There are live recordings that capture an engagement, and others that seem to revive an entirely vanished room. This newly unearthed Verve Records release from Detroit’s Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, recorded over five sets in August 1960, clearly falls into the latter category. More than just a historical curiosity, it reveals atmosphere, temperament, and mastery. The Oscar Peterson trio at full strength in a venue that knew how to listen, playing as if elegance and fire were not mutually exclusive virtues but twin responsibilities.
By the summer of 1960, Oscar Peterson had established himself as one of the leading pianists in modern jazz, yet what these performances reveal is that the celebrated “will to swing” often associated with him was never merely about…
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Art and music collide on pianist Marta Sanchez‘s first album of solo prepared piano with 2026’s For the Space You Left. Born in Spain and based in New York City, Sanchez often explores the connections between modern jazz, classical, and Iberian-folk traditions; a quality that marked both 2022’s SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) and 2024’s Perpetual Void.
Here, she takes a more esoteric approach, crafting songs that often have the tactile, textural quality of sculpture. Much of this is due to the “prepared” aspects of her work, a process by which pianists use objects and materials to alter the sound of the instrument; in Sanchez’s case that means placing metallic paper, tape, Blu-Tack, and other materials between the strings.
No matter who is actually present in the same physical space while Oakland-based experimental artist and field recordist Kathryn Mohr records or performs, she is always alone. Even when her music’s turns toward intense claustrophobia — writhing over a stifled ability to connect with another body in the room — her work aims to convince any ears against the wall that they are catching the last set of layered voices bearing down over the last fuzz-ridden guitar remaining on the face of the earth. There’s no stillness in her isolation either, as 2025’s Waiting Room, her critical breakthrough and debut release with The Flenser, proved. Even in its more muted acoustic meditations, there is the suggestion of boots scuffing against each other to…
Released at the end of the initial period of Wire’s 3rd Act – after Aend and before the band’s post-Bruce Gilbert re-invention – Read & Burn 03 never quite got the attention it deserved. However the opening track 23 years too late, with its tour narrative text and motorik rhythm stands as one of the band’s finest achievements of any era in the view of both core fans & the band. The original ep, 3rd in the read & burn series and the one not compiled on to the send album, was the last non-historic release by the original wire line up of colin newman, graham lewis, bruce gilbert & robert grey and has never been properly released on vinyl. The 2026 version brings the original 4 tracks and adds 3 more. While some of the tracks originated as part of the 2021-2022 sessions…
Surprisingly, singer-songwriter/harmonicist Curtis Salgado has never released a live album until now. Legacy Rewind: Live in ‘25 was recorded just over a year ago on April 5th at the Triple Door, Seattle, WA, on Salgado’s home turf. The genesis for the project dates to 2019 (pre-COVID), when a fan and producer, Randy Maag, suggested it at the very same venue. Maag suggested older Salgado tunes that are rarely played in his current show repertoire. Maag didn’t forget the encounter and resurrected it six years later. Some songs had never been performed live, while others were two decades old. So, this recording, with a 9-piece band, encompasses R&B, Funk, Soul, and Rock n’ Roll, curated by Maag and Salgado. Interestingly, there is no mention of blues, but we all…
To behold Stonehenge is to bear witness to the human capacity for ingenuity. For songwriter Nate Amos, who records as This Is Lorelei, an encounter with the megalithic structure was life-changing: It convinced him to stop smoking weed.
The prospect of giving up a habit he’d indulged nearly every day for 15 years was daunting, but Amos decided to channel his subsequent restless energy into songwriting. Maybe it was the lack of weed; maybe Amos was building off the recent success of his various other projects; maybe those Neolithic rocks transmitted something magic to him — regardless, the resulting album, Box for Buddy, Box for Star, is a keenly crafted and wonderfully adventurous set of songs, both earnest and appealingly funny.
Out on his own after making music with bands like Veronica Falls and Ultimate Painting, James Hoare has gone further down the rabbit hole in pursuit of the most understated, most intimate version of melancholy guitar pop possible. Under the name Penny Arcade Hoare plays his tender tunes softly in front of a tape machine, though really it sounds like he’s on the bed right next to you the listener the whole time.
His first record under this banner was 2024’s Backwater Collage and it was lovely in its preciseness and calm, mixing catchy melodies and production that never reached the red on the dials. Taking that sparse template and breaking it down even more, 2026’s Double Exposure is just as true and blue, even more so at times.
