Ninja Tune Vinilo y CD

Review: Since they emerged in 2019, there's been a fair amount of hype around Black Country, New Road, with one noted media outlet calling them, "the best band in the world right now". While that might be a little over-the-top, there's no doubting that they're a unique proposition - as this much-anticipated debut album on Ninja Tune proves. Stylistically, they're hard to pin down, variously fusing post-punk guitars, fuzzy Stereolab synths and folksy strings with thoughtful, story-telling spoken word vocals (think Arab Strap), restless bass guitar and drums and sax sounds that have more in common with the more experimental end of jazz than alternative rock. It's an usual mixture, but a hugely alluring and surprisingly coherent one. For The First Time is, then, a genuinely impressive debut album.

Review: Black Country, New Road marks a new chapter as a six piece with this new album of previously unreleased music. It was recorded by therm at the Bush Hall venue in London, a legendary place where they played six special shows at the end of last year. This follows a busy and sold out run of shows and the success of 'Ants From Up There' as Lewis Evans, May Kershaw, Georgia Ellery, Luke Mark, Tyler Hyde and Charlie Wayne find some of their highest nights. Critical and fan praise followed them everywhere last year and that will only continue with this, we sense.

Review: When Marie Davidson announced last year that she would be, "retiring from club music", many wondered what she'd do next. Renegade Breakdown, her first album recorded with a full band (L'Oeuil Nu), answers that question. It sees the Canadian artist and her new collaborators deliver suitably arresting, personal and ear-catching songs built on mixing and matching a surprisingly wide variety of musical inspirations, from Blondie, classic disco and mutilated heavy metal guitars, to Kraftwerk, Billie Holliday, Fleetwood Mac and Daft Punk. It's a big shift for the previously highly experimental artist, but thanks to her skill as both a a producer and performer, one that works magnificently well.

Review: When Marie Davidson announced last year that she would be, "retiring from club music", many wondered what she'd do next. Renegade Breakdown, her first album recorded with a full band (L'Oeil Nu), answers that question. It sees the Canadian artist and her new collaborators deliver suitably arresting, personal and ear-catching songs built on mixing and matching a surprisingly wide variety of musical inspirations, from Blondie, classic disco and mutilated heavy metal guitars, to Kraftwerk, Billie Holiday, Fleetwood Mac and Daft Punk. It's a big shift for the previously highly experimental artist, but thanks to her skill as both a a producer and performer, one that works magnificently well.

Review: It is now five years since Nabihah Iqbal got widespread critical acclaim for her debut album Weighing Of The Heart, and finally, she is back with another. This one, Dreamer, was two years in the making and finds the London-born artist, curator, broadcaster and lecturer offering up her most reflective and raw work to date. This versatile talent has done everything from composing music for the Turner Prize to being involved in a performance as part of a major Basquiat retrospective. Here she reflects on pandemic experiences having let the ideas develop in her head before she even turned on her machines.

Review: Swedish dub funk electropoppers Little Dragon - Yukimi Nagano, Erik Bodin, Fredrik Wallin and Hakan Wirenstrand - present their latest LP Slugs Of Love here via their longstanding patrons Ninja Tune. Following up their 2020 album New Me, Same Us, which had a long time to gestate, the new album comes at a well-timed moment, charting a thematic undercurrent of finding love in unexpected places - just the message we need for 2023. Eccentric and kooky synthiness bolsters their minimal-kitsch, r&b-inflected post-punk sound, best evidenced by the songs 'Stay' (featuring JID) or 'Gold'.

Review: Exactly pinpointing the essence of Little Dragon's sound is tough - it's always soulful and groovy, but it's not soul in the classic sense and there's plenty of other musical influences in the mix - but by now it barely matters. Each of their albums thus far has been special, and Slugs of Love is no exception. The Swedish four-piece impresses early with the head-nodding grooves, echoing house pianos and swirling atmospherics of 'Frisco', opts for a New York no-wave disco flex on 'Slugs of Love', and offers a perfect platform for mic man JID to the warped, hip-hop-goes-synth-pop shuffle of 'Stay'. There are highlights aplenty elsewhere across the album too, with our picks including Damon Albarn hook-up 'Glow', the moody house-not-house of 'Gold' and the picturesque, breakbeat-driven pop breeziness of 'Tumbling Dice'.

Review: Metronomy mark their signing to Ninja Tune with a new single that comes not long after their Posse EP Volume 1, a collection of tunes all made in collaboration with up-and-coming artists like Biig Piig, Spill Tab, Sorry, Brian Nasty and Folly Group. This one is another collaboration, this time with Pam Amsterdam. 'Nice Town' deals with the lead singer's own battles such as "internal versus the external or, intangible versus the tangible." It is a delightfully snappy dance-pop ditty with great and tight synth sequences, old-school rap vocals and nice broken early electro beats. Metronomy and Alain Ogue add their own remixes to a great label debut.

