Album: Abel Selaocoe - Hymns of Bantu

A celebration of the ancestors, African and European

The musician Abel Selaocoe reaches out to the ancestors, African and European, continuing a journey that spans continents and centuries, an adventurer guided by love and respect for those who have departed, and yet nourish by the splendour of now.

Album: Doves - Constellations for the Lonely

Prog-rock existential wranglings from the grizzled Mancunians

Doves really are quite prog rock aren’t they? It’s never really leapt out at me before, probably because I’d always thought of them as brooding indie first and foremost.

Album: bdrmm - Microtonic

★★★ BDRMM - MICROTONIC Post-shoegazing quartet’s third album evokes the communal musical experience

Post-shoegazing quartet’s third album evokes the communal musical experience

Microtonic comes into focus on its third track, “Infinity Peaking.” Album opener “Goit,” featuring a guest vocal by Working Men’s Club’s Syd Minsky-Sargeant, is doomy post-Balearic impressionism with spoken lyrics seemingly about the loss of self. Next, the distant-sounding rave-shoegazing hybrid “John on the Ceiling.” “Infinity Peaking” is the point of coalescence; where beats-bedded, drifting electronica is suited to the comedown experience.

Blu-ray: Drugstore Cowboy

Gus Van Sant's non-judgmental indie classic about a gang of narcotics addicts

Rehab people will tell you there are three stages to drug abuse: fun; fun with problems; problems. There’s also a fourth phase, where there aren't any problems, because you’re dead.

Album: Artemis - Arboresque

A safe album from a band with a necessary message

Spare a thought – please – for Leipzig-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003). In 1956, she became the very first woman to record albums in her own name for the Blue Note label. Earlier this month was the centenary of her birth. It went by more or less unremarked.

Album: Heather Nova - Breath and Air

A mellower, acoustic sound that contemplates life's rhythms

With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative voices – though longtime fans of London Rain will find she's meandering down a sandier path. 

Album: Panda Bear - Sinister Grift

A psychedelic curiosity that’s unlikely to wear anyone’s stylus down

Sinister Grift is Panda Bear’s first album since his 2022 Reset collaboration with Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom. Anyone anticipating any lasting influence from working with Rugby’s premier psychedelic adventurer, however, is going to be sorely disappointed.

Album: Sam Fender - People Watching

★★★ SAM FENDER - PEOPLE WATCHING Solid, sincere evolution and full of moments that stay with you

The North Shields indie star's third album is a solid, sincere evolution

While discourse on many topics grows toxic and polarised, it’s the voices who speak plainly about the reality of everyday lives that provide some sanity and make us feel heard. Enter Sam Fender, whose straight talking and pride of his working-class roots has seen him emerge as a figurehead for the younger generation, who at times feel unheard and underappreciated.

Album: Basia Bulat - Basia's Palace

★★★ BASIA BULAT - BASIA'S PALACE Canadian singer's seventh album musters dreamy pop that simultaneously arrives and floats away

Canadian singer's seventh album musters dreamy pop that simultaneously arrives and floats away

Canadian singer Basia Bulat has tried on various musical hats during her career but is most associated with singer-songwriterly folk-pop. Her last album was the melancholic, string-swathed The Garden but with Basia’s Palace, her seventh album, she seems in a jollier frame of mind. She has veered into overtly electronic pop before, especially on her 2016 album Good Advice, but this time it’s a bubblier, warmer version. Then again, these nine songs still find room for heartache.

Blu-ray: Golem

★★★★ BLU-RAY: GOLEM Polish 1979 Meyrink adaptation is a visually striking dystopian drama

This Polish 1979 Meyrink adaptation is a visually striking dystopian drama

In Jewish folklore, a golem is an inanimate clay figure, brought to life when a magic word is placed inside its mouth. Piotr Szulkin’s dark 1979 film debut makes reference both to this legend and to Gustav Meyrink’s unsettling 1914 novel, moving the action forward from the latter’s fin-de-siècle Prague to a geographically non-specific dystopian future.