[PREORDER] Michael Kiwanuka - Fudge (Indie Exclusive Mint Green Vinyl)

Indie Exclusive Mint Green Vinyl 2LP With Alternate Cover

This edition of FUDGE was solicited by Universal as exclusive to independent record stores, and the label's solicitation lists it as a limited edition. It presses the album on two mint green LPs in an alternate cover, with the twelve songs cut across sides A through C, four to a side. On this vinyl sequence "Move In My Direction" closes side B and "You Sent Me Flying" opens side C, the reverse of the order those two songs take on the CD.

FUDGE is Michael Kiwanuka's fifth studio album and the first he has produced himself since his 2012 debut, Home Again. His three albums before it, Love & Hate, Kiwanuka and Small Changes, were made with Danger Mouse and Inflo. FUDGE was written almost alongside Small Changes and took shape at Dreamers, a one-room studio built from cob near his Southampton home, where he worked with Joe Connell, the multi-instrumentalist in his live band. Kiwanuka spent his Mercury Prize money on a console for the room. The recordings were completed with producer Dom Monks, whose credits include Laura Marling and Big Thief, and Kiwanuka's longtime string arranger Rosie Danvers, with further string parts recorded at Dreamers by Henry Rankin and Harry Fausing Smith's quartet.

Part of a Chick Corea interview, which Kiwanuka came across on Instagram during lockdown and took as his cue for the project, opens the record. The seven-minute "Love In My Heart" grew out of an after-dinner jam, and Kiwanuka has called it the album's "eureka moment." "Stars" was first recorded in the period after Home Again, and "Summer Clothes" began as a contender for Small Changes; it and "Swings and Roundabouts" bookend the album. Kiwanuka has named the Beatles' Rubber Soul, Neil Young's On the Beach, Frank Ocean's Blonde and Shuggie Otis's Inspiration Information as touchstones, and says the title is meant to feel "playful and childlike."

Kiwanuka's third album, Kiwanuka, won the Mercury Prize in 2020, and Love & Hate debuted at number one on the UK albums chart in 2016. FUDGE was finished before a period of ill health and was held back for almost twelve months before its release was announced in September 2026. The artwork is by Stevie Gee, an illustrator and animator and a longtime friend of Kiwanuka's.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Summer Clothes
2. California
3. Just Another Moment
4. Drowning In Your Heart

Side B

1. Love In My Heart
2. Across The Sky
3. Stars
4. Move In My Direction

Side C

1. You Sent Me Flying
2. Steve's Paradise
3. Sing
4. Swings and Roundabouts