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Despite describing the piano in liner notes as a “non-malleable instrument” (something specialists in prepared techniques would presumably challenge) and “an instrument [he’s] been avoiding throughout [his] compositional career,” Ivan Vukosavljevic, a Serbian composer based in The Hague, has nevertheless created a mind in the heart, a solo piano collection produced in collaboration with Portuguese pianist Joana Gama. She’s issued recordings on a number of labels, including Room40 and Pianola, and presented music by Satie and, on Travels in My Homeland: Portuguese Piano Music (Grand Piano, 2019), composers from her homeland.
Inspirations came from three primary sources for a mind in the heart, the music from…

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New York-based Japanese composer Miho Hazama, who has garnered accolades with her contemporary large ensemble m_unit, displays a maturity far beyond her years.
On Frames, the Grammy-nominated composer honors the legacy of the influential Danish Radio Big Band, crafting a new suite inspired by its musical directors, including Bob Brookmeyer, Thad Jones, Ray Pitts, Palle Mikkelborg, and the recently departed pianist Jim McNeely, to whom the album is dedicated.
The album opens with a sense of optimism and devotion to the music. “And The Door Unsealed” unveils cascading sonic layers in succession before settling into a mid-tempo, soulful flow. Driven by a warm swinging energy, the piece…

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Jazz has long operated with something like an open-door policy, absorbing influences from classical, folk, rock, and beyond. Turkish-American composer Mehmet Ali Sanlikol extends that tradition in a particularly personal way on The Electric Oud Man Speaks and You Listen…, a five-track project that brings Turkish makam, jazz improvisation, and rock energy into a shared musical language.
Sanlıkol’s musical background reflects that synthesis. Raised in Istanbul by a classical pianist mother, he grew up surrounded by Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin before discovering jazz — a turning point that led him to study the music more deeply and eventually attend Berklee College of Music. Boston is now his home…

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Adam Kyriakou’s Department is a one-man band in the style of Neil Hannon’s Divine Comedy and Matt Johnson’s The The; others may pass in and out, but Kyriakou steers the ship.
Audacity Files proves to be the maiden voyage for what should be an interesting and impressive career in sonic development. “Shadow Play” embodies the freneticism of the Lennon-McCartney opus “A Day in the Life”: brass, loops, and percussion lunging at the unsuspecting listener. Incidentally, “Shadow Play” is the longest tune on the record: despite pushing the boundaries of pop, Department wisely keeps the runtime to a palatable two-minute average.
Purportedly inspired by a voyage to his ancestral Macedonia, Department incorporates…

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There’s just something timeless about Montreal. It carries a deep European history into a future rife with possibility, clear-eyed concern, and ever-expanding cultural diversity. These elements are among the building blocks used by the many recondite and stylistically adventurous artists the city produces — much like Atsuko Chiba, who present a sure-footed path through the perpetually shifting terrain they choose to walk through Montreal’s geography.
On their eponymous fourth full-length, the band immediately introduce their complications with “Retention,” a song that dares you to define genre, swapping new style elements in and out of its slow, twilight creep. Vocalist Karim Lakhdar’s rap-accented lyrics trace the boundaries…

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To truly listen is not a passive gesture but a radical, embodied act of attention. Christina Vantzou’s The Reintegration of the Ear offers a slower presence: one rooted in care, intimacy, and reflection. Composed by the Greek-American composer between 2023 and 2025 after being commissioned by INA GRM as a multi-channel acousmatic work, The Reintegration of the Ear unfolds as a durational electroacoustic suite, meticulously arranged by Vantzou and performed with Irene Kurka (voice), John Also Bennett (flutes, synthesizers), Roman Hiele (double bass), and Oliver Coates (cello).
…Their play is fluid and instinctive, requiring each performer to listen to each other for small cues and inspired turns. Glissandos rise as waves crash against shores; the tides reflect…

