Horses (50th Anniversary Edition), available through Legacy Recordings, will pair the classic LP with a further nine alternate versions and outtakes from the album sessions, including two selections from Smith’s demo tape for RCA Records. (Arista, unaffiliated with RCA at the time, ended up signing her for about a quarter-century.) A demo version of standout “Redondo Beach” was released on a 2002 compilation, but the others here – including the preview track “Snowball” and a cover of The Marvelettes’ “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game” – are heard here for the first time. The deluxe Horses, available on CD, vinyl and digitally, prefaces the publication of Smith’s new memoir, Bread of Angels, in November. (Smith’s deliberate recording pace – one album in the ’80s…
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Buddhist Hipsters is eighteenth studio album by English duo the Orb and features contributions from Roger Eno, Steve Hillage & Miquette Giraudy (System 7), Youth, Paul Ferguson of Killing Joke, Andy Falconer, Trevor Walters, Violetta Vicci, Eric Von Skywalker, Andy Caine and Rrome Alone.
In a changing, unpredictable and turbulent world, something we can always rely on is a new Orb album, with the next holiday-for-the-head never far away. On what is quite possibly the millionth longplayer helmed by electronic lifer Alex Paterson; partnered with the now firmly-entrenched boy wonder Michael Rendall; the inspirationally productive outfit yet again deliver the goods, with one of their best yet.
“I was having a dream, and in this dream was…
As a musical curator, Coco Maria has an ear for color. The third compilation in her Club Coco series, Coco Maria Presents: New Dimensions in Latin Music, offers a broad and brightly-hued sonic palette of sounds from across the global Latin diaspora and beyond. Born in Saltillo, Mexico, and now based in Amsterdam after stints in Berlin and London, Coco María is well acquainted with the vastness of the scene, whose titular dimensions she explores here.
She serves us a sampler that leans into the more playful possibilities of eclecticism, presenting the cutting edge with a sense of fun so often missing from visions of the avant-garde. What Coco knows — and shares with us in her virtual club — is that experimentation is better when…
To listen to a new release from Geneva-based label Bongo Joe is to have a twofold reaction. On the one hand, the Bongo Joe catalog is so eclectic that each new direction it takes is a surprise. On the other hand, the albums that come out of it tend to be so good that it seems only logical for the latest interesting release to be a Bongo Joe production. An inarticulate harmony and a tasteful eclecticism hold their discography together.
Now, the imprint celebrates its first full decade with a vivid compilation that makes the extent of the Bongo Joe palette clear. In 23 tracks, 2015-2025: Les Disques Bongo Joe – 10 Years of Sonic Explorations tells the story its subtitle promises, moving through space and time with an ear for quality. It’s unquestionably…
Groove of ESSR III marks the next chapter in highlighting the musical heritage trapped behind the Iron Curtain during the Soviet occupation.
The tracklist curated by Henrik Ehte and Ingvar Kassuk spans recordings from 1971–1983 by Estonian artists, most of whom were born under a foreign regime after the war. Nevertheless, they had relatives in the West and antennas tuned in to Finnish radio signals. In a closed-off world, they had the courage to explore the groove without borders.
Many performers and songwriters became the most sought-after players throughout all of Soviet Russia, not because they blindly followed the communist party’s canon. On the contrary, the sheer brilliance of their compositions,…
Growing up, Gabi Gamberg’s yard was lined with buttery-yellow daffodils. Even now, as the seasons shift and the bounty of springtime subsides, Gamberg’s daffodils are unremitting, living in infamy in the form of their stage name, Daffo. It’s no wonder Gamberg chose a name that signals their youth’s germination — their career charts the trajectory of an artist from their impetus, one willing to parse through the knots of adolescence and search for coherence. The Daffo presented on 2023’s Pest EP had a penchant for killing spiders, but at twenty-one, they look now with more compassion toward the unwanted pests of their earlier music. With indie-rock hits like “Good God” and “Poor Madeline,” Daffo put down roots that flowered into their debut…
In her latest album, Sounding Line, pianist Carmen Staaf probes different lineups and approaches, reimagining the music of pianists Mary Lou Williams and Thelonious Monk as intimate ‘conversations’. Inspired by their friendship and shared musical sensibilities, Staaf revisits two Monk pieces and three Williams gems — respectful but never slavish — while adding two of her own.
