Make a Sound marks the first full release from saxophonist and composer Oded Tzúr‘s fledgling label, Sky River Music. After a pair of fiery albums for Enja Records and a string of esteemed releases on ECM Records, Tzúr sets out in a new direction with a set of tracks channeling deeply personal expression through his Indian-influenced jazz. He is accompanied on this journey by an experienced group of collaborators: Joe Martin (bass), Nasheet Waits (drums), Vanraj Shastri (sarangi), and Gilad Hekselman (guitar). Guitar and sarangi bring entirely new shades into Tzur’s growing canvas of expression, creating an album that has the pastoral ambiance of Americana and the simmering fervor of Indian classical music.
The album does not often bounce like his…
Category: world
On A La Altura: Visionary Mexican Music 1977-1999, Volume 1, a new compilation of Mexican experimental music from the latter quarter of the 20th century, the misconception that cosmic exploration is reserved for futuristic science fiction is thoroughly righted. Instead, ambient and New Age ruminations sprawl with celestial curiosity, while pre-Hispanic instruments and cinematic field recordings ground the secrets of the universe in our own verdant home-world. The result is a fascinating dialogue between ancient wisdom and Space-Age zeal, with just enough rock grooves for the body to pick up wherever your intellectual journey peters out.
Curated by the Mexican journalist Carlos “Tropicaza” Icaza and Mark “Frosty” McNeill of…
Never Too Soon is the second album to appear under Brazilian musical icon Joyce Moreno‘s name in 2026; the first, Joyce & Tutty Moreno was a Jazz Is Dead collaboration with her husband the legendary Brazilian drummer and Adrian Younge. She’s been pretty prolific in the 21st century’s third decade, releasing albums for Biscoito Fino at home and Far Out Recordings in the U.S. and U.K. (In January 2027 she followed this set with Jobim Extravaganza, a live album for Storyville fronting the Danish Radio Big Band.)
Recorded in Brazil, the set was co-produced by the married duo. Joyce is a phenomenal guitarist and her voice retains its trademark elasticity, while Tutty helms the drum kit alongside bassist Jorge Helder, guitarist Lula Galvão, and…
By the early 1980s, the electric organ had started to infiltrate the iconic hotel bands that defined the Addis Ababa music scene of the previous decade. And so keys player, arranger and producer Teodros Makonnen took the leap. Using nothing but a double-manual Yamaha (with a built-in drum sequencer), he made this album of instrumental versions of classic Ethiopian songs.
Originally released on cassettes in the ’80s, it was all recorded in a single take under the shadow of curfews – and, in doing so, mapped out his version of the future of Ethiopian music. It’s a vibe: pop melodies with deep roots in Ethiopian folk music, dreamy runs doused in hazy reverb, and minimalist waltz rhythms shuffling from the tinny drum machine. Some tracks are…
After four consecutive English language albums Ed Motta returns to singing in Brazilian Portuguese on Toc-Toc. A significant shift to be sure, but it’s not the only one. Motta always surrounds himself with the best studio musicians in Brazil. In sharp contrast, Toc-Toc was recorded in his apartment. He programmed and/or played all instruments and provided all voices. Co-produced with longtime collaborator Michel Limma, Motta received lyric assistance from comic book artist and spouse Edna Lopes. His goal was to bring two different genres of contemporary music together: Electronica and traditionally structured songwriting. He regards this as a pop-R&B album threaded with jazz influences. One can hear trace elements of artists who fascinated him while growing up,…
Orchestra Baobab was founded in 1970 to serve as house band at Dakar’s Baobab Club. Between 1971 and 1987 they cut numerous albums fusing Afro-Cuban rhythms, Wolof griot traditions, mbalax, Congolese rhumba, and jazz. 1982’s internationally celebrated cassette Pirates Choice offered the depth and breadth of their musical range. It has been reissued internationally several times. After splitting in the ’90s, they reunited for 2002’s Specialist in All Styles. 2017’s Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng offered homage to OB’s late original vocalist. No less than six of the band’s former members have died, leaving alto saxophonist and musical director Seydou Norou “Thierno” Koité the only survivor from the original group. On Made in Senegal, he used veteran…
In the small town of Bomarzo in central Italy lies the Parco dei Mostri, a 16th-century garden filled with enormous, grotesque sculptures that have been carved directly into the rock. Also known as the Sacro Bosco (“Sacred Grove”) it was commissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini and stands apart from the more ordered ideals of Renaissance garden design. Among its many sculptures, the Orcus Mouth — a huge stone face with an open mouth leading into a small chamber — has become its most recognizable image.
