed as though Shepherd was departing the dance floor for good. But as he wrote his ballet score by day, at night he found himself longing for the sweaty communion of a dance floor. For the pulse-racing abandon of electronic music. Shepherd released Crush, his rave-reviewed second studio album, in November 2019. It was hailed as one of the albums of that year by Pitchfork, The Independent, Mixmag, Loud And Quiet and more – "but I never got to explore its ravey, experimental side live", laments the musician, whose world tour was cancelled due to lockdown. Cascade was devised as a follow-on from Crush that would allow him (and audiences) to experience Floating Points in its traditional form on a dancefloor once more: bursting with Buchla rhythms, glitching melodies bewitching a room full of heaving bodies. "It’s meant to be kind of a continuation", adds Shepherd. This explains Cascade’s artwork: another colourful sleeve, full of fluid imagery (created once more by Akiko Nakayama). It also explains its evocative title: like Crush, one word that implies movement, beauty and pressure. Most importantly, it explains its mesmerising sound: sumptuous sonic chasms to lose yourself in again and again. Creating the album stripped Shepherd back. Not only in terms of his set-up – "I have a studio at home with all the gear I usually use, but I wasn’t there so I had to use my laptop, doing it all on headphones", he says – but in terms of his connection to electronic music, and to his home city where his love of music first flourished. "There’s something about Manchester that keeps coming back to me, and I think it’s partly to do with its record shops", says the producer, who found himself instinctively naming tracks after local landmarks and institutions. "As a kid, my school was around the corner from the Northern Quarter so at lunchtimes, I’d run out of the school gates and skip lunch altogether to go and listen to records. I’m sure I was a total pain in the arse constantly pulling records off the shelves", he laughs, "but it was amazing. I’d be listening to Autechre at Pelican Neck, Dilla at Fat City, David Morales mixes at the Factory Records shop… It gave me a parallel education in music to what I was being taught at school". This can be found in multiple tracks on the album including lead single 'Key103' - named after "an underground Manchester radio station I’d listen to religiously" that helped expand his music sensibilities beyond the classical composers he focused on in his academic work (Shepherd studied composition at Chetham's School of Music). Other tracks took inspiration from the dust bowl surroundings off the Californian desert, but make no mistake: Cascade is a record forged in an adolescence spent in Manchester, discovering the mind-expanding (and emotion-purging) power of electronic music in all its forms. Though devised as a continuation of Crush, Cascade nonetheless pushes Floating Points’ sound forward into new places. The nine songs here are allowed to smoulder and spark for up to eight minutes at a time, allowing for more expansive exploration of sounds and grooves than before. Almost a decade on since Elaenia, his revered debut album, the composer has discovered ways to thread his experiments outside of club music seamlessly into his music designed for the dancefloor. "I’m just constantly chasing challenges", says Shepherd, explaining how this album fits into his ever-expanding web of creative projects, of which there are many. "I always want to keep things moving and go all in on things that excite me. Whether that’s working with a 100-piece orchestra on a ballet or on a laptop on my own", Shepherd grins. Cascade is the proof – when it comes to electronic innovation and simmering tracks that stand hairs on end, Floating Points will always, always have unfinished business.

George Strait’s latest album, Cowboys and Dreamers, is his first new music since 2019. This new collection features 13 songs and includes a duet with Chris Stapleton. George is currently on his sold-out stadium tour through summer 2024. This will be his 31st album on MCA Nashville. George Strait is the unambiguous King of Country Music, having sold more than 105 million albums (and counting) while earning more than 60 major entertainment industry awards, as well as countless nominations. He is the only act in history to have a Top 10 hit every year for over three decades.

Madrid's Hinds, back to their formative line-up of best friends Carlotta Cosials & Ana Perrote, return with a sonically adventurous & career-defining 4th album. Recorded with producer Pete Robertson (Beabadoobee) & Grammy-nominated engineer Tom Roach in rural France, VIVA HINDS features the singles "Coffee", "Boom Boom Back" with a guest verse from Beck & the band's close friend Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. singing on the simmering post-punk inspired stand-out track “Stranger.”

