Also in stores this Friday, October 23, are the new records from Michael Kiwanuka and Uly.
Fine Jazz Dreams (Escho)
Choosing to illustrate her second album with a curious drawing of a sad clown fish (a gift she received from illustrator Jared Nangle in exchange for a concert ticket), Fine Glindvad Jensen quietly brings forward associative logic as the expressive mode of her record, the aptly titled Jazz Dreams. This logic, constitutive of the Danish artist’s music since her early days on the very cool Escho label (Elias Rønnenfelt, Smerz, Snuggle, Astrid Sonne), embraces serendipity, absurdity, but also the ecumenism that forms the material of dreams. Those dreams, like her songs, dissipate as quickly as they take shape. Composed, molded during concerts and recorded over the last sixteen months, the thirteen vignette tracks of Jazz Dreams unfold as floating structures bearing a dreamlike surrealism.
By Théo Dubreuil. Read the review of Jazz Dreams.
Philippe Katerine Planète bleue (Maison Magique/Cinq7/Wagram)
With Nk.F (PNL, Damso Angèle) in close collaboration, the Olympic-era Dionysus surprises and hooks listeners with songs that are brutally direct. Like everyone, Philippe Katerine has his annoyances, but he, unlike us, knows a way to avoid exploding: write songs very quickly to shed this emotional onslaught. This is how Planète bleue, a surprise album begun in September 2025, came into being, crafted partly just a few steps from his home and in Montreal where Nikola Feve resides. Better known under the initials Nk.F, the producer with the polished credentials, a gold-maker for PNL, Damso or Angèle, had already mixed Zouzou (2024). Yet he also handed Katerine roughly thirty instrumentals that had become lost in the memory of the phone—and the memories of the owner, happy to listen to them again.
By Vincent Brunner. Read the review of Planète Bleue.
Michael Kiwanuka Fudges (Polydor/Universal)
The London soul prodigy strips down his airy strand on a fifth album where lightness matches freedom. For about fifteen years, within the bustling British music scene, a distinctive figure has progressively stood out: Michael Kiwanuka, a craftsman of contemporary soul softened by folk reminiscent of Van Morrison. Often likened to Bill Withers for the velvet smoothness of his delivery, Kiwanuka has, across four albums, built an intimate R&B signature and precise songwriting set against celestial arrangements.
By Rémi Boiteux. Read the review of Fudges.
La Fève Finis-les (Walone/Epic/Sony Music)
Behind its programmatic and combative title, the young Fontenay-sous-Bois artist’s second album confirms her as one of the best inventors of French rap. In the recent history of French rap—the Covid-era that spawned a multitude of alternatives for the genre—rare are the artists whose rise toward success has been as straight as La Fève’s. A rejuvenation of a French rap scene heading toward suffocation with the EP Kolaf and the tape ERRR, a move toward Atlanta, the birthplace of trap, on the nostalgic 24 (all while filling the Adidas Arena’s 8,500 seats along the way), she eventually propelled the narrative of US rap at high speed on Biglaf, a brisk mixtape that placed her at the level of the boldest American contemporaries.
By Théo Dubreuil. Read the review of Finis-les.
Ugly The South Facade (Sate 51)
The English band broadens its indie vision in a labyrinth where Stereolab and post-punk meet, alongside yacht-rock and art rock. Since the Cambridge sextet’s name has circulated in the English indie rock circuits—ever under close scrutiny—its ecosystem has deepened and shifted. Black Country, New Road has had time to die and be reborn from its ashes, Black Midi has exploded into singular yet magnetic entities (My New Band Believe, Geordie Greep), while the country has welcomed newcomers like Westside Cowboy or Mary in the Junkyard as Ugly prepared The South Facade.
By Théo Dubreuil. Read the review of South Facade.
