The Best New Music Across the World, This Month

May doesn’t whisper – it strikes a chord. As spring pushes everything into bloom, music answers with urgency, depth and friction. Albums turn inward, festivals reimagine space and protests echo through the industry. It’s not just a month of releases – it’s a season of resistance, ritual and reinvention. 

And since last month, the pulse of this column plays on – you can find our playlists on Tidal and Spotify.

New Album/1

Viagra Boys – viagr aboys

When a band dares to shift its poetic voice and tackle fresh themes, it’s already a win—even if it risks missteps – because seeing musical art break free from market logic or cultural trends in favor of personal or playful detours is a victory in itself. On viagr aboys, Sweden’s post‑punks Viagra Boys’ fourth album, they channel that spirit inward. Sebastian Murphy trades grand political and social rants for a more intimate focus on love, health and self‑recovery: from the country‑tinged balladry of “Medicine for Horses,” a song that feels lifted from Arcade Fire’s last great album (The Suburbs fyi) to the bare‑bones tenderness of “River King,” where piano and sax frame his confession “everything feels easy now”. It moves on to bruising honesty of “Pyramid of Health,” which fuses classic rock, grunge and country as he battles “cigarettes for breakfast” and lampoons cactus‑munching health gurus.

Elsewhere, playful absurdity abounds – “Uno II” and “The Bog Body” dramatize vet visits from a pet’s perspective and jealousy of a “bog woman” over dance‑floor grooves and synth‑soaked sax, while “Store Policy” channels Zack de la Rocha–style rage on top of dub‑tinged drums. Even the throbbing menace of “Dirty Boyz” and the meme‑heavy “You N33d Me” nod to their roots, though both can feel a little too familiar – and the internet slang (“perpetual stew”, “gooning”, OnlyFans nods) sometimes borders on cringe. Overall, while a few tracks don’t stray far enough from their earlier sound, this leaner, more personal album proves that embracing themes beyond social indictments has only sharpened their songwriting and expanded their sonic palette: Viagra Boys still know how to surprise.

Listen/Buy via Bandcamp.

New Album/2

Angel Bat Dawid, Naima Nefertari – Journey to Napta Playa

It’s becoming clear: this isn’t just a space for carefree, easy listening. As the title already suggests, Journey to Napta Playa – by the duo Angel Bat Dawid and Naima Nefertari – is a deep and mystical voyage, intertwining mythology, ancestral sciences and meditative litanies, guided by a fusion of experimental jazz and storytelling – and yes, we wholeheartedly encourage you to immerse yourself in it. The destination, and the album’s original source of inspiration, is the ancient astrological stone circle of Nabta Playa – an archaeological site nestled in the Nubian desert of southern Egypt. It’s from this point that Chicago-based clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid and artist-performer Naima Nefertari shaped their first collaboration, “connected by music, research and sisterhood, through sacred time and space”.

As the two explain, through flute, clarinet, vibraphone, kalimba, clay pot, gong, mouth harp, piano, and synths, the album unfolds “as a story from beginning to end, a mythology in music, where the tracklist acts as a cosmic narrative arc: from desert summoning and ritual procession, to astral ceremonies, burial and liberation.”

The work draws from powerful references to the past – most notably Don and Moki Cherry (relatives of Nefertari), as well as Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly – while opening up to the future through bold sonic and narrative experimentation. It’s a release perfectly aligned with the spirit of its label – London-based Spiritmuse Records, founded by Mark Gallagher and Thea Ioannou – which is dedicated to producing “quality, ancient/future collection classics for a deep listening experience, that is respectful to the musicians’ message and directly benefits the artists involved”. Not to be missed.

Listen/Buy via Bandcamp.

Single Track

Marc Ribot – Daddy’s Trip to Brazil + video

This month’s new single comes as a surprise: Daddy’s Trip to Brazil is the second track extracted from Map of a Blue City, the upcoming album by one of the greatest guitarists of our time, Marc Ribot. What makes it remarkable is that for the first time in his decades-long career it will be a solo-vocal album.

According to Ribot, Daddy’s Trip to Brazil – which comes with a video directed by his daughter Clara McHale-Ribot – is “a hungover post-punk echo of Antônio Carlos Jobim’s famous Wave, importing the ennui of a late-capitalist touring musician into the tropicalismo paradise”. As the lyrics suggest – and as hinted by the previous single, When the World’s on Fire, and some early liner notes – Map of a Blue City may turn out to be Ribot’s most personal and intimate album yet, featuring songs originally written thirty years ago and reworked over time to reach their final, refined form. To support the release, Ribot will tour extensively across Europe and the US throughout the year.

