by Cai Trefor | Photos by wenn
45 exciting albums still to come in 2016
From Radiohead and LCD Soundsystem to Parquet Courts, Last Shadow Puppets and beyond
RJD2 - Dame Fortune (25 March): Philly hip hop DJ RJD2 will put our Dame Fortune on his own label, Electrical Connections. 'Peace Of What' (feat. Jordan Brown) is the first cut to drop ahead of its release. Other guest vocalists include Son Little, Phonte Coleman, Blueprint, and Josh Krajcik.
White Denim - Stiff (25 March): White Denim are one of the tightest live bands around, and their 2013 album, Corsicana Lemonade was a triumph. Album teaser 'Hola You (I'm Psycho) shows White Denim in strong classic rock and prog form with crunchy riffs and blistering solos.
Zayn - Mind of Mine (25 March): The debut album by the former One Direction star will go stratospheric. The phenomenal success of lead single 'Pillowtalk', suggests seems life outside the boy band is going incredibly well for Zayn. Hats off to him.
Andrew Bird - Are You Serious (1 April): Andrew Bird is rumoured to have completed his most definitive work yet with a band of top flight musicians on Are You Serious. He's always found the most wonderful tone on his violin by rigging it up with valve amps and his voice is also a soulful mesmerising force. We can't wait for this to be out.
Biffy Clyro - Ellipsis (8 July): Once an awkward but insane math-rock curiosity, now a festival headlining, arena-destroying tour-de-force, The Bigg return with their seventh album this summer - with frontman Simon Neil SAYING: "It feels absolutely like the best thing we've ever done, I think I've written some of the best songs I've ever written. It feels like we've found a new verbage for Biffy Clyro."
Bat For Lashes - The Bride (1 July): The flawless Natasha Khan should have become an icon off the back of her last album, The Haunted Man - now we're in no doubt that she will on her fourth LP. A statement reads: "The Bride flees the scene to take the honeymoon trip alone, resulting in a dark meditation on love, loss, grief, and celebration. Written as the soundtrack for a feature length film in mind, The Bride is Khan’s most ambitious work to date, sonically and visually incorporating an entire world inhabited by The Bride, along with the characters and places she encounters on the way."
Velcro Hooks - S/T (1 April): The band showed some early promise with DIY shows around Bristol and occasional buzz band nights in East London around their Gymnophoria EP. But they slipped into the shadows to make their debut album. Of the recording proces, their press release posits, "Multiple all-night recording sessions in their homemade studio, fuelled by cheap Polish lager, almost destroyed them." But their perseverance has paid off and they add that "they have ten tracks bursting at the seams with chaos, urgency, paranoia and knife-edged romance, to add to their already explosive mix of off kilter, sprawling, hook-filled rock."
Bibio - A Mineral Love (1 April): Warp's best purveyor of blissed out experimental music returns with an album that eschews sampling. "I partly want it to sound like sampled records," says the English producer, born Stephen Wilkinson, in his press release. "But by crafting every single detail myself and colouring it to have familiar textures that resonate [with] people's forgotten memories."Some tracks are influenced by records I listen to often and some from ghosts of memories of things I heard while growing up, like 70s/80s American TV themes or 90s dance," he adds.
Cheap Trick - Bang, Zoom, Crazy...Hello (1 April): If anyone's seen Detroit Rock City then you'll remember the Cheap Trick cut 'Surrender'. It's one of the bands signature songs and one of the best rock singles of the 70s. As they've been together so long, Bang, Zoom, Crazy...Hello, remarkably is the band's 17th album. It's doubtful they'll replicate the genius of their early stuff here but their lead single, 'When I Wake Up Tomorrow', suggests they've achieved an anthemic sound worthy of any classic rock fans time.
The Last Shadow Puppets - Everything You've Come to Expect (1 April): One of the most highly anticipated records of the year, TLSP are a Gigwise favourite because the colossal combination of Miles Kane, Alex Turner, and an orchestra is a match made in heaven. The three singles that have already dropped convey the instrumental diversity on offer. Riff-laden lad rock is followed by more poignant pieces.
