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Music

Mandy, Indiana – Life Hex

I really didn’t get on with Mandy, Indiana” celebrated debut i’ve seen a way, at all, despite multiple listens and various people telling me how brilliant it was. Their new album URGH, however, has definitely got me. Written during a residency outside Leeds and completed between Berlin and Manchester – with the band working through ongoing some pretty significant health issues at the time – URGH moves between industrial pressure, fractured club textures and metal (probably?), creating moments that feel both at times deeply claustrophobic, at others spacious yet still uneasy. But most prominently of all, it’s ragey – in a very satisfying way.

https://mandyindiana.bandcamp.com/album/urgh

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Hannah Cohen – Wasting My Time

This was released seven years ago, but I’ve only just found it and I can’t get over how much I love it. Hannah Cohen put out the brilliant Earthstar Mountain LP last year, but this is taken from 2019’s Welcome Home, which is probably my favourite album of the year so far, if that counts. I just can’t handle the melodies, and yes, of course I’m crying.

https://hannahcohen.bandcamp.com/album/welcome-home

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Music

Gia Margaret – Everyone Around Me Dancing

Yay! Gia Margaret is back with a new album, Singing, her first since 2023’s Romantic Piano. I’ve totally loved everything she’s put out for the last decade, the ludicrously beautiful 3 movements being a personal favourite – and based on this lead single from the upcoming LP I expect that trend to continue. “I wanted to make something that sounded hopeful” she says of the recording process, “which is a little ironic because I felt essentially hopeless during the entire process.” This is the energy I need I my life.

https://giamargaret.bandcamp.com/album/singing

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Music

Maria BC – Night & day

Maria BC’s third studio album Marathon lands at the end of the month, and Night & day is the second single: a haunting, reflective experimental folk song. The album itself is billed to deal with themes of “resistance, environmental ruin, personal disruptions and destruction”, which feels very 2026.

https://mariabc.bandcamp.com/album/marathon

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Music

Reinartz – A Point for Everything to Spread

Appendix.files rolls out its second LP with Irradiated, an eight-part excursion from Berlin-based sound artist and producer Kurt ‘Reinartz’ Salgado. If you’re a fan of Barker’s beatless techno deconstructions, you’ll likely find plenty to like here.

https://reinartz.bandcamp.com/album/appx-lp02-irradiated

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Music

Imarhan – Tamiditin

Imarhan started out around 2008, a loose collection of friends who began to play together and whose style reflects their cultural and generational background; dry guitar riffs, pop melodies and pan-African rhythms which draw on traditional Tuareg music, African ballads and the modern pop and rock the band heard growing up.This is taken from ESSAM, their fourth album, recorded with the same core lineup, but with a significant shift in their sound and approach, moving toward something more open, modern, and exploratory.

https://imarhan.bandcamp.com/album/essam

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Music

Pefkin – Green Bound In Ice and Snow

The opening track on Pefkin’s new album Unfurling is a stunning, 11-minute blend of haunting folk and icy ambient, inspired by the artist’s dreams of the coming spring. Nature has always been a central part in Pefkin’s music, and on Unfurling she captures all the elements as the record follows the transformations of the land from winter into spring – air, light, temperature, soil.

https://pefkin.bandcamp.com/album/unfurling

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Durand Jones & The Indications – Let’s Take Our Time 

A fresh A-side from Durand Jones & The Indications finds drummer and falsetto king Aaron Frazer taking the lead on Let’s Take Our Time, a song that has been billed as a Mayfield-era Impressions’-adjacent track, but to my (admittedly untrained ears) sound more like a Smokey Robinson tribute. Either way, it’s likely you’ll know the kind of area in which they’re operating.

https://durandjonesandtheindications.bandcamp.com/album/lets-take-our-time-flower-moon

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Music

OHYUNG – all dolls go to heaven

Fresh from delivering one of the best albums of last year, OHYUNG returns to the ambient textures they explored so affectingly on 2022’s imagine naked!; my favourite LP of that year. all dolls go to heaven is the lead single from the forthcoming album IOWA, described by the artist as “a memento to my time living in Iowa between 2023 and 2024” and “my ambient transexual version of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.”

https://ohyung.bandcamp.com/album/iowa

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Music

SAULT – Protector

SAULT start the year with a typically low-key release, their new album Chapter 1 emerging out of the January mists with barely a whisper of hype. Predictably it’s great, perhaps even a career highlight. Time will tell; but if you can’t find something to enjoy with Protector I’m really not sure what’s wrong with you.

https://saultglobal.bandcamp.com/album/chapter-1