The Best Albums of October: The Avalanches, PISS, Cameron Winter, Dummy, Fontaines D.C., Morgana and more

The Avalanches’ No Bad Memories is my album of the month, the lead pick in a packed October with 24 albums below. It’s joined by PISS’s you made me / skin on linen, Cameron Winter’s Live at Carnegie Hall and Fontaines D.C.’s Dopamine Chamber. Closer to home, there are new records from The Wran and banríon. Further afield, there’s Andy Stott, John Talabot / OR, Queens of the Stone Age, Shabazz Palaces, Emily A. Sprague and Bibio & Dorian Concept, and more. Here are my recommended best albums from October.

Album of the month:

The Avalanches – No Bad Memories

The Australian sample legends return with their fourth album and first in six years, a sprawling 31-track collage that picks up the sample-stitched vibes of Since I Left You and Wildflower and takes it somewhere frazzled, digital and even more sun-kissed maximalist. This time there is a concept under it: No Bad Memories digs into the overlap of advertising, memory and nostalgia, turning jingles, sonic logos, commercials and the hums of old technology into warm, euphoric portals back to childhood and collective memory. This framing meant my first impression of the album was negative as the onslaught of unhinged music and sound to process was frankly, overwhelming.

It makes sense that the band (now Robbie Chater, Tony Di Blasi with newer member Andrew Szekeres) that made the plunderphonics classic Since I Left You 25 years ago would evolve their methods, but my first impression of the record was that the Avalanches had brought our sample-frenzied style into a modern DAW, applied the tropes of 21st century dance music and created information overload.

But with repeated listens, as with some of my favourite records of all-time, my initial recoiling was replaced with a desire to take the journey once more, as criminally-short uplifting songs revealed themselves and had me drawn to them like a magnet in a hard disk drive.

So yeah, my initial reading of No Bad Memories sounding like a metronomic hyperactive mash has given way of a love of its short-attention span pace, which in many ways was Avalanches’ modus operandi with Since I Left You – I’ve just had 25 years to process it.

One thing that is consisent with the record – this is Avalanches best written collection of songs among its fizzy guest-stacked thrill of dayglow sunny melodies. Karen O, John Glacier, Rivers Cuomo, Barry Can’t Swim, Jamie xx and Loaded Honey are among the voices, alongside Ryoji Ikeda, Portraits of Tracy, Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono and Suzanne Ciani, who helped build the sound of brands like Coca-Cola and Atari. Lead single ‘Can’t Get Over Losing You’ features Portraits of Tracy, and the centrepiece ‘I Give Everything I Have 2 U’ comes with a one-take video starring Haley Joel Osment weaving through Shibuya traffic, who also voices some of the fake ads along with Mike Patton. It’s a testament to the Avalanches that they manage to weave the input of such a stacked guestlist into a consistent whole, though with so much audio information for your ears to process, I could do with less of the old media interludes personally that contribute to the sonic whiplash.

No Bad Memories could be simply described as an electronic disco-pop collage if you don’t want to engage with the themes of nostalgic degraded media and collective memory. The songs make that pretty easy – still sample-stacked, they are addictive like the 2-minute sugar soda rush of ‘Every Single Weekend’ with Jamie xx, the frazzled electronics of ‘Together’ with Nikki Nair, Jessy Lanza and a Famous Five vocal sample, the sunkissed soul of ‘I Give Everything I Have For You’, the gentle euphoria of ‘Blue Shadows’ with Karen O on vocals, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo’s vocal on classic Avalanches sounding ‘All The Time In The World’, the Carly Simon flip of ‘One More Fantasy’ and the Suzanne Ciali and The Three Degrees-sampling masterclass of ‘Our Love Is Alive’ that recalls the early 2000s sample-lead dance music early 2000s.

On reflection, the audio information overload could be No Bad Memories‘ secret strength – there’s so much to explore and so much exuberance and excitement to derive from this constructed treasure trove that it has to be The Avalanches’ greatest work since their classic debut that defined an entire sampledelia genre.

PISS – you made me / skin on linen

Vancouver art-punk four-piece PISS’ debut album, you made me / skin on linen on Sub Pop feels more like current cultural commentary and performance art than a regular album as it arrives in a time where rape culture and consent is yet again in the news.

Fronted by Taylor Zantingh, PISS’ album was actually recorded with Colin Stewart in January 2025 but that is an indication of the perennial problem of male violence which is central to this visceral album exploring the topic.

