Our weekly roundup of essential new releases is back, also including tracks from Pleisured, TTSSFU, Child of Prague and Alex Lukashevsky.

Chalk – ‘Pain’

If Chalk’s ‘Conditions’ trilogy built them a reputation for twisting post-punk into a techno-fuelled fever dream, ‘Pain’ feels like the point where it all snaps into terrifying focus. Out now via ALTER Music, the Belfast duo’s latest single is a feral collision of jagged guitars, industrial thrash, and pounding electronic rhythms, produced with Chris Ryan. At its core, ‘Pain’ is exactly what Chalk do best: a brutalist slab of noise that doesn’t just soundtrack anxiety, it embodies it. There’s a physicality to the track – every beat hits like concrete on concrete, relentless but addictive. But what’s most striking here is how much vulnerability bleeds into the assault. You can hear the tension throughout: the swagger of the rhythm, undercut by a raw emotional edge that makes ‘Pain’ more than just another post-punk bruiser. (Gemma Cockrell)

Geese – ‘100 Horses’

Geese convulse, croon, and crash, wrapping despair in groove and dissonance until it becomes strangely euphoric. Their latest single, ‘100 Horses’, surges with panic and pulse, each lyric a guttural cry disguised as a dance-floor command. The track is the third single from the Brooklyn-based quartet’s upcoming album ‘Getting Killed’, set for release on September 26th via Partisan Records. ‘100 Horses’ blends chaotic energy with groovy rhythms and muddied guitars. It is deliberately dissonant, yet captivatingly sharp. Lyrically, it serves as a satirical commentary on the absurdity of human nature in times of crisis, fusing dark humor with surreal imagery. The line “All the horses must go dancing / There is only dance music in times of war” is delivered in Cameron Winter’s unmistakable vocal style, shifting between urgent cry and languid drawl. In ‘100 Horses’, Geese create a sound where punk’s raw edge meets jazz’s complexity. Jagged guitars, pulsing rhythms and guttural vocals crash in a wild yet controlled collision of experimental rock and apocalyptic dance. (Isabel Kilevold)

Ninush – ‘The End’

To look at the recent alumni of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama is to witness a high-point for the development of art-pop. Found in the work of Black Country, New Road, Jockstrap, and Ethan P. Flynn, intricate and ornate songcraft is combined with sprawling neoclassical arrangements producing an idiosyncratic style that can only be described as Guildcore. On Ninush’s ‘The End’, these elements are made whole and continue to prove the provenance coming out of the school. Over delicately glitching vocal samples and twisted woodwind, Nina Lim’s voice floats sombrely, singing of stasis and a desire for things to remain as they are. Lim’s arrangements are majestic with planing strings, prickling harp plucks and orchestral drum swells producing a work that is cinematic and utterly arresting. Armed with an orchestra of BCNR members and classical musicians, Ninush is lithe and ethereal on ‘The End’, and an exciting development among the clutch of artists emerging from the practice rooms of London’s most revered music college. (A. L. Noonan)

TTSSFU – ‘Forever’

There’s always been something brilliantly uneasy about TTSSFU’s world – a project where shoegaze haze collides with glitchy chaos, and Tasmin Stephens’ voice slices straight through the noise. But on ‘Forever’, released alongside her new EP ‘Blown’ (out on Partisan Records), she shifts the focus. This time, it’s not unease but warmth driving the track, and the result is her most luminous cut yet. A co-production with Chris Ryan (Just Mustard, NewDad and the aforementioned Chalk single), ‘Forever’ is a widescreen ode to friendship that still wears its shoegaze armour. Radiant guitars wash over pounding drums, while Tasmin’s vocals stretch skyward, layered and reverb-drenched yet unflinchingly direct. She chants the title like a mantra, half a hymn, half a rallying cry – a declaration of joy that never dissolves into sentimentality. (Gemma Cockrell)

Child of Prague – ‘Basking Sharks’

