One aspect of the obsessive fascination surrounding Joy Division is the scarcity of their music. Though they were technically active under different band names as early as 1976, the finalized lineup of the group played under the name Joy Division for less than three years, becoming one of the most influential and game-changing entities to ever shift the tides with just two studio albums. In this brief time, the band played somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 or so live shows, which have also played into their legacy. Innumerable bootleg recordings and a smattering of above-board releases have cobbled together as much footage as possible of the band’s extremely limited time on stages, hoping to uncover a better picture of what made them so important.
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Gugaruz (curated by Zappi W. Diermaier): Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier has spent decades channeling spontaneity into a unique rhythmic language; a direct, instinctive and vital beat born from the creative freedom which has long defined the spirit of Faust. This same intuitive approach is at the heart of his new LP ‘Gugaruz’, created in collaboration with Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM) and Elke Drapatz, a record which grew organically from shared experiences, chance encounters and the energy of collective interaction. The project’s unlikely starting point came in a Vietnamese restaurant, when Diermaier pointed to a piece of pickled baby corn and exclaimed “Gugaruz”, an Austrian dialect word for maize. That small moment triggered a chain reaction…
Peter Hammill has never been an artist interested in taking the easy route. Whether through Van der Graaf Generator or his extensive solo catalogue, his music consistently occupies a space where beauty, tension, introspection and unease exist side by side. Tears in Time, his first solo album in five years, continues that tradition while looking back across decades of creative exploration.
Released through Cherry Red’s Esoteric Antenna label, the album brings together eleven compositions drawn from recordings made at Hammill’s Terra Incognita studio between 1991 and the present day. Rather than feeling like an archival collection assembled from unrelated fragments, Tears in Time develops into a surprisingly coherent journey through memory…
Tom Morello returns with his first solo rock album, Everyone Gets Everything They Want, released via Mom + Pop Music.
Produced by Tyler Smyth, Carl Restivo, Zakk Cervini, Dan Carey, and Sam Nelson Harris, it features guest appearances from Serj Tankian, Kneecap, and Beartooth. Morello’s son Roman Morello co-wrote five tracks, contributing guitar riffs and solos.
Tom Morello is a Grammy-winning, Harvard-educated, Rock & Roll and Metal Hall of Fame-inducted artist, songwriter, and activist living proof of the transformative power of rock ‘n’ roll. Known for his innovative guitar work and socially conscious songwriting, Morello rose to prominence as a founding member of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave…
A tenth album often serves as a way of resetting the clock, rediscovering something that has been misplaced or set aside, slowing down, reconnecting with ways of working that were there from the very beginning but may have gradually faded into the background over the years.
For Anthony Gonzalez, I Wrote You a Letter became exactly that; a return to instinct. Written from demos begun in the summer of 2024, the record grew from a desire to rediscover the immediacy of M83’s earliest work, the bedroom recordings, the imperfections, the freedom of creating without expectation.
Twenty-five years after M83 first emerged from the south of France, that impulse feels surprisingly radical.
Even though Orbital had hit the Top 40 of the British singles chart several times by the time they took the stage at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival, they were still largely popular among ravers rather than rock fans or the general public, and some people still got them mixed up with the group that did “Little Fluffy Clouds.” That all changed when their set took place, especially since Channel 4 was providing extensive television coverage of the festival, giving British home audiences their first taste of live electronic music, and subsequently opening the door for the arena-conquering success of acts like the Chemical Brothers, Underworld, and Faithless. Orbital returned to the Glastonbury stage several more times, and the compilation Live at Glastonbury 1994-2004…
Protomartyr have never done things the easy way. From singer Joe Casey’s handmade album artwork to drummer Alex Leonard’s impish, kinetic inversions of classic post-punk rhythm, the Detroit band maintain a workman-like lack of compromise in everything they do. Cerebral, instinctive or otherwise, nothing in the Protomartyr canon is ill-considered or under-distilled. For many listeners, myself included, this sense of commitment and purpose made them instantly appealing on first exposure, yet it’d be easy to understand a certain reticence from others based on that same quality. This is austere, unflinching music, often as bleak to one person as it may be cathartic to another—and this has never been truer than on Protomartyr’s new album Hotel Usona.
With the passing of Dave Ball last autumn, one of the 1980s’ great synth-pop outfits came to an end. He and Soft Cell partner Marc Almond completed the final mix of Danceteria two days before Ball died. It’s the full stop on the band and, fittingly, a concept album about early 1980s New York, where the duo indulged in hedonistic 24-hour nightclubbing which they filtered into darkly peerless electronic music, giving Britain a glimpse of what lay in its 1990s future.
Danceteria is, then, a celebration of long-ago dissolution, the glamour and sleaze of a city that no longer exists. Tonally, it’s similar to Madonna’s most recent album; indeed, she receives a mention on the moodily pulsing title track, an inventory of the 21st Street clubbing mecca.
The Frank Zappa estate have released a 60th anniversary super deluxe edition of his debut album with The Mothers Of Invention, Freak Out!.