On their enchanting new album – the playfully titled Ouch – James Hatcher and Andy Clutterbuck are ready to tap back into their foundations, and realise the kind of melodic effervescence and heart-tugging songwriting that only Honne can provide. In this radically ambitious independent era Honne want to remove the gloss, and show the emotions underneath. The result is a record that is impeccably detailed and wonderfully entrancing, informed by profound shifts in their own lives. It follows a narrative that begins with a teenage crush and closes with the responsibility of family life. Touching on everything from early 90s hip-hop production to slick 21st century pop via torch songs and ballads, Ouch is testimony to the frenetic creativity only Honne can conjure, having written, recorded and produced every single aspect of this project themselves.

Isik Kural's Moon in Gemini is a luminous scrapbook of slow-flowing narratives couched in intuitive and symbolic storytelling. Awash in woodwinds and strings, lullaby-inflected lyrics and tender imagery, Isik's voice moves closer to the listener's ear on his third album, intoning states of being in which the wonder filled sound of everyday life can be heard and felt. Moon in Gemini is a space for wide daydreaming, where the invisible steps forward and dauntless ghosts play under a hazy lunar light.

Max Richter presents his 9th studio album 'In A Landscape'. A record about “reconciling polarities"; bringing together the electronic and the acoustic, the human and the natural world, the big questions of life and the quiet pleasures of living. "A memoir of the present moment”. In his own words, Max describes the music on the record as being about “connecting or reconciling polarities. the tracks themselves are, as ever, my attempts to figure out how to make sense of our lives in the here and now of our daily life as I experience it.” One of the most influential and acclaimed composers of all time, Max's fusion of classical technique and electronic technology, heard across genre-defining solo projects, countless scores for film, dance, art and fashion, has won him legions of fans world-over, and blazed a trail for a generation of artists.

In upstate New York, deep in the seam between the Catskills mountains and the Hudson Valley, a richlyswelling, spellbound sound emerges, eddying and flowing like the local Esopus Creek, or in theslipstream of the grander Hudson river, carrying the flotsam and jetsam of our hopes, dreams, fears. Asound composed of organic and electronic; guitars, keys, brass, strings, woodwind, drums - and a voiceof incantations, tapping streams of consciousness that similarly eddy and flow.Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev's ninth album Born Horsesspring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searchesit's soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision linked to their exalted past whilst quiteunlike anything they have created before?The answer is somewhere between the homes of founder members Jonathan Donahue (the hamlet of MtTremper) and Grasshopper (the town of Kingston), in their veins and brains of their now-legendarytapping of musical cosmology, and the vital presence of new permanent member Marion Genser (keys),plus long-term ally Jesse Chandler (keys) and guests Jeff Lipstein (drums), Martin Keith (double bass)and Jim Burgess (trumpet). A place that feeds off the levitating mood of their last album, 2019'sexpansive tribute Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited, and the instrumental psych explorationsunder the names of Harmony Rockets and Mercury Rev's Clear Light Ensemble, and the spiritualguidance of avant-garde artist Tony Conrad and Beat poet Robert Creeley, to whom Born Horses isdedicated.Born Horses opens with 'Mood Swings'. A trumpet, evoking mariachi and the windswept terrain of thedesert prairie, opens up to a dynamic panorama of sound, wandering through and enveloping Jonathan'sintimate recitation, conflating memories and confessions of feelings trapped and unwrapped: "My moodswings come and go as they like / rebellious fickle teenagers, unable to decide." It establishes BornHorses' tone of vulnerability and awe, and a little frisson of fear, testifying to the frailty of humanexperience, buffeted by the currents all around us. The flightiness of feelings is further explored by themetaphor of a bird, most clearly in 'Bird Of No Address' and the album's pulsating finale 'There HasAlways Been A Bird In Me'.The album title, named after the majestically rippling sixth track 'Born Horses', was chosen because it'swords resonate through the entire record, encompassing the idea of flight ("I dreamed we were bornhorses waiting for wings") and the phrase "You and I" that appears at different junctures on the album.This is not the concept of two separate people, but two parts of one self.The concept of Born Horses began pre-pandemic, and then once Mercury Rev were allowed to tour andrecord again, Marion Genser moved over from her native Austria to join Jonathan in the Catskills, andMercury Rev in full flight. A classically-trained painter as well as a musician, Marion has become aninvaluable addition to the Rev chemical compound.More inspiration was provided by the spirits of Tony Conrad and Robert Creeley, acolytes of progressivethought and action who both taught at the University at Buffalo when Jonathan and Grasshopper werestudents. Amongst other credentials, Conrad was an associate of John Cale and The VelvetUnderground, Creeley an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Black Mountain poets.