The album blends punk, poetry and sound collage and paints a portrait of a woman’s life shaped by violence and being drowned out by male supremacy and misogny. It’s a tough listen at the best of times depending on your penchant for noise-rock and doubly so in the lyrics – with ‘blocking a scene you can’t remember’, employing the language of theatre and spoken shoegaze music style to reveal a triggering song that speaks to wanting to forget the experience of sexual abuse by an older man. This is not music for playlists.

Zantingh is joined by Tyler Paterson (guitar), Gavin Moya (bass) and Garreth Roberts (drums) on harrowing and uncompromising hardcore album rallying call against male violence, with Zantingh tripling as performer and activist as she is a singer as she sings about sexual assault (“I spent my life learning the right way to scream so people would listen” / “Some words are bigger than bodies/ I never learned how to get them out of my mouth”), with each song interspersed with spoken word from sources speaking on the theme including radical feminist Andrea Dworkin and novelist Toni Morrison.

A necessarily shocking and disturbing listen.

Cameron Winter – Live at Carnegie Hall

The Geese frontman’s Live at Carnegie Hall is his first live album, a much-anticipated document of his December 2025 performance, where he became one of the youngest solo artists to headline the venue’s main auditorium. Alone and arched over the piano with his back to a sold-out room, he reshaped the Heavy Metal songs and aired three previously unreleased compositions, a glimpse into his vault. There is an undeniable sense of occasion to it, the sound of a once-in-a-generation songwriter commanding one of American music’s most hallowed stages.

Paul Thomas Anderson and Benny Safdie filmed the show which is being shown in cinemas, but in the US only it seems apart from the odd date.

Fontaines D.C. – Dopamine Chamber

Fontaines D.C. are now one of the biggest bands in the world. And probably the biggest rock band of the moment? Every new Fontaines album is now a big event. They are now big enough to play Slane Castle twice next summer, and they’ve done it without compromising anything about their sound. Fifth album Dopamine Chamber, their second album with James Ford at the controls confirms that as it pushes a rock album with shades of electronics, trip-hop rhythms and cinematic strings to the fore.

No matter how much the band shapeshift and my, how much they no longer sound like the baby band on Dogrel, there’s an unescapable Fontainesness to the record – and it’s down to Grian Chatten – the gravitational force of the band, and the thing that’s most recognisable old-world rock’n’roll in the band’s records as they progress – his presence is the latest in a lineage of great rock singers – that just like his forebears occasionally stumble at the plate. This time out his words are broader and more globally relatable, but harder to hold decipher personal meaning which matters for long playing albums which is the only real mark against this record – incredibly, the band’s fifth in seven years.

Dopamine Chamber is the first Fontaines album that doesn’t have any central Irish concerns in it, which is something that the band have consistently previously referenced even though they haven’t lived in Ireland in quite a while. As I said in my review, it is a lush, stadium-sized modern rock record, uncompromising and cohesive if lacking in great singular moments. The band have given up some of the specificity that made them without sanding off the edges that keep them compelling.

Read the review in full.

Alchemical Sisters – Alchemical Sisters

The clue is in the name. Alchemical Sisters, comes out of the blocks sounding inspired by the big beat acid rave break euphoria of Chemical Brothers and their ’90s ilk.

Alchemical Sisters is the collaborative project romantic and electronic music partners of Eris Drew and Octo Octa, aka Maya Bouldry-Morrison, the DJ duo behind the T4T LUV NRG label. Their self-titled double album, out on Interdimensional Transmissions and tied to this year’s Samhain, pushes the psychedelic, acid-driven big beat of their all-vinyl back-to-back sets onto hardware.

It was recorded in the pair’s New Hampshire forest cabin where they emptied the master bedroom and “slept on the studio floor while, in white nightgowns and under the spell of mushrooms, they brought dulcimers and ancestral instruments into communion with turntables, twentieth-century machines, and new technologies.” The record was mixed over two weeks with producer BMG in Detroit in a high end studio.

Served as a rave communion for the head and the floor.

Morgana – The Whole Thing Was Very Emotional

Morgana MacIntyre, one half of Saint Sister, steps out solo with her debut album after a series of world-building singles including album singles  ‘I’ll Cry When I’m Dead’, ‘I’m Not Going Anywhere’, and ‘Fix Your Heart For Free’. Freed from the duo’s harp-led atmospherics, Morgana explores a more direct and personal mode, the songwriting candid and searching and the arrangements built to give her remarkable voice room to carry the weight – and she showcases its range from near-operatic to pop artist and everything in-between.

