Back catalogue:

Review: New York emcee Hassaan Mackey (Rawkus 50) delivers sharp, unfiltered lyricism, packing rhymes with onomatopoeia and raw street wisdom. Set to blackout beats by Detroit producer Apollo Brown (The Reset, Brown Study, Gas Mask, Clouds), we've the ideal backdrop here: deep bass set to the the crackle of well-worn vinyl. The result is a record on which we're given much more than our Daily Bread. Lyrical picturebooks of faded spirit photographs return like plasmic ghosts, each booing line steeped in a mood of eerie reckoning. Atonement lingers in every note, experience weighs heavy, yet a fierce hope burns through.

Review: The fourth full-length from Mexico's post-metal-tinged melodic crust-punks Habak follows on from two previous collaborative efforts with also Tijuana-based post-rockers Fractal and Los Angeles crust-punk outfit Lagrimas, marking their first sole studio full-length since 2020's Ningun Muro Consiguio Jamas Contener la Primavera. Expanding their diverse, abrasive sonic palette more than ever before, drawing on elements of late 90s "skramz" era screamo, blackened hardcore and shoegazing post-rock, yet all coalesced under the black breath of their obligatory crust-punk sound, Mil Orquiideas en Medio del Desierto illustrates a band reaching the peak of their prowess and potential while offering a unique perspective on all of the above mentioned subgenres, with just that tincture of Mexican folklore for that added, incomparable aura.

Review: Ensemble Modern and experimental, Berlin-based music composer and sound artist Hainbach come together for Primer, an album sourced from their 2022 Checkpoint concert and reworked in the studio with bassist Paul Cannon. The record transforms their fine live performance into a rich, immersive home listening experience with Hainbach's signature use of nuclear research gear, tape loops and vintage electronics weaving haunting, ever-shifting textures throughout. As such the pieces pulse with a sonic spark that captures the spirit of experimentation and collaboration and is taps into plenty of avant-garde thinking in its approach to drone and ambient.

Review: ***B-STOCK: Creasing to corner of outer sleeve but otherwise in excellent condition***


]Nathan Haines, the renowned New Zealand musician, unveils his 11th studio album, marking his first solo venture since 2014. Known for his talents of saxophone, flute, and composition across jazz, electronic and dance genres, Haines melds his signature jazz sound with vibrant electronic and disco influences on Notes. This labor of love began years ago in collaboration with the late UK producer Phil Asher, whose influence permeates the album despite his passing during its creation. Featuring guest vocalists like UK soul-diva Vanessa Freeman and emerging talents Ajuna Oakes, Ruby Cesan, La Coco, and EO, Notes showcases a diverse range of voices intertwined with Haines's own instrumental strength. With contributions from bassist Jkriv and electronic jazz innovator Mark de Clive-Lowe, alongside beats by Marc Mac and acoustic bass by his father Kevin, the album is full of spirit and musical evolution. Frank Booker's production on three tracks adds depth, while the acoustic rendition of Rare Silk's 'Storm,' featuring vocalist Rachel Clarke, stands out as a poignant artistic highlight.

Review: Fifty years after its original release, and over 20 since its first reissue, the quiet Beatle's landmark solo record All Things Must Pass has been punctiliously expanded once more, offering a complete sonic and archival overhaul. Spearheaded by Dhani Harrison and Grammy winner engineer Paul Hicks, the collection is a deluxe format-multiple, with one Uber Deluxe Box Set coming housed in a bespoke wooden crate and featuring 70 tracks. Alas, this CD edition is but a mere optical truncation, offering the humble and prudent listener a much sublimer curated experience: rooted in George Harrison's growing frustrations within the Beatles and a desire for artistic autonomy, 'Isn't It A Pity', 'Let It Down' and 'I'd Have You Anytime' still lie among the most enduring songs of Harrison's Tibetan Buddhist era, and with none other than compression master Phil Spector at the mix controls, you can be certain of a well-smoothened sonic experience from front to back.

Review: Russell Haswell brings Deep Time, marking his sixth release on Diagonal following a productive 2024, which included the 4x12" compilation 13, on top of a UK-wide tour. Deep Time spans a vast influential range, reflecting Haswell's diverse background in computer music, black metal, noise, techno, and improvisation. Deep Time explores all from geopolitical tension to the incomprehensible scale of time itself, drawing sublime inspiration from his solo trips to the Scottish Hebrides and the rock formations glimpsable there. Album highlight 'Unconformity' references James Hutton's geological discovery and its connection to the Earth's history, with typography for the album sleeve designed by MuirMcNeil.