Its cavernous jaws have also found their way into music: Anna von Hausswolff used the sculpture for All Thoughts Fly, Italian prog band Taproban had featured the same image on their 2002 debut album, and now Mexican trio…
As a club DJ, radio broadcaster, podcaster, and label founder, Jamz Supernova has become one of the U.K.’s foremost tastemakers, exposing audiences to music from around the world, particularly from regional dance music scenes. Her first official release is Dance Around the World, an unmixed selection related to her radio show and event series. The set is programmed to resemble a day-into-night sequence, with the more acoustic, earthy tracks up front, and the heavy dance grooves in the second half. She gives a particular spotlight to Maloya music from the Réunion Island, first with the lush harmonies of Simangavole and Soa Ravelo, then later with a jagged electro remix of a song by singer and storyteller Lo Rwa Kaf. Brazilian group Oruã’s “Capoeira Demo”…
Somewhere in the middle of the Bone Bame touring cycle, 10LEC6 stopped being able to work. Nicole, the singer whose voice is the entire centre of the group, was served an OQTF, the French administrative order requiring a person to leave the country. The practical result was that the band could not honour festival bookings outside France. A Paris collective built almost entirely on movement, on diaspora, on rhythms carried between continents, was pinned to one territory by paperwork. It was Nicole who then told the others the legend of Ako Akas, a mountain in southern Cameroon that you are not supposed to walk around, because those who try are said to vanish into a dance with no end. The band have said plainly that the story struck…
The mid-20th century was a period of dramatic social upheaval across the Caribbean, especially for the islands of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. Claimed by the Dutch in colonial times, this area became a hub for the slave trade, and following abolition it gradually receded into a sleepy cultural backwater. But an influx of outsiders—first oil companies, then later waves of tourists and migrants—opened the area to the outside world, sparking cultural mixing and a new spirit of political self-determination that led to events like the 1969 Curaçao uprising.
Antiyano Progresivo: Musical Experiments from the Former Dutch Caribbean, 1968-1986 offers a snapshot of this cultural revolution, as local musicians blended homegrown…
For the most recent offering on Easy Eye Sound, the Swiss-Ecuadorian siblings Hermanos Gutiérrez wanted to craft an instrumental love letter to South America. The resulting ten-track breezy affair, Los Ojos Del Cóndor, is an elegant journey through these soundscapes.
Alejandro & Estevan Gutiérrez worked in Nashville with studio friends and producer Dan Auerbach, keeping a visual cue in mind while recording: a lone condor soaring across the Andes. That description, as well as the brothers’ travel and heritage, led to the album’s instrumental offerings, which mix nylon-string plucking and light rhythms with moaning organ and chango guitar strumming, an instrument straight from the Andes.
The opening “Canto Andino” sets the tone and…
The music of Dur-Dur Band captures the energy and optimism of 1980s Mogadishu. They were the prime exponents of a sound which blended Somali melodies with disco, funk, jazz, soul and reggae. As Dur-Dur translates as stream, all these elements could be compared to tributaries feeding into the smooth running of a larger river. It is this combination of local flavours and international influences that makes their music so appealing – refreshingly different while underpinned with familiarity and always eminently danceable. This latest compilation from Analog Africa follows on from the label’s 2018 release of the earlier parts of their catalogue, ‘Dur Dur of Somalia – Volume 1, Volume 2 and Previously Unreleased Tracks.’
