Since their beginnings, indie folk duo the Milk Carton Kids have been associated with a hushed, melancholy brand of song as well as with effortless guitar technique, with both Kenneth Pattengale and rhythm guitarist Joey Ryan playing vintage 1950s-model Martin and Gibson guitars, respectively. With their fourth studio album, All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do (2017), they recorded with a backing band for the first time, before returning to the duo model. Since then, however, they’ve toyed with instrumentation, and their seventh LP, Lost Cause Lover Fool, finds them incorporating banjo, mandolin, bass, and/or percussion on some tracks for subtle texture shifts on an album guided by the theme of transformation. At the same time,…
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The last Foo Fighters album, 2023’s But Here We Are, was a profound act of public grieving, the band’s first music since the tragic death of beloved drummer Taylor Hawkins only a year earlier. “Someone said I’ll never see your face again/Part of me just can’t believe it’s true,” Dave Grohl sang on the LP’s determined anthem “Under You.” For a band whose three-decade run has always been marked by how uncannily well-adjusted they seem, seeing them power through such a major loss in real time made for what was arguably the most emotionally intense listen in their discography. That is, until now. The band’s 12th album, Your Favorite Toy, is the next chapter in that story of fighting through grief and looking forward. Yet where its predecessor often had a reflective…
Ringo Starr’s debut outing with T Bone Burnett, 2025’s Look Up, was a creative triumph, so the pair haven’t messed much with the formula on this swift follow-up. Returning are Molly Tuttle – duetting with Starr on three of the 10 tracks, including Robert Plant/Alison Krauss-styled opener ‘Returning Without Tears’ – and Billy Strings for the Everly Brothers-fashioned harmonies of ‘My Baby Don’t Want Nothing’.
Sheryl Crow pops up on the title track (which comes with Ringo’s meditation-informed spoken-word section: “Don’t be attacked by your thoughts… let them come in, let them go”) while St. Vincent cameos on ‘Choose Love’, a reworking of a previously-released 2005 Ringo song now given mid-’60s R&B swing and…
David Sylvian-led Japan became legends of ‘80s electronic music, and Sylvian himself had a renowned solo career with a series of more and more experimental releases. Yet quite a few fans of the genre sometimes need to be reminded that all other members of the band had a series of good to excellent releases with their solo, joint or collaborative/band efforts. This is particularly true of Richard Barbieri, the man that many critics cite as the architect of the Japan’s synth programming, who has behind him not only a series of electro albums, but also became an integral part of prog rock favourites, Porcupine Tree.
Barbieri has been a bit quiet for the last five years (his previous effort was Under a Spell from 2021) but is now back with aptly titled…
There are so many ways that musicians can currently cooperate, without necessarily having to be physically together in the same studio, room, basement or whatever, and we got a clear example here with Developments, the album that is, well, developed by Six Missing & Patrik Berg Almkvisth.
Behind the Six Missing moniker is Austin, Texas-based ambient composer and sound designer TJ Dumser, while Almkvisth is a musician/pianist and actor from Stockholm. To create this seven-part set of ambient movements, Almkvisth kept sending improvised solo piano pieces in their raw form to Dumser. Then, as their PR notes, Six Missing then expanded each one into a fully realised scene, cycling them through tape machines, routing them into modular systems, and…
One might debate whether the phrase “lies, damn lies and statistics” belongs to nineteenth-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli or to Mark Twain, but it is hard to dispute the popularity reflected in over 100 million streams. Whatever the numbers say, Swedish pianist Joel Lyssarides’ music is clearly resonating with audiences around the world. Alongside his streaming success, Lyssarides has accumulated numerous jazz awards, which makes it all the more intriguing that the two words most naturally applied to his music might be “quiet” and “intense.” Classically trained, he deals in subtlety, light grooves and fine details. His melodic compositions and cascading patterns are supported by his longtime collaborators, bassist Niklas Fernqvist and drummer…
Wielding little more than drums and a keyboard, Osaka-based duo HYPER GAL are waging a perpetual loudness war against themselves.
