WarmduscherWhale CityThe Leaf Label
A playground for the people that have stepped above and beyond their comfort zone.
JpegmafiaVeteranEQT Recordings
His latest album, Veteran – a play on the 28-year-old having been in the music game for a while, but also a reference to his four years serving in the US air force – struck a chord with a jarring world, cathartic in its dissonance, its lithe sexuality, and its visceral, vital undercurrent of frantic rage and a kind of jaded indifference.
East ManRed, White And ZeroPlanet Mu
The list of MCs includes Darkos Strife, Kwam, Saint P, Irah, Killa P and more, and Gilroy’s contribution highlights the class tensions and intricacies that take place in London on a daily basis, giving the album thematic weight and focus. In many ways, the album is a celebration of that working class spirit which Hart and his contributors represent, an achievement of that sector of society that get the least love and attention by the powers that be..
Lucrecia DaltAnticlinesRVNG Intl.
Dalt’s native Latin rhythms mix with contemporary, minimal synth vignettes and industrial clutter. This is an immersive listen, full of eerie familiarity and suspended body horror; a quasi-mystical sense of oneness gives Anticlines cohesion and a sense of spiritual comfort, and somehow reminds of of the vast indifferent universe as we descend into environmental disaster.
Vanishing TwinMagic And MachinesBlank Editions
Magic And Machines was recorded for Blank Editions’ Blank Tape series, in which bands tape themselves while in free improv/R&D territory. This 30-minute, spectral jam was recorded live in one take at a night-time session at a mill in Sudbury, Suffolk and is evidence of a band who are finely tuned into their environment, one another and the multiple avenues open to the modern pop group.
Miss RedK.O.Pressure
Miss Red, aka Sharon Stern, is an astonishing vocal presence. Her flow is dextrous and fiery, brilliantly confrontational. She’s highly literate in her genre, nodding to familiar dancehall inflections while making no bones about her status as a white female Israeli. Born to Polish and Israeli-Moroccan parents in xxx, her self-awareness and personal experience of conflict drive her words throughout K.O.. The righteous fury that permeates each track is rooted in very real issues.
Melting HandFaces Of EarthHominid Sounds
For a band whose first album didn’t sound like it was scrimping, sonically speaking, on pretty much anything, Melting Hand’s second album is remarkable for packing in more of everything. More members, for one thing, and more vocals from more heads who dropped in for useful guest spots; more speed (as in velocity), at times, but also more apparent consideration in these five songs’ arrangements, rather than smoke-belching free-associative heavy-psych jam sessions all in the red all the time and get knotted if you don’t like, alright?
Primitive KnotThee Opener Of The WayAurora Borealis
From up in the Pennine hinterlands, Primitive Knot continue to blend black metal, noise and esoteric lo-fi in increasingly hectic, heavy ways.
ZULITerminal
His debut full-length on Lee Gamble’s UIQ label marries swampy basslines with slinky vocal delivery courtesy of rappers like Abyusif. Gut-wrenching trap flirtations meet delicate, alien melodic arrangements. In ‘Bump’, a highlight of the album, distorted synths flutter amidst sub tremors and rapid-fire vocals. Mollie Zhang
Jake MuirLady’s MantleSferic
On Lady’s Mantle, LA-based Jake Muir weaves delicate ambient loops from heavily manipulated surf-rock samples. Smudged synths repeat over and over on tracks such as opener ‘High Tide’ and ‘Yaupon’, forming neat earworms, while distant samples – people speaking, waves crashing, birdsong – unfurl, buried deep in the mix.
Helena HauffQualmNinja Tune
Qualm sounds like it’s trying to crack the matrix: deliciously squelchy, subtly creeping with unease, slicing and thwacking break beats boasting gun-metal precision, an ominous nuclear-green fogginess, like you’re listening through night vision glasses.
The ArmedOnly Love
The Armed from Detroit, MI, have introduced new rupturing new dynamics into the realm of what might loosely be termed hardcore, managing to be both more melodic, more noisy and more inventive than nearly anyone else doing the rounds at the moment.
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs PigsKing Of CowardsRocket
King Of Cowards opens with a simmer, a descending bass riff bubbling away until it boils over into an intergalactic launch of searing noise, and you’re reminded that this is a band of quite tremendous power. Baty’s vocals are more colossal than ever, surfing the monolithic wave with an almighty howl. The rest of the Pigs are on agile form, switching momentum from cosmic rushes to almighty, crushing descents without hesitation.
RezzettRezzett
Manni DeeThe ResidueTresor
A deeply atmospheric listen that captures many of the anxieties and oppressive atmospheres of existing in metropolitan Britain in 2018. The two minute interlude ‘Vicarious Living’ has a melancholy akin to wandering home after a rave, looking up at a tower of luxury flats and seeing some wholesome City couple sat having a nude granola breakfast as you wander home to your overpriced room, with its black mold and grotesque memories of personal inadequacy.
The BodyI Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any LongerThrill Jockey
Despite shedding metal’s generic trappings almost completely, The Body have created some of the heaviest and most intense music we’ve heard this year, a devastating multi-faceted gut-punch of a record that asks you to come face to face your most primordial, deep-seated fears, acknowledge and accept your failings and emerge from the experience a stronger person.
AJAAJAOpal Tapes
She’s the antithesis of the macho tropes that have for years surrounded noise music. Falling somewhere under the umbrella of ‘New Weird Britain’, her live shows symptomatic of it. Built upon the idea of audience immersion, AJA beckons you to share the extreme emotion her performances convey and the strangeness that surrounds it.
Synth SistersEuphoria (WAV)EM
‘She Sang’ centres around serene drones, while ‘Euphoria’’s synth patterns wouldn’t sound out of place working alongside a chugging krautrock groove (‘Time Is Flowing There’, later in the album, explores this element of their sound fully). ‘Different Story’ is full of machine zaps and harp-like chirps, and closer ‘I Am Here’ is a whirl of piano and psychedelic pads that could continue for hours without its grasp fading.
Nine Inch NailsBad WitchThe Null Corporation
They’ve ended up hitting on something that is simultaneously genuinely belligerent in the power of its snot nosed assault, while being leagues more sophisticated than anything any of the remaining big hitters from the imperial period of American alternative rock are even attempting in 2018.
Big JoanieSistahs
As well as the wider statement its very existence makes, Sistahs is an exploration of individual experience. Lyrically introspective, the songs are often one-sided conversations, processing moments of change and frustration, bratty retaliation and loss. Less a political call to arms and more a “black punks have always been here” reclamation of space, musically Sistahs draws from an eclectic palette that includes 60s girl groups, jangle pop, lo-fi indie and punk. Melissa Steiner
