Here’s a rundown of new releases out today, including new albums and EPs on DSPs and physical releases in record shops this week.
Nialler9 keeps a rolling list of Irish album releases for 2025.
New Albums and Releases
New Albums
A$AP Rocky – DON’T BE DUMB
A$AP Rocky’s fourth album has been in the offing for a while and is the followup to 2018’s album Testing, making a significant eight year gap between albums.
DON’T BE DUMB arrives today via A$AP Worldwide/RCA Records, with artwork by Tim Burton after last week’s drop of the superbly-made Helicopter video, and recent single ‘Punk Rocky’.
Guests include The Weeknd, Doechii, Tyler, The Creator; Thundercat, Westside Gunn, Gorillaz, Will.i.am and Jon Baptiste.
Jessica Pratt features on the last track ‘The End’ after her feature on 2024’s ‘Highjack’.
Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore – Tragic Magic
Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have made an album together called Tragic Magic where the synthesizer-producer-singer and the harpist’s complementary ambient and electronic styles composition styles combine.
The album was made in nine days at the Philharmonie de Paris, co-produced by Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), with access to the Musée de la Musique’s instrument collection – harps and analogue synths, in partnership with the French label InFiné.
‘Melted Moon’ is the album’s closing number, a spirited eight-and-a-half minutes of a cosmic transportive arrangement.
Sleaford Mods – The Demise of Planet X
The latest album from the Nottingham punk spoken word duo of Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn release their thirteenth album with a guest-stacked record enlisting Liam Bailey, Aldous Harding, Big Special’s Joe Hicklin, Life Without Buildings’ Sue Tompkins and Game of Thrones actress Gwendoline Christie feature.
Upcoming gigs:
19 Feb – Olympia Theatre Dublin
20 Feb – Limelight Belfast
21 Feb – Cyprus Avenue Cork
Sassy 009 – Dreamer+
Norwegian alternative electronic artist and singer Sassy 009’s debut album features collaborations with Blood Orange, yunè pinku and BEA1991.
Dreamer+ features “distorted vocals and elements of grunge, shoegaze, ‘90s beatronica and gauzy hyperpop.”
Dreamer+ is work of fiction at its core, a grim fairytale in which dreams and emotions are processed through a landscape of shapeshifting characters, dark forces and moral responsibilities. It’s an album Lindgård has imagined for years and has taken on many forms, shapes and sizes. Like those morphing silhouettes you see at nighttime, this distinctive body of work has been an ever-evolving assimilation of disciplines.
Courtney Marie Andrews – Valentine
American folk and country-leaning singer-songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews’ ninth album was recorded in-studio to tape with producer Jerry Bernhardt with Andrews playing flute, high-strung guitar, synths and draws on her visual art discipline, and influences from Lee Hazlewood, Big Star’s Third and Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk albums.
Written during a period of profound endings and new beginnings, Valentine is a vulnerable exploration of love vs. limerence. While anticipating the imminent loss of a loved one who would eventually recover, a new but uncertain romance began to develop. Rather than lift her up, the two emotional poles seemed to bleed into each other to sow doubt, trouble, even obsession. But through her own exploration of music and art, Andrews found a way to grow stronger inside this feeling.
Minced Oath – Lazzarella
Irish electronic producer and Countersunk Recordings’ Dunk Murphy (aka Sunken Foal) releases a second album in a series “weaving volatile, textural surges with clockwork synth patterns”.
This music originated as an all-night ambient performance on Dublin Digital Radio, presented as Sun Static in 2020 and was supported by the Arts Council of Ireland. The work began with the conception of a performance system built around sixteen convolution resonators, each fed by dynamically controlled noise sources within the computer. The aim was to create an instrument capable of producing textural, aleatoric swells—free from temporal grids or fixed rhythmic structures—something I could surrender to and inhabit over an extended duration. The original performance lasted around eight hours.
If tuned correctly, the resonators could behave like an ensemble of jagged, crumbling bowed instruments. For the noise sources, I stripped some vintage movies of their dialogue and music, leaving only the residual cackling hiss of magnetic tape and incidental ambient sounds. Each track takes its title from its source movie—the movies being chosen only for their sonic character. Once amplified and routed through the resonator system, these fragments produced brittle, unpredictable timbres and unstable harmonic configurations—an environment that invited plenty of play.
BXKS – Fear Of Eclipse
The debut mixtape from the Luton MC whose alternative grime-flecked rap delivery is in the slipstream of Lil Simz. BXKS recently collaborated with Gliders MC Travy on ‘Guestlist’ which doesn’t feature here.
Instead there are 11-tracks breezing across 20-minutes setting out an intriguing stall, and marking BXKS as one to keep an ear on.
John Blek – The Midnight Ache
Cork singer-songwriter John Blek releases a self-produced and recorded ninth studio album with references to Sea Change-era Beck and Sparklehorse; through its string arrangements and songwriter intimacy.
John’s wife sings on the record and the cover is pressed flowers from their home garden, which is also where Blek’s studio was recently built.
There are tour dates around Ireland from tonight through March – see the dates.
YinYang – The Lotus Throne EP
Belfast alt-punky-rap artist’s new extended four-track player features ‘Dumped Me In The Smoking Area’ with a video shot and self-directed in Thailand. Yinyang’s electronic body rap music has recently supported the likes of Gurriers, The Scratch, Meryl Streek, YARD and Fat Dog.
Martina And The Moons – Starfish Social Club EP
Dublin four-piece alt-rock band Martina And The Moons release their debut EP with recent single ‘Laundry Mat’, and ‘Baby Turtle’ alongside three other tracks.
The band are inspired by Britpop and 90s alt-rock bands like Elastica, Catatonia and Blur, and singer-songwriters like Paul Simon, Carole King and Joni Mitchell.
“Starfish Social club is a project that’s full of contrasts. And yet, although sonically the songs are very different, the lyrical themes and overarching sentiment is the same. The songs tell different stories about moments where you lose your innocence, where your inner child disappears.”
Also released this week
- Amanda Bergman – embraced for a second as we die
- Crooked Man – Crooked Stile
- Imarhan – Essam
- Keep Shelly In Athens – V
- Mel Mercier – First Conviction Soundtrack (RTÉ Podcast hosted by Ruth Negga)
- Daniel Blumberg – The Testament Of Ann Lee Score
- Wilding (Original Soundtrack)
- View on Bleep
- Jon Hopkins and Biggi Hilmars – Wilding (Original Soundtrack)
- YA TSEEN – Stand On My Shoulders (Sub Pop)
- Xiu Xiu – Xiu Mutha Fuckin’ Xiu: Vol. 1
Recent posts on New Albums:
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