Leon Vynehall - Rojus (1 April): Leon Vynehall cut his teeth DJing at Life club on Brighton beach. He's since grown into one of the UK's most revered house producers. Rojus is the most significant release since his LP, Music For The Uninvited, that Martyn put out on his 3024 label. This time he's signed to Gerd Janson's Running Back label. He's written the album as functional dance music sequenced as if it were a club night, from doors to closing.
Moderat: III (1 April): Moderat, the trio comprised of Gernot Bronsert, Sebastian Szary (aka Modeselektor) and Sascha Ring (aka Apparat), complete the trilogy with III. According to thier press release, the new album signifies Moderat's maturation in modern pop and mastery of the group.
Mogwai - Atomic (1 April): Last year, Mogwai provided the music for Storyville - Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise, a BBC documentary chronicling the creation of the atomic bomb. Now, they've reworked that soundtrack for this new album. According to their guitarist Stuart Braithwaite, "The Atomic soundtrack is one of the most intense and fulfilling projects we've taken on as a band."
Mike and the Melvins - Three Men and a Baby (1 April): Three Men and a Baby is the long-awaited collaboration between Mike Kunka (godheadSilo, Enemymine) and The Melvins. It was recorded in 1999 at Louder Studios by Tim Green (The Fucking Champs), and it was finished in 2015 at Sound of Sirens by Toshi Kasai. Better late than never.
Pet Shop Boys - Super (1 April): New single 'The Pop Kids' suggests that this 13th album of theirs is going to be incredible. Once a genius always a genius in their case.
Yeasayer - Amen & Goodbye (1 April): If they've kept up the standard of the two tracks from the album that have been released already, Amen & Goodbye is going to be a contender for album of the year. Their eccentric and intricate pop songs are a beguiling, psychedelic journey.
Colin Stetson - SORROW (8 April): SORROW, led by Stetson, is a re-imagining of Henryk Gorecki's most famous piece, Symphony No 3. The composition is one of the biggest sellers of classical music of all time. Saxophinist and multi reedist Stetson is a rare talent who will bring a unique twist in a completely transfixing version of the classic.
The Dandy Warhols - Distortland (8 April): This was first recorded in Courtney Taylor's basement on an 80s cassette recorder with the band putting on the finishing touches in the studio. Jim Lowe, best known for his work with Taylor Swift and Beyonce, mixed the album. Courtney notes that the end result is an album that is "organised like a pop record but still has the sonic garbage in there."
Deftones - Gore (8 April): Grammy Award-winning rockers are set to release their eighth studio album, and the first since 2012's Koi No Yokan. It's also the first release since bass player Chi Cheng sadly passed away in 2013. Speaking with Radio 1's rock show, Chino Moreno said, "It's got dynamics and there's loud aggressiveness and there's mellowness to it, but it's all sort of got an ebb and flow to it."
Frightened Rabbit - Painting of a Panic Attack (8 April): The band's fourth album but second major label release, sees a slight reshuffle in band members and the addition of The National's Aaron Dessner on production duties. It was recorded at Dessner's Brooklyn studio, where he recorded The National's 'High Violet' and 'Trouble Will Find Me', and at Dreamland Studio in Woodstock, NY in the summer of 2015, and sees them unveil their most cohesive record yet.
Parquet Courts - Human Performance (8 April): The New York garage rockers return with their most ambitious and accessible record yet. Thematically the album is a meditation the anxieties of modern life.
Woods - City Sun Eater in the River of Light (8 April): It seems that New York is getting to people. Just like Parquet Courts, stress and anxiety of modern life shaped this record. But sonically they're a completely different band with a more diverse set of influences and instrumentation. "At this point no matter what we bring to the table it turns out sounding like Woods. Whether it's krautrock, ethio jazz, modern pop or classic rock. It's all Woods in the end," says singer Jeremy Earl. This is their ninth album in ten years but only the second to be done in a proper studio and the production is glorious. It sounds big without losing the intimacy the band are renowned for.