Having established a mantra of “prepared to party, ready to cry”, that doesn’t mean the music is all intimate and reverent, the DNA of a pure fun synth pop record is obvious throughout what is is an emotionally generous collection of songs produced with Matt Glasbey, unafraid of its own vulnerability (hey, it’s called The Whole Thing Was Very Emotional after all).

’80s electronic-flecked pop records are an influence, and who better than Kate Bush and Abba to be those North Stars for The Whole Thing Was Very Emotional cycles from a lyrical pre-occupation with other people “wanting their attention, approval, affection, or simply wanting to be close to them,” as Morgana puts it, to darker themes of self-reflection and reflective crushing points, usually with with high-drama and warm high-wire arrangements. Throughout there are moments of deep well musical beauty.

The first half features the operatic opener ‘Make It Hot Make It Cool’ written with Daithi O’Dronaí, is centred on teenage romance, the assertive pop highlight ‘I’m Not Going Anywhere’, ‘Sidekick’ written with Rocky O’Reilly is a grand ode to close friends (“when I’m coming up too hard you play Kylie ‘Slow’ / and when I’m dying on my feet you are in the front row:”), while ‘Chancer’ written with her Saint Sister Gemma Doherty is a gorgeous tea-spilling cutting song about someone you are no longer friends with (“i used to love you / you’re a fucking chancer”) with a vocal outro heavily inspired by a Hungarian choir.

On Side B, the mending begins with Morgana channelling The Roches and Mary O’Hara on the propulsive gallop of ‘Fix Your Heart For Free’., You Are Never Gone From Me’ a baroque alt-pop song written for her long-time manager Conor Cusack, currently recovering from a big cancer operation (“that’s right / that’s my guy / so when the nurse says ‘only family’, i’ll pretend that I’m your wife.”).

 ‘I’ll Cry When I’m Dead’ remains Morgana’s single best song to date, a bright and gilded song of euphoric intent about keeping the fire burning, through partying, codependency and advice sought.

The record ends on the elegaic ‘Win Once’ , a song of acceptance written with close pal Paddy Ormond, which Morgana says she imagines “singing it on the floor of a caravan kitchenette, utterly defeated, wishing only for one win, feeling like a total loser.”

The Whole Thing Was Very Emotional leaves the impression of the artist, the person, disentangling toxic relationships, unspooling complexities and finding solace and meaning in others, as well as herself. Emotional it may be, but I wouldn’t have it any other way if it means these heart on sleeve emotions get to the heart of what it means to be alive and move through the world.

Buy the album on vinyl.

Headline tour (support: Rosie Carney)

• Wed 16 Dec – Dolan’s Kasbah, Limerick
• Thu 17 Dec – Róisín Dubh, Galway
• Fri 18 Dec – Savoy, Cork
• Sun 20 Dec – Whelan’s, Dublin (sold out)
• Tue 9 Feb 2027 – McChuills, Glasgow
• Wed 10 Feb 2027 – YES Basement, Manchester
• Thu 11 Feb 2027 – The Lower Third, London

Dummy – do you love the color of the sky?

The Los Angeles band Dummy fold motorik krautrock, shoegaze and bright synth-pop into something hypnotic and melodic on their third album. do you love the color of the sky? leans into that collision of drone and tune, propulsive and dreamy at once. It’s the spirit of early ’90s indie and alternative with a modern brush.

Tracks like ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ sound like a cross between The Breeders and the Mock Turtles, ‘April Limousine’ has Stereolab and Broadcast DNA, and ‘Touch the Perfect Speed’ like much of the record, just have this unidentifiable air of ’90s alternative bands I can’t quite place.

Dummy Live :

Thu. Jan. 21 – Bristol, UK @ Strange Brew
Fri. Jan. 22 – Leeds, UK @ The Attic
Sat. Jan. 23 – Dublin, Ireland @ Bello Bar
Mon. Jan. 25 – Edinburgh, Scotland @ Mash House
Tue. Jan. 26 – Manchester, UK @ YES Pink Room
Wed. Jan. 27 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare and Hounds
Thu. Jan. 28 – London, UK @ Moth Club
Sat. Jan. 30 – Paris, France @ Le Chinois
Sun. Jan. 31 – Tourcoing, France @ Le Grand Mix
Mon. Feb. 1 – Bruges, Belgium @ Cactus
Wed. Feb. 3 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso Noord Tolhuistuin
Thu. Feb. 4 – Berlin, Germany @ Kantine am Berghain

John Talabot / OR – Music for Empty Stadiums

Catalan producer Oriol Riverol aka John Talabot’s debut album fin was a defining record of the 2010s electronic landscape when it was released in 2012 but the Barcelona man never actually followed it up with another full-length album until this one, Music for Empty Stadiums, under the new alias OR on AD 93, the label’s 100th release.

