A long overdue update to the new music playlists and a few recent Bandcamp favourites that aren’t available on the streaming platforms (or Spotify anyway).
Subscribe to the ‘Weekly Dose’ playlist HERE or join MLD on Substack for irregular musial delights.
The playlists now exist on Qobuz, along with Apple, Deezer, Youtube, Amazon, Tidal and Spotify.
FRANKIE ARCHER
I sadly failed to make it up from London for what sounded like a magical gig to launch Frankie Archer’s debut LP at Hexham Abbey in June. The Abbey has a series of 15th century wooden panel paintings, some of which depict the medieval Danse Macabre, ‘The Dance of Death’ which inspired Hexham born Frankie’s album of “nu-ancient trad bangers”.
Not only a magical gig but it would’ve been a chance to take the glorious 685 bus that crosses the country from Newcastle to Carlisle via Hexham for – last time I took it – 2 quid and takes in roman roads/the wall, medieval towns and Northumberland and Cumbria’s stunning countryside.
Anyway, I digress, on ‘The Dance of Death’, Archer reconstructs some of the oldest songs in the English canon with ‘fractured, future-facing production’. Working from archival ballads of obsession, devotion, and loss, she warps fiddle lines, processes her own vocals, and drives the material with pulsing drum machines and colourful synth arrangements.
There are countless highlights – many of which have featured on this blog before – but the album closer ‘The Lovers Ghost’ is a particularly euphoric way to go out, if there is euphoria to be found in discovering your lover is a ghost.
WHEELCHAIR SPORTS CAMP – MAKE IT MAKE SENSE
ALL this shit i can’t ignore, and ALL this shit we can’t afford
we’re ALL in DOUBT in DEBT, endure, but funds for tons of guns?
of course…
Wheelchair Sports Camp unleashed a new single, “MAKE it MAKE SENSE” featuring guest vocals by Jello Biafra & Radio Pete.
Lead singer/emcee Kalyn Rose Heffernan has a condition called Osteogenesis imperfecta, otherwise known as brittle bone disease, which lends its name to the LP, “oh imperfecta”.
Fans of Jello Biafra will have been heartened to see him guesting live with the band in June as he continues his recovery from a stroke. Biafra not only features on two of the tracks, he’s also signed the band to his legendary Alternative Tentacles imprint. This follows a 2016 debut album that came out on Sage Francis’s Strange Famous records.
SKIPP COON – BOTH/AND
“Both/And” is the first single from Skipp Coon’s forthcoming LP on B Dolan’s new label ‘Glaring Typo Records’. The song marks his official solo return after a decade, during which fans have been eagerly anticipating the return of this reclusive poet, who by his own description is ‘more revolutionary than rapper’.
Listening to these bars, we know he must be one hell of a revolutionary.
SHAMROCK SHOWBAND
SHAMROCK SHOWBAND are a psychedelic country and Irish band.
Conor McAuley on fiddle, Jamie Bishop on guitar, samplers and synthesizers and Joel Harkin on pedal steel guitar. They hail from the border counties of Louth, Monaghan, and Donegal, respectively.
SHAMROCK SHOWBAND’s sound is built on their fascination with country and Irish records, old time American fiddle music, sampling and punk.
BRIAN ENNALS & BLOCKHEAD – ROLL CALL
Hell might be real but there’s no heavenTelling my son that before he’s 7
Veteran NYC producer Blockhead teams up with Baltimore MC Brian Ennals (usually part of an incredible duo with Infinity Knives who did the artwork for this release) for vital, skill sharing new album Boatshoes, a canny and celebratory ride through irreverent and truth-telling bars alongside classy, master-level production.
“This is a dude that’s made albums with Aesop Rock and billy woods so I was aware there was a level of quality I had to reach,” writes Baltimore rapper Brian Ennals. “Not to toot my own horn, I think I did.” A debut collaboration between two heads of hip-hop – one established, one ascending – Boatshoes provided a creative challenge that the pair met head on with verve and confidence. Ennals is part of the irresistible Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals duo whose three records have attracted significant acclaim in rap music and beyond but working with Blockhead meant a diversion from the incendiary, vitriolic, substance-loving stomp of his usual format. “It’s the most fun rapping I’ve had in a long time,” he tells us. “Block’s productions were funky as fuck, almost pop, but still totally totally rap. They didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard.”
KNATS – BOWLING BALL
Contemporary “Geordie Jazz” band Knats made their Later…with Jools Holland debut in June and now follow up with ‘Bowling Ball’, which metaphorically tears down the flags that have been appearing across British streets in recent times.
Poet Cooper Robson provides the spoken word, with bass player Stan Woodward commenting that ‘Bowling Ball’ was penned “in response to the disgusting rise of the far right across the UK. It was written a few days after attending the counter protest against the EDL on the West Road, in the west end of Newcastle.”
The artwork for ‘Bowling Ball’ was crafted by comedian and national treasure Jim Moir.
808 PRINCE
808 Prince is an electronic music project inspired by the Roland TR-808. Drawing on house, techno, electro, acid and UK club music, it reimagines one of electronic music’s most iconic sounds for today’s dancefloor. Created by producer and DJ Steven Julien, the project blends classic drum machine aesthetics with modern production, pushing the raw sound of the 808 into the future.
Leah Blevins
In the middle of London’s never-ending summer heatwave Leah Blevins played Rough Trade’s tiny Denmark Street store. It was about as intimate as it’s possible to be with Blevins standing in the middle of the floor, singing without amplification with a guitarist back her. The audience melted, partly due to the quality of the songwriting and Blevin’s voice but at least partially due to the lack of air conditioning in the pocket-sized shop.
Out of the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky, Leah Blevins makes her stunning Easy Eye Sound debut with her sophomore album All Dressed Up. Produced by Dan Auerbach and recorded in Nashville, the album seamlessly blends Blevins’ timeless vocals and songwriting with the enchanting spirit of the South and contemporary storytelling.
Dawuna
Baltimore-based artist Dawuna (real name Ian Mugerwa) has released a new mixtape, ‘African Family Laptop Musick’, coinciding with his signing to True Panther Records.
The release isn’t available to stream but you can buy it on Bandcamp and Boomkat. It follows acclaimed albums ‘Glass Lit Dream’ (2021) and ‘Naya’ (2024).
Dawuna explains how the making of his new mixtape ‘African Family Laptop Musick’ came to be:
“I was healing from a traumatic head injury that gave me a later amnesia diagnosis, so I don’t remember more than a couple small flashes of memory from the recording/construction of this project. I know I wanted to make a low-fidelity concept piece about my family life at the time, compositionally simple, but necessarily abstracted. This is the last lil offering from a very personal side of myself before I give y’all something big. Enjoy.”
Snapped Ankles – ‘Shopping Parade’
First single from new compilation showcasing unreleased tracks and mixes from Malcolm Catto’s Quatermass Sound Lab analogue studio in London.
This unreleased Snapped Ankles acid workout laments the decay of shopping streets in regional market towns.
YoDelice – Scroll
YoDelice unveils his new EP ‘Mouvement 1’, the first of four movements to be unveiled every six months.
Open Mike Eagle covers Fishbone’s ‘Knock It’
For its 40th anniversary Fishbone’s debut LP, In Your Face, is being reissued along with a bonus album called ‘Cover Your Face’ — a newly curated tribute album featuring artists like Twin Shadow, Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, Wheatus, Silversun Pickups, Kimya Dawson, and my personal favourite Open Mike Eagle.