Review: Once synonymous with bands such as The Lemonheads, Some Girls, and Blake Babies, Boston, USA singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield has been there and done that as part of a group, with her own Juliana Hatfield Three setup, alongside Todd Philips and Dean Fisher, and in full-blown solo mode. And she continues to 'do it' very well indeed - How To Walk Away might be 17 years young in 2025, but her most recent original offerings, on 2021's Blood, proved there's no shortage of ideas still. As for How To Walk Away, this is Hatfield in her element. Emotional alternative rock in that way America has defined for the best part of four decades - left of centre yet accessible and destined for charts and soundtracks alike.

Review: Following on from 2023's acclaimed debut full-length All Gas No Brakes, Bristolian noise-punks Heavy Lungs return with the definition of an antithetical sophomore LP with Caviar. Clocking in at under 30 minutes (significantly less than their initial outing) and recorded live in dingy church rehearsal spaces to capture the unhinged intensity of their live performances, this is the sound of a band vehemently disinterested with mainstream appeal, exposure or playing the game by any terms apart from their own. While vocalist Danny Nedelko would be the named subject of one of the biggest singles from fellow Bristol natives Idles' 2018 breakout second album Joy As An Act Of Resistance, where his peers have expanded their sound and embraced myriads of melody, Heavy Lungs are poignantly going the opposite route, full speed towards oblivion with only chaos and anarchy on their collective minds.

Review: Talk about appropriate names. There's something about Helen Island that sounds as though it has been cast adrift, washed up, and left to establish its own thing. The Parisian enigma's work feels ghostly, haunted by a past that has vanished into the ocean mist. Whether they'll ever be reunited is the real question, but mystery is the joy here. Whether it's at the uptempo, synth pop hued 'Hot Zone Regular Day', or the weird and wonderful psyche-electronica-field style 'Forever Starts Today', breathy samples on 'Indivisibl' or the innocent contemporary classical-cum-ambient plucked strings and keys of 'Restless Lovers' and 'Gore Lore', the whole thing is a strange and beguiling ride through the outer reaches of popular music.

Review: Some 37 haiku poems are given an avant-garde, 64-minute musical backing with translations from poet Harry Gilonis, on this unique project by composer and multi-instrumentalist Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow) and vocalist Atsuko Kamura. We hear a vignetting lingual interplay, with lines in English by Hodgkinson sung in Japanese by Kamura, as a wide instrumental span covers percussions, violin, viola, harp, clarinets, guitars and electronics result. Recorded between Tokyo and London, the album offers a startlingly satisfying sonic renga (a Japanese poetic form encompassing a succession of haikus), lending the brevity of classic haiku an expansive, stretched-out prosthesis. From the 17th through to the 20th-century, this is a subduing but still irregular experience, as it formally demonstrates the laconic and aphoristic essence of the haiku.

Review: Buddy Holly defied rock star stereotypes with his Ivy League style and horn-rimmed glasses, yet his impact on music rivals legends like Elvis and Little Richard. This 20-track collection celebrates the legacy of Holly and The Crickets and takes in many of their most iconic hits like 'That'll Be the Day' and other gems released under his various different monikers. Despite his tragic death in 1959, Holly's brief yet brilliant career left an indelible mark on rock 'n' roll after he emerged by mixing up Texas country roots with r&b influences with great guided by producer Norman Petty. Holly's sound was both fresh and timeless, and this album proves what a pioneer he was.

Review: Originally recorded live at the New York Jazz Museum in 1977, this newly mastered version of a classic form William Hooker captures a vital, previously unheard performance from three titans of free jazz. They are eponymous drummer William Hooker, tenor saxophonist David S. Ware and alto saxophonist Alan Braufman and this session brims with raw, unfiltered energy that taps into a pivotal moment in each artist's career. Hooker's percussive invention, Ware's searing intensity and Braufman's loft-era vision combine in a spellbinding document of New York's avant-garde scene and form what is a crucial artefact from jazz's fearless frontier of the time.

Review: Marking the 25th anniversary of The Magnificent Tree, Belgian trio Hooverphonic release a special limited edition of their third album, available on translucent blue vinyl. This edition comes strictly limited to 1,000 numbered copies, each with a commemorative insert; its four core singles 'Mad About You', 'Vinegar & Salt', 'Out of Sight' and 'Jackie Cane' became career milestones for the ethereal band, clinging to the Flemish Ultratop 50 for 107 weeks as they continued to hone and plane their established blue noir, post-trip-hop sonic vernacular. Also marking their 30th anniversary as a band, The Magnificent Tree is probably the best touchstone to describe their coming of age, ripping up the the comparatively innocent sonic formula of Blue Wonder Power Milk.

