Records of the Week (February 4, 2026)

What we're spinning at VF HQ.

Another Animal Collective solo project, a lush ode to love, an early year club behemoth and VF alumnus Duval Timothy have been keeping us warm as February comes to its cold start.

Contributions from VF's Kelly Doherty and Alex Flowers.

Beverly Glenn-Copeland

Laughter In Summer

(Transgressive)

Much of Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s career narrative has been framed around the passing of time. Long held up as living proof that musical ideas can eventually find their audience — no matter how long it takes — Glenn-Copeland has also spoken openly about his role as a queer elder, and the honour he feels in reaching younger generations through his music.

With Laughter In Summer, Glenn-Copeland gently dismantles the reductive notion that he was “discovered” in 2010, instead foregrounding a personal joy that long predates the covers, festival slots, and late-career acclaim. A love letter of sorts between Glenn-Copeland and his wife, artist and activist Elizabeth, who features on vocals across the record, the album was initially conceived as an instrumental project, until its first listener, Elizabeth, filled it with lyrics.

In light of Glenn-Copeland’s 2024 diagnosis of dementia, the album’s intimate, one-take recordings and tender vocal interplay between the couple take on an added emotional weight, lending each listen a raw, heart-wrenching immediacy that demands full attention.

That’s not to say Laughter In Summer is a sad album. Reworkings of Glenn-Copeland’s cult classics, “Let Us Dance” and “Ever New”, retain their hopeful, transcendent spirit. Even more melancholic moments such as the title track and “Children’s Anthem” are suffused with a depth of love that supersedes the painful undertones.

A beautiful outing from a truly special artist.

Kelly Doherty

Duval Timothy & CJ Mirra

My Father's Shadow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

(Carrying Colour)

Duval Timothy, the pianist best known for his minimalist compositions, collaborates with composer CJ Mirra on the original score for My Father’s Shadow. With Timothy’s piano at its centre, the instrument feels liminal — suspended between the present moment of the viewer and the film’s 1990s Lagos setting, where a father and son move through a city on the brink of political unrest.

The album unfolds slowly, opening with distant repetitions of fragile, faintly haunted piano figures, as if drifting in from another room, another time. Notes bloom gently before dissolving into a lonely, reverberant space, while subdued sound design lends weight to the negative space. "Journey to Lagos" breaks from this early refrain with cinematic tension, driven by a climbing, broken-octave motif as barely audible percussion shivers beneath the surface, carrying a sense of motion, scale and wonder.

"Puppet Dance" briefly interrupts the spell with a juju-inspired interlude nodding to King Sunny Adé, before the mood darkens. "Horses" hums with low piano tones and uneasy percussion, while "On Passing" introduces a groaning cello, heavy with dread. Familiar chimes and motifs circle back, searching for resolution but offering none.

The score reaches its breaking point in the closing stretch, where propulsive percussion and industrial textures collide with mounting urgency. It closes with "O Pade Leti Odo", a Yoruba hymn rendered with fragile tenderness: the piano wheezes, slightly unsteady, almost human — exhaling at last.

Alex Flowers

Geologist

Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights?

(Drag City)

Animal Collective’s Brian Weitz finally steps out solo with Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights?, the debut album released under his Geologist moniker. Where many side projects see artists expanding outward, Weitz instead uses this offshoot to narrow his focus — specifically onto the hurdy-gurdy, a medieval stringed instrument rarely heard outside of folk tradition.

If that premise conjures visions of early-2000s baroque pastiche, Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights? quickly dispels them. Across its ten tracks, Weitz shapes the hurdy-gurdy into something far more fluid and contemporary, dabbling in alarmed post-punk (“Tonic”), loose-limbed experimentation (“Not Trad”), minimalist lo-fi (“Government Job”), and more. At times the instrument functions as a droning textural bed, elsewhere it’s bent into the role of a riffing lead guitar.

The result is a patchwork of non-prescriptive emotions and a loosely bound sonic palette imbued with warmth, familiarity, and a low-level melancholy. Listening is akin to drifting in and out of sleep in the passenger seat on a late-night drive; initially disorienting, but quickly comforting.

Though the record occasionally slips into the background, Can I Get A Pack Of Camel Lights? is, for the most part, a psyched-out, dreamlike pleasure that rewards repeat listens.

Kelly Doherty

Shackleton

Euphoria Bound

(AD 93)

British producer Sam Shackleton returns with Euphoria Bound, his debut for AD 93 and his first full-length record in three years. Following a period spent in the far-flung corners of the experimental world — through collaborations with artists such as Six Organs of Admittance and Heather Leigh — Shackleton circles back to the dancefloors he first cut his teeth on, bringing new sensibilities with him.

Euphoria Bound is exhilarating. Brimming with dingy, pummelling drums, willowing pads and tightly engineered percussion, the record moves on the down-low, building almost imperceptibly until the entire room is shaking. None of the tracks adhere to traditional club structures: from the opening shuffles of “Elemental Dream” to the unpredictable, spaced-out closer “Buried and Irretrievable”, the album unfurls slowly, teasing out fragments and ideas rather than forcing them into recognisable forms.

Winding and unwinding over the course of an hour, Euphoria Bound is another assured entry from a producer who knows how to take familiar ingredients and make them feel entirely new. Despite its title, don’t come expecting unbridled euphoria — the reality is far more compelling.

Kelly Doherty