Formed in the late 2010s, the band was inspired by the anarchic creativity of Japanese noise acts like Melt-Banana, Solmania, and Boredoms. But while their forebears deconstructed rock conventions, HYPER GAL’s primary influence is the glistening textures of pop. Their songwriting formula is bracingly simple: Kurumi Kadoya loops a keyboard phrase, pushing the volume until the melody grinds into a thick harmonic paste. Then she lays into the drums, heavy on the cymbals, while her bandmate Koharu Ishida half-sings and half-raps with a dreamy detachment.
The band’s 2021 debut album, Pure, which…
Alternative pop-rock outfit, CHROMA, have put out their newest record 25 Forever. The Welsh trio decided to take a different approach when it came to the writing of this record. Where their debut album, Ask For Angela, was a commentary of social-political issues, this record takes on a more personal approach as they look back and discuss life lessons most people will experience in their 20s. From relationships to mental health to existentialism, CHROMA have created something honest that gives off the vibes of talking about these same topics with a close friend, all against a soundtrack that you’ll find yourself dancing along to albeit unintentionally.
This is clear from the very start with opening track What! that opens with feedback…
The remarkable output of Ekseption, is compiled in this 13-part CD box set, Planet Ekseption.
Their real breakthrough came in 1969, when their first album Ekseption was released. With their unique combination of classical music and pop, they achieved international success and released 6 popular albums in 3 years. Keyboardist Rick van der Linden gave the band its recognisable sound during that period, until he left in 1973. After his departure, their success slowly declined, even though there were reunions later on.
Planet Ekseption brings together their musical legacy with remastered albums and rare bonus material.The first 9 albums have been remastered from the original master tapes. The remaining 3 albums have been mastered…
Last Time Here serves as a stunning sonic time capsule, capturing The Album Leaf at a pivotal moment in the project’s evolution. Released in 2026 as a companion to the 25th-anniversary reissue of One Day I’ll Be on Time, this live collection transforms the delicate “bedroom” intimacy of the original 2001 recordings into something far more expansive and cinematic.
The album thrives on what critics call “aural photosynthesis.” While the original studio tracks were celebrated for their minimalist restraint, these live versions breathe with a new intensity. LaValle’s signature blend of Rhodes piano, glitchy rhythms, and soaring guitar loops feels more organic here. Tracks like “Vermillion” and “The MP” benefit from the live energy, where the transition…
…With his highly influential band Shoes, Gary Klebe’s been a veteran of the power pop scene since the 1970s. But now, in his 60s, he’s putting out his debut solo record. And it is truly solo: Klebe performs all the vocals, plays most of the instruments, and produced and mixed the album, largely in his basement.
The result is a refreshingly mature take on the genre. Klebe’s hooks and melodies are as bright as ever, but that contrast between music and lyrics is more pronounced and complicated. Gone is idealism; in its place, lived experience. Klebe’s distinct tenor remains robust, but now there’s also a soulful weariness to it on songs like “Invading My Space,” akin to how Brian Wilson sounded on his later solo work. It adds a gravitas to…
Scottish-born singer songwriter Sam Grassie has had a rocky journey in recent years, with a car accident resulting in serious injury and a debilitating ME diagnosis, as well as familial tragedy. All of this hindered but did not halt a promising musical career that was ignited when Sam was a child, secretly listening in on his family’s living room sessions.
Sam’s recovery saw him relocate to London in 2022 and immerse himself in the folk scene there, as well as sharing bills and stages with a wide range of musicians, from Ryley Walker, with whom he toured the UK, to Martin Carthy, Gwenifer Raymond and Robert Plant. This led to a series of EP releases, before Sam eventually put together Where Two Hawks Fly, his debut album,…
There’s an affectation that courses through certain parts of the musical fringe, where an artist or group’s oft-used descriptors perfectly capture what the listener might be in for. In that, they mirror the best of kitschy B-movies. There’s little doubt what films with titles like Attack of the Crab Monsters or The Blob might give you. So it goes for Houston, Texas duo Ak’chamel, Giver of Illness. The group, who have never revealed their identity, have spent years building out one of the most singular catalogues in experimental music, a strange and enthralling fusion of found sound, psychedelia, neo-folk and the deepest, eeriest recesses of the avant-garde. And their tagline of “Fourth World post-colonial cultural cannibalism” is about as faithful as an indicator can get…
Emerging from Cairo’s experimental underground, Mi3raj is a duo comprising poet/vocalist Mohamed Tarek Moussa and producer/muti-instrumentalist Abdelrahman Shaat. Their hypnotically immersive album, Callings of the Owed, centres on six poems written in contemporary Arabic by Moussa, which ventriloquise the thoughts of characters drawn from Cairo’s fringes.