Despite the joyful sound on these…
The most useful thing to know about Pure Confusion is how it was made. King Ayisoba flew to England in November 2024, sat down in Adrian Sherwood’s studio in Ramsgate, and played the whole record in one afternoon.
He says the songs were already finished in his head. Nothing about his performance was altered after the fact. The bass, the cello, the saxophone, the harmonica, the dub processing on the desk: all of it was added later, to a recording of a man who was alone in a room with a two-string lute made from a calabash and goatskin.
That order of operations explains what the album sounds like. Ayisoba does not adjust to anybody. He plays the kologo as rhythm and melody at once, hard and unbroken, and Sherwood’s…
Innovative guitar duo Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero began working together in Mexico City in the 1990s, first in the heavy metal band Tierra Ácida, then as a beach bar-playing duo in Ixtapa, then as a busking duo in Dublin, Ireland, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan. They are citizens of the world. OurHome was recorded and produced by the duo in Japan at Tokyo’s NK Studio with mixing assistance from Dave Sardy. The country, its culture, and its people are beloved by the duo. The album marks RyG’s return to a primarily acoustic sound, though electric guitars appear. The 11-track set also includes their first-ever vocal song and guest instrumentalists including jazz pianist Hiromi, guitarists Yukihiro Atsumi and Marty Friedman (ex-Megadeth), and cellist Hiyori Okuda.
Within Haruomi Hosono’s decades-spanning career, 2006’s “Walking Vibration” isn’t particularly notable. The celebrated Japanese musician made this flute-accented instrumental for a TV show aired that same year about people seeking clarity in life via a famous pilgrimage around the country’s Shikoku region. It’s a minor entry in a sprawling songbook that changed the course of his home country’s music scene and influenced creators around the world, preserved only on a 2008 “archive” collection.
Yet on his treasure box of an album Yours Sincerely, the 79-year-old Hosono revisits what was once just background music for a four-episode drama. He keeps the traditional percussive touches of the original intact but adds…
Strut presents Nigeria 80, the next essential chapter in the legendary Nigeria 70 series, diving deep into the explosive sound world of 1980s Nigeria. Following the global impact of 2001’s Nigeria 70, which helped introduce rare Nigerian recordings to international audiences, Nigeria 80 continues the journey, unearthing a rich, restless, and wildly creative decade of music from Lagos to Enugu. Despite economic instability and restrictive political conditions in the ’80s, Nigeria’s music industry flourished, driven by a growing network of independent labels such as Tabansi and Phonodisk, which championed local artists and expanded creative freedom. The ’80s also marked a significant rise in visibility for female artists, with trailblazers like Onyeka Onwenu…
Adrian Younge always has several projects on deck. In 2026 alone he produced and played on three releases from his and Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s Jazz Is Dead label, with one more coming. Further, his Linear Labs studio and label have issued three 2026 outings: the completely solo outing Younge, the EP Afro-Disco Makossa, and the forthcoming Proud of Me in collaboration with British singer/songwriter ALA.NI.
That’s a lot of work for one man, but Younge’s organic process makes it all possible. What’s more, he makes it look easy.
Afro-Disco Makossa was born from a single question: “What would a Ghanaian producer in ’76 have made if he set out to create an American disco record for his hometown?”…
Chopping Mountain is the sixth long player from Ibibio Sound Machine. It was recorded in South London at their Vanguard studio and produced by synthesist/saxophonist Max Grunhard. It’s the first time ISM has eschewed an outside producer since 2019’s Doko Mien. Their subjects across these ten tracks are love, social and political resistance, unity, and healing, both societal and individual. While these aren’t unfamiliar topics, they are presented with a seamless maturity and an unwillingness to compromise. The songs were rehearsed, performed, and recorded collectively; they’re chock-full of classic West African highlife, mutant post-punk, Afrobeat, electronic sounds, and breathtaking 21st century soul.
Opener “Burning in Lagos” is introduced by…