The legendary Malian desert blues artist Samba Touré, has returned with a new album Baarakelaw (The Workers) – the follow up to his highly-acclaimed 2021 album Binga. The album received ecstatic, career defining reviews and led to Samba being named the “Best Artist” of 2022 at Songlines magazine. Baarakelaw is a vivid mix of traditional northern Malian Songhoy music, blues-rock tracks with psychedelic overtones, ballads and love songs.

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Park Jiha, the acclaimed Korean composer/multi-instrumentalist, makes patient, immersive music; music that illuminates the essence and texture of the natural, living world. On her fourth album, All Living Things, her mastery of Korean traditional instruments is intricately woven with deeply personal compositions and a deft use of contemporary sonics. Terms like post-classical, ambient or even cinematic are useful, entry-level tags, but they only scratch the surface of this album’s shimmering, contemplative soundworld.

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A poignant sequel to Some Mississippi Sunday Morning (2023), the acclaimed prison recorded gospel album that UNCUT called “an inescapably spiritual experience.” Producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami) has returned to Parchman Farm to record a new collection of raw, haunting performances from the prison’s Sunday gospel service.
Unforgettable.

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Avant-garde Colombian singer-songwriter Julián Mayorga returns with his ninth album, a clattering, absurdist slice of post-cumbia psychedelia. Chak Chak Chak Chak is a feverish mix of angular electric guitars, circuit-bent beats, found percussion and rapid-fire incantations, with influences that include Tom Zé, Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart. Frenetic energy meets satirical wit. Surrealist fables entwined with defiant sonics.

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This legendary Istanbul band remains the most experimental exponent of the hotly-tipped contemporary Turkish psych-rock scene. BaBa ZuLa are revered sonic trailblazers who have built a cult following in all corners of the globe. İstanbul Sokakları (Streets of Istanbul) is a vivid sonic and political statement from a band that continues to show us the future.

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Saagara’s new album 3, is the third installment of this acclaimed collaboration between Polish producer/multi-instrumentalist Wacław Zimpel and four virtuosic musicians from the Carnatic musical tradition of southern India: percussionists Giridhar Udupa (ghatam), Aggu Baba (khanjira) and K Raja (thavil) and violinist Mysore N. Karthik. It’s a buzzing juxtaposition of dense Indian rhythms and pulsating electronic patterns.

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Dal:um – alongside peers Park Jiha, Jambinai and Leenalchi – are at the forefront of a new Korean music. The duo of Ha Suyean and Hwang Hyeyoung are virtuosos on two different types of traditional zithers, the gayageum and geomungo, and their music deftly navigates a plethora of contemporary influences: minimalism, experimental folk and abstract jazz.

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El Khat’s 3rd album mute belies its title as it careens out of the speakers with a raucous intensity. Formed in the garages and warehouses of Jaffa and now based in Berlin, the group’s ever-expanding vision makes a defiant stand against complacency, conflict and division. Skittering drums and brass, a jagged organ, hypnotic Yemeni melodies and one-of-a-kind DIY percussion and string instruments, all meld together in an infectious, heady soundscape.

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Hailing from Cyprus’s divided capital Nicosia, and led by Antonis Antoniou, the founder of Monsieur Doumani and Trio Tekke, Buzz’ Ayaz creates a transfixing Eastern Mediterranean psychedelia. Their self-titled debut album is a fuzzed-out urban soundscape of dubby electronics, 70s-psych organ, growling bass clarinet, amplified folk instruments, ritual beats and Greek and Anatolian melodicism.

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The Bhutan Balladeers collective’s entire debut album was recorded live in a hilltop forest outside of the capital, Thimphu. The music features extended vocal tones that weave complex patterns, and melodies that are sup-ported by minimal instrumental accompaniment.

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Landless are Lily Power, Méabh Meir, Ruth Clinton and Sinéad Lynch. The Irish quartet sings centuries old ballads as well as more recently penned folk songs. Sometimes unaccompanied and sometimes with subtle instrumentation, their vocally rich music is dark and patient; spellbinding and gorgeous. Produced by John “Spud” Murphy (Lankum, ØXN) and featuring Cormac MacDiarmada from Lankum (fiddle, viola, banjo).

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Gordan mirror the mysticism of legends and stories from the Balkan region, creating a music that stretches between expressiveness and abstraction; tradition and the avant-garde. The visceral vocals of Svetlana Spajic are both rooted and deeply interpretive. In turn, drummer Andi Stecher and Guido Möbius on bass and electronics, employ sonic strategies that steer the songs in inspired and unpredictable directions.

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Following her thrilling 2022 duo EP with Iggy Pop (The Dictator) Belgian composer/musician Catherine Graindorge returns with a luminous ensemble album. Collaborators include Simon Huw Jones (And Also the Trees) and Pascal Humbert (16 Horsepower, Lilium, Détroit). Instrumental and vocal songs of life, love and death. Inspired by mythologies and elegies from the Greeks to the Beats.

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Avalanche Kaito: the exhilarating combination of Burkina Faso born urban griot Kaito Winse and fellow experimentalists Belgian guitarist Nico Gitto and French drummer/producer Benjamin Chaval. This transnational avant-rock trio created waves with their visceral self-titled 2022 debut, bagging notable festival appearances (Supersonic, End of the Road), a KEXP session and much deserved critical and audience enthusiasm. Polyrhythmic futurism, raw epiphanies, Burkinabe parables. A rattling ritual of ecstatic noise.