Riverol made the album during lockdown (you would have thought we are past its recorded reach by now), when touring stopped, the 17-track, roughly 95-minute album began with a question: “What might the most euphoric possible variant of ambient sound like?” The answer is an almost entirely beatless “anti-ambient” record, sequenced in the order the pieces were made, like a diary of that period. The stunning polyrhythmic synth Tangerine Dream-esque track ‘Nokik Messiah’ was one of my recent tracks of the week. A long, absorbing listen, and the album kicks off with one of the song titles of the year – ‘The Cortisol Arena’.

The Wran – Stone Man

From the Comeragh Mountains in Waterford comes The Wran, whose debut Stone Man fuses trad and folk with a hi-octane banjo bent. The four-piece are the Dunford brothers, Tommy, Danny, Seán and Stephen who take traditional Irish folk songs and imbues them with a brooding yet more accessible Lankum-adjacent drone trad, while drawing on retro rich harmonies and acoustic band numbers that often jump into full dramatic pelt towards the second half of the song, very often with banjo to the fore and on ‘Some Say The Devil Is Dead’, the use of a jaw harp. It’s more jaunty than Lankum sure – closer to the Pogues in its build of high tempos and the banjo ends up defining a lot of the songs as it cuts through the instrumentation’s spine.

Two original compositions ‘Dunford’s March’ and ‘Fear Dearg’ sit alongside their takes on the traditional songs displaying the band’s natural penchant for tension-filled instrumentation, and the album ends in a vocal song local to Waterford – ‘All Kilbrien Are On a Spree’.

LIVE DATES
Tickets
9th November – London, Rough Trade East (In-store)
10th November – Nottingham, The Bodega
11th November – Birmingham, Hare and Hounds SOLD OUT
12th November – London, The Lower Third SOLD OUT
13th November – Bristol, Thekla
5th December – Waterford, Bank Lane (supporting Madra Salach)
6th December – Limerick, Dolan’s Warehouse (supporting Madra Salach)
9th December – Dublin, 3Arena (supporting The Pogues)
10th December – Belfast, Telegraph Building (supporting The Pogues)
12th December – Killarney, Gleneagle Arena (supporting The Pogues)

Andy Stott – Late Loop

Andy Stott’s first album in five years, out on Modern Love, began with a set of rules: no basslines, no reverb, and no effects except a delay unit. It was “like learning a new language”, he says. The songs, mostly about a separation, are carried by Alison Skidmore, his vocal foil for more than a decade, and the Cork singer-songwriter Elaine Howley, whose ‘Something In Mind’ appeared in our best songs of the week. A drum machine played through speakers and recorded back into the room, plus a pump organ cleared out of the loft, give the eight tracks a textured, primitive feel with the record sometimes feeling like an experimental minimal take on dub music.

banríon – Untarnishing

Róisín Ní Haicéid’s banríon steps from full-band indie-rock into something more intimate and revealing on Untarnishing, her debut album and the start of a solo era. Written as a time capsule of 2022 to 2024 and shaped partly by songwriting workshops with Adrianne Lenker and Florist, its nine songs turn over love, loss, belonging and self-forgiveness with her wit and candour intact.

Lead track ‘HimNotTo’, born of her first queer relationship, channels Riot Grrrl defiance against the male gaze, while ‘Roseland’ reaches back to her grandparents’ home in Donegal and ‘Forgiving’ makes peace with a surgical accident she lived through at 17. A tender, clear-eyed soft indie songwriter record about looking back and staying in the present, and one for the Irish end of year lists.

Jimbo Jones – We Only Want the Earth

Five years in the making and Arts Council-funded, Jimbo Jones’ concept album documents the destruction of our environment, our society and ourselves, and offers an imagined alternative, a utopian future based on community. Recent single ‘Lost All My Time to the Television’ is melancholic, euphoric trip-hop about technological addiction, and introduces Jones’ singing voice.

