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A second 2024 review package, featuring fresh and archival wares from Rupert Lally, Dean McPhee, Aircooled, Essential Logic and more
These are the albums of 2023 that have meant the most to us, alongside our compilations & archives of the year
An autumnal inundation of new and archival audio from Suzy Mangion, Makushin, The Home Current, The Jasmine Minks, The Chills and more
New and archival things from The Leaf Library, Burd Ellen, Sharron Kraus, Marina Allen, Marine Girls and more are pulled from the review pile
With Wayward, Vashti Bunyan disidentifies her story from its countercultural return-to-nature mythology, writes Alice Keeling
A benevolent avalanche of sonic goods from Eat Lights Become Lights, Mildred Maude, Good Shepherd, Melinda Bronstein and Stellarays
Germany’s ToiToiToi returns to Ghost Box with Vaganten, an LP of wayward electronics, Medieval plunderphonics and Chaucerian machine music
A long-in-the-pipeline new album from Fuzzy Lights and an old-but-refreshed one from Sennen spread out into broad yet firmly-rooted vistas
Avant-folk trio HAV return with Haar, their vivid and pensive new album of electro-acoustics for Polpols Records
Musician-composer Phil Self talks about pulling pints, the Kentish coast and Peter Greenaway’s influence on his new album Zed Zed
Lebanese singer-songwriter Rogér Fakhr tells the story of Fine Anyway, his remarkable lost 1970s album now reissued by Habibi Funk
Two divergent takes on loner explorations from The All Golden and Dean McPhee go under the review microscope
Reflections on ten tremendous years of Clay Pipe Music, with founder Frances Castle, through ten totemic releases
Lisbon’s Beautify Junkyards have brought a dangerously dreamlike world to life on Cosmorama, their inviting new record for Ghost Box
Burd Ellen’s Debbie Armour talks to Gareth Thompson about sacred dramas, Mary as an Ever Mother and taxidermy wrens
Diverse new albums from Memory Drawings, Keiron Phelan & Peace Signs and Andy Bell leave the review pile for an accumulated assessment
Sharron Kraus talks to Gareth Thompson about her Preternatural Investigations podcast and finding ways into a place’s magic and mystery
Goods from Sam Prekop, Sally Anne Morgan, Throwing Muses, Tobin Sprout, Floodlights and Field Lines Cartographer usher in a new CI column
To mark the release of new LP Adlestrop, the real Gilroy Mere talks to Stewart Gardiner about Clay Pipe Music, the Beeching Report and avoiding nostalgia
An assembly of alternative summertime soundtracks from bdrmm, Gilroy Mere, Bernard Grancher and more undergo some sun-lit scrutiny
This second springtime column brings together a broad range of wares from Modern Studies, Textile Ranch, Bizarre Statue, Correlations and Rose City Band
Detouring again from singer-songwriter mode, Ryley Walker’s second pairing-up with Charles Rumback ploughs deeper into Chicago’s post-everything pastures
Heron & Crane’s Firesides record is where dipped-in-acid Americana gets a strange makeover by retro-futurist British electronics and library music
Kemper Norton’s self-released brunton calciner album is a work of industrial beauty, disturbing archaeology and curiously fitting electronics
Burd Ellen’s Debbie Armour talks to Stewart Gardiner about her last trip to Mull, radical vulnerability and experimental Gaelic 7″ Chi Mi Bhuam
Justin Hopper has made an invitingly out of place and out of time mixtape for Concrete Islands to accompany the Chanctonbury Rings album on Ghost Box
Justin Hopper, Sharron Kraus and Belbury Poly have brought the thinnest of places to vivid life in this oddly comforting avant-garde wonder