Young Welsh folk guitar virtuoso Gwenifer Raymond "tries to invent a new style: Welsh primitive infused with folk horror", Guardian writes about their latest choice for Folk Album of the Month. With a PhD in astrophysics and a day job programming video games on one side, Raymond says her folk music is influenced by the countryside, but had to record her new album 'Strange Lights over Garth Mountain' locked down in her basement during the pandemic.

South-African experimental pop artist Desire Marea performed a virtual concert with a host of first time collaborators. They performed gorgeous live renditions from Desire Marea's this year debut 'Desire', making them mesmerizing, jazzy, and atmospheric.

"Lyric Jones uses her art as a balm to soothe the sting of systemic oppression and finds confidence in her ability to rap anyone under the table" - Pitchfork wrote in the review of California rapper's breakthrough project 'Closer Than They Appear'. Here - "her sincerity and musical range are her greatest weapons".

New hip-hop project Small Bills is made of New York rapper Elucid (one half of another new hip-hop duo Armand Hammer), and Detroit multi-instrumentalist/producer The Lasso. Also on their debut album 'Don't Play it Straight' are Moor Mother, Fielded, Nosaj, .k, Koncept Jackson, and billy woods. Brooklyn Vegan compares the album to the awesome Armand Hammer debut 'Shrines', but adds "this album is also a beast of its own. It's overall more psychedelic and more chaotic. It has less warm, soulful production than 'Shrines' and more sputtering electronics".

"An absorbing modern shoegaze classic" - Louder writes in review of 'The Great Dismal', adding the new Nothing record is "an intense and unflinching album which embraces life’s chaotic absurdity and weighs heavily long after its final riffs fade to black". Dark singer/songwriter Emma Ruth Rundle and crushingly heavy sludge metal band Thou "feed off each other in a way where they create something none of them could have done on their own" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about their collaborative new album 'May Our Chambers Be Full'.

"The nearly two-hour show was part music, part comedy, part documentary, with cinematic production values that rival those of a home video release" - CoS writes about Mr. Bungle's Halloween show The Night They Came Home. "Instead of treating the camera like an audience member that isn’t there, Mr. Bungle used it like a film director, making the concert portion more like a performance video than a webcam stream", CoS adds, praising the use of guests - Josh Homme, Henry Rollins, Buzz Osborne - to bridge moments of silence between songs.

Moses Sumney made a stellar short show at the digital edition of Planet Afropunk with reinterpretations of four songs from this year's album 'Græ' and his debut project 'Aromanticism'. Sumney starts on the rear of a truck with his band projected on the back, to continue with an in-nature performance, and finishing with darkness. A much bigger emphasis on the sonics here. Awesome!

Greek prog-sludge metal band Kevel picks up pieces of death metal, black metal, and post-metal to make the "ultimate, tumultuous majesty" on their album 'Mutatis Mutandis', Invisible Oranges writes. Dusted magazine goes deeper into the concept - "Kevel articulates an engaging, challenging riff, and then works it, allowing the musical statement to build its own significance". Listen to the powerful and raw album on Bandcamp.

"The design of Eilish’s live stage not only exceeded expectations; it provided effects that would be nearly impossible to pull off at an in-person concert" - CoS writes in a review of Billie Eilish's online show 'Where Do We Go? The Livestream'. Guardian's Alexis Petridis said it was "both striking and entertaining".

Four young women living in Moscow released 'We Are', a "direct, even brutally blunt, yet invested with a considerable emotional hinterland", the Quietus says in a review of debut album by Lucidvox. These Muscovites "sound like news from nowhere" and although they sing in Russian, the Q hears "a fair warning of awful things to come. But how sweetly they coat the message".

"A celebration of humanity, as well as a call to better ourselves and better our connections and interactions with each other" - Brooklyn Vegan writes in a review of the new concert film 'American Utopia', based on David Byrne's concert show of the same name. Spike Lee's Spike’s direction is "spectacular. Cameras are situated everywhere, yet they never intrude on the proceedings and astoundingly his choices are perfect. There are moments we are on stage with the band, behind them, above them and, at times, in the crowd dancing and singing with the audience".

Ten years after he made it, Jay Electronica released his album 'Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn)' last week (cause it leaked), which Pitchfork describes now as a "nearly an all-time classic LP, the kind of record that celebrates an art form while simultaneously pushing it forward". The P branded it "Best new music" and gave it grade 8,7.

