Live at Smoke is the last of the living birthday celebrations for the late, great drummer, Al Foster. These celebrations had been ongoing for more than a decade, and fortunately, the 2025 session was recorded on January 18 and 19, 2025. Foster passed away on May 28, 2025, before the music could be released, but Foster did hear the final mixes. Foster leads a top-shelf quartet for this last celebration. Saxophonist Chris Potter, who was very close to Foster, was a regular at these celebrations. Joining him were the acclaimed pianist Brad Mehldau and renowned bassist Joe Martin.
Foster has a history with many of the greats, from Sonny Rollins to Miles Davis. Accordingly, the set list includes compositions from Rollins and Wayne Shorter as well as a piece each…
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Originating from the port city Tumaco in Colombia’s Pacific region, Bejuco‘s name comes from a jungle word for a hanging plant stem, symbolizing truth, wisdom, and evolution, reflecting their deep connection to their roots.
The second album from this dynamic outfit follows their 2021 debut, Batea, which introduced listeners to their self-styled ‘bambuco beat’ – that is, a seamless combination of the rhythms of Afrobeat with the tenor of the region’s traditional music. So, marimbas vie with drums, bass, guitar and synths, along with thrilling, fiery vocals.
Listening to the irresistible opener, ‘Me Mueve el Tambó’, tells you much of what you need to know about the album’s intensity. There’s a similar urgency to most of the other eight…
If you have never listened to or heard of Beans On Toast before, thinking of it as only an absolutely delicious evening snack, then you are not far off the mark. Beans On Toast is the stage name of Essex-born folk singer Jay McAllister. Since 2009, on the first day of December, an early Christmas present drops on the mat, and this year is no exception.
Kill Them with Kindness was recorded at the Greenmount Studios in Leeds with a full band. It’s a thoughtful collection with a host of social commentary throughout. However, it still features the humorous, playful lyrics that Beans On Toast excel at — songs about travelling, meeting new people, Tequila drinking, Cats, Shrewsbury and even Taylor Swift.
The opening salvo, ‘The Great North Road’, is…
Maxi arrives hot on the heels of 40 – a commemorative reflection of The Wedding Present’s complex and fascinating catalogue across four-vinyl and four-CD formats, with the compilation’s final track being ‘Hot Wheels’ – a track from Maxi.
Although Maxi follows the same concept as Mini, the 2025 model of The Wedding Present’s vehicle is discernibly grander, with Gedge hinting that guitarist Rachael Wood – who was new to the band at the time of writing – might be one of the reasons why. ‘Scream, If You Want To Go Faster’ – the opening track – mesmerises with a slow-building, post-rock feel before it revs up to set the EP’s tone and flows into the infectious riff of ‘Grand Prix’ – itself driven forward by the complexities of Wood’s playing.
The new live album from MC50, capturing the unrelenting energy of the 2018 world tour that reignited the spirit of MC5 – one of rock’s most radical and influential bands.
10 MORE extends MC5’s legacy with a high-voltage document of the MC50 lineup led by MC5 founding member Wayne Kramer and featuring an all‑star ensemble of rock innovators: Kim Thayil (Soundgarden), Brendan Canty (Fugazi), Billy Gould (Faith No More), Matt Cameron (Pearl Jam) and Marcus Durant (Zen Guerrilla).
Recorded live in Seattle, WA, Cincinnati, OH, and Hamburg, Germany, 10 MORE roars through MC5’s most iconic songs — including ‘The American Ruse,’ ‘Call Me Animal,’ ‘Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa‑Fa‑Fa),’ ‘Looking at You’…
The 2012-2013 Wrecking Ball tour marked the start of the current incarnation of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It was the first without late, great founding members Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons, and the tour served in part as a eulogy to those fallen heroes.
The passing of Phantom Dan and the Big Man also triggered major changes on stage: Wrecking Ball featured an exponential expansion of the E Street Band, ushering in a horn section, backing singers, and a percussionist — a blueprint still in use when Springsteen returned to the road in 2023 and retained through the last concert in Milan this past July.
Given how many new musicians were involved, it’s remarkable that the 2012-13 tour…
From a very early source tape, “Apparition” has been given the sonic overload it desperately deserved and even boasts a couple of bonus tracks from the time.