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Ana Lua Caiano’s debut album melds rural Portuguese music traditions with layered vocals, synthesizers, insistent beats and field recordings. Her music is visceral and tightly focused pulling from a rich mosaic of influences that includes traditional group singing, musique concrete, songwriters from Portugal’s 70’s revolutionary period and electronic icons like Bjork and Laurie Anderson.

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Sahrawi singer-songwriter Aziza Brahim’s new album Mawja (Wave) is fashioned from a simple but powerful foundation: Saharan and Iberian percussion mixed with stately guitars and warm, enveloping bass. Co-produced by Brahim, the album is confidently eclectic. It navigates the textures of her life: the Sahara, Cuba and Spain. It even includes a drum part inspired by the Clash. Her voice is a wellspring of deep and resonant emotions.The yearning for homeland. The struggle for freedom.

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Saramaccan Sound (Suriname) are a brother duo – Dwight Sampie and Robert Jabini – who write and perform flowing acoustic songs sung in Saramaccan, the language from the Americas with the most African elements. Their debut album was recorded in situ by Grammy winner Ian Brennan along a remote riverside in the Amazon region of Suriname.

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YĪN YĪN, the highly touted Dutch quartet from Maastricht, returns with a sonically expansive third album Mount Matsu. Recorded collectively in their own studio in the Belgian countryside, the album is a kaleidoscope of sounds and influences, occupying a no man’s land between Khruangbin and Kraftwerk, surf music and Southeast Asian psychedelia, Stax soul and mutant 80s disco, City pop and Japanese instrumental folk (sōkyoku).

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Lucidvox’s new album is vast-sounding. A collection of swirling ritual missives offered up in the hope of better times. Formerly based in Russia, for their new album That’s What Remained, the all-female quartet has added additional sonic thrust (horns, keyboards, strings, atmospheric textures) to their already acclaimed and impassioned psych-rock.

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The 2nd album from Belgrade Ethno-Noise outfit Lenhart Tapes, boldly extends producer Vladimir Lenhart’s acclaimed re-tooling of submerged Balkan musics. Hypnotic Walkman jams meet industrial rhythm loops and trad-folk songs interpreted by a lineup of thrilling female vocalists. A magical, beauty-and-the-beast encounter of dirty noise and righteous folk.

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São Paulo’s Afro-Brazilian groove visionaries Bixiga 70 return with an ecstatic 5th album – Vapor – their first in four years. The sound is joyful, a series of potent horn driven melodies and infectious polyrhythms. More than a return, Vapor is a rebirth. An exuberant, full-tilt party.

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Haunting in situ recordings from Parchman Farm maximum security prison in Mississippi. Producer Ian Brennan recorded the prison’s Sunday gospel service and the results are unforgettable. Performances range from solo acapella to a floor-shaking band. The repertoire includes both traditional and newly penned spirituals. The emotions are unfiltered and deeply resonant.

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Mesmerizing field recordings from Botswana. Producer/recordist/Grammy winner Ian Brennan ventured to an end-of-the-road location to document songs sung in Taa, a rich language on the verge of extinction.

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A genre-defying Afrofuturist manifesto from Uganda. Producer, dancer and choreographer Faizal Mostrixx’s singular vision of East African electronic music is a lush sonic tapestry of polyrhythms, modern dancefloor styles, amapiano, Nile basin ceremonial chants and Pan-African field recordings.

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Scottish smallpipes player Brìghde Chaimbeul’s second album “Carry Them With Us” is an exhilarating weave of rich textural drones, trance atmospheres and instrumental folk traditions. Acclaimed Canadian sound explorer and saxophonist Colin Stetson is a featured collaborator on the record.

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Their 5th album in as many years Aşk (deeper feeling of love), marks an exuberant return to the 70s Anatolian folk-rock sound that characterised Altın Gün’s first two albums. It is a record that radiates the infectious energy found in the Amsterdam-based sextet’s celebrated live performances.

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“Work Hard” solidifies King Ayisoba’s reputation as both a shamanic performer and a restless sonic experimenter. A wild mashup of Ayisoba’s frenetic kologo sound and musical deep dives from an exciting roster of Ghanaian producers and contributors.

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Acclaimed producer Raul Refree returns with his second solo album for tak:til/glitterbeat. A kaleidoscopic but seamless mashup of soundtrack music, post classical meditations, Iberian traditional elements and experimental strategies. Deeply immersive.

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Acclaimed Istanbul-based artist Gaye Su Akyol is due to release her fourth album, ‘Anadolu Ejderi’ (“Anatolian Dragon”), on 25 November. Building upon her combo of Turkish psychedelia, empowered commentary and retro-futurist sonics, her vision is more personal and uncompromising than ever before.

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Etceteral are a Slovenian experimental trio (saxophone & electronics, drums, visuals) who create a propulsive, polyrhythmic futurist jazz. It is a sound marked by abstract modular explorations, hypnotic drumming, ricocheted horn textures and crystalline production.

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The kaleidoscopic third album from Seán Mulrooney and his Ireland meets Berlin ensemble. Ecstatic folk-psych that full embraces the natural world and living ancestry, through joyful experimentation and deeply rooted sonics. An inspired soundscape that echoes eclectic and eccentric atmospheres: traditional Irish folk, outsider pop, global sacred music and drone rock.

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The award-winning Israeli-Persian singer returns with “Roya” (fantasy in Farsi) an exhilarating blend of tradi-modern rhythms and retro-Persian sonics. Recorded in secrecy in Istanbul with her band from Tel Aviv and risk-defying Iranian musicians from Tehran. A musical portal to a place of peace, joy and unfettered freedom.

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