Six years is a long time, about one-and-a-half generations in pop music and a fairly large chunk out of anyone’s life, two sentiments that come into play on the Beastie Boys’ sixth album, 2004’s To the 5 Boroughs. When the Beasties last delivered an album, it was in the summer of 1998 as the Clinton impeachment scandal was heating up, and just as that sordid saga closed the curtain on the swinging ’90s, Hello Nasty served as both a culmination of the New York trio’s remarkable comeback and as a capper to the alt-rock boom of the ’90s, the last album of the decade to capture what the ’90s actually felt like. Not only is the political and cultural landscape of 2004 much different than that of 1998, the Beasties are a different band in a different position.
As the time approached 10:30 Tuesday night — nearly three hours after Bruce Springsteen had marched onstage at Inglewood’s Kia Forum alongside 18 of his musical comrades — the 76-year-old rock legend told the crowd he hadn’t intended to be there.
“This is a tour that we never planned,” he said. “The E Street Band is here with you tonight because we need to feel your hope and your strength. And we want to bring some hope and bring some strength for you.” It wasn’t impossible to believe him.
After a two-year trek that finally wrapped last summer amid the release of a massive box set and a splashy Hollywood biopic, Springsteen might’ve been expected to spend 2026 counting his money and his accolades. Yet the way…
Winston Hightower is indisputably punk. That’s not just because he’s been a touring bassist for hardcore bands like Soul Glo, Minority Threat, and Twompsax. The Columbus-born musician first began self-releasing his music over a decade ago, and across countless releases — most of them hard to find these days — Hightower’s career so far has seen him subtly incorporate post-punk, rap, and jazz into his ramshackle indie pop. He’s accrued the type of vast, elusive catalog that seems requisite for a DIY legend in the making. Judging by his songs, he’s an outsider, but he’s also a deeply connected player in the Midwest’s underground scene. His fringe appeal and defiant spirit together position him to be a celebrated cult favorite in the future. A few decades from now,…
La Peste was Boston’s first true punk band. The material in this compilation comes from the studio session that produced the Better Off Dead 7”, their 1979 session with The Cars’ Ric Ocasek, a 1979 session at Electro Acoustic Studios, 4-track loft recordings and the the band’s very first studio sessions with Curt Naihersey (Pastiche, The Kids).
Originally formed after frontman Peter Dayton witnessed The Ramones perform at CBGB in 1975, La Peste became one of Boston’s first true punk bands. What started as a group of art students who had never played instruments quickly evolved into a force that helped define the city’s burgeoning punk scene. Despite releasing just one single during their initial run-1978’s ‘Better Off Dead’-the band’s sound and attitude…
This definitive new edition combines all 17 tracks from the UK and US versions of The Zombies’ 1965 debut album, remastered in its original mono mix. Begin Here (Mono Remastered) is the next chapter in the series of Zombies reissues via the band’s own label Beechwood Park Records, with the same team as Odessey and Oracle – again being overseen by Matthew and Jamie White, mastering by Reuben Cohen at Lurssen Mastering, and brand-new liner notes by the legendary David Fricke.
Begin Here, the British debut album by the Zombies, was released by Decca Records on April 9th, 1965. The LP, issued only in mono, was 14 tracks of beat-boom R&B and dynamic songwriting by one of the hottest young groups in the country. The band reprised “Summertime”…
As David Lowery, the director, was writing the fictional pop star Mother Mary for his new film of the same name, he spent a lot of time studying the last 25 years in music. He listened to Taylor Swift (whose Reputation concert film inspired the performances in the film), Lorde and FKA twigs, who appears on screen as a medium named Imogene. But as the film’s haunted love story between Mary (played by Anne Hathaway) and her former best friend and designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) emerged, his listening habits shifted.
“The pop music fell away and other music started to enter that sphere,” he says in A24’s New York offices. He’s sitting beside twigs and Hathaway the day after the trio attended…
Two mainstays of Boston’s independent music scene join forces, just not in the way you probably expected. Tanya Donnelly (who doesn’t live in Boston any more) is best known for the yowling, uninhibited punk rock of Belly and the Throwing Muses, as well as her more recent guitar-driven work with 50 Foot Wave. Brokaw has done a million things, including genre-establishing bands like Come and Codeine, but he’s never done anything like this. The “this” in this case is a quartet of medieval choral songs, arranged for Brokaw’s moody, atmospheric guitar and Donnelly’s airiest, purest vocal stylings.