The Legendary Pink Dots are an influential, staggeringly prolific group led by enigmatic frontman Edward Ka-Spel. Emerging from the early-’80s post-punk underground and sometimes categorized as industrial due to associations with bands like Skinny Puppy, the group’s music is nearly impossible to pin down, drawing from Krautrock, ambient, folk, synth pop, and numerous other styles.
Apparition originally came out in 1982, the same year as their album Brighter Now. The first edition was a cassette only on the band’s own…
“An integral factor behind the production of Abacab was Hugh Padgham, an engineer responsible for the ‘gated reverb’ drum sound that defined the 1980s. As a result, Phil Collins’ drums have incredible definition across this entire pressing. Tony Banks’ keyboards often reside upfront in the mix, occasionally creeping in and out three-dimensionally during the title track or lush chords filling up the soundstage on ‘Keep It Dark.’ A massive highlight is ‘Dodo/Lurker,’ where Mike Rutherford’s bass is at its deepest, and the varying tonality of Collins’ vocals gives the different parts of the track a distinguishable characterization.”
Certified multi-platinum-selling in several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, Genesis’ album Abacab…
“Nothng but manna from analog heaven can be found within the balance of Analogue Productions’ year-long-plus Atlantic 75 anniversary reissue series … but to my ears, the crème de la crème of the lot are all the reissuances culled from the prime, more progressive-leaning ’70s era of the Genesis catalog. … A few highlights to whet your aural whistle: 1) Mike Rutherford’s high-pitched, 12-string acoustic guitarwork and the overall rise/fall drama of “The Musical Box” (LP1, Side 1, Track 1, November 1971’s Nursery Cryme). 2) The full majesty of Tony Banks’ lengthy piano intro (and outro!) and Steve Hackett’s career-defining guitar solo on “Firth of Fifth” (LP1, Side 2, Track 1, September 1973’s Selling England by the Pound). 3) Peter Gabriel’s pleading lead vocals…
…deluxe 3CD set include 19 extra tracks – focusing on lesser-known B-sides, late ’80s and early ’90s albums, and even material that Tom Bailey and Alannah Currie released in the ’90s under the name Babble – along with the premiere CD release of ‘Into the Gap Live’, the audio of a longform video release from 1984 that was recently issued on vinyl for Record Store Day.
The 1980s were heady times for synthesizers and drum machines. Ushering out the distorted three-chord guitars and traditional drum/bass/guitar lineups of the punk and stadium era rock of the decade that preceded it.
New Wave bands like OMD, Human League, and The Pet Shop Boys created a dance-friendly genre that was light on sneers and anger but…
Formed in North London, Madness have grown into one of Britain’s most successful and best-loved bands, selling millions of records worldwide and inspiring generations of artists. More than four decades on, their music, spirit, and style are woven into the fabric of British culture.
Madness released their latest record Theatre of the Absurd Presents C’est La Vie in 2023, which was the band’s first ever No.1 studio album in their 45 year career. The band have also had two No.1 compilation albums, 10 UK Top 10 albums, 15 Top 10 singles and have won a multitude of awards including a prestigious Ivor Novello.
Hit Parade celebrates that remarkable legacy, a career-spanning anthology, the band have chosen 45 singles from 45 years from…
Over two sides of an LP, Ensamseglaren takes us along paths of genteel jazz, intriguing experimentation, thunderous doom, and brassy sighs capable of breaking your heart. With her 12-strong ensemble, reassembled after a five-year hiatus in order to help work through the grief of losing her father (the lonely sailor to whom the album title alludes), Anna Högberg has transcended any clichés about getting the old band back together. Their collective expression, their artistry, their simply being with one another, proves itself to be a viable method for processing the chest-hollowing feeling of parental loss.
‘Ensamseglaren / Inte Esam’ begins with gentle tapping, scraping, and a gloopy suction sound. Rain disturbs a window, and a rope appears…
For around a decade, Philadelphia’s Camae Ayewa has been constructing sonically experimental and thematically radical works of art. As Moor Mother, the musician and poet’s art often offers searing takedowns of structures of oppression and on the imperialism, colonialism and brutality that has resulted in generations of Black trauma. She delves deep into this on her 2019 album Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes, the sense of widespread socio-political discontent illustrated by the record’s brutal, auditory chaos. Now, in her latest release, Moor Mother reissues that same album as a brand new orchestrated edition, featuring the string quintet Wooden Elephant and The Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, conducted by Dirk Kaftan, once again blurring the boundaries…
One of the challenges for a group like the Kronos Quartet is to keep finding new pathways to explore. They’ve spent a half-century commissioning works from cutting-edge composers, collaborating with unlikely partners, and stretching the boundaries of what a string quartet can do. Where else is there to go? Their latest release, Forgive Us For, has a few answers: Palestine, Iceland, and Ukraine. The album features three very different pieces, each topical in its own way.