"If rock 'n' roll's a dream, please don't wake me." Midwife's No Depression In Heaven, her fourth studio album, was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour endlessly over the course of the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock 'n' roll from within a body in motion. No Depression In Heaven explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife's work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston's project has been living and evolving.Recording at home in New Mexico between 2021 and 2023, Johnston aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs. The album features collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of Nyxy Nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen.Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America's underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston's existential status as a woman of the highway.

Mj Lenderman is a songwriter born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina. The anatomy of an MJ record might go something like this: warped pedal steels and skuzzed out guitar; crackin' a cold one with some buds; a voice reminiscent of the high-lonesome warble of a choirboy. Songs snake their way from a lo-fi home recording to something glossier made with longtime friends at Asheville's Drop of Sun studios, but the recording setting doesn't seem to matter much - at it's core, a Lenderman song rings true.Manning Fireworks is a remarkable development in Mj Lenderman's story as an incredibly incisive singer-songwriter, whose propensity for humor always points to some uneasy, disorienting darkness. The punchlines are still here, as are the rusted-wire guitar solos that have made Lenderman a favorite for indie rock fans looking for an emerging guitar hero. There's a new sincerity, too, as Lenderman let's listeners clearly see the world through his warped lens.

This is the third volume of the Neil Young Archives series of box sets produced by Neil Young. A definitive, comprehensive, and chronological record of his entire body of released work. Volume III covers the period from 1976 through 1987, an extremely productive and musically diverse period in Neil Young’s career that included the release of several classic albums including Comes A Time, Rust Never Sleeps, Live Rust and Trans. Spanning 11 years, this Archives box set covers more years, and includes more music and video than the previous two volumes in the Archives series.

Rose Main Reading Room, the fourth full length by Peel Dream Magazine, is a lush, inviting headphones record; the kind of album made to accompany city bus rides and rainy-day solo trips to accidental destinations. The band, whose name nods to the BBC Radio 1 legend John Peel — arbiter of all things underground, quality, and (it must be said) "cool" — has since its inception been a genre-hopping experiment, jumping from motorik krautrock to shoegaze and space age pop, and their newest work is a perfect starting point for the uninitiated, beckoning toward a newfound romance and nostalgia with their catchiest collection of songs to date. Across its fifteen songs, Rose Main Reading Room ultimately proposes a world of marvels and compelling complexity: “Oblast” cheekily prods at mutually assured destruction; “Ocean Life” explores the infiniteness within ourselves; while “R.I.P. (Running in Place)” unpacks an all too familiar stagnation. It’s all part of, and crucial to, Rose Main Reading Room’s transportive power, ever reaching for the wonder and magic of the world we live in.

From the inimitable husband and wife folk-punk duo that started a movement, Shovels & Rope's new studio album 'Something Is Working Up Above My Head' is a catalog of vulnerable characters with sweet and sordid narratives."Many times we've made records that we loved and then, after figuring out how we'd perform it live, we end up falling in love with the live arrangement because being a 2 piece band, it took some real risk and struggle which led to innovation, which gave it a whole new life. So with this one we just started there and worked backwards. The result encapsulates, more than anything we've done before, the sound of our live performance. Resulting in what one might consider by definition, a definitive album."