Somewhere between radio static and an open wound, ‘Basking Sharks’ finds its pulse. The track is the third single from the Dublin based six-piece’s debut EP, ‘Clothed In The Sun’, which is set for release on September 19th via Faction Music. It opens with a jarring, guitar-led melody that carries deliberate weight, setting the stage before Jack McDonnell’s vocals break through a melodic clarity tinged with vulnerability. The line, “I still got no fucking teeth in my mouth”, is sung through clenched teeth. There is irony in the contradiction, though the line still lands with restrained honesty. Child of Prague draw from a diverse background, with members hailing from Dublin, Tipperary, Boston, San Francisco and London. On ‘Basking Sharks’, they layer guitar grit with the soft resonance of violin and textured saxophone, building toward a mid-track bridge. A muffled recording, “What hope have you got in the future?”, cuts through the mix like static on a dying radio, casting a shadow of existential unease before giving way to a richly layered crescendo, where violin and guitar intertwine, harmonise, and clash over driving bass and grounding drums. Child of Prague thrive in collaboration, crafting songs that are emotionally immediate yet musically expansive. Woven from raw edges and honest moments, ‘Basking Sharks’ moves with a soft grit that cuts deep. (Isabel Kilevold)

Pleisured – ‘ROT’

Few things organic or otherwise are more dopaminergic than distortion. If science could accurately analyse the neurochemistry involved in the production of a stank face following a mucky bass hit or fuzzed-out guitar riff then I feel humanity would be closer to attaining the true answers in life. With this in mind, Pleisured’s latest single ‘ROT’ should be a prime case study for why distorted, driving riffs cause so much joy in one’s brain. Fuzzy, murky and teetering on stoner-y, ‘ROT’ is the sonic equivalent of riding a destrier horse into battle. Clattering, galloping drums bolster the fizzing chainmail guitar encasing distant, delay heavy vocals in an armour of noise and heft. Muscular and dense, the track shifts from the blitzkrieg of tremolo guitars and relentless crash hits to a lumbering groove full of bassy swagger. When this drops, look out for each other in the pit. (A. L. Noonan)

Alex Lukashevsky – ‘that musician that’s dead !!’

The latest single from influential Toronto artist Alex Lukashevsky is a reflection on mortality and art. Set at the funeral of the titular musician, it explores the tension between the life of an artist and his audience’s appreciation of that life, what is misunderstood and what is perhaps wrongly forgiven… “Have fun, it’s how you get to heaven”. Lukashevsky says the song was inspired by a real funeral, where the friar “comforted the mourners by saying, ‘He’s in Heaven now singing the sweetest song”. It stuck out to him that “the world at large is always looking to give a musician their bona fides, even in death”. Over an intense clanging two-minute intro of wriggling guitars, the song slowly comes into focus before exploding into a jostling rhythmic verse, worthy of Parquet Courts at their most fired-up. In his sarcastic lyrics and irreverent delivery, Lukashevsky also evokes the spirit of Pere Ubu’s David Thomas, if only in an attempt to wrap his voice around so many contrasting ideas and styles of delivery. All over the place in the best of ways, this single is an exciting taste of the new album ‘OOOOH!’, due out on Tin Angel at the end of October. (Lloyd Bolton)

Potato – ‘Gill’s Fanfare’

Back after the release of 2024 EP ‘Stew’, Potato release wondrous new single ‘Gill’s Fanfare’. Flowering with understated majesty from its humble drum machine opening, there is something hymnal about its stirring chorus. One senses almost instinctively the hand of Joseph Futak on production as the subtle tones of clean guitar, bowed strings and chanting backing vocals rise together in the gentle crescendo that expands across almost the entire song. Not a moment is wasted, and as the track simmers back down it plays out in a trickle of flute licks and spacious breaths of guitar. An exciting first taste of a debut album we understand is not too far down the line. (Lloyd Bolton)