The project began as a one-off when the pair played a benefit in late 2004. Brokaw had been exploring early music influences, finding…
Souled American return after thirty years with a work of immediate relevance. Arriving just in time, with decency roundly mocked, as dissent spells career disaster and algorithms isolate us into units of convenience, Sanctions dares explore roots and traditions in both sound and consequence, revealing a band that has lost members but gained gravity. Acclaimed by Jeff Tweedy, The Jayhawks, John Darnielle, and Counting Crows, Souled American here elevate their unique style of ambient Americana into a life-altering experience full of feeling and drama, like some ink-stamped elegy fresh off the printing presses of Walt Whitman. Written, performed, and produced by founding members Joe Adducci and Chris Grigoroff, the album marks…
Brand new CD reissue to celebrate its recent 40th Anniversary in 2025 and due for a critical reappraisal.
Following the breakup of the Police, their drummer Stewart Copeland undertook a musical Odessey through the heart of Africa in search of the roots of Rock & Roll. Originally released as both a film, (directed and produced by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux) and album in 1985, The Rhythmatist preceded amongst other albums, the release of ‘Graceland’ by Paul Simon which was to follow in 1986.
The album produced by Stewart along with Jeff Seitz, featured the singles ‘Koteja (Oh Bolilla)’ featuring Ray Lema a major figure in world music himself as well as ‘Gong Rock’.
This brand new edition comes with…
Alea Iacta Est is one of the most demanding and compositionally dense works in John Zorn’s already massive catalog. Released on his Tzadik Records label, it continues his late-career focus on chamber-jazz hybrids that blur the line between composition and improvisation.
Composed from 2020 to 2024, “Alea Iacta Est (The Die is Cast)” is one of Zorn’s most challenging masterworks—a complex and varied piano concerto that runs the gamut of moods, styles, and tempi. Performed brilliantly by four of the most trusted and passionate interpreters of his work—the trio of Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, Ches Smith, with guest star Sae Hashimoto on vibraphone on one track—this stunning new work is an essential piece of the Zorn puzzle. Astonishing!
Live in Köln 1976, this special edition release is exclusive to RSD (Record Store Day) 2026 and catches both the Rainbow and the band at their creative and blistering energetic peak.
The album was originally released a few years back as a one of three double CDs, and more recently as part of the excellent Temple Of The King 9CD set, also by Demon. This is the first time on vinyl and wonderful it is too.
The classic Rainbow line-up of guitarist Blackmore, vocalist Ronnie James Dio, keyboardist Tony Carey, bassist Jimmy Bain and drummer Cozy Powell came together soon after the band’s 1975 debut, and in fact drew Cozy out of attempted retirement. Touring to support the classic (and equally ground breaking) Rainbow…
Nine Inch Nails‘ collaborations with Boys Noize began in 2024, when the German EDM producer remixed Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ Challengers soundtrack, and it blossomed last year when NIN made a short set of songs with Boys Noize a centerpiece of their Peel It Back Tour.
Now, they’re releasing a unique, “purely electronic” full-length Nine Inch Noize album recorded “all over the place – some of it’s live, some in studios, hotels, planes, etc.”
“The creative fulfillment of working on the Challengers and Tron scores with Boys Noize led me to think that including him in the Peel It Back tour could be an interesting way to express NIN in more purely electronic terms live – a concept I’ve wanted to explore for some time”…
Their last album with works by Robert Schumann, Edvard Grieg and Tõnu Kõrvits saw the Gazzana sisters Natascia and Raffaella “achieve the highest levels of instinctive expression”, according to the French daily paper Le Monde, and one could argue that this holds even more true for their new recording with music by Sergei Prokofiev, Arvo Pärt and Alfred Schnittke.
The duo’s reading of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 1, op. 80 opens the proceedings with urgency, true to the composer’s intention (Prokofiev famously declared that a particular passage “should sound in such a way that people should jump in their seat…”), but also with lyrical serenity, casting the work’s third movement in a spellbinding light. His Five Melodies op. 35a are interpreted with…