Go Folk

Fourteen tracks moving between Bamako and Belize, Dakar and Geneva. Cymande's nyah-rock, Orchestra Baobab's 1975 Afro-Cuban swing, Bonobo remixing Ghanaian funk. Oumou Sangaré and Fatoumata Diawara hold the Malian centre, Songhoy Blues the edge. The Garifuna Collective answer a bird. Sudan Archives folds Sudanese fiddle into her beats, Yalla Miku start funky and end heavy. A cratedigger's delight. Source

Emily Portman selects ten objects from her home: her grandpa's Mexican pottery owl, the mask she wore to become Blodeuwedd on the "Dominion of Spells" photoshoot, and a wedding ring cut in half by a spade and returned twenty years after it was lost. The stories behind them are quite magical. Source

Sam Blasucci premieres his video for "Creature", the latest single from his new album "Black Rose", out 21st July on DoublePlay Records. Recorded mostly in the middle of the night in Ojai, the ten-track album is an invitation into shadow and a darkness that could be groovy. It follows April's 28-track double LP, "Physical Dream". Source

Adrian Crowley's "Quinn The Adventurer" follows James Quinn, who left Belfast in 1920, surfaced in Hollywood as a silent-film extra, and was sentenced to San Quentin over a collection of shrunken heads. Out today on Dimple Discs with Bring Your Own Hammer, it precedes "From The Tombs", a 21-song double album on the history of crime, law and order in Ireland and its diaspora. Source

Inviting a sense of ultimate calm, Luluc's "Sweet Thief" is a gorgeous, contemplative exercise in quiet isolation and self-reflection. Randell's vocals mirror those of the calmest stream, barely creating a splash, with J Mascis adding percussion. Ten songs that embody a lighthouse in a storm, a point of connection anybody can relate to. Source

Sailing Stones' "Slow Magic" is one of the most satisfyingly complete collections of songs I have heard this year. Built around matrescence, the transitions a woman goes through at the time of bringing new life into the world, the whole record plays like a kaleidoscopic whirligig, shimmering in and out of focus, crafted with a crackly analogue, hands-on human touch. Her best album yet. Source