Big-sounding punk-rock of the latest Touché Amoré album 'Lament' has critics nodding their heads in approval. "A Touché Amoré album that can reach the most people as possible from the greatest distance" - Ian Cohen wrote for Pitchfork, which gave it it's Best new music tag, and 8,2 score. Stereogum chose it as their Album of the week because it shows "light at the end of that tunnel, the sound of Touché Amoré finding some kind of hope in this world". DIY magazine emphasized the work of Ross Robinson on this record - "there’s a crispness to the production that highlights every drum beat and crashing riff".

"Shamir’s music makes the listener want to wake up. Listening to it is like being shaken awake, blinds thrown open... This music is wildly fun to listen to" - Consequence of Sound writes in a review of Shamir's self-titled album. NME says it's "hugely focused, each song short and sharp and coated in precise production". Under the Radar rightfully says ''Shamir' is a pop album... Succinct. Catchy. Honest".

"Skin’s story is one of a rhomboid peg spurning both the round and the square hole, drilling dimensions of her own... in a frequently jaw-dropping memoir" - Guardian writes about 'It Takes Blood and Guts', a memoir of Skunk Anansie's singer Skin. The critic adds that "among the pleasures of this peek into an extraordinary life are the intriguing facts it pumps out", like the one time when Robbie Williams took on racist Russian nightclub bouncers when they refused Skin entry to the club.

"It crosses barriers between indie/art rock, post-hardcore/emo, abrasive noise-rap, R&B, dance beats, bedroom folk, and more" - Brooklyn Vegan says about Bartees Strange's 'Live Forever' - "one of those debut albums that truly brings something new to the musical table, and it also very much seems like it's only the beginning". It's Stereogum's Album of the week because "it’s rare to hear someone have so much presence right out of the gate, but Strange owns every decision that he makes... 'Live Forever' is a testament to the power of taking chances in order to make great art".

Tone Glow's experimental music-lovers chose 30 albums released July through September they liked the most (streams added). It's not just some serious and hard-to-swallow music, they promise fun: on Secluded Bronte's 'What? Yes!' one member of the trio reads an absurdist script while the others interrupt with outraged “WHAT?”s, and every time the response is a resigned “Yes”, also there's experiments to be made on bagpipes - YES! - as Donald WG Lindsay & Richard Youngs prove. There's also highly conceptual music like Network Glass, a unique project on the verge of even being music. All in all, a simple and quick way to find out what's going on in the world of modern experimental music.Music

Louder calls 'When I Die...' is "the most important British metal record of 2020", while Angry Metal Guy says it is "a heart-wrenching album whose simplicity in D-beats, stunning tremolo, sustained overlays, desperate vocals, and just a dash of post and black is truly refreshing". Kerrang insists on lyrics being "at their most personal and most blunt here", while Stereogum simply calls the album "phenomenal".

Pitchfork says the new Fleet Foxes album 'Shore' is "staring into a darkness and responding with beauty, acceptance, and light", gives it its Best new music tag. Stereogum calls it "the oldest and wisest Fleet Foxes album". MusicOMH says it is "a glorious, life-affirming collection of songs". Similar in the atmosphere, and critics' reaction, is Sufjan Stevens' new album 'Ascension': Independent found "whole galaxies of nuance in a universal context", The Quietus says Stevens is "unflinchingly honest in its assessment of the United States as well as a very personal and raw portrait of Steven’s own humanity and fallibility". "Stevens' music delivers the jolt of encountering this life force in its raw, factory-unprocessed form and realizing there is not all that much difference between its seemingly competing varieties" - NPR.

"Khadifa Wong’s new documentary, 'Uprooted', reveals that the popular image of jazz obscures the true history of a dance form of African descent, born of slavery and enmeshed with the African American experience – from cakewalk to Charleston to Lindy hop – but then dominated by a series of white mem" - Guardian says in a review of the new documentary about jazz dance. It covers Marilyn Monroe’s choreographer Jack Cole, Patrick Swayze’s mum, Patsy, the only teacher in Texas who took black students alongside white, JoJo Smith, who was John Travolta’s dance consultant on 'Saturday Night Fever' etc.

"It’s an album of earth tones -- oranges, dark greens and browns -- that comes just in time for autumn" - Brooklyn Vegan writes about the new album by British comedian and musician Matt Berry. "A lonely, lovelorn quality... a heartfelt album" - the Times says. "Matt Berry is on wonderful form" - Clash Music reviews.

