Welcome back!

So, it’s been more than a hot minute since I was last extolling opinions on this fair-weather site… well, actually here in the UK the body of time in question has included three record-breaking heatwaves, but according to climate-change deniers it’s still not as hot as that one time in 1972, so there’s no arguing to be had there!

But I digress; in all honesty with regards to this year’s exercise in new-music collation, I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

Between the recommendations from Pitchfork, The Guardian, Resident Advisor, Metacritic and Album Of The Year, I’ve also taken it upon myself to listen to any title highlighted in the weekly-updated iTunes Store, because of course I still have an iTunes account.

The introduction of the latter this year may prove to be my undoing, seeing as it has opened a whole new world of disposable/super-questionable releases that I normally would have avoided, including The Worst Album Of The Year So Far…

Certainly a foolhardy attempt to be down with “da-kidz” (or at least what the labels in Apple Music’s pockets are making them push anyway), but I’m over halfway through the year now so even if I’m going to fail I will do so most doggedly, and thanks to July being a mercifully lighter month in terms of releases I’m getting my half-time report a whole two-weeks later than when it would have been useful.

So, if you wish to distract yourself with positive words about good things that actually came out in the first five months of 2026, please read on, you could find something well worth your time!

Best Not-Albums Of 2026 So Far

Just because we need to give a fair round of applause for projects that do not adhere to the original album format, including retrospective compilations, live recordings and remix projects, the kind of releases that manage to rise above “this could have been a playlist”-style criticism; though don’t worry, the latest “version” of album released as soon as the following week of the original offering are not included, being the cynically-engineered examples of fan-abuse that they are.

15 Years of Butter Sessions by Various Artists

We begin in Australia, specifically Melbourne where underground label founders Maryos Syawish and Corey Kikos (aka DJ duo Sleep D) took time out for a little crate-digging to put together a three-disc compilation to celebrate the first fifteen years of operating their dance-music skein, Butter Sessions.

With a catalogue of nearly 100 releases to choose from including cuts from now-established acts such as Roza Terenzi and Jennifer Loveless, Syawish and Kikos’ house/techno dub selections traverse Australia and Asia to find gorgeously sweaty common ground on the dancefloor.

Djax-Up Beats 1990-2005: Volume 1 – The Acid Trip by Various Artists

Yet another party fifteen years in the making arrives next, switching locations from Melbourne for Amsterdam where we find the prolific techno/acid house stalwart Miss Djax, whose work in cultivating her specific party scene helped boost Chicago acid house’s popularity across Europe as well as that of other fledgling European beat makers.

The first of an intended six volumes, The Acid Trip delivers roundhouse-kick-after-roundhouse-kick of euphoric nostalgia, throwing its dayglo shapes across both sides of the Atlantic in a triumphantly transportive effort to bring any listener who dares to back to the mischievously-grinning fold.

In My Dreams by Bill Frisell

Incredulously maintaining the motif or the previous entries’ reaching back into the past, composer Bill Frisell’s latest project is one that has taken twice as long to come to fruition, inspired by a dream he had thirty years ago featuring some of his favourite artists.

Released on the eve of his seventy-fifth birthday, this collection of live recordings and studio sessions finds Frisell in peak-dreamy jazz mode, eliciting moving performances from his myriad of collaborators as he attempts to render his dreams into sonic reality, and by all accounts succeeding.

Kaiso Power: Sound In Revolution by Various Artists

From Frisell’s present-day Los Angeles we now travel back in time to Trinidad in the 1970s via Soundway Records‘ latest release, still steadfast in their ongoing mission in discovering, dusting off and remastering lost musical gems from all over the world.

A small but invaluable cache of protest songs that transcend the sunny vibes of their calypso funk and reggae genre trappings to deliver wary missives on government corruption and repression as well as moments of joy, like all of Soundway’s releases they reveal a world that goes beyond Westernised exoticism.

War Child Records Presents HELP [2] by Various Artists

Speaking of calling out the powers that be and their continued corruption and inaction in the face of human atrocity, War Child Records snap us straight back to the present with the sequel to their inspirational 1995 compilation conceived in response to the ongoing death of children in the Middle East amidst ongoing genocides and war crimes.

Even if the impossibly-starry roster of talent involved is enough to pique your purchasing interest (one which includes Olivia Rodrigo, Depeche Mode, Ezra Collective and pretty much everyone else in between), the project itself is essential in terms of ethos and intent; so please, listen.

Best Extended Plays Of 2026 So Far

All got a little bit real in that last section, didn’t it?

As such, how about a few little notes on audio-based amuse-bouchées to cleanse the palette ahead of more length works to be elaborated on later?

