Lately, I’ve been listening to…

Due to personal changes in my life recently, I’ve had to curb my vinyl buying but I invariably have a big pile of records beside my turntable that have borne repeated listening. Here are some of them.

Milan W. – Leave Another Day (Stroom, 2024)

Though his discography dates back to 2011, this marks the first time Antwerp-based songwriter and producer Milan Warmoeskerken, better known as Milan W., has placed his vocals at the forefront. It’s a surprising, yet striking shift. This record speaks directly to everything I find compelling in music : it’s intimate, melancholic, atmospheric and curiously disconnected from contemporary trends, as if it existing in its own, quietly haunted space.

Built from a rich palette of voice, bass, guitar, synths, saxophone, oboe, violin, drum machines, and restrained percussion, the album conjures a misty, melodic elegance that feels tailor-made for the colder months. On tracks like ‘Memories,’ where chiming acoustic strums meet echo-laced electric guitars and a softly chorused bassline, there’s perhaps a tipped hat to the early ’80s winterlands of Cocteau Twins and The Cure.

The synth work is especially striking – lush, textural, and full of that elusive, Northern European romanticism, wrapping each song in a gentle fog of longing. It’s a record suffused with quiet heartbreak and lingering beauty. A masterpiece.

Buy/listen info : https://stroomtv.bandcamp.com/album/leave-another-day

Jabu – A Soft and Gatherable Star (Do You Have Peace?, 2024)

There comes a point, at that certain age, often quietly, unannounced, when you begin to feel like you’ve heard it all before. At that crossroads, you have two choices : retreat into the comforting embrace of the music that defined your youth, or stay open and find joy in hearing echoes of that past being reshaped by a new generation. The latter path can be unexpectedly rewarding.

I’ve heard this album lazily dismissed as “Portishead on Nitrazepam” – a shorthand that’s understandable (they share the same Bristol roots and a fondness for slow-burning, nocturnal soul) but ultimately does Jabu a disservice. Despite what the album artwork might suggest, this isn’t just background haze for a late night smoke. It’s richly immersive, hypnotic and dreamlike to the point of sensuality; an album that pulls you in and keeps you suspended somewhere between memory and fantasy.

Its sound feels drawn from a delicate fusion : fragments of dreampop, the hushed intimacy of urban soul and the lo-fi experimentation of late-’90s home recording culture. Sparse guitar strokes, tender vocals and flourishes of saxophone, cello, strings, and old-school drum machines drift through a gauzy veil of chamber reverb. The result is music that feels both deeply personal and mysteriously distant, like a half-remembered feeling you can’t quite name but don’t want to let go of.

Buy/info/listen : https://doyouhavepeace.bandcamp.com/album/a-soft-and-gatherable-star

Stephen Lane – Dare To Dream (Hand Idiom Recordings, 2025)

As someone who’s occasionally fallen into that category myself, I’ve always had a soft spot for the bedroom artist, the kind of musician who, when faced with the logistical nightmare of managing a band, opts instead to go it alone, embracing the lo-fi, DIY ethos with joy, rather than compromise. Back in the ’80s, I recall seeing Martin Newell (The Cleaners From Venus) regularly advertising his self-recorded cassettes in the classifieds at the back of Record Mirror magazine. There was something incredibly bold and brilliant about that : no label, no band, no gatekeepers. If that wasn’t the true spirit of punk, what was?

Recently, someone pointed me toward Stephen Lane, a Norwich-based singer-songwriter who, entirely under my radar, has been recording as Vase on his own label, Hand Idiom Recordings, since the late ’90s. Needless to say, I’ve got some serious catching up to do.

His latest album, ‘Dare To Dream,’ was recorded over the past year at Green Hills Studio in Norwich, likely a home studio, judging by the recording’s beautifully homespun feel. Lane sings and plays nearly everything himself, from Stylophone to sleigh bells to wooden agogo, with subtle contributions from (presumably a relative) Henry Lane on electric piano. There’s a warmth and closeness to the whole album, a kind of gentle intimacy that some might read as naïve or unpolished but it’s clear Lane knows exactly what he’s doing.

The approach is minimalist and deliberate : repetition, understatement and space serve as the scaffolding for Lane’s unfussy vocals and quietly brilliant lyrics.
“The fear and fun crackles with time. Give your hands to a cricket ball. Smoky socks with a net curtain eye.” (Pan Pipes)

There’s a kind of poetic surrealism here – part dream diary, part domestic collage.

The opening track, ‘Cold Spot,’ sets the tone perfectly – hypnotic, pastoral and deeply English in its restraint. It immediately called to mind the hazy textures of Woo and the whispered elegance of Jane & Barton’s sparse, though far more eccentric, 1983 album on Cherry Red. In fact, there’s probably no better time or place for music like this than Cherry Red in 1983. And coming from me, that’s high recommendation.

Buy/info/listen : https://stephenlane1.bandcamp.com/album/dare-to-dream

Jonny Nash – Point Of Entry (Melody As Truth, 2023)

By the time you read this, I’ll still be a step behind – Jonny Nash’s new album, ‘Once Was Ours Forever,’ is already doing the rounds. But I, being me and no-one else, am still idling on the cloud of his last (and 6th), ‘Point Of Entry.’ Nash was, at least I thought, new to me until a friend pointed out his part in the Amsterdam-based ambient trio, Gaussian Curve, who actually caught my ears some time ago via the algorithm (you know the one).

Nash, solo, has a beautiful sleight of hand on the guitar, a gentle layering of picking and slide through various effect pedals, which brings to mind July Skies, Ashra and inevitably, Vini Reilly at his most pensive. His voice and Joseph Shabason’s serpentine sax, float somewhere above all this, like distant hot air balloons, delicate, aimless, slowly vanishing into the soft blue. Is this the new New Age? I hope so.

Buy/info/listen : https://jonnynash.bandcamp.com/album/point-of-entry

Life Without Buildings – Life At The Annandale Hotel (Rough Trade, 2025)

Full disclosure : my life was once inextricably entwined with Life Without Buildings, having been instrumental in them signing to the Rough Trade Records imprint, Tugboat Records, which Geoff Travis and I co-founded.

Despite technically only existing between 1999 and 2003, the impact of the Glasgow-based art school band, still resonates today, though at the time, my recollection is that of (mostly) hostile press and bemused audiences but when people got it, they really got it. Musically water-tight, the band’s main focus (some might say, distraction) was the lyrically and physically peppy vocalist, Sue Tompkins, whose delivery appeared to be wonderfully spontaneous, frenetic and inexhaustible in equal measure; rhythmical phrases jumping off the page and running off down the street.

I’ve often heard people say that Life Without Buildings were years ahead of their time, most specifically when new “art-rock” bands, emboldened by an unconventional front woman, crop up (Dry Cleaning immediately come to mind). But I’ve always detected a lineage that runs all the way back to X-Ray Spex, The Raincoats, Kleenex, The Au Pairs, Pylon and the like.

This album, recorded at the Annandale Hotel in Sydney, back in December 2002, apparently unbeknowst to the band at the time, captures them as I prefer to recall : tight, fun, tumultuous. Sue sounds like she’s having the time of her life. The audience had a ball. ‘Sorrow’ is one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. ‘The Leanover,’ which has since taken on a life of its own, thanks to TikTok, is a hair’s breadth from collapsing altogether. This, I think, was their magic – the fine line between control and chaos.

Buy/info : https://www.normanrecords.com/records/90087-life-without-buildings-live-at-annandale-hotel