NEW ALBUMS

AtoZ

This month…

P26 THE BLACK KEYS

P29 CABARET VOLTAIRE

P30 JESCA HOOP

P32 JOE JACKSON

P32 LAIBACH

P33 MILDRED

P34 PICTISH TRAIL

P37 WHITE DENIM

JOSHUA ABRAMS

Music For Pulse Meridian Foliation

DRAG CITY

8/10 Natural Information Society leader gets arty

If you weren’t able to visit LA’s Redcat gallery in summer 2023 to hear this piece in four-channel surround sound on an endless loop, then this stereo album version will be welcome. Composed to soundtrack bandmate Lisa Alvarado’s Pulse Meridian Foliation exhibition, Abrams’ extended composition drifts beautifully between ambient abstraction and glacial melody. Two violas, courtesy of James Sanders, slide and seesaw between discord and harmony, while Alvarado’s subtle harmonium and Abrams’ ebbing electronics intertwine in the background. It’s eerie, beautiful and vacant, evoking Brian Eno and Morton Feldman, plus Miles Davis’ spacey “He Loved Him Madly”.

TOM PINNOCK

TORI AMOS In Times Of Dragons

FONTANA

8/10 Amos’ 18th is a cry of defiance in the new face of tyranny

Over the course of a long and eventful career, Tori Amos has never shied away from calling out the most villainous forms of patriarchal power. Yet the rise of Trump and the American alt-right have inspired a new level of ferocity in many of her songs, even if the music itself retains its grace and delicacy. After contending with colonialist traumas on 2017’s Native Invader and lamenting the US Capitol attack on 2021’s Ocean To Ocean, Amos now presents the ever-deteriorating political landscape in allegorical terms, imagining a George RR Martin-like realm full of foul tyrants, lizard demons and other dangers to lovers of democracy. While all this makes for a rich, dense and sometimes overwhelming offering, Amos still ensures there’s some light amid all this darkness.