The opener is “Ya Taali’een el-Jabal” (Going Up the Mountain), a traditional song that Palestinian women would use to communicate with men in prison. The album notes date it to the British Mandate; other theories trace it back further, to Ottoman times. More recently, vocalist…
With their latest EP, the four-song A Brief Intermission in the Flattening of Time, Spanish Love Songs adopt their roomiest and rangiest perspectives to date. Though clocking in at only 14 minutes, the project follows a cogent arc, as the band and various guests, including Kevin Devine and Illuminati Hotties’ Sarah Tudzin, traverse the tundra of disillusionment and egoic right-sizing. Unsurprisingly, Brief Intermission, like 2023’s No Joy and 2020’s Brave Faces Everyone, brims with distinct earworms.
On “Lifers Too”, Slocum articulates anger (at his parents’ generation), guilt (about the actions of his own generation), fear (for the entire species), and apathy (as a result of being thoroughly overwhelmed). In Springsteenian…
While Jackson Scribner’s sophomore release likely won’t elicit cries of “Judas” directed at him, his move to a fuller, more electric sound warrants attention, just not the kind that involves booing.
Arriving four years after his eponymous debut, Depression Kids, expands the mostly acoustic sound of that album without detracting from his earnest vocals and insightful lyrics. While his songwriting remains honest and authentic, the added instrumentation and arrangements succeed in fleshing out the songs and adding interesting textures to the overall sound. The result is a warm-sounding album featuring an accomplished core of musicians whose symbiotic playing throughout helps fill in the spaces between Scribner’s words and makes for some perfect…
Kyle Hamlett haunts the eerie corners of Americana, but he does it with a sideways grin. His songs jitter gleefully amid spectral harmonies, gothy but also celebratory, like a skeleton dancing a cakewalk across a stage. Hamlett fronted Nashville’s Lylas in his younger days and has, more lately, recorded with pedal steel phenom Luke Schneider. This album is a solo effort, though the artist draws support from a range of Americana players. A good bit of the late Justin Townes Earl’s backing band turns up to play here: Joe McMahan on guitar and a range of exotic instruments (cavaquinho! Kalimba!), Adam Bednarik on bass and Bryan Owings on drums and percussion.
Song’s like “Fool’s Moon” set up a twitching, skittering tension in the picked guitars, but…
Carson McHone begins 2025’s Pentimento with the sounds of birds chirping outside and McHone reciting the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, as they appeared in a letter to Margaret Fuller. Neither of these things necessarily define McHone’s creative approach on Pentimento, but their presence speaks volumes about how this LP differs from her previous work. There’s a musical and lyrical intimacy in these songs and performances that sounds natural and unforced, and she is clearly not wary of letting her poetic sensibilities take the lead in her writing. According to McHone, nearly all the songs on Pentimento began as poems before she struck on the idea of setting them to music, and while the words mesh comfortably with the melodies, much of this album…
It’s fair to say the past decade has brought some challenges for Swedish singer-songwriter Marlene Oak. Ten years ago, she got the difficult diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Type 2, then just a few years ago she experienced an episode of severe psychosis, something she described as “terrifying”, leading her to question her own reality and even fearing there was a demon inside her.
Understandably, it took her some time to recover, but even whilst still feeling fragile, she felt compelled to turn her trauma into art, and with Peter Morén, she co-wrote and produced what would be Welcome to Oak Land.
“I thought I always knew / What I wanted to do / Now I’m split up in two,” Oak sings on the album opener ‘Threading a Fine Line’, no doubt…
The ongoing retrospective of the late John Wetton’s live recordings lands in the 1990s, during the time he was plying his trade as a solo artist. This 10-disc set, which presents eight shows from that decade in either remastered or revised form, is a treasure trove of material recorded in Japan, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands.
While there are inevitably repeated songs across such a wide-ranging set of shows – especially the most crucial pieces from his work with Asia, King Crimson and UK – there are plenty of variations in performance and arrangement, and Wetton is in fine voice throughout.
Asia’s ‘Heat of the Moment’ pops up in every show, of course; but often in rearranged form, while Crimson’s ‘Easy Money’ regularly…