The album also features brilliant frenetic ‘Modern Day Business Man’ with Dublin rapper Curtisy, and the album’s sonic palette is rich, with Jimbo Jones having upped his production game significantly from the debut album adding a heavyweight atmosphere that simmers with a murky blue-hued screen glow of modern living.

All proceeds go to The Sameer Project, a Palestinian-run aid project in Gaza. Very much recommended album about living in the now from an underappreciated Irish artist.

Trick Mist – A Shimmering

Trick Mist is the Cork multi-instrumentalist Gavin Murray, who channels Irish traditional music through an abstract prism, shaped by sean nós singing, experimental sound processing, absurdist lyrics and the writings of the Irish mystic John Moriarty. His third album and Moot Tapes debut, A Shimmering, grew from daily home-studio sessions designed to mine the unconscious: he recorded an idea a day, labelling each one from 1 to 30.

Out of that came a contemplative, longing-steeped soundscape with detuned tin whistles, aching flutes, primal bodhrán, reverb-dripping banjo and sean nós voice, with Dan Walsh of Fixity and Niamh Dalton of Ana Palindrome adding sax/flute and backing vocals respectively. Built on the Irish mythological idea of liminal space, it subverts trad’s bond with the past to tell cautionary tales about the future. Inventive, intriguing and meditative, A Shimmering is released alongside the Sub-liminal audio/visual series, where Murray takes a portable speaker to an outdoor place that shaped one of his new songs, plays the song in the environment, and records and films what happens.

Saint Abdullah & Eomac – When The Sandbox Has No Edge

A continuing collaboration between the Iranian-American brothers Saint Abdullah and the Dublin producer Eomac, real name Ian McDonnell. On their fifth album now on Planet Mu, the trio make dense, politically charged experimental electronics, folding field recordings and Middle Eastern samples into club-adjacent abstraction. Challenging, immersive music with a strong sense of purpose. Armand Hammer, Richie Culver and Abbas Zahedi are among the guests. This one has a more overt hip-hop influence and is my favourite of their albums to date.

Francis Harris & Gareth Quinn Redmond – Eyes Bright and Low

A collaboration that blends analogue and digital synthesis with piano, Eyes Bright and Low brings together the American producer Francis Harris and the Irish composer Gareth Quinn Redmond, with guest vocals from Rachael Lavelle. The artwork is synesthetic to how the music sits – slow, nebulous, twinkling tones sitting behind tracks that alternate with vocals by Lavelle. The album doesn’t deviate from that too broadly but it doesn’t need to be, the establishing mood is edifying and pleasing as it is to want to spend time in Francis and Gareth’s world.

KiiKO – KiiKO Forever

A Tokyo-Dublin electronic pop debut album from Emmy Shigeta and John McDowell, with drummer Dave Rogers. KiiKO Forever brings together the two cities’ sensibilities, pairing bright, synth-led Japanese city pop with a crescendo drum break pulse. There is a playful, maximalist streak running through the record, luminescent melodies stacked high over propulsive rhythms, reminscent of Lali Puna, Cornelius and Cibo Matto. It is an assured debut statement , full of identity and a unique addition to the Irish music landscape.

Queens of the Stone Age – Perfecth

Queens of the Stone Age return with Perfecth on Matador, their ninth album and the follow-up to 2023’s In Times New Roman…. Josh Homme and Michael Shuman produced it, and the record was pieced together on the road in studios from New Orleans to Los Angeles, with the current line-up of Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen, Shuman, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore.

The title is a deliberate corruption of “perfect”. Homme’s reasoning is that perfection is dishonest because it doesn’t exist, and the album takes its cue from kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Its nine songs are about love in its many forms, from the loves that break a person to the ones that help them recover.

Overall, this is a moodier more introspective record than Queens have ever released, with the riffs toned down, and the cinematic psychedelic vibe amped up. ‘Easy Street’, featuring Nikki Lane, was the first new Queens music since 2023, and the Rolling Stones-esque ‘Insignificant Other’ is a song about the disorientation of distance, left by someone who was once your whole world.

If you want the band at an earlier heavier peak, we’re playing Songs For The Deaf in full at our now sold out vinyl listening parties in November.

Jack Tiraquon – The World Overhead

The third and final part of Jack Tiraquon’s Mr. 8040 space saga (previously billed as Space Dimension Controller) brings the story back to earth 13 year after Welcome To Mikrosektor-50 took it into space.