‘I write to the locusts / whistle into bare air,’ claims one. ‘Pluck the fog from my joints’, pleads another. ‘At my naming feast / widows intoxicated me,’ another confides. The texts are rich and full of mystery, brought to life by Moussa’s dramatic delivery, using multiple overdubs to suggest a Babel of voices: at once pleading, declamatory and ritualistic. Shaat’s accompanying…
While it sounds like it might be the work of some mysterious intergalactic orchestra, Unbalance is the work of two musicians performing with little to no advance direction. Brazilian experimental guitarist and composer Carlos Ferreira and Korean performer and composer Dasom Baek combined their adept skills in ambient/drone, avant-garde, musique concrète, and free improvisation to create an album of four pieces entirely through uninterrupted improvisational flow.
…In addition to the electric guitar, Ferreira uses live electronics, working with an open-source software program called ppooll, which enables audio signal processing, performance, and routing. Baek, meanwhile, performs on traditional Korean wind instruments – jungju, daegum,…
Over the past decade, Sono Luminus has done an incredible job promoting the music of Icelandic composers and granting listeners multiple opportunities to hear the wondrous music they make. It’s safe to say that names such as Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Vikingur Ólafsson, Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, and others would be far less familiar to those outside the country in the absence of the label’s efforts. One of the country’s greatest home-grown talents and exports is composer Daníel Bjarnason, who currently holds the title Artist in Collaboration with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and was previously its Principal Guest Conductor (2019-21) and prior to that Artist in Residence.
One could regard him as the quintessential…
Released by Trojan Records in the UK in 1975, Ja-Gan quickly became a must-have long-player for dub enthusiasts and devotees of the melodica sound first popularised by Augustus Pablo two years earlier.
Despite crediting keyboard whizz Leslie Butler as the primary artist, the Harry Johnson-produced LP primarily showcased the talents of singer-turned melodica maestro Joe White, whose proficiency of the instrument rivalled that of his more widely celebrated contemporary, Augustus Pablo.
Remarkably, White also went unacknowledged on the front sleeve of ‘Dub Wise’, the Jamaican pressing of the LP, which instead credited the engineer responsible for mixing the set, Sylvan Morris!
The writer and poet Jonathan Swift began writing poems for his dear friend, and possibly secret wife, Esther Johnson (known as to him as Stella) every year on her birthday, starting in 1719. The works are small treasures, full of love and life even hundreds of years later. Trash Can Sinatras’ singer Francis Reader and producer/Noonday Underground leader Simon Dine are both big fans of the poems and decided to set excerpts from them to music. The two had worked together before so they already knew that Reader’s warm and woody vocals would fit well with Dine’s mixture of loops, orchestral samples, and trip hop-inspired production. They called the band Fellow Mortals and their 14-song 2026 album Stella’s Birth-Day melds tricky wordplay…
For their second full-length album, Under My Umbrella, Miss Grit has lifted the lid on their internal world, lasering in on the anxieties and heartbreak of the past two years, following their acclaimed debut Follow the Cyborg.
On this album, Margaret Sohn – aka Miss Grit (they/she) – channels the noirish atmosphere of classic trip-hop bands, while adding a hefty dose of maximalism and a dream-pop sensibility. The title is a nod to the iconic Rihanna song and embraces Sohn “…letting people in more on this record and trying not to shy away from that. I’m leaving the cyborg behind, I’m letting it all out.”
This record started to take shape when Sohn returned from an intense touring schedule where they’d driven themself around…
Joachim Kühn has no interest in looking back. At over 80, he is more driven, productive, and fearless than ever—composing and improvising daily in a restless pursuit of freedom, growth, and renewal. On Joachim Kühn & Young Lions, this lifelong refusal to stagnate takes vibrant new form as Kühn surrounds himself with a new generation of outstanding musicians, writing fresh material specifically to challenge and inspire them. The result is music of striking intensity and openness, where experience meets youthful fire, structure dissolves into risk, and individuality fuels collective power. Young Lions is not a celebration of legacy, but a statement of the present: jazz as a living, forward-moving force, and Joachim Kühn as one of its most uncompromising voices.