Dear Children Of Our Children, I Knew: Epilogue by Alabaster dePlume

Recorded in a day somewhere in Brooklyn, New York amidst his 2025 US tour, poet and saxophonist dePlume’s EP is an improvised snapshot in time that captures the forlorn-yet-vital energy of his live performances with drummer Tcheser Holmes and bassist Shahzad Ismaily.

Exchequer by Proc Fiskal

A sweet bump of irrepressibly genre-less miasma plays wild and loose on the latest release from the Edinburgh-based DJ and producer, incorporating elements of folk, grime and hyperpop electronica into the kind of fashion-forward blast that feels like its tip-toeing towards the edge of something huge.

Metal Giants by Refige Kru

Jungle/DNB stalwarts Goldie and Submotive return for a victory lap of pure, unadulterated steel after the warm response from their first collaborative album, last year’s Alpha Omega.

Sarab by Seera

All-female Arabic psych-rock quartet Seera’s debut EP has enjoyed quite the rapturous response for its swoonsome combination of desert blues, alternative rock and fierce poeticism, earmarking them for greater things in the future.

Shinrin-Yoku by Yazz Ahmed

We finish up the auditory appetiser section with jazz musician Yazz Ahmed’s latest collection, a clutch of ambient songs indebted to the healing power of nature recorded with friends in 2020 that she was moved to release in response to the ongoing awfulness that is the present-day.

Best Debut Albums Of 2026 So Far

OK, we’re breaking into the album chart proper now, starting with a few words on some budding musicians who have done well to make a rather good case for keeping up with on their first try…

And So It Is by Aaron Shaw

Multi-instrumentalist and arranger Aaron Shaw had been enjoying something of a meteoric rise within the Los Angeles music scene, including playing for the likes of Mary J. Blige and Anderson. Paak under the tutelage of Carlos Niño, when personal tragedy struck in 2023 via his being diagnosed with bone marrow failure at the age of just 27.

As such, his debut album is one bestowed with more of an air of unabashed spirituality and introspection than most, whilst still displaying the kind of intelligence that combines elements of West Coast hip hop and Latin jazz among other influences into a prodigious and at times revelatory offering.

Divorces by Devices

A quartet of art music nerds come good in the form of art-rock pop band Devices, mixing playful melodies and riffs with darkly ironic lyrics about misplaced lust and identity to create songs that are as much at home referencing Ancient Greek mythology as they are about present-day ennui and disillusionment.

Following through on the promise of their debut EP from last year, their first longform player expands their sound both technically and thematically in terms of production polish and songcraft, all whilst never losing the incorrigible sense of fun that turned heads in the first place.

The Apple Tree Under The Sea by Hemlocke Springs

If we are talking about 2026 in terms of Your New Favourite Popstar, the best case so far is most likely that of Hemlocke Springs, the North Carolina singer/songwriter of otherworldly alt-pop who has already enjoyed support slots on tours with the likes of MUNA, Doja Cat and Chappell Roan.

Nestling very nicely within a genre-defying pop realm where her lyrical abandon and fanciful aesthetics display a wistful command already with their sound, Springs’ intuitive world-building and innate star presence suggests a sonic meeting point between Santigold and Kate Bush.

Best Albums Of 2026 So Far

So here we are, the first ten best albums of 2026 so far, listed alphabetically so as to not infer any specific pecking order or anything, because we still have at least five months left after this, right?

Ambiguous Desire by Arlo Sparks

After flirting with bristling post-punk on their second album, singer/songwriter Arlo Parks deviates further from the beatific palette of her Mercury Prize-winning debut with a third album which finds her luminous melodies and sweet vocals married to a more nightly spectrum of sound that includes pumping house and dusty breakbeats.

Inspired by a newfound appreciation for what she describes as “nocturnal spaces” over the past couple of years, its mishmash of UK-specific dance sub-genres married with Parks’ intuitive song-writing suggests a journey into the night of a young soul ready to get outside and feel any and everything, be it joy or heartbreak.

Euphoria Bound by Shackleton

Lancashire-born and Berlin-based ambient-techno meister Sam Arthur Shackleton’s twenty-year-plus career has found the DJ and producer travelling the world both in terms of gigs and with regards to their enveloping soundscapes, informed by a sonic wanderlust that never feels less than transportive.

His tenth album finds the beatmaker operating with a more direct approach than normal this time, sampling African and Middle Eastern songs and textures to create more propulsive tracks that don’t so much lull you with exotic vibes but present something more immediate and inescapable whilst never losing their sense of mystery.

It’s The Long Goodbye by The Twilight Sad

Following a six-year break that included touring with longtime-heroes-turned-new-best-friends The Cure (of whom the inimitable Robert Smith is their greatest champion), Scotland’s premier shoegaze-rock outfit return with a sixth album that carries a profound sense of agony indebted to both professional and personal circumstances.