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Annea Lockwood was sitting on the shore of Flathead Lake in Montana with her partner, the composer Ruth Anderson. It was the summer of 1975, and it’d been a couple years since the two fell in love.
Lockwood was, among other things, enamored with the way Anderson’s music could make her feel “so at peace and so part of everything.” A similar phenomenon was happening here — she was soaking in the sounds around her, like the jet skis and motorboats in the distance. She was fascinated by the difference in speed between human activity and, say, a stone striking water, rippling outwards. “What if we could hear all those rhythms,” she wondered, “as one huge rhythm?”
At the heart of her sentiment is a certain…

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nagoyaka na kaze / 和やかな風 – (quiet wind): a collection of forward-thinking electronic experiments sourced from central Japan – co-curated by Nagoya artist abentis for Facta & K-LONE’s Wisdom Teeth imprint. The project profiles a close-knit community of music makers operating in and around the Japanese city of Nagoya: one of the country’s most populous and industrial cities, but one all too often overlooked in terms of its cultural significance.
Curated in close collaboration with local scene organiser Yuya Abe – aka abentis – the record seeks to capture the creative energy of a community of artists making hard-to-define, future-facing electronic music away from the clamour of the bigger cities.

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1. Caroline Polachek – Look at Me Now
2. Mike Polizze – Cheewawa
3. Royal Trux – Waterpark
4. King Kong – Scooba Dooba Diver
5. Steve Gunn – The Handshake
6. Red Red Meat – Gorshin
7. Oneohtrix Point Never – Krumville
8. The Halo Benders – Virginia Reel Around the Fountain
9. Jessica Pratt – World On a String
10. Kim Gordon – Dirty Tech
11. Viktor Vaughn – Vaudeville Villain
12. Stress Eater – Giving Back to the Universe
13. Sun Ra – Trying to Put the Blame On Me (Live)
14. Sunburned Hand of the Man – Nimbus
15. Kurt Vile – Constant Repeat

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Having previously cast themselves as 19th-century American vagrants, Anglo-American duo Ben Parker and David Berkeley, aka Sons of Town Hall (named for a ’90s “junk raft” built by octogenarian nomad Poppa Neutrino to cross the Atlantic), present a new concept and fictional world on Of Ghosts and Gods. Here, Victorian-era explorers Josiah Chester Jones (Berkeley) and George Ulysses Brown (Parker) travel the world on a self-built, mythical raft. They are joined, musically at least, by Jordan Katz, variously on trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone and tuba, David Felberg, Elizabeth Young, Kimberly Fredenburgh and Dana Winogradhorns on strings, percussionist Mathias Kunzli, woodwinds by Elizabeth VanArsdel, Kevin Vigneau and Jesse Tatum, with Will Robertson…

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“When I was faced with the challenge of writing and recording a new album, I had the choice to stay where I was comfortable, under the sage guidance of a producer or to step out into the dark and produce it myself. It became clear that if I was going to grow in the craft, I needed to become my own lighthouse. So I made the commitment to take on the Producer role. There were a lot of sleepless nights.
Writing Long Wave Home, though no less daunting, became a refuge for me—a place to explore interpersonal connections and the rise and fall of emotions that come with relationships. Writing an album can be very agitating, but it’s a discomfort I am comfortable with. What a gift it is to spend my time examining my inner world…

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French TV’s latest CD, The Spanish Caper, is the 16th in their long history and their 2nd for Cuneiform.
Disc One is new songs recorded in Spain featuring charter member bassist/composer Mike Sary, guitarist Kasumi Yoneda (also from the Japanese band TEE), long-time drummer Jeff Gard, plus members of the French band Mentat Routage (who also make up French TV’s line-up when touring Europe).
The second disc is a collection of somewhat-obscure rock covers from the late 60s-early 70s. Songs featured include deep tracks from Iron Butterfly, Kinks, Mountain, Spirit, Procol Harum, Traffic, Steppenwolf, The Guess Who, James Gang and more The line-up…