In keeping with the Zappa estate’s recent run of 50th anniversary releases – Waka/Wazoo, Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe, One Size Fits All and Bongo Fury – the reasonably-priced set is packaged in a neat clamshell box and features the original album, studio outtakes, demos, rehearsals, live tracks over multiple CDs, plus a Blu-ray featuring various mixes. As with many Zappa releases, unpicking what’s already out there is tricky, with the period around Freak Out! already covered by a bunch of releases. Released in 1985 as part of The Old Masters: Box One, Mystery Disc was a compilation of early Mothers material…
Six solo albums into a career that also includes numerous collaborations, her work as a member of Red Sparowes, Marriages and more, Emma Ruth Rundle has amassed one of the most impressive back catalogues of any current musician.
These Killing Times is another beguiling set of songs that run the gamut from dark to delicate, crushing to sombre, and feel far more dynamic than the raw minimalism of 2021’s Engine Of Hell. This may partially be due to the subject matter, with Emma looking more broadly at the current state of the world, rather than reflecting on her own personal journey.
Opener Powerless muses on her fears and disdain of those who govern us and is gorgeously melodic, but the deep, distorted guitars…
Roger Clark Miller was guitarist/vocalist/co-leader in the highly influential post-punk band Mission of Burma. Their album Vs. was listed at number 19 in Pop Matters’ “50 Best Post-Punk Albums ever”, and number 24 in Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time.” They even have a chapter dedicated to them in “Our Band Could be Your Life.”
He continued expanding his guitar skills after Burma on his Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble album and through his current rock band Trinary System.
His new album, The Green Man, due late summer 2026 on Don Giovanni Records, sees him returning to slightly more traditional song-writing. As a solo singer/songwriter, the lyrics are prominent, supported by his unique guitar stylings.
The music of Dur-Dur Band captures the energy and optimism of 1980s Mogadishu. They were the prime exponents of a sound which blended Somali melodies with disco, funk, jazz, soul and reggae. As Dur-Dur translates as stream, all these elements could be compared to tributaries feeding into the smooth running of a larger river. It is this combination of local flavours and international influences that makes their music so appealing – refreshingly different while underpinned with familiarity and always eminently danceable. This latest compilation from Analog Africa follows on from the label’s 2018 release of the earlier parts of their catalogue, ‘Dur Dur of Somalia – Volume 1, Volume 2 and Previously Unreleased Tracks.’
Despite the joyful sound on these…
Memphis native, Kelly Hunt, sings with what Rolling Stone Country describes as “the lilting cadence of a folksinger born somewhere far away, sometime long ago.” Indeed there is a patina to her sound, especially when she opts for her Depression-era tenor banjo—a calf-skinned instrument whose origins supposedly date back to a man named Ira Tamm and his dog-and-pony show in the 20s and 30s. That mysterious banjo, with its warm, soulful sound, plays the starring role in her 2019 debut album, Even the Sparrow, which was a finalist for the International Folk Music Awards “Album of the Year.”
But while rooted deeply in traditional forms, Hunt crosses into markedly modern territory, hovering beyond the constraints of genre…
Two jazz titans conjure the golden spirit of two earlier jazz titans on 2026’s Dedicated to You. Recorded in honor of John Coltrane’s centennial celebration, the album finds saxophonist Branford Marsalis and vocalist Dianne Reeves sharing the spotlight, backed by Marsalis’ quartet with pianist Joey Calderazzo, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Justin Faulkner. Together, they interpret songs from 1963’s John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, a classic ballads album that paired the legendary saxophonist with the beloved singer. Here, they tackle all six tracks from that 1963 date, offering burnished readings of “Autumn Serenade,” “Lush Life,” and “They Say It’s Wonderful.” A long-avowed Coltrane acolyte, Marsalis is the perfect improviser for this project, but one who…
The legendary guitarist Robin Trower release his new album, Shine, via Provogue / Artone Label Group. Ask Robin Trower to explain his late-period creative burst and the legendary British guitarist can only shrug: “I think you’ve either got to keep pushing – or give up.”
Now 81, with a mythology that spans from the clubs of Swinging London, to Procol Harum, through 1974’s gold-selling Bridge Of Sighs and onward into a vital post-millennial solo catalogue, the veteran bluesman’s place amongst the all-time greats is beyond doubt.
Yet while his ’60s peers have long softened into greatest-hits autopilot, this restless artist still starts each morning the same way: stood in his workroom with a battle-scarred…
Since the early 2010s Lorely Rodriguez has cut a restless, inventive figure. She’s slipped from raucous pop to silkier sounds, explored her Honduran-American heritage and, on her last album, flipped the staple awards season phrase “for your consideration” into a full-frontal club-pop meditation on uneven relationships.
Her gorgeous fifth album makes a feature of this searching nature. Written after her family home burned down in the 2025 California wildfires, Dream House is about the rebuilding of that home – birdsong-dappled field recordings of its construction keep popping up – but also contemplates what it means to feel at home in yourself and with others.
For all the violent loss behind the record, it…