the crowd's
week

Bonobo
— Distance in Static

album

LP · 11 Sep 2026 · Ninja Tune

Eighth album on Ninja Tune, co-produced with Dave Sitek. Arooj Aftab, Nilüfer Yanya, Joy Crookes and Ichiko Aoba drop by. Simon Green says it may be the last for a while.

Twenty-five years after he started making records, Simon Green let slip a line that changes the way you hear this one: "This is the end of an era, really." Distance in Static is Bonobo's eighth album and may be the last for a good while, which perhaps explains the sense of taking stock that runs through its fourteen tracks. Production is shared with Dave Sitek — yes, the one from TV on the Radio — and his presence shows: there's more texture and more grit than usual on a record that still lives between deep house and downtempo. The guest list is remarkable and not at all decorative: Arooj Aftab, Nilüfer Yanya, Joy Crookes, Ichiko Aoba. Fifty minutes built less for the dancefloor and more for what comes after it — the journey home, early in the morning.

critics 70 · users 74

featured

This Is Lorelei
— The Singer in My Band

album

LP · 11 Sep 2026 · Matador Records

Nate Amos lands on Matador and swaps bedroom pop for luminous alt-country. Recorded at home, with his father on banjo and his sister on vocals. The warmest record he has made.

Nate Amos has had a few short years with a lot going on: Water From Your Eyes selling out rooms on two continents, and the solo project growing at the same pace. The Singer in My Band is his debut on Matador and the clearest turn he has ever made — out go the bedroom-pop tricks, out go the vocoders, and in their place a luminous country-folk record, recorded in his Brooklyn apartment and finished at his parents' house in Vermont. He did everything himself, with two exceptions that are worth the whole record: his father, Bob Amos, lets loose a banjo solo on the title track, and his sister Sarah and his partner Al Nardo sing backing vocals. Warren Zevon's dry humour is in here, as is the warmth of American Beauty. It's the most direct and most generous record of his career — and the one that best brings critics and listeners together this week.

critics 79 · users 73

Pretty Sick
— Anarchy

album

LP · 11 Sep 2026 · Dirty Hit

Sabrina Fuentes returns on Dirty Hit with Oscar Scheller producing. Indie pop, shoegaze and rap in the same place, crystalline synths and distortion that hurts. Start with "City Kid".

Sabrina Fuentes started Pretty Sick as a teenager, in New York, and has spent the last few years refusing to let anyone pin a genre on her. Anarchy, the second album and the first in several years, is the loudest possible answer to those attempts: recorded mostly in Los Angeles with Oscar Scheller, it's a maximalist hybrid where indie pop, shoegaze and rap coexist without asking permission. The synths are crystalline, the beats are heavy and the distortion works less as an effect and more as an emotional tool — when the song tightens, the sound tightens with it. "City Kid" is the record's sharpest urban portrait; "home2hide" shows the opposite side, withdrawn and almost fragile. For the part of the Crowdmusic community that moves between post-punk and dirty electronics, it's one of the most interesting records of this September — and a band to watch closely for European dates.

users 76

Ezra Collective
— Here Because of Hope

album

LP · 11 Sep 2026 · Partisan Records

Fourth record from the Mercury winners, in three movements: Africa, the Caribbean, London. Pa Salieu, Lila Iké, Leona Lewis, and Letitia Wright narrating. Jazz to fill venues.

Since winning the Mercury, Ezra Collective have stopped being "the jazz band that fills rock venues" and become simply one of the best live bands in the UK. Here Because of Hope, their fourth album and first on Partisan, is also their most ambitious: it's built in three movements, spiritual and geographical, that follow the path of the Black diaspora — from Africa to the Caribbean and from there to the London streets where the group formed. Each movement has its own voices: Pa Salieu, Lila Iké, Leona Lewis and Libianca, with the actor Letitia Wright guiding the record in spoken word. Beneath the narrative is what Ezra do best — Afrobeat, jazz-funk and Femi Koleoso's drums pulling everything forward. It's a political record without being heavy, and one made to be heard standing up.

users 77

Eiafuawn
— Endless Body

EP

EP · 11 Sep 2026 · Numero Group

Clay Parton of Duster reappears 20 years on with 16 minutes of slowcore on Numero. Four tracks, a dirty recording, the same suspended weight. The discovery of the week.

Eiafuawn — pronounced "ee-uh-fon" — is the solo project of Clay Parton, one half of Duster, and the name is an abbreviation of a phrase that sums up the mood well: everything is all fucked up and what not. In 2006 he left a single album, Birds in the Ground, which Numero rescued a few years ago and which has since become a cult object for a whole generation that discovered Duster online. Twenty years later, and practically without warning, Numero has put out Endless Body: four tracks, sixteen minutes, the same dirty recording and the same suspended weight as ever. There's no reinvention here at all — and that is exactly the point. Slowcore and slacker rock made by someone who helped define both, recorded as if the twenty years hadn't passed. For anyone who lives in this territory, it's the most important release of the week.

users 72