Eusexua Afterglow
FKA Twigs
(Young)
Earlier this year, the boundary-pushing dancer turned singer-songwriter FKA Twigs released Eusexua, titillatingly named for the moment just before orgasm, or a kind of flow-state. Inspired by the anonymous freedom of dancing in the dark, the album was nominated for the Mercury prize and a Grammy.
Originally conceived as a deluxe version, Eusexua Afterglow adds 11 new tracks to FKA Twigs’s subterranean club banger era. The opening song Love Crimes, with its punishing tempo and body-moving digitals, kicks off on the dancefloor, but the album’s focus is after-hours: bleary-eyed, Twigs sets off on a tour of late-night parties in low-rent boltholes (the wavy, two-speed Cheap Hotel) and bedrooms (Hard); on Lost All My Friends, she is en route from rave to comedown, losing her mind in a car.
Twigs is a nimble enough operator to pack in hits alongside her more avant-garde tracks. Of the former, Wild and Alone, a collaboration with PinkPantheress, is a success, Hard and Sushi are nagging earworms, and the record’s curveball – the borderline indie rock outlier Stereo Boy, which closes the album – keeps listeners on their toes. Kitty Empire
Woman of Faces
Celeste
(Polydor)
We don’t need to know the catalyst for Celeste’s eloquent rage on Woman of Faces is her disastrous relationship with a gaslighting addict. Still, that knowledge gives her album a clarifying narrative context. Lily Allen might have raised the stakes for scorched earth breakup confessionals, but this record is fuelled by Celeste’s elemental voice – a devastating, trembling tower of emotion.
Whereas her 2021 album Not Your Muse opted for more conventional pop arrangements, Woman of Faces is more dramatic and orchestral, always ready for its closeup or end credits. This Is Who I Am should be a Bond theme. On With The Show and the title track are equally sensational.
Celeste’s lyrics may occasionally be elliptical, but her vocals always make her meaning plain: these are words you feel before you hear. The album’s main theme is how we all must play our parts in the “theatre of the day by day”. Her vibrato’s tremor betrays fragility, the feeling of being forced to take the stage again before we’re ready, then the swooping grandeur of her haunted and haunting mezzo-soprano transforms that everyday drama into a heroine’s quest. A glorious album. Damien Morris
PTSD2
D-Block Europe
(D-Block Europe)
Many of D-Block Europe’s fans may seem too young for druggy luxury rap. Yet beyond its transgressive thrills there’s an existential horror to the south-London duo’s music that is viscerally fascinating. And what’s more teenage than grappling with the futility of existence? PTSD was one of three mixtapes released by the pair in 2019. Post-traumatic stress disorder – a diagnosis of trauma caused here by being black in a white world – was modish then, with Pop Smoke, G Herbo, JPEGMAFIA and J Cole releasing PTSD-titled tracks.
So why make a sequel? The intro suggests that PTSD symptoms such as hyperarousal or addiction are exacerbated rather than ameliorated by fame, money and limitless access to sex and drugs. The rest of the movie-length mixtape corroborates this. Central Cee’s one-inch punch flow (Yurr) and Nemzzz’s truculence (Private Flights) are welcome additions, but PTSD2 is all about DBE and their trauma response. You hear the silk noose of success tightening with every Auto-Tuned track, as sedatives supplied by Lamborghini, Hermés and Pornhub fail to take effect. It’s grubbily brilliant. Damien Morris
There Is Beauty, There Already
Sarathy Korwar
(Otherland)
Almost a decade since his first release, 2016’s Day to Day, South Asian percussionist Sarathy Korwar returns to his roots with a record of pure drumming. While previous albums such as More Arriving (2019) and Kalak (2022) dealt with weighty themes like migration and colonialism, here Korwar leads an ensemble of three drummers to deliver a 40-minute suite of wordless rhythmic improvisation.
Designed to be played from start to finish in one sitting, the record’s 10 movements develop narrative intent. The opening track, On A Perfect Day, trills hand percussion and droning synth to create a sense of soft ambience, while the next number, We Take Things for Granted, builds an insistent, thrumming tabla motif. This hypnotic, heartbeat drumming reaches an apex with the dancefloor focus of Looking For A Ghazal before breaking down into hand claps and eerie whispers of melody on the closing title track.
Harnessing repetition as a means of moving beyond monotony and into the unknown, like a word spoken so many times it loses its meaning, this strangely alluring album draws us deeper into Korwar’s world of ritual rhythm the longer we listen. Ammar Kalia
One to watch: Bricknasty
Formed in Dublin’s Ballymun estate as a 2020 lockdown studio project, Bricknasty have since become one of Ireland’s most unpredictable live acts, blending hip-hop, R&B, jazz and punkish distortion into a sound that is wholly their own. Their latest mixtape, Black’s Law, captures this restlessness, exploring faith, political disillusionment and human volatility across nine tracks.
Frontman Fatboy’s instinctive intensity powers the record, his lyrics tracing the gentrification and displacement that has shaped his home. The title is a nod to Black’s Law Dictionary, reframed as a metaphor for the struggle for power and the way language conceals class conflict. Recorded in makeshift studios and B&Bs along the Irish border, the album is a dense, DIY statement. Folk inflections and Celtic motifs are woven through beat-driven rap and ambient noise. Is É a Locht a Laghad is a standout, folding field recordings from Ballymun and guest vocals by Willa Lee into a haunting trad-folk song.
Live, the group is just as unpredictable. Swelling guitar solos, biting vocals and an improvisatory rhythm section turn sets into balancing acts hovering between chaos and control. It’s no wonder Bricknasty were picked to support Kneecap earlier this year. Politically charged and spiritually inquisitive, they are among the most compelling new voices of the Irish hip-hop scene. Georgia Evans
Black’s Law is out now. Bricknasty tour the UK and Ireland from 18–25 November
Photographs by Jordan Hemingway/Keerthana Kunnath