New Mixtape and Weekly Digest
This week’s Mixtape ranges from archaic old-time vibes to the more ambient and avant-garde end of the spectrum. Plus our latest album reviews and music news.
KLOF No. 92 Mixtape
This week’s Mixtape ranges from archaic old-time vibes to the more ambient and avant-garde end of the spectrum. It features new music from Angel Autumn, The Powers Ensemble, JP Harris, Laura Veirs, Blake Hornsby, M G Boulter & Jenny Sturgeon, Twilark, J.J. Gregg, Jason Dungan / Johan Carøe, and Duffy x Uhlmann. Plus tracks from John Ondolo, Dyad, and Ayami Suzuki & Rob Noyes.
Album Reviews
Click on a title to read in full
The Powers Ensemble – Kindling
by Alex Neilson
How do you like your Free Folk? Plaintive yodelling over earnestly plucked strings? Freaky throat singing over microtonal mayhem? Cloudbursts of flugelhorn, clarinet and percussion like sonic prayers parachuting from heaven? Well, Kindling – the new album by Mikey Powers’ The Powers Ensemble – contains all these things and more.
There’s a freshness to Kindling which is disarming but also makes your blood sing with recognition. Let me give you an example. When I first started listening to Will Oldham’s music, it bridged a lot of disparate passions. I loved folk music, ecstatic improvisation and misanthropic literature with an Old Testament tinge. He seemed to glue all these things together with a charisma that was unguessable. Why did he make these decisions which made the songs awkward to like, but eventually became the bits that you fell in love with? – the crack in the voice, the misheard lyric, the climactic cymbal hit two seconds after the final guitar chord – all to the cadence of a deconstructed sea shanty. Eventually I heard other things that offered similar plot points of the heart – Astral Weeks, JOMF, Robbie Basho. The Powers Ensemble share the mutant DNA of all these psychic travellers.
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Prairiewolf – Zone Poems
by Glenn Kimpton
The concept behind Colorado-based psychedelic trio Prairiewolf’s new album blurs the line between studio recording and live album. The initial material for Zone Poems was cherry-picked from three of many shows the band were performing in 2025. Music from live sets in Crestone and pair of fall sets at Glob in Denver, Colorado was taken, layered, manipulated, reimagined and rearranged, with extra sound recorded later, to create more of a tapestry than we are used to with this band.
That said, Prairiewolf has been formed by a subtle bunch of musicians who are well aware of overloading an ear, so each decision is discerning, with the sound never becoming overcrowded. Of course, anybody who has experienced the band live will appreciate that many of the songs on Zone Poems have been produced. On tracks like The St. Vrain Method, the structure is a fair way from the spacious, minimalist music the band makes in real time, even if it is delicately crafted. Fragments of layered guitar from Stefan Beck and Jeremy Erwin’s percussive beats surround Tyler Wilcox’s beefy bass line, with enough reverb and rhythm to evoke a fisheye view of tidal currents.
News Highlights
Clara Mann announces second album Wishbone, shares “News From Home”
Clara Mann has announced her second album, “Wishbone”, out 23rd October via state51, and shared the lead single and video “News From Home”. Produced by Fabian Prynn in Norfolk, it follows 2025’s “Rift” — where that debut sat in a single strange, isolated shade of blue- “Wishbone” is built on contrast. A UK and European tour runs from September.
Richard Thompson Announces 20th Album “Hippies, Thugs and Heroes”, Shares ‘Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking’
Richard Thompson will release his 20th studio album, “Hippies, Thugs and Heroes”, on October 16th via New West Records, and has shared the first single, “Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking” — a hustling London song carried by strutting, raw-nerve riffs. Recorded live in New Jersey with his touring band, the album is, in his words, “less them and more me”.
Elanor Moss shares “Fixer” video, final single from her debut album
Elanor Moss has shared “Fixer”, the final single before her debut album “The Knife, The Needle”, out 21st August on Merge Records. It opens the album and gives it its name, the chorus turning a knife into a needle that might stitch the wound instead. The video is by H. Hawkline.
Eliza Carthy and The Restitution – Mr Sits in the Dark (a Tribute to Martin Carthy)
Eliza Carthy pays tribute to Martin Carthy on her new single ‘Mr Sits in the Dark’, out today on Hem-Hem Records and accompanied by a video created by Marry Waterson. Her new album, Frenemies, will follow in the Autumn, featuring special guests, including Jools Holland, Robyn Hitchcock, Miranda Richardson, and more, with a special album launch party at Dingwalls on October 22nd.
Charlie Parr Announces Folk Opera “Rooming House” and Shares Animated Video
Charlie Parr will release “Rooming House”, a seven-song folk opera, on Smithsonian Folkways on 16th October, and has shared an animated video for the title track. Drawn from Parr’s years in Minneapolis rooming houses, the album follows people facing poverty, illness and unstable housing, and the small generosities that keep them going. Dave King of The Bad Plus is on drums.
Caleb Nichols Drops New Single “A Feeling of a Feeling of a Feeling”, Announces New Album
Caleb Nichols has announced “Stone Age Is Now: Poems from Lithic”, his new album out via Royal Oakie Records this October – listen to his latest single “A Feeling of a Feeling of a Feeling”. Across twelve tracks, Nichols interpolates poems from his book “Lithic: A Hyperballad” with songs from “Stone Age Is Back”, tracked in five days with engineer Jay Pellicci.
Golden Samphire Band Share “Waking Moment” Video From Debut Album “Dream Is The Driver”
Golden Samphire Band share a video for “Waking Moment,” from debut album “Dream Is The Driver,” out now via Wayside & Woodland Recordings. Junkboy’s Mik and Rich Hanscomb, joined by Hannah Lewis, trace the song back to wild swims in Seaford Bay, paired with a grainy, VHS-to-NTSC video for a hazy, half-remembered summer feel.
Anna McLuckie shares video for ‘Blackberry Love’
Anna McLuckie has shared a video for “Blackberry Love”, the opening track from her album “The Little Winters”, filmed by Lucy McLuckie. The song lists the five plants: “…like a kind of spell. It’s a practical magic, but all the more enchanting for it”, writes KLOF’s Thomas Blake.
Jason Dungan and Johan Carøe Share “Mornings with Rita”from Collaborative Album “Routine”
Jason Dungan and Johan Carøe have shared “Mornings with Rita”, the second single from “Routine”, their first album together. Built over several years, they traded home recordings between Copenhagen and rural Sweden, setting zither, clarinet and cello against tape, drum machine and a Yamaha DX7. Out on Tonal Union on September 25th.
Angela Autumn Shares “Heavy Tobacco” Video from New Album “Believer”
Angela Autumn releases her second album, “Believer”, on September 11th via Gar Hole Records, and shares its opening track, “Heavy Tobacco”, with a video she choreographed herself. The song came from thinking about tobacco as both a purifying spirit and a habit that turns harmful, and about choices that carry consequences both ways.
More soon