Though the loss of three of the quintet’s original line-up provides its own cloud, the emotional core of the album finds frontman James Graham wading through the fallout of his mother’s dementia diagnosis with an excoriating honesty that transcends grief and anger via euphoric guitars and synths to provide a catharsis stirring enough to rival any storm.

Laughter In Summer by Beverly & Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland

Far be it of me to make dementia a running theme in this celebration of music from 2026, however the next album of note is that of seasoned multi-hyphenate artist Beverly Glenn-Copeland, whose latest release, a collaboration with his wife Elizabeth, is made all the more bittersweet with his own recent diagnosis.

The album almost works as an audiobook of the Glenn-Copelands’ lives, both literally in their selection of decades-old songs worked on together and given verdant new life and thematically in how each of the pieces deal with the passage of time with equal amounts mournfulness and celebration, its theatrical melding of jazz, poetry and folk never failing to move.

My Ghosts Go Ghost by By Storm

Naming themselves after a track from their last album under their previous moniker Injury Reserve, rapper Nathaniel Ritchie and producer Parker Corey stepped back into the underground hip hop fray together five years since losing their third member Jordan Groggs with a sound that provided a more emotionally-haphazard and existential bent than their previous work.

Eschewing those industrial leanings with beats and motifs reminiscent of experimental jazz and electronica, Ritchie’s vocals constantly shift in dynamics and intonation to match Parker’s emotionally restless production, giving the listener a more abstractly cerebral journey through which to essay the cornerstones of grief.

No More Like This by PVA

Though they certainly carry the attitude to posit themselves as a punk band, Bristolian collective PVA’s second album is one of those ribald genre-less adventures that throws everything it can at the wall to grab your attention and not only manages to make it stick, but leaves a beautifully bloody imprint you cannot quickly wash away.

Whether vocalist Ella Harris’ beguiling monotone is expressing meditative calm or tapping into primal rage, the music around her morphs appropriately from gorgeous ambient vistas to post-punk portent and all-out rage, but vitally keeping their sinuous grooves intact wherever the songs may take the listener.

Redstar Wu & The Worldwide Scourge by Genesis Owusu

The genre-straddling continues further apace with the Ghanaian-Australian’s third album, representing a commanding step up for the artist both in terms of the iconoclastic themes of disillusionment and social justice as well as the breadth and confidence in his delivery.

Be it casting diatribes against the billionaire class with bop-friendly post-punk shout-alongs or crooning wistfully by on some funkier conscientious grooves, the would-be journalist is on never-better mode throughout with the courage of his convictions on fine display helping to give 2026 one of its realest moments.

Sexistential by Robyn

Finding that sweetly subsuming spot between rapturous euphoria and nervous-oversharing eight years later as if no time has passed by at all, Robyn Carlsson’s ninth album is a lean-and-not-at-all-mean electro-pop marvel that could not have come to reassure her fanbase of disco nerds and hedonists a moment too soon.

Stripping things back to the synthpop basics after her dalliance with artful balearics on Honey, Robyn is back on playful and funky form here, giving us all plenty of room to join in with her groove whether its via self-deprecating humour or her unique penchant for making heartbreak sound so joyously transcendent.

The Color Of Rain by Aja Monet

Providing sterling proof that there are still some prized fighters in the music industry in terms of answering to bigotry and wrongdoing in the world with an unwavering sense of duty and moral code, poet Aja Monet’s second album is one that trades fierce lyrical blows with sensuality and intelligence.

Collaborating with the likes of Meshell Ndegeocello and Brandee Younger among others, Monet’s words are imbued with a serene directness amplified by gorgeous soundbeds of nu-soul and contemporary jazz, making sure that each sharp diatribe lacerates with a smoothness to make it one of 2026’s most subversively world-exploding works.

Wor$t Girl In America by Slayyyter

And because summer still hasn’t quite had its way with us just yet despite my lateness, we are finishing up with Slayyyter’s third longform of indecently good electroclash sweatiness, a throwback to the kind of late 2000s dance-pop-scuzz that those of us old enough to remember still can’t help but get caught up in sometimes.

Capturing the warring inner factions of steely defiance and sad-eyed vulnerability that any single person feels on a debauched night out with Slayyyter’s vocal presence in particular selling the absolute shit out of it, it’s the dance-pop album that feels most like how 2026 feels.

But of course, if you can’t remember all of that instantly, here’s a handy playlist to allow you to hear these 2026 spinnables for yourself!

Thanks for making it this far, both blog-wise and just in general really. I’ve got quite a lot of ground to make up for listening-wise, but without tempting fate, let’s see what happens!

Until then, keep well and safe. xxxo