Margaret Glaspy – Act Natural

This is the first single from the New York City based singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy’s new album ‘Echo The Diamond’ which will be released on August 18th. Now into her second decade of solo music releases, Margaret has delightful echoes of the greats in her field that previously walked her home turf; especially in the sage ruminations that recall Suzanne Vega and the electricity driven streetwise edge harking back to Lou Reed; Glaspy’s excursions down the same path enchant because her eyes and ears are plugged into the core elements of the real life surrounding her, this is great stuff…

Shangri-Lass – Father’s Daughter

How about this for some superb marrying up of vintage sixties / seventies imagery with the sounds they play against? I especially like the split screen shots of what I assume to be early seventies Top Of The Pops audience dancers alongside the glam-rock stomp of the back beat. These energizing new sounds arising out off Sheffield using classic retro girl-group pop as the launch pad for an eruption of technicolour melodic sonic adventure, taken from the Shangri-Lass debut EP, ‘Over & Over’, released digitally and on pink cassette back in April of this year on Redundant Span Records…

The Studio 68! – Slow Boat To China

This one is also out now as well, as part of the ‘Back With The Boys’ EP released on Detour Records and as with the previous video clip, pulls in an imaginative use of vintage film excerpts to enhance the organ heavy mod sound of the track itself. The Studio 68! were trailblazers back in the late eighties, pioneering the authentic vintage sound that saw mod thriving into the modern era and they even won credit for tumbling down walls that opened up the UK scene for Britpop. This new release sees the original four members from the classic line up still pile-driving that irresistible sound with utter conviction…

P J Harvey – I Inside The Old I Dying

This brief and solemn, mildly disturbing, dark and gothic piece, accompanied by a suitably haunting animation directed by Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña, was released last week on an album of the same name by Partisan Records. Once again working with her long term musical companion John Parish who was joined on production duties by Flood, P J Harvey continues to make music wholly out-of-time and yet indisputably right for the moment in which it arrives…

Gregory Alan Isakov – The Fall

This is the first single from the new album, ‘Appaloosa Bones’, due to be released on August 18th and as with the previous selection it features a superb animation accompaniment, this time by Ruth Lingford. This will be Gregory’s eighth album in a career now spanning twenty years during which he has earned well deserved plaudits and indeed a Grammy nomination for his thoughtful, musically eloquent, folk-inflected Americana song writing. He seems to tap into something universal on ‘The Fall’ with a line like “we all break a little” making this gorgeous track a timely audio balm for the testing, anxious times in which we live…

Alfa Mist – Variables

This is the title track of the latest Alfa Mist album released on Anti Records. Alfa Sekitoleko comes from Newham in London and his early passions of football and hip-hop were atypical of the area. However, the sampling culture unlocked the door to jazz music which would push Alfa to developing his keyboard playing and it is the textured, tonal and soulful sounds he conjures out of the electric keys that are the backbone of his solo music, now linked indelibly to the still explosive London jazz scene. His playing never seems too showy, he is far more about the improvisation and the vibes but still somehow the Alfa Mist sound locks you in, gives the listener something firm to hang on to. On occasion loose experimental jazz can be hard work but Alfa Mist arrives in anything but a haze, his work is focused and rising out of a human beating heart, it is vital and it’s genius is clear to see and hear, this is one of the greatest music creating talents these battered, divided isles currently offer…