Listen via Bandcamp.

Reissue

Meridian Brothers – VI–VII

Meridian Brothers is one of the most intriguing and established experimental music projects to come out of Colombia in the past two decades. Founded in 1998 as a solo project by the wildly inventive multi-instrumentalist Eblis Álvarez, it evolved into a full band starting in 2007. With their most recent albums – Cumbia Siglo XXI (2020), Meridian Brothers & El Grupo Renacimiento (2022), and Mi Latinoamérica Sufre (2024) – they’ve gained critical acclaim and performed at major festivals around the world. Their sound is a vibrant mix of Colombian musical tradition, electronic textures, and psychedelic elements – blending cumbia, hypnotic guitar work and heady, philosophical concept albums.

Earlier this month, Swiss label Les Disques Bongo Joe and Italian imprint Holidays Records reissued VI and VII, the group’s long-unavailable second and third albums, in a special, first-time-on-vinyl edition since their original CD release between 2009 and 2012.

These two seminal records already hinted at Álvarez’s singular approach to reworking and modernizing the traditional music of his country: on VI, his guitar and other instruments dance through cumbia and vallenato; on VII, analog sounds are fused into hypnotic, propulsive loops and grooves using an original, custom-built sampling algorithm, years before this kind of technological reflection became common – in music and beyond. Adding to it all, the track titles and lyrics are laced with irony and mischief, oscillating between ancestral references and spontaneous gags. Going back to the beginning, to discover an extraordinary discography.

Listen/buy via Bandcamp.

Festival

Terraforma EXO

Italy hosts many concerts, but true international festivals remain rare. Things began to shift in 2014 when a collective in Milan launched Terraforma, a forward-thinking festival of experimental music focused on sustainability. Inspired by the concept of terraforming, the event aims to reshape cultural and environmental spaces.

Held in the historic Villa Arconati, the festival also became a project of park regeneration. In 2025, Terraforma EXO, its itinerant format, returns with events in Milan (June 28–29), Rome (Sept 27), and Palermo (Oct 25), transforming public spaces into zones of collective listening and reflection.

The lineup is carefully curated and still evolving. In Milan, Lorenzo Senni will present trance-inspired experiments in a set co-curated with Nuits Sonores, while Florian Hecker will offer an automated performance that transforms Debussy and the words of poet Mallarmé into a psychophysical experience. In Rome, Nkisi brings Serpent Songs, a ritualistic journey through myth, memory, and rhythm, set against the backdrop of Forte Antenne. In Palermo, Moritz von Oswald presents Silencio, a choral-electronic work inspired by Varèse and Xenakis, and Rrose performs James Tenney’s iconic Having Never Written A Note For Percussion – a minimal gong crescendo that becomes both meditative and, in its intensity, unsettling.

Check out the full festival programme here.

News

A coalition of musicians, including Brian Eno and Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, has signed an open letter urging Field Day Festival to sever ties with its parent company, KKR. The letter, coordinated by members of the Sisu collective – a platform for women and non-binary DJs – calls on the London-based festival to “publicly distance itself” from the investment firm.

The signatories, many of whom have previously played or are slated to perform at Field Day, condemn KKR for its alleged financial links to Israeli companies operating unlawfully in Palestinian territories, as well as its reported connections to arms manufacturers. Their statement frames the issue as part of a broader stand “against Israel’s genocide in Gaza” and in support of Palestinian rights under international law. KKR acquired Superstruct Entertainment, the company behind Field Day, in June 2024 – a move that has triggered growing concern among artists involved in the festival.

Among those backing the letter are DJs Ben UFO, Midland, I. JORDAN, DEBONAIR, Rrose, Pangaea, and TSVI, joining Eno and Del Naja in calling for accountability and ethical responsibility within the music and events industry.

Read the full letter here.

Camillo Vegezzi is a freelance music writer based in Milan. He has collaborated with various music magazines and is a contributor to the cultural section of Il Manifesto. Read more of Camillo’s writing on Something Curatedhere.

Lorenzo Villa is a writer and editor based in Milan. He writes about lifestyle for Harper’s Bazaar Italia and collaborates with the literary magazine Galápagos. Read more of Lorenzo’s writing on Something Curated here.

Header image courtesy of Meridian Brothers.