"An excellent brief documentary about a heroic grassroots political movement whose importance reveals itself more clearly in retrospect with every year that passes" - Peter Bradshaw writes about the new documentary 'White Riot'. Director Rebecca Shah mixes archival images and interviews with key figures of the grassroots organization Rock Against Racism that bonded together punk, ska, reggae and new wave scenes to stand against the far right. The documentary closes with images of the Carnival Against Nazis, which drew in an audience of 100,000 in support of their cause.

"'Untitled (Rise)' hardly yields highlights because the quality never wavers... It manages to be as lyrically unflinching as the music is compelling... You’d call it the album of the year if its predecessor wasn’t just as good" - Guardian's Alexis Petridis writes in a review of Sault's new album, anonymous neo-soul-funk band's second double album in just over 12 weeks, and their fourth in 18 months. The new album is "more obviously dancefloor-focused – its influences shifting from house to disco, from the perspiration-soaked post-punk funk to smooth 80s boogie, from sorrow and soothing to empowerment and resistance".

"Their hypnotic orchestral folk songs 'come howling after' an unfathomable god" - the Guardian writes about singer-sogwriter Anjimile's debut LP 'Giver Taker'. Paste Magazine says "Anjimile’s story is an uncommon one, but an uplifting one nonetheless: A trans person—in the midst of battling his own demons—excavates the most troubling parts of his past and ultimately seeks out catharsis". The Line of Best Fit says Anjimile "channels the hurt through extraordinary delicate songs where harmonies wrap around each other with a spectral quality, and the dripping rain of picked guitar strings decorate the walls".

The new documentary 'Sleep' by Natalie Johns is about what many consider Max Richter's magnum opus - an eight-and-a-half-hour composition 'Sleep' with 204 movements in a plangent, ambient and mellow vein, designed to be listened to while the audience is asleep. This new docu focuses on an open-air event in the Grand Park in Los Angeles. Guardian's Peter Bradshaw says the docu on "this toweringly quixotic work" is a "beguiling film" and "anything but a snooze".

Moroccan-French quartet Nadya! released their debut album - a "fusion of contemporary rock and funk and ancient traditional Moroccan musical forms including gnawa and chaabi", the Quietus says in their review of fresh sound on ancient music on 'Bab L' Bluz'. "And while influenced by music from across North Africa there is a fluid thread... to what they describe as the origins of the music, gnawa trance, and Malian blues".

"There’s no freewheeling carnage here, nor the chance to indulge in the classic fest camping ritual. Instead, this is a communal celebration of excitement at actually being outside and watching music" - NME reports from Wild Fields, a socially distanced festival, perhaps a new model for festivals. It is modest - there are three stages, two bars and a merch stand, the audience is spread in pods, and the line-up is made of local bands. "By providing a legitimate festival experience – or at least the closest we’ll get to it this year – the team have forged a celebration of everything we’re missing in 2020: the dissonant echo from a stage plopped in the middle of a field as we escape the real world, and all its woes, for the spiritual relief of music in the company of like-minded souls" - NME argues - "It all creates an atmosphere that digs into the heart of what festivals have always been about: escapism".

NME's columnist wrote, as usual, a warm and funny text, this time about music docus: "One of the main reasons we can watch documentaries about hugely successful bands without seething with envy is the knowledge that, had we followed that career path ourselves, our odds weren’t too great of living to be in the documentary"!!! The last one he liked is the one about The Band - "a rare example of bit players striking it big on their own terms, then watching on helplessly as success tugged at their stray flaws until the whole thing unravelled".

Former American president Jimmy Carter said that Willie Nelson smoked weed with his on the roof of the White House in 1978, not with an employee, as the country legend had originally claimed, the 95-year-old politician said in a new documentary, 'Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President'. The new docu explores the 39th president’s connection to the music community during his four-year term, Huff Post reports. The core of Mary Wharton’s film argues that stars like the Allman Brothers, Bob Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash, as well as outlaw country artists like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, played a crucial role in getting Carter into the White House in 1976.

Their first incarnation, in the 1990s, was a dance band Sub Sub made of ravers, then the Manchester trio reincarnated as a indie-rock band Doves in the 00s, now their third coming, after a decade long hiatus, is a pop-rock band, obviously happy to be making music. And critics love it. Stereogum chose 'The Universal Want' as their latest Album of the week because "their roughshod-then-glimmering anthems always sounded like something magical striving to break its tethers and take off". It's also Alexis Petridis' album of the week because "it's all heartfelt, well done". NME gave the album four stars (of five) saying they "bring thumping fairground anthems, and words of hope". Clash calls it "a long-awaited treat, it deserves a warm welcome".