John Bradbury

Lee Martin’s MARLENE opens in the half-light of acoustic guitars, slow-burning soul, country inflections and jazz-coloured brass. It is a polished singer...

On The Ground Above Beth Orton sounds like an artist still moving forward, opening out, and finding new ways to shape songs about memory, loss, freedom and renewal.

Keren Mara 's Falling is a seven-song debut mini-album shaped by movement, intimacy and release. Written by Mara and produced with Harry Finlayson-Hood , it introduces the Ōtautahi artist in a warm space where modern folk meets alt-rock dynamics and blues-tinged instrumentation.

Low Cut Connie's Livin in the USA arrives as a self-described protest album and party album. That sounds like a contradiction only until the record starts moving.

Luke Haines makes Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Bizzy from the strange leftovers of late twentieth-century British popular culture: children's television, stage magic, variety acts, early 1970s pop, horror films, cartoons, minor celebrities and half-remembered catchphrases.

Macey 's Once is a second album about what remains after the first storm has passed. The grief, heartbreak and self-questioning that shaped The

Swamp Dogg has spent more than five decades proving that soul music can be funny, wounded, political, filthy and holy at the same time. On Swamp Dogg Contemplates The Afterlife , the 83-year-old turns that unruly gift towards mortality.

The Sixteenth 's Winters in the World is a carefully shaped instrumental album that turns the Anglo-Saxon year into a cycle of atmosphere, pulse and return.

The stage of the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre was packed edge to edge. The Exploding Rainbow Orchestra filled it with 44 musicians, led by conductor Joshua Worthington-Church , alongside a rolling cast of guest singers, dancers and performers.

At 79, Lenny Kaye releases his first solo album, drawn from songs written and performed over many years.