New Music Friday: 13th Floor New Album Picks: October 20, 2023

Yikes! It’s New Music Friday again! Spend your Labour Weekend listening to these top 5 picks including the new Rolling Stones album and plenty of Kiwi music.

The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda these five new releases for your consideration:

1. The Rolling Stones – Hackney Diamonds (Universal) This could be the last time. Mick’s 80, Keith will be in December, yet more than 60 years after forming, The Rolling Stones defy all the odds and release their 24th studio album. Charlie’s gone but Elton John, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, and former bandmate Bill Wyman are all on board for the ride.

2. Ebony Lamb – Ebony Lamb (Slow Time) Released on Nadia Reid’s own label and produced by Bic Runga and Cody Nielson. Ebony’s album was written over the last five years while coming to terms with the realities of a changing world, themes of gratitude, loss, acceptance and aspiration run through the album like a river.

3. Sampha – LAHAI (Young) Second album from Lomdon’s Sampha who explains “, ‘LAHAI’ was my grandfather’s name. My middle name. My next musical chapter. My next album. Fever Dreams. Continuums. Dancing. Generations. Syncopation. Bridges. Grief. Motherlands. Love. Spirit. Fear. Flesh. Flight.”

4. Cloudy – Raincloud EP (Lil Sister) Says the Kiwi-Austrian singer-songwriter: Raincloud introduces a new era within my sonic world. The shift from performing and recording solo to working with a band, really widened my music horizons and allowed me to test new waters. I got to explore a new way of making music and learn more about what I wanted to come through in my music.”

5. Crime & The City Solution – the Killer (Mute) First from the band in over a decade. The album began life as a PhD application that came to life when the band’s core members, Simon Bonney and Bronwyn Adams, found themselves stuck in their native Australia under one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, their nomadic lifestyle put on pause by the pandemic. “Naturally”, says Simon, “I sat and I pieced together a PhD application about decision making in Afghanistan in the late 80s. But as it turned out, it was actually more of a record than it was a PhD.”