The concept is more a framing device than a driving narrative, with a new name and a new sound – SDC / Jack Tiraquon has evolved since the days of that debut album’s Egpytian Lover-aping electro, and the softer but similar 2019 middle trilogy entry Love Beyond The Intersect.

The World Overhead then came after a move from Belfast to Amsterdam, acid and trance-inspired releases and a renewed interesting in guitar and shoegaze tones.

As such then, the closing chapter, released on his own label, where the previous two were on R&S Records, is more interested in musical expression than story – and presents more readily as a particular interstellar form of alternative-inspired electronic songcraft.

@ – Autosmile

The hard-to-google Baltimore-based art-folk duo Victoria Rose and Stone Filipczak aka @ make their 4AD debut with second album Autosmile, a subtly spellbinding blend of folk, ambient pop, prog folk and gentle experimentation.

Lead single and title track ‘Autosmile’ is nearly seven minutes long and is one of my songs of the year – a hypnotic track about the mystery of a strongly-tethered relationship  “I don’t know how I belong to you, but I do somehow,” Rose sings as the song makes use of the interlocking vocal harmonies, acoustic passages, guiro percussion and guitar-expressed colour. As for the rest of the record, it casts a slow, enticing psychedelic folk spell while not matching the title song’s heights but that’s totally understandable.

They play Workman’s Dublin next week on November 16th.

Emily A. Sprague – Cyano

The Florist songwriter’s solo synth work takes a new turn on her fifth solo album: she sings on it. Every sound on Cyano is synthesised, mostly on her Eurorack modular synth, with no samples or acoustic instruments. The record grew out of an interest in cyanotype photography and the botanical images of Anna Atkins, which led Sprague to imagine a planet whose inhabitants are relearning how to express emotion. It follows last year’s Cloud Time and is out on RVNG Intl.

Shabazz Palaces – It’s a Style Sport

Ishmael Butler returns as Shabazz Palaces with It’s a Style Sport on Sub Pop, his most reflective and upfront record yet and the follow-up to 2024’s Exotic Birds of Prey. He frames it as a return to rap’s root spirit of friendly competition, out-styling your peers with flair and substance both. Recorded live over eight days at Seattle’s Hall of Justice with a band including Kassa Overall, Evan Flory-Barnes and Thaddeus Turner, and produced with longtime collaborator Erik Blood, it sets Butler’s Afrofuturist, ‘Afro-fractal’ poetics against everything from Prince-like guitar to a fuzzed-out, Stereolab-ish closer. Singular, restless rap from one of its true originals.

Laurie Shaw – Born In The G.A.A.

The Wirral-born, Kerry-based bedroom pop recordist is back with another regular new album about small-town politics and rural dramas in and around South Kerry. It folds 80s pop rock, electronics and dreamy synths together, with Kate Bush, Springsteen and Cate Le Bon acknowledged.

The album is about Kenmare, good people, bad people, social issues, a bit of global issues, everything, nothing and infrastructure. It’s got drum machines with organic drums sitting on top and vice versa, it’s got smatterings of 80s gated reverb, a lot of wobbly synths and some forceful, actionable guitars. I wanted every song to be a potential pop hit for a warped, parallel universe AM radio.

Part of it was recorded at YAWN Studios in West Kirby, co-produced by Bill Ryder-Jones, who adds backing vocals, guitar and piano. The vinyl comes with a board game of the same name on the back, complete with player cards, pawns, dice and a betting notebook holding the lyrics. One of our most prolific songwriting weirdos.

Bibio & Dorian Concept – Answers

A first full collaboration between Bibio, the British producer Stephen Wilkinson, and the Austrian keyboardist and producer Dorian Concept, out on Warp. The instrumental album Answers weaves Bibio’s warm and woozy, pastoral electronica together with Dorian Concept’s fluid synth playing, the single ‘Lichen Trip’ showing how naturally the two sit together. Warm, intricate and gently psychedelic, it is a meeting of two distinctive voices on the same label.

Córas Trio – Birth Is Upon Me, Death Is Upon Me

The Belfast trio of Kevin McCullagh (fiddle, electronics), Paddy McKeown (guitar, electronics) and Conor McAuley (drums) follow their 2024 debut with a second album on Coracle Records. Working without a compositional leader, they use the studio as an instrument, with melodies emerging from otherworldly textures and musique concrète abstractions, and echoes of Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic and Reich-like pulses. Mixed and mastered by Seán Mac Erlaine, it runs on themes of impermanence and renewal. An album full of trad sensibilities with outer jazz edges.