A band founded sixty years ago during the same emergent British psychedelic art-rock scene that brought the world Pink Floyd is still putting out new music. Soft Machine’s Thirteen refers to this being their 13th studio release, the third since they resumed making records under the Soft Machine moniker after a thirty-seven year lull.
Soft Machine’s last new release arrived three years earlier; the Other Doors quartet still boasted two members from the mid-70s lineup and a third from that era appearing on two tracks. In the interim, long-time drummer John Marshall passed and bassist Roy Babbington’s phase-out became complete. Guitarist John Etheridge remains the last link to the classic era while keyboardist/saxophonist/flautist Theo Travis…
Category: jazz
Five years on, Mark Turner returns to the studio with his pianoless quartet to record the follow up to the hugely impressive Return from the Stars and see how much further they can collectively take the music forward.
As with the earlier recording, Turner once again draws his influence from his love of science fiction with the Patternmaster novel by Octavia E. Butler published in 1976, and which in the distant future humans are sub-divided with the dominant Patternists ruled by a powerful telepath known as the Patternmaster.
With a similar fascination with science fiction, Turner likens Wayne Shorter to the Pattermaster of Butler’s novel to the extent that the title track is a cleverly disguised contrafact of…
Reconnection is one of the projects (and second quintet album) of violinist and composer Tuva Halse. Tuva who? OK, you are not in Norway (that is your right). The entire Norwegian music scene, from jazz to folk, rap and contemporary music, even Eurovision, knows Tuva Halse. She stopped critics in their tracks in a duo with Joshua Redman last summer, which they described as historic. Three years after graduation at the prestigious jazzlinja at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, she is emerging on the international scene. Listen to this album today so you can look smug in a few years: “Tuva Halse? Yes, where have you been?”
Let us make introductions. Halse: baroque, occasionally carnatic-flavoured violin, voice,…
With her latest album, Isaiah, the expansively creative Japanese violinist and composer Meg Okura proves once again that she stands among today’s most distinctive musical visionaries.
Rhythmically fluid and stylistically adventurous, the record represents contemporary world fusion at its most refined. A testament to her eclecticism and athletic command, the album showcases her acclaimed Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble in celebration of its 20th anniversary. The tentet’s unfettered explorations are amplified by a roster of distinguished guests who elevate the ensemble’s dynamics, arrangements, and interplay to a higher plane.
The exuberant fusion of “Sushi Gadol”, a tribute to Okura’s brother — who transitioned from…
Since the release of his ACT debut Letter to the Universe (2023) and its follow-up Highlife (2024), Ghanaian-born trumpeter Peter Somuah, now based in Rotterdam, has established himself as a bridge-builder between cultures and continents. “An excellent musician and jazz at its most international,” notes the BBC. For the globetrotting Peter Somuah, musical influences from geographically distant cultures are always just a step away. This is precisely what his new album Walking Distance is about.
Walking Distance is an exploration of musical unity — a journey through diverse genres that, despite their differences, remain deeply interconnected. The album blends elements of post-bop jazz, Arab music, Latin grooves, blues,…
This is pianist Shai Maestro’s second release since signing for Naive in 2025. The first, Solo: Miniatures & Tales (2025), was a personal exploration; in deliberate contrast, The Guesthouse is expansive, open and collaborative. Maestro describes the album as “my attempt to turn the creative chaos that lives in mind into one coherent artistic statement, always having a simple melody as a thread that tells the story of this collective.” Inspired by Rumi’s poem The Guesthouse, Maestro uses the idea of a guesthouse as a framework — a place with an open door where musical guests are welcome to enter and collaborate freely. The result is an album markedly different from his previous work, with a far broader musical palette. It has also pushed Maestro in new…
Marty Ehrlich first encountered Julius Hemphill in the early 1970s when he was a high school student in St. Louis. Though Ehrlich performed and recorded with BAG (Black Artists’ Group), a community-based collective co-founded by Hemphill in 1968 to foster collaboration and present music, dance, theater, visual arts and creative writing, he didn’t get to know him well until the two were living in New York in the late 1970s. Ehrlich went on to collaborate with Hemphill, particularly as a member of Hemphill’s saxophone sextet, becoming musical director after the leader died in 1995. As chief researcher for Hemphill’s archive, Ehrlich has continued to unearth a trove of previously unreleased recordings, many documented on…
We always want life to make sense, yet despite our best efforts, it does not. This is the starting point for Asymmetry, which distills a lifetime of thoughts and emotions into 88 keys. Alex Kozobolisis no stranger to such efforts; his seasonal quadrilogy, The Seasons Are Not Four, swept 14 tracks into four quadrants, a tidy project, although as the title indicates, the “real” seasons seep into their neighbors’ yards.
Asymmetry includes wholly original tracks, plus a couple reimaginings; the slightly jazzy tone represents a shift from the composer’s prior works, but a holiday spirit bubbles below; at times the tender notes call to mind Vince Guardini’s classic Peanuts score. As early as opening track “Lost Hours,” one can hear the snow…
Torch Bearers is the landmark new recording from Grammy Award© winning trumpeter-composer-arranger Brian Lynch, featuring legendary saxophonist Charles McPherson. Recorded at Van Gelder Studios with an all-star lineup including vocalist Samara Joy, this album documents the first recorded collaboration between Lynch and McPherson since their initial meeting in 1980, reflecting a shared artistic lineage shaped by direct experience with pianist and educator Barry Harris.