Cate Le Bon: Crab Day (15 April): Cate Le Bon has kept herself busy since the release of her highly acclaimed album Mug Museum in 2013. She released an album with White Fence's Tim Presley under the name DRINKS and has toured relentlessly. Crab Day is her most highly anticipated release yet and will likely be one of the indie guitar albums of the year.
Kevin Morby - Singing Saw (15 April): Kevin Morby is the former bassist of Woods and the songwriter and guitarist of The Babies. In addition to being involved in two of New York's best bands, he's a highly acclaimed solo artist. Singing Saw is his third solo album and his first for Dead Oceans (Marlon Williams, The Tallest Man on Earth). It's his most realized effort of songwriting and lyricism to fruition yet. Fans of Bob Dylan will see this generation is in strong hands and that brilliant songwriting isn't only a thing of the past when they hear this.
PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project (15 April): PJ Harvey's ninth album was recorded at Somerset House in London back in January, and members of the public were able to watch the entire recording process from behind one-way glass.
Suuns: Hold/Still (15 April): "Hold/Still, the third studio album from Suuns, is an enigmatic thing: an eerily beautiful, meticulously played suite of music that embraces opposites and makes a virtue of cognitive dissonance. It is a record that does not give up its secrets easily. The 11 songs within are simultaneously psychedelic, but austere; sensual, but cold; organic, but electronic; tense sometimes to the brink of mania, but always retaining perfect poise and control." (Secretly Canadian)
Brian Eno - The Ship (29 April): The Ship is his first solo album since 2012. According to Eno himself, it's based on "experiments with three dimensional recording techniques", and the album is split into two parts and is as much musical novel as traditional album." The album offers social commentary on the paranoia within a wealthy, greedy neoliberal society. Who says no one says anything meaningful in music these days?
ANOHNI - HOPELESSNESS (6 May): It seems paronia and disenchantment with modern society has struck a chord with yet another artist this year. HOPELESSNESS' lyrics address surveillance, drone warfare and ecocide. ANOHNI is the new project by the singer of Antony and the Johnsons who's workedin conjunction with Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke. The band are a sure highlight of the upcoming Sonar festival in June.
Twin Peaks - Down in Heaven (13 May): Chicago garage punk band Twin Peaks are one of the rowdiest and fun groups around. But their third record sees them reign it in a bit and channel their 60s side. Singer Cadien James cites The Kinks' Village Green Society, Beatles' White Album, and Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet as strong influences on this record.
Kvelertak - Nattesferd (13 May): The Norwegian heavy metal classic rock hybrids are in for an exciting 2016 with the release of their third album. They topped the Norwegian charts with their last album so expectations are sky high. Let's hope they can pull it off again.
Gold Panda - Good Luck and Do Your Best (27 May): Gold Panda produces some of the most soulful electronic music around. The preview from his first full length in three years suggests he's on a creative high. It's bustling with ideas and is a transfixing, enthralling ride that has the potential to induce that nocturnal euphoric state you may get at festivals.
Cat's Eyes - Treasure House (3 June): The duo, comprised of The Horrors frontman Faris Badwan and musician Rachel Zeffira, are poised to put out their second album. Treasure House is their first since 2011's self-titled debut, and the first full length release since the soundtrack to Peter Strickland's film, 'The Duke of Burgundy'.
Melvins - Basses Loaded (3 June): The title of the album is a comment on the recording process. The 12-track collection features contributions from six different bass players. Among them: Nirvana's Krist Novoselic, Butthole Surfers' J.D. Pinkus, Redd Kross' Steve McDonald, Big Business' Jared Warren, and Mr. Bungle/Fantomas' Trevor Dunn. There are also four tracks revisiting Melvins' 1983 lineup in which the bands Dale Crover swaps drums for bass.
