Photo: Hörður Óttarson Sigur Rós have announced a limited run of special dates, where they’ll perform material from a new album with a 41-piece orchestra in both Europe and North America. Having spent the past few years writing and recording, the Icelandic group will now debut these new songs to the world. They’ll do this with the Wordless Music Orchestra in North America. The tour kicks off with Meltdown Festival in the UK, where the group will perform with the London Contemporary Orchestra, who also accompany them on their following European tour dates. All orchestral dates will be conducted ..read more

Tom Trago will a new album on Rush Hour. Deco is Trago’s sixth album and first for the Amsterdam label in a decade. He recorded it following an extended absence from dancefloors, as he cut back on DJ commitments to spend more time with his young family. When he returned to the studio, Trago struggled to get back into the groove, “the desire to make dancefloor-focused music had temporarily deserted him,” we’re told, and he found himself drawn to create “electronic lullabies” that reflected his more pastoral environment that he lives in these days. Returning to the first synthesiser he ever bou ..read more

Though raised only a short drive away from Detroit, Hila Lubman—better known as Hilu—has been calling Israel home since 2007. She’d always been drawn to electronic music, and would regularly go out to parties, but she didn’t try mixing it until 2015, when she discovered it was her “true means of self-expression,” she says. Since then, her relationship with it has changed—from that of a dedicated clubber, who would spend endless nights immersed in the sounds and atmospheres of The Block, Tel Aviv’s most famous club, among others, to one who would create them for herself. To do this, she relies ..read more

Rachel Lyn will release Stories Came to Us, a new album, via her own My Own Imaginary World label. Stories Came to Us is the Australian DJ-producer’s second album, following Oh Daydream. Across 10 new tracks, she composes a soundboard of stories, thoughts and translations—of smells by the sea, in illusions of mind and love, through songs of desire and dream—captured using her own voice as instrumentation. She recorded it over periods of solitude, “through long grasses under paling skies, climbing hills amidst the sensations of sea air,” were told. The album is accompanied by still and moving ..read more

In less than a decade, DJ Lag—the alias of Lwazi Asanda Gwalahas—has established himself as a sonic innovator and leading ambassador of gqom, taking the bass-heavy, minimalist sound from South Africa to a worldwide audience. (Its name stems from a Zulu word meaning drum or hit and Hyperdub label head Kode9 described it as “like being suspended over the gravitational field of a black hole, and lovin’ it.) He’s achieved all this before the age of 30 and from his home in Clermont in the coastal city of Durban, which is where he began making beats using little more than FruityLoops as a teenager ..read more

Photo: Joseph Hayes Nabihah Iqbal will return with a new album on Ninja Tune. DREAMER, a 10-track album, lands five years on since the London-born artist’s debut, Weighing Of The Heart. We’re told to expect her “rawest and most reflective work to date.” The record sees Iqbal reflect on her experiences during the early months of 2020, when her studio was burgled. All her work was lost, including the album she was working on. While the forensic police looked for fingerprints in her studio, she received a call from her grandmother telling her that her grandfather had suffered a brain haemorrhage ..read more

Photo: Nick Walker SBTRKT will release his third studio album in May. Seven years in the making, The Rat Road signifies a “pivotal period of evolution” for the British producer, real name Aaron Jerome Foulds, we’re told. Musically it’s an “expansion” on his previous records, including 2014’s Wonder Where We Land on Young and 2016’s Save Yourself, which he self-released. The album has a “purposefully wider” and “more layered” sound and features the previously released track, “FORWARD” featuring LEILAH. “This album has been my most sonically ambitious record to create, following my own musical p ..read more

Photo: Pip Bourdillion James Ellis Ford, one half of Simian Mobile Disco, who has worked with the likes of Arctic Monkeys to Depeche Mode, will release his debut solo album on Warp. On The Hum, Ford has deftly side-stepped the obvious choice of flicking through his contacts to produce a press-worthy pop album with a galaxy of A-list feature appearances. Instead, the release is as much an homage to the tender and eccentric English pop music of Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt as it is a love letter to his wife and son’s Palestinian roots. We’re told to expect a “madcap voyage into the cosmic unknown ..read more

Upsammy will release her second album, Germ in a Population of Buildings, on PAN. In 2020, Upsammy, real name Thessa Torsing, released her debut album, Zoom, which was praised for its careful reimagining of IDM. On Germ in a Population of Buildings, the skeletal trace of IDM is still present but it’s been “trapped in amber,” we’re told, “allowing her unique sonic landscape to develop organically.” Across 10 tracks, Torsing layers her contorted voice in rickety patterns beneath a lattice of fragile rhythms and faintly melancholy synths. The album is rooted in her interest for ambiguous environ ..read more

re:ni and Laksa will release a label called RE:LAX. RE:LAX is an extension of the pair’s party series and NTS Radio show of the same name. It will explore “music at faster tempos,” we’re told, and “try to continue the lineage of jungle, dubstep, grime, and UK techno.” On the label’s mission, the pair say: “Now more than ever it’s easier for you to create and put music online. This can be a good thing, but it’s also easier for it to get lost, and we’re looking to expand the contribution of RE:LAX. Hopefully we can poke our heads out, create some narrative, and do something that feels personal ..read more