Featuring original compositions including pieces written specifically for and with Joy, alongside canonic bebop works by Barry Harris and Dizzy Gillespie, the album showcases mutual intuition among musicians united by Harris’ influence. Joined by pianists Rob Schneiderman…
Guitarist, composer, arranger, and producer Gregory Uhlmann expanded his musical and sonic reach in 2023 after more than a decade of quirky singer-songwriter albums. In September, he collaborated with guitarist and Hand Habits creator Meg Duffy on the celebrated Doubles. The following year he joined experimental L.A. collective SML, along with Macie Stewart, Josh Johnson, Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, and Booker Stardrum. They issued a widely acclaimed eponymous debut on International Anthem. In 2025, he and saxophonist Johnson teamed with bassist Sam Wilkes to release Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes. SML released How You Been in November 2025. Extra Stars marks Uhlmann’s solo debut for International Anthem. Its 13 brief works are airy…
Walter Smith III returns to his lean, yet endlessly playful trio concept with 2026’s Twio, Vol. 2. A follow-up to 2018’s Twio that introduced the chordless line-up, Vol. 2 finds the tenor saxophonist leading two different trios.
The first features close associates bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Kendrick Scott. The second finds Sanders graciously stepping aside for legendary bassist Ron Carter, a longtime hero of Smith’s. Also on board for several tunes is another of Smith’s heroes, fellow tenor saxophone titan Branford Marsalis. Part of the fun of the Twio idea is that Smith, tethered only to the four-string harmonies of the bass, can essentially push the group in any direction. It’s a sound that takes direct inspiration from the classic…
Quiet Fire is the first Dave Stapleton solo album since Flight in 2012.
Hardly inactive, he runs Edition Records, the influential 21st century label he founded. He is also a member of Slowly Rolling Camera, the Cardiff-based trio globally recognized for their unique brand of “jazz hop,” which melds modern jazz, trip-hop, and electronic music. His collaborators on Quiet Fire include alto saxophonist Olga Amelchenko, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, bassist Jon Goode, Slowly Rolling Camera drummer Elliott Bennett, guitarists Tara Cunningham and Stuart McCallum, and violinist Victoria Stapleton (Astri Strings). The set was mixed by Deri Roberts, who is also a member of Slowly Rolling Camera.
The title-track opener marks the album’s…
Dundee composer extraordinaire Andrew Wasylyk enlists some well-known names for his latest project, Irreparable Parables. From Gruff Rhys and Kathryn Joseph to Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch, for first-time listeners this is likely Wasylyk’s most accessible material, blending his cinematic noir charm with pockets of jazz, classical and indie flair.
It’s counterpointed by two key highlights: the first being ‘Love Is a Life That Lasts Forever (ft. Molly Linen)’. Reminiscent of Glasgow duo Cloth via Linen’s hushed vocals, its bright trumpets and textures echo waves of joy and hope, with Wasylyk looking to the writings of Derek Jarman for inspiration. Constrastingly, Kathryn Joseph’s pain-ridden vocal delivery on…
France’s near-revolution of May ’68 kicked the country’s small but vibrant counter-culture into overdrive and birthed a local underground music scene. The bands it spawned made music with far less rock purity than groups from the UK and US – their influences foregrounded improvisation, disjunction and genre-blending: Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, free jazz and radical politics. The introduction of the synthesiser in the early 1970s added fuel to the fire.
This six-track compilation inaugurates a series to accompany Ian Thompson’s Synths, Sax & Situationists – the first English-language book to investigate this extraordinary and still largely unknown movement. It focuses on the second wave of bands that emerged in 1972/3, when…
Shabaka Hutchings’ two and a half years away from the saxophone have proved fruitful, his beatific album of (predominantly) flute music – Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace – emerging in April 2024 to almost universal acclaim. Perhaps too much acclaim, fretted those who despaired of ever hearing him attack the tenor sax again. Yet here he is, back on sax – a move proclaimed loudly by Of the Earth’s attendant press release. And indeed, sax is the central voice on the new album’s impressionistic opener A Future Untold, lyrical over nuages of tinkling bells. After that, Hutchings’ iconic axe is less dominant – obliged to fit into a complex choral network of flutes and electronic percussion, all played, programmed, recorded and mixed by…
All Duke Ellington concerts offered music of substance. Audiences listened patiently through the medleys and Tony Watkins’ vocals. Some performances, however, stood apart because they contained material that was fresh — music not yet worn thin by repetition, where both the thinking and playing could still surprise.
Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and the orchestra toured Asia (the “Far East”) in 1963. Rather than immediately writing new compositions, they deliberately allowed the impressions of the journey to settle, preferring that the process of transformation occur naturally rather than risk producing a mere pastiche.
Ellington’s “The Far East Suite” (RCA 1966) was eventually recorded over three days, from…