On their sixth long player The Breaks - their second for Joyful Noise Records - SUUNS find themselves lost in limbo. The trio of Ben Shemie, Joseph Yarmush and Liam O' Neill leans more zealously than ever into their pop instincts. Yet remarkably enough, with that same dauntless abandon, SUUNS have mined a more extreme sonic palette this time around, one that stretches far beyond their core fundamentals as a band The Breaks finds Shemie, O'Neill and Yarmush gleefully experimenting with loops, synths, samples and MIDI instruments like a post-millennial Tangerine Dream messing with downtempo triphop beats. Forged between countless plane rides, road trips, van tours and text threads, The Breaks became a product of endurance and a lot of trial-and-error. It's a record composed in tight fissions of freedom, where spells of whispered intimacy - like on the stunning ballad "Doreen" - are allowed to branch out into the vast glacial dreamscapes of the album's majestic title track. It captures SUUNS at their most panoramic, curious and exuberant: a constant relay of being adrift and enlightened anew, geared up to eleven. And guess what: the wheels keep on spinning.

THE THE’s first studio album of new songs in a quarter century! The 12 songs on Ensoulment encompasses characteristic topics ranging from love & sex, war & politics, life & death – to the meaning of what it is to be human in the 21st century. Singer-songwriter Matt Johnson is joined by long-standing THE THE members James Eller (bass), DC Collard (keyboards), Earl Harvin (drums), and Barrie Cadogan (lead guitar). The album also marks the return of co-producer and engineer Warne Livesey, who previously worked on landmark THE THE albums Infected (1986) and Mind Bomb (1989). Additional performances include Gillian Glover (backing vocals), Terry Edwards (horns), Sonya Cullingford (fiddle) and Danny Cummings (percussion). 

What’s Wrong With New York? is the long awaited and highly anticipated debut album from The Dare on Republic Records. Recorded between The Dare’s home and studio in New York, it features songwriting and production collabs with Dylan Brady (100 gecs), Emile Haynie (Lana Del Rey, FKA twigs, Dua Lipa), Romil Hemnani (Brockhampton), Chris Greatti (Yves Tumor, Yeule), Isaac Eiger of Strange Ranger and more. The Dare is the solo project of vocalist, songwriter and producer Harrison Patrick Smith. Bursting onto the scene with the ubiquitous “Girls,” his much lauded The Sex EP drew widespread praise from critics and artists alike. His explosive live shows have sold out across North America and Europe, and his legendary DJ sets, honed at his signature downtown Manhattan party Freakquencies, have soundtracked parties for Gucci, Celine and more. He has shared stages and collaborated with Charli xcx, Yves Tumor, Water From Your Eyes and a host of others.

Hole Erth, Chaz Bear's eighth full-length studio record as Toro y Moi, is the genre shapeshifter's most unexpected and bold move to date, with Bear diving headlong into rap-rock, Soundcloud rap and Y2K emo. The album blitzes anthemic pop-punk next to autotuned, melancholic rap - two genres that inform one another now more than ever before - and packs in the most features ever on a Toro y Moi album. A sense of nostalgia sneaks it's way into almost every Toro y Moi release, but angst is an emotion that Bear has never intentionally explored the way he does here. Tracks like "Tuesday' channel a specific, yet forever-relatable sense of adolescent unease. A distorted guitar riff leads into a repeating chorus that conjures misunderstood teenagers singing aloud, maybe too loud, while riding bikes through American suburbs. This foreboding can also be heard on "HOV," though not without poking some fun with lines like "Romance is so cold / My advice? To bring a coat." Bear has the energy, but is acutely aware that his energy isn't forever. At a time when the internet is blending multiple genres into one at an increasingly rapid pace, Bear accomplishes the rare feat of keeping up with the contemporary alternative listener. Constantly changing, evolving and experimenting is the heart of Toro y Moi, and on Hole Erth Bear challenges but also reclaims himself, embracing the myriad sounds and eras that formed him, while crashing new worlds together.