AtoZ

It’s been a good while since any band proudly put the word “quadrophonic” in big capital letters on an album cover. But bold moves have remained a specialty of…Trail Of Dead, even after their explosive late-’90s releases gave way to the proggier likes of 2011’s Tao Of The Dead. On their 11th LP, the band strive for an Animals-sized scope with the help of producer KamranV and guests such as Britt Daniel and Amanda Palmer. Though their drive to fill all available space causes some songs to grow diffuse, their vision coheres on “Taken By The Hand”, a suitably audacious fusion of ferocious post-hardcore and anthemic Southern rock.

JASON ANDERSON

Alexis Georgopoulos’s linen-suited voyage around the Fourth World continues with New Pleasures, his fifth Arp album and one that really explores the synthetic textures produced by his array of vintage keyboards. Where earlier material flowed freely, here his fiddly funk and plastic grooves contrive a kind of new-age electro that at times is suave and smooth but rarely settles into anything satisfying; as much as they exude a sense of wellness, “Eniko” and “Sponge (For Miyake)” have a slightly queasy quality. Tethered to gated drums and loping bass, “Le Palace” and “Traitor (Dub)” at least take the scenic route to the dancefloor.

PIERS MARTIN

Caterina Barbieri is a cut above your average modular-synth tweaker, an alumnus of the Conservatory of Bologna whose voluminous electronic compositions draw on cosmology, mysticism and the nature of consciousness. Recorded in hermetic isolation in Milan during lockdown, Spirit Exit finds Barbieri augmenting her precise electronic arpeggios with processed vocals, strings and guitar. “Canticle Of Cryo” and “Broken Melody” tip back and forth between melancholy and euphoria, Barbieri’s voice cresting and dipping through carefully sculpted waveforms. A mood of high seriousness pervades, but Spirit Exit’s blend of spirituality and futurism is often transfixing.

LOUIS PATTISON

The New York-based composer (and Royal Potato Family co-founder) recorded his ninth solo album at his home studio in Woodstock, a small space crammed floor to ceiling with vintage synths and drum machines. Every single one of them makes an appearance on Benevento, which mixes old-school instruments with flourishes of African percussion and ’70s rock songwriting. The rippling “Marco & Mimo” and the chugging “Do You Want Some Magic” suggest the anarchic inventiveness of Garth Hudson as well as the anything-goes sensibility of very early Moog records, but it’s the exuberant vocals by his wife and kids that add warmth and vivacity to the proceedings.

STEPHEN DEUSNER

Naima Bock’s solo debut is a spiritual record, in the most ecumenical sense of the word: its through-lines are nature, muted earth tones and grace. A founding member of post-punk band Goat Girl, where she played bass under the alias Naima Jelly, Bock’s solo work takes a subtler but no less arresting approach, weaving in melodic passages for strings, organ and woodwind and rhythmic calls to her Brazilian heritage in ways that only fully reveal themselves with repeated listens. Bock’s vocal tone is sombre, almost hymnal, leaving plenty of space for musical transformation from main collaborator Joel Burton and others – from choral benediction “Every Morning”, with its barely-there instrumentation, to the samba- and sax-led call-and-response of “Working”. LISA-MARIE FERLA

Five years after 2017’s similarly themed Revival Beach, The Burning Hell’s apocalyptic vision has been distilled into a floating raft of cultural flotsam, a great Pacific garbage patch of seabirds, wistful nostalgia and romantic flight. Mathias Kom’s busy songs, mostly co-written with Ariel Sharratt and Jake Nicoll, remain super-literate and fantastically droll, over backings that range from bubbling synthpop and acoustic folk to rattly punk and even a spot of semi-calypso. Silver Jews and Jeffrey Lewis spring to mind on the terrific “Birdwatching”; “Bird Queen Of Garbage Island” sounds like a glorious revival of Tom Tom Club.

ROB HUGHES