Recently on Dazed, we’ve explored the secret history of Ibiza’s wildest 90s club night, looked at the 5 best features on Turnstile’s massive new remix album, and published the first major interview with TR Gobrazy. We’ve also documented Tems meeting Kate Nash, published a complete guide to solo gigging, and hosted a Dazed Mix from Tsatsamis.

Nine months into the year, and we’re strapped in for the rollercoaster ride. Despite the uncertainties that colour many people’s day-to-day realities, music still offers the potential for shared communal spaces and serves as a source of collective solace. The global music community still faces economic challenges around touring, releasing and promoting music, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Expert difficulty level settings be damned, new and under-discussed talents in the world of underground music will always use connection and craft to find their way.

For the third edition of our 2026 quarterly roundup, we continue to reflect on and acknowledge musicians, artists, producers, and DJs from around the globe, all with strong communities, real visions, and important statements to make. Here are ten essential Q3 releases, all available on Bandcamp.

BAE BAE, GAUZE

WHO: A Los Angeles DJ and producer informed by all corners of Black diasporic dance music.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Across the Gauze EP, Bae Bae turns her hand to 2-step, jungle, and footwork production techniques, while keeping her solidarity with Palestine front and centre. Mixing absolutely monstrous club tracks with affecting interludes, Gauze is a short but perfectly formed project that keeps the dancefloor moving, while saying exactly what it needs to say. As lean and muscular as a Ghost Recordings white label, ‘still believe’ is a perfect US response to the syncopated bump of UK Garage. ‘living in memory (reese mix)’ puts a similar spin on the breakbeat futurism of mid-90s Metalheadz with a hyperpop twist. Stellar stuff. 

FOR FANS OF: EL-B, Tim Reaper, Fatima Al Qadiri.

CLAIRE ROUSAY & MARTYNA BASTA, HOTEL ROOM

WHO: Two key players in modern experimental music and sound crossing paths on one album.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: In 2023, Kraków composer Martyna Basta and Los Angeles sound artist claire rousay spent several days together at an arts residency at the behest of Poland’s Unsound festival. Afterwards, they continued working independently from their respective homes while emailing files. Three years on, they’ve emerged with hotel room. Across a set of tracks with titles like ‘the single pure thing left’ and ‘cool girls go to heaven’, they supplant songs with soundworlds that feel like liminal zones. From the ASMR gestures of ‘zoom’ to the ambient Americana of ‘lost and found’, the album unfolds like a dream within a dream.

FOR FANS OF: Pauline Oliveros, The Caretaker, Kane Parsons.

CURBSIDE LAMBSEAR, PUT RINGS ON ALL MY FINGERS TO WEIGH DOWN MY HANDS

WHO: One of London’s most exciting new post-punk/dream-pop duos.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: As Curbside Lambsear, Austrian musicians Annabelle Mödlinger and Magdalena McLean make music that plays with a rough/smooth dynamic, while folding together influences from dub, drone, folk, pop, improvised music and free noise. Having previously played together in the art-rock band The Umlauts, Curbside Lambsear’s debut EP, Put Rings on All My Fingers to Weigh Down My Hands, feels thoroughly lived-in and drawn from the world around them. ‘No Ordinary Word’ opens with a levitating half-time groove, percussive echo and moody guitars, setting the scene for languidly abstract prose. These songs scratch a very specific itch. Released by Scenic Route.

FOR FANS OF: Fauzia, School’s Fair, Mica Levi.

DEA, FAIRLIGHT

WHO: The Indonesian producer, DJ and musician blending Italo, boogie and electro with classical sensibilities.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Across Dea’s Fairlight EP, you can hear a fluent understanding of the rich histories of post-1983 drum machine and synthesiser music dovetailing together with an appreciation of baroque music, movement and composition as a journey. On the title track, named after the Yamaha DX1 keyboard’s Fairlight preset patch, a tight drum machine loop and bass line straight out of the Paradise Garage set the scene for dramatic synth lead lines and chirpy p-funk melodies. Later on, ‘Noctara’ brings vocoded vocals in the mode of Kraftwerk into Dea’s retrofuturistic dancefloor beatscapes. Front to back, Fairlight feels ready for the floor.

FOR FANS OF: Arthur Baker, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Mogwaa. 

JOHN SILAS, WATER SIGN

WHO: A soulful New York house producer and DJ with a real sense of jazz.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Water Sign by John Silas is the confluence of a lifetime of significant music memories: watching episodes of Soul Train as a child, digging for hip-hop samples as a teen, studying the MPC2000XL under Detroit greats, working in record stores, and living and breathing Brooklyn. Over four tracks and two remixes provided by Patrick Scott and Silas himself, he restores the feeling. From the floaty piano house of ‘Boundaries’ to the balearic bliss that runs through ‘Cyber Dreams (feat. Domenica Fossati)’ and the percussive, saxophone shuffle of ‘Nasty’, Water Sign is all killer, no filler. Love Injection Records does it again.