Review: As they mark over two decades of collaboration, HTRK continue to thread past and present with a new, upcoming reissue of Rhinestones. First self-released in 2021, the album marked a stylistic turn for Standish and Yang, embracing a sparse and haunted approach to songwriting inspired by gothic country and Western folk minimalism, contrasting their earlier dub-punk dramatics. More emotionally forthright as their records go, it drifts over echoic acoustic textures, hushed vocals, and a characteristic metronomic pulse, conjuring a shadowy, intimate atmosphere. A landmark release epitomising their noted progression out from minimal-wave origins to "gentler, more inviting" territory, Rhinestones motivated a quiet resurgence for the band. This reissue follows the 2024 repress of their debut Marry Me Tonight and the collaborative 'String Of Hearts' EP, with reinterpretations from peers like Loraine James and Liars, reaffirming HTRK's strong creative orbit.

Review: 70s and early 80s Jamaican producer Keith Hudson's approach to dub was never about smooth edges or easy rhythms. His productions are dense, disorienting, heavy with delay, bass and drums that sound like they're ricocheting down a well. The Soul Syndicate, his long-time studio band, provide the backbone hereideeply locked-in grooves that Hudson warps into something ghostly. 'No Commitment' staggers forward with stabbing guitar chops that seem to dissolve mid-strike, while 'Ire Ire' loops through warped vocal fragments and echo chambers that stretch into infinity. 'Bad Things' and its dub counterpart pull apart the rhythm until it feels skeletal, each hit landing in the empty space between delay trails. Hudson's use of reverb and tape manipulation isn't just about atmosphere, but about control as well. He shifts and reshapes the mix to turn steady rhythms into something unsteady, always shifting just out of reach. 'Desiree' drifts through flickering hi-hats and cavernous low-end, while 'Keeping Us Together' seems to slow down and speed up in the same breath. There's something darker, more claustrophobic in the way he structures space and silence. Even the brighter moments, like 'Mercy' with its open, rolling groove, carry an unease, as if the music itself is bracing for collapse. Hudson was an architect of mood, twisting familiar elements into something deeply immersive and strangely hypnotic.

Review: This is not our first time falling for Jenny Hval. We might have been a little late to the party than some, initially encountering the angelic-voiced Norwegian singer-songwriter with her 2019 effort on Sacred Bones, The Practice of Love, but lost time has been made up for since. Landing again on 4AD, the label that hosted her preceding effort, 2022's Classic Objects, this latest is similar and yet different to what has come before. Tracks like 'Lay Down', which opens things here, present the Scandinavian voice at its sweetest, set against a backdrop of birdsong, fine-tuned for melody. Other moments take us into a dreamy otherworld, blissful harmonies and siren calls, ambient refrains invoking the great adventure that awaits us after this one. Or maybe that's just because the track in question is entitled 'I Want The End To Sound Like This'. Either way, so do we.

Review: Trumpeter Chris Ryan Williams and cellist Lester St. Louis form HxH (H by H) are a boundary-pushing electroacoustic duo who work with acoustic instruments and electronics in real-time. Their debut album, released on KMRU's label OFNOT captures their expansive, sculptural sound, and it is one rooted in jazz, noise, classical and Black experimental traditions. Drawing comparisons to Sun Ra or Laurel Halo, their music is fluid, unpredictable and emotionally resonant. Tracks like 'Pyrex Vision' and 'BEACH' showcase a dynamic interplay between form and freedom and are influenced by visual artists like Torkwase Dyson. HxH's sonic world is both daring and intimate and is an ever-shifting architecture of sound.

Review: Brazilian artist Hyldon's 1981 album 'Sabor De Amor' is a Latin classic that is well overdue this reissue by Jazzybelle Records. It was the fourth from the soul man, singer and instrumentalist who was, with equally celebrated peers Tim Maia and Cassiano, at the very heart of the Brazilian soul revolution of 70s. This may be his most consistent album with its more than accomplished backing by Azymuth musicians including Alexandre Malheiros on bass, drums from Ivan "Mamao" Conti and Hammond jams from Sergio Carvalho amongst others. The bass is funky, the arrangements are sophisticated and full of sun with noodling jazz melodies and Portuguese vocals all oozing summer magic. From mellow moments like the title cut to more dazzling and upbeat dancers like 'Amor Na Terra Do Berimbau' this isa joyous listen.