Review: It's incredible to think Blush is PVA's debut album. The South London band sound like they've been doing aggy, abrasive and regularly oddly beautiful cold synth wave stuff since it was invented, bringing their own edge and energy, influences and ideas to a table that - much as we love it - can often feel like it has become set in its ways. Then again, perhaps their breaking from some traditions is exactly what exposes their freshness.

Across 11 incredible sonic assaults we're dragged from pillar to post in the best way. 'Untethered' sounds like an alarm going off and panic setting in, opening the album without apology. 'Hero Man' takes things into a more rolling, wavy place, albeit wasp-in-jar keyboard lines underpin things. 'The Individual' slows us down and ups the nasty; spoken word style lyrics and grungy, grimy atmosphere making it a stand out. Meanwhile, 'Seven' drops just ahead of the finale for blissful, twisted but honest romance.

Review: On their third LP, British-Singaporean singer-songwriter Nat Cmiel is moving in a new direction - not only with a move from Bayonet Records to Ninja Tune, but also favouring a guitar-led indie rock sound, a departure from the critically acclaimed 'Serotonin II' and Danny L Harle produced 'Glitch Princess'. Lead single 'sulky baby' is a bright affair, distorted guitars circling Yeule's brand of gloomy lyrics sang with a smile. 'dazies' gets off the mark with a killer electric guitar lead, giving way to a plucked ambience with a computerised Nat ringing off a word association of a person kicked to the curb. When Kin Leonn isn't working their production magic, Yeule's self-production breaks the space. 'fish in the pool' is an ambient piano interlude with light-as-a-feather vocal adlibs, something that wouldn't be out of place in a Studio Ghibli production.

Review: The tide of (hyper)pop has ebbed into increasingly emo and indie directions and the frothiest edge of this fluid movement is perhaps best represented by the latest album from Yeule (Nat Cmiel). Softscars follows up Yeule's 2022 album Glitch Princess and continues the trend of ultra-glossy, CD-reflective, knife-edge sounds packed into the blueprint of downtempo dream pop, in which said gloss reflects Cmiel's own personal experience of healing from trauma. The likes of 'ghost', 'dazies' and 'sulky baby' are giving glitchy alternate-reality Green Day in their Boulevard Of Broken Dreams era, with a dash of ejector-jewel-cased lyrics and a sprinkling of George Clinton-esque production flavour.

Review: The third full-length studio album from Singaporean singer-songwriter-producer Nat Cmiel (aka yeule) released to rave reviews earlier this September, following an ethereal rollout with singles 'dazies', 'ghosts' and 'inferno' showcasing exactly what yeule excels at: worldbuilding. 'softscars' is now the 3rd instalment in one of the most exciting album runs in modern alt-pop, shifting away from the glitchy, electronic ambience of predecessor 'Glitch Princess', moving in a more rock-centric, brighter direction. This isn't to say the album doesn't have its soul-crushing moments, opening track 'x w x' closes with a defiant scream of frustration, whilst the drums, guitar and synths fight each other for dominance - bottoming out into a gentle outro sequence. The calm after the storm. We could go on about this album for hours, as a yeule fan it feels so fresh but so perfect with it's oscillating directness in delivery. Whereas 'Glitch Princess' felt like travelling through a clastrophobia-inducing tunnel at time, 'softscars' is that moment you burst out of the tunnel and are hit with a huge green vista. It's my album of the year but, hey, what do I know?

Review: With their Mercury-winning 2014 debut 'Dead', Edinburgh trio Young Fathers set the bar high for themselves, which they met with 2015's follow-up 'White Men Are Black Men Too', and continue to do so with new album 'Cocoa Sugar'. Their third record isn't as brash and in-your-face as their previous two, but that's not to say that this any less impactful, instead 'Cocoa Sugar' is a stripped back, concentrated The group have a unique ability in that they can draw elements from a range of genres, with an outcome sounding in a class of its own and tantalisingly hard to define. Also, in their use off-kilter loops, gospel-esque vocals, haunting samples and breakneck speed verses, Young Fathers create dualities and contrasts that playfully subvert. Tracks like 'See How', 'In My View' and 'Lord' appear to tread into joyous and cathartic pop territory, before being pinned down by unnerving scraping samples and dissonant synthesis. It's these intelligently executed sonics and structures that make 'Cocoa Sugar' an addictive, thrilling and beguiling listen.

Review: Five years on since their last, Young Fathers are finally back with their fourth album (if you don't include their introductory mixtapes Tape One and Tape Two). Heavy Heavy finds the trio of Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and G. Hastings embracing a back to basics approach formed around working in their own basement studio, keeping the equipment turned on and allowing the ideas to flow freely. Cherry picking the most fruitful moments from these extended sessions has resulted in a striking, invigorating album which bursts forth with the opening salvo of 'Rice' and 'I Saw', clutching you tight and not letting go for the duration of the album. It's been worth the wait.