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Michael: Songs from the Motion Picture is the official companion album to the brand-new biopic, Michael. This album highlights 13 songs showcased in the film, spanning from The Jackson 5 to The Jacksons to Michael’s chart-topping solo success with “Off the Wall” and “Thriller.”
…Filling the superstar’s shoes is his nephew (and son of brother Jermaine) Jaafar Jackson, who reportedly will do some of his own singing in the film. Despite that, the soundtrack features only Michael’s original vocals. The movie’s screenplay has been penned by Academy Award nominee and Tony winner John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator on film; Red, Moulin Rouge! on stage) and also stars Colman Domingo as Joe Jackson, Nia Long as Katherine Jackson, Kendrick Sampson…

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L8 Antique have been winning converts on the Johannesburg circuit since the mid-2000s.
Usually performing with just four people on stage, the group’s rhythm section wove such tight polyrhythms that it gave the feel of a larger ensemble. This sound blended well with the soulful approach of former lead singer Phumla Siyobi, who was an iconic presence. With the emergence of a new lead vocalist, Itumeleng ‘Manyanga’ Mothomoholo, the band has reorientated itself. Manyanga’s style is elemental, drawing from Balobedu cosmology, with lyrics subsumed by melodies and chants that sound channelled. While the group’s original cross-rhythms remain, in this, the group’s debut, they sit within a more dramatic sound, featuring brass choruses,…

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-1 outside / 24 inside documents collaborations between Zhao Cong and Kevin Corcoran when the two were in Beijing to perform at a series run by Aloe Records. After the show, the two spent an evening recording outside in an underpass below a major bridge on the northeastern stretch of Beijing’s 3rd Ring Road. Then later, they spent an afternoon recording in a studio often used to present shows. Both of these musicians focus on the materiality of sound and the processes of sound creation, delving in to the tiniest detailed textures and timbres of objects they utilize. Zhao is credited with “rotating mobile phone stand, karaoke light, tape recorder, etc.” and Corcoran with “snare drum, objects, and feedback.” But both Zhao and Corcoran are also keenly interested in…

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On her latest album, Delphine Dora is concerned with temporality, its pace and pressures it produces. L’ineluctable pulsation du temps finds the French pianist, composer and improviser summoning a gentle collection of piano cycles with drone undertows. The record took shape during a time of intense touring, while Dora was simultaneously busy engaging with writings on acceleration and alienation by Hartmut Rosa, a “sociologist of speed”.
According to Rosa, capitalist societies are programmed for constant economic growth, which forces us into a rat race, approaching the world instrumentally and as a competition. It may sound too esoteric for a German sociologist, but Rosa proposes a different mode of…

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The release of Mitski’s concert film The Land and its accompanying live album last autumn consolidated her status as a kind of art-school Taylor Swift: glancingly elusive but still capable of grand emotional spectacle.
Recorded with her live band, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me showcases Mitski’s gift for cutting vintage musical theatre stylings and half-lit Americana with acerbic art-pop, the jaunty list-song ‘Rules’ or the chaotic evil ‘Where’s My Phone?’ almost sharing a theatrical moment with current-day David Byrne.
‘That White Cat’ simmers with jarring anger at parasitic forces who seek to commodify and consume while ‘Dead Women’s disturbing Lana Del Cohen transmission features the lyric…

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A project established by two veterans of the Stockholm indie scene to delve into (circa) 1980s inspirations like post-punk, new wave, jangle pop, and indie pop, Salt Lake Alley combined these styles while favoring post-punk on their 2020 full-length debut. While they leaned more heavily into jangle and indie pop with the follow-up, their third album, Always Out of Time, finds them expanding their lineup to four and committing almost fully to a giddy, bittersweet indie pop veiled in shimmer and echo. Members Gustav Tranback, Mikael Carlsson, and later personnel Fredrik Jalker and Thomas Aherne hail from like-minded and not-quite-as-like-minded Swedish acts such as the Honeydrips, the Garlands, and Paper Hearts, among several others.

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