FOR FANS OF: Byron The Aquarius, Larry Heard, Joe Claussell.

L’RAIN, FATA MORGANA

WHO:  The multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and vocalist reimagining R&B, jazz, noise, and pop from New York to the world.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Fata Morgana is a rare album that truly looks beyond genre, era and location. Across thirteen kaleidoscopic tracks, L’Rain and her collaborators move between 1960s downtown minimalism, transatlantic sound system culture and intimate, bedsit songwriting, rendering a confrontation with self-doubt and alienation in epic terms. It’s gospel, dream-pop, a cry of defiance, and a record of the present moment. On tracks like ‘july 5th ’, rich musical and cultural histories interweave effortlessly. From evocative miniatures (‘no body/know body’) to expansive ambience (‘church of no one’), Fata Morgana is a chance to briefly exit your mind and experience someone else’s.

FOR FANS OF: Broadcast, Klein, A.R. Kane.

ROBERT BAXTER, PARTYANIMAL

WHO: A Taiwanese-Australian partystarter crafting dance-pop songs that will keep you on the dancefloor till last call.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Robert Baxter’s Partyanimal EP is an extravagance of sugar-rush melodies, vocal chants, uptempo machine beats and expansive synthesisers. Playing with the raw energy between need and desire, the seven audacious, sexy, and fun songs included capture the magic of a perfect night out, from sundown to sunrise at the party, the afterparty and the hotel lobby. Opening with the throwback 2010s retrofuture pop of ‘B2B’, Partyanimal reveals Baxter as an artist with a clear understanding of nightclub music from the ‘80s to today. Recently, they’ve been on tour with Ashnikko, lighting up theatre stages across New Zealand and Australia.

FOR FANS OF: Lady Shaka, Charli XCX, Ninajirachi.

ROMI WRIGHTS, ANDY

WHO: The big-voiced New Zealand singer-songwriter with expansive mid-20th-century soul, funk, jazz and dub influences.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Andy by Romi Wrights is an expansive tribute to love, heartbreak, loss, and reconnection, told through twelve songs. Written and recorded with her longtime producer Kenny Sterling, her friends and family, and a cast of session musicians from New Zealand and Ireland, the album unfolds like a masterclass in lushness, resolve, love and affection. On the throwback number ‘Shine Your Light’, she pays homage to a good friend, the late Andrea Orani, aka DJ Andy Heartthrob. Later, ‘Bring It Back’ sees a dubby, drum machine intro colliding with sunkissed 1960s Kodak moments. There are many forms of love songs on Andy.

FOR FANS OF: Solange, H.E.R., Cleo Soul.

TRICKY, DIFFERENT WHEN IT’S SILENT

WHO: A crucial UK rapper, producer and musician who continues to reinvent himself over the decades.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Although he was a central figure in the rise of the late 80s/early 90s Bristol sound, better known as trip-hop, Tricky has always rejected the term. Fittingly, Different When It’s Silent, his first solo album in six years, feels more like a logical continuation of the post-punk, dub, dream-pop and hip-hop sensibilities that informed his early rise than a study in genre. Working with fellow Bristol guests including the singer-songwriter Mitch Sanders and the rapper Run Red Rambo, Tricky transforms the pain of the death of his daughter in 2019 into catharsis, while opening the door for new talents.

FOR FANS OF: PJ Harvey, The XX, a.s.o.

WAKING SUNS, CASUAL TALK

WHO: Two good friends bringing a Balearic take on downtempo to Seoul and South Korea.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE LISTENING: Over the last decade, Seungyoung Lee, the South Korean multi-instrumentalist, producer and DJ better known as Mogwaa, has earned a global cult reputation through his hardware-heavy Balearic renditions of boogie, house, ambient, reggae, jungle and beyond. Recently, he teamed up with fellow Seoul-based singer-songwriter Xin Seha as Waking Suns. Across their debut album, Casual Talk, they explore unresolved emotions, tension and the space between us, rendered through a melange of glossy synths, bubbling rhythms, atmospherics and languid, half-spoken, half-sung Korean vocals. On tracks like ‘XT’ and ‘Smoke Freestyle’, Lee and Seha’s sensibilities spiral together into a unique meeting of minds.

FOR FANS OF: Bill Laswell, Rhythm & Sound, Shuggie Otis.