Shura - Nothing's Real (8 July): The UK singer made a real impact with 'Touch' - her first proper stab at the music industry. She recently had a Four Tet remix of the cut pressed, which is complimentary to any artist. Her debut album likely to be one of the most euphoric pieces of electro pop you'll hear this year and a summer release is perfect for her.
The Kills: Ash & Ice (3 June): Fresh from The Dead Weather album Dodge and Burn, Alison Mosshart is back on Kills duty and lead single 'Doing It To Death' is sounding as emotionally charged as ever.
At the Drive-In: TBA: They're one of the best live bands ever and are back touring and will release new music this year. It's eagerly anticipated as it will be their first since 2000;s Relationship of Command. No firm details have been announced yet.
Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial (TBA): Easily one of the best newly signed acts we've heard this year. Under the moniker of Car Seat Headrest, the multi instrumentalist has independently released 11 albums of buzzing, lo-fi pop, with last year's Teens of Style his first on Matador, and the quick follow up, Teens of Denial, his second.
Drake - Views From the 6 (TBA): We're very much in the dark regarding any concrete date but the rapper has announced View From the 6 is imminent. When it finally drops it'll be his first album since his number one and Grammy nominated album, Nothing The Same, which came out in 2013.
Frank Ocean - Boys Don't Cry (TBA): Frank Ocean will follow his near perfect album Channel Orange with a release in July. We expect big things.
Flume - Skin (TBA): This Aussie electro pioneer made an incredible impression with his debut in 2012. Skin has been teased and sounds like he's kept his head on and has produced something truly special.
LCD Soundsytem - TBA (TBA): One of the surprise stories of 2016, LCD Soundsystem seemed dead and buried until James Murphy said he'd be touring this year. The infinitely creative individual isn't content on solely revisiting the classics from his back catalogue and will have a new album out at some point this year.
James Blake - Radio Silence (TBA): Last year, Blake said that his new album would be called Radio Silence. Later, he confirmed that both Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and Kanye West would appear on the new album. No more details have been released yet.
Kanye West - Turbo Grafx 16 (TBA):Hot on the heels of Life of Pablo, Kanye West will release Turbo Grafxc this summer and it's named after one the 1989 console, which he claims was one of this favourite gaming systems as a kid.
Lawrence Rothman - (TBA): The as-yet-untitled record features guests including Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon, Charli XCX, and Ariel Pink. Justin Raisen sat at the controls who produced Charlie XCX and Sky Ferreira. It's a lot of name dropping but Rothman is a fascinating artist in his own right and one of the musicians in LA at the moment.
Radiohead - TBA (TBA): According to their collaborator Stanley Donwood, whose already heard it, this album is a work of art. Their last album, King Of Limbs, didn't enchant as much as In Rainbows so hopefully this could be the Radiohead album that surpasses the magic on that - especially if 'Spectre' is anything to judge by.
2016 has dealt its fair share of tragedy. There was a few weeks at Gigwise where all we were reporting was death and we've been devastated at the loss of some of the industry's greats. David Bowie, Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane, Dale Griffin from Mott The Hoople, and Glenn Frey from Eagles are just a few.
But it's important in times of tragedy that we treasure what we've currently got and find inspiration in the creativity of the remarkably talented set of musicians who are making waves at the moment.
In the coming months we are going to be treated to what will become some of your and some of our favourite albums of all time. The Last Shadow Puppets have a gem up there sleeve, the prospect of a new Radiohead album is mouth watering, as is the unlikely return of LCD Soundsystem. Meanwhile, Kevin Morby, Woods, and Parquet Courts show New York is in good form at the moment.
Elsewhere, Leon Vynehall, Gold Panda, and Moderat offerthe electronic music charts a set of releases to be thrilled about.
There are a whole host of othe acts to get excited about. The best way is to dive in and discover and find your favourite in and among these greats.