Daily Newsletter, August 22, 2025

AI can write psych rock albums for us! This news will come as a relief to King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard who won’t need to make a brand new album each month anymore. Now, machines can do it for them. This will free up their time and energy, allowing the band to focus on […]

Forged during punk's new musical hinterland, Gina Birch and The Raincoats' uniquely jumbled sound would pave the way for the 1980s indie boom and beyond.

Should artists like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift qualify as the best producer of the century? We take a look.

In 1978, two teenage girls scored an unexpected reggae chart-topper with Uptown Top Ranking—a song that remains infectiously perfect.

A look back at the very best tracks from the Beatles' first decade as solo artists.

At once a suite of love songs and a call to arms, the new album from Baltimore’s Marcus Brown is an electronic pop record grounded in hard graft, workers' solidarity and deep ties of affection

East of the River Nile is a masterpiece of haunting and hazy ambience from Augustus Pablo (aka Horace Swaby), whose plaintive melodica leads waft through these dubbed-out instrumentals like fragrant and heady strains of ganja mist. Recorded at some of the most hallowed studios in Jamaica—Harry J’s, King Tubby’s, Channel One, and Black Ark—East of the River Nile boasts some serious dub royalty with master engineers like Errol Thompson, Sylvan Morris, Prince Jammy, and Lee Perry manning the console while the Barrett brothers, Robbie Shakespeare, Earl “Chinna” Smith, and The Upsetters are among the heavies throwing down the riddims.

Jazz label Blue Note is releasing 'Puttin’ It Together', the debut album for the label from 1968 by drummer and jazz legend Elvin Jones.

Craft Recordings have unveiled a box set centring Miles Davis' 1954 recordings for Prestige Records, giving an incredible insight into the jazz master.

The Monitor’s reviewers choose the best of August 2025, from novels and biographies to accounts of history.