Duets with the incomparable trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire bookend the album. Williams’ “Scorpio” is stripped down to a six-beat piano bass figure over which Akinmusire unfurls his rich lyricism and unmistakable tone before the duo slides seamlessly into a 4/4 blues. The closer, Staaf’s “The Water Wheel” conjures magic. There’s nowhere to hide in a piano/trumpet duet and yet…
After years of sending club spaces into chaos and soundcloud into overdrive, Irish producer and DJ, KETTAMA, unleashes his long-awaited debut album, Archangel, with the release a genre-smashing, emotionally rich body of work that cements his status as one of underground music’s most vital new voices. Best known for his high-octane sets, raw cuts, and galvanizing club anthems, the Galway-born artist has taken his time crafting Archangel, and it shows. A decade in the making, the 15-track collection is more than just a debut, it’s a defining statement. Blending hard-house energy, trance elation, breakbeat chaos, and a bold step into introspection, the album solidifies KETTAMA’s rise, and cements him as one of the best currently around.
In the midst of a career writing, creating, and recording music with a wide array of influential popular artists and for television and film, Grammy award-winning Nashville-based producer and musician Emery Dobyns is releasing his debut album, Improvs, on Hammock Music Label.
A series of 16 improvised works, Improvs sees Dobyns step from the fast-paced environment of the studio and into a world of glowing ethereal ambiance, where time slows and rays of hope and poetry illuminate life’s quiet moments and days full of wonder and promise.
…Improvs is Dobyns’ first album, but he’s racked up over two decades on the other side of the mixing desk, producing and engineering for multiple artists from Mary J Blige, through…
…In 1977, John Williams composed three film scores – and you’d be forgiven for not remembering the third, compared to the other two. While Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind made him one of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters (earning an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and five Grammys between both scores), his first offering that year was the suspenseful music to Black Sunday, a taut political thriller directed by John Frankenheimer and based on the novel of the same name by The Silence of the Lambs author Thomas Harris. In it, Robert Shaw plays an agent of Mossad in a race to stop a crazed blimp pilot (Bruce Dern) and a Black September operative (Marthe Keller) from detonating a bomb in the air above the Super Bowl. Featuring stunning footage of…
…Bonus four track CD featuring a cover and three live tracks.
Say She She were praised by none other than Chic leader Nile Rodgers after the release of Silver, their second album. It’s impossible to imagine a greater form of validation for an accurately self-described “discodelic” vocal trio whose name is a play on the refrain from Chic’s indelible “Le Freak.” Singers and songwriters Nya Brown, Sabrina Cunningham, and Piya Malik keep riding the wave with their third album, on which they’re backed again by the flexible-as-ever instrumentalists of Orgone. The slick, supercharged “Disco Life” reaffirms their affinity for disco as a crucial subcultural movement while envisioning “a playing field where all are free.” The song uses that and other baseball…
Alhaji K Frimpong’s 1977 Highlife masterpiece, melding traditional Ghanaian musical forms with experimental instrumentation and innovative arrangements.
Opening with the urgent, call-and-response drive of “Hwehwe Mu Na Yi Wo Mpena” and closing with the 15-minute odyssey of “Adam Nana,” the record stretches highlife’s rhythmic and structural possibilities. Its sinuous guitar lines, clavinet vamps, layered vocal phrases and hypnotic percussion evolve with a looseness and freedom that echo the experimental spirit found in 1970s jazz and funk — a Ghanaian counterpart to many of the African-influenced sounds being shaped across the Atlantic.
…The Black Album expands the electronic…
Roomful of Blues is an institution, the blues genre’s equivalent to the Count Basie Band and Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Roomful is much smaller, comprising only an octet, yet considering its longevity of 58 years, the comparison holds. Basie and Ellington’s bands had a tenure of 50 years under each’s leadership. Granted, Roomful continues without an original member, although saxophonist Rich Lataille has been aboard since 1970. However, we now have a new development. For the first time, a female vocalist fronts Roomful of Blues, the gifted and powerful DD Bastos. While Ellington and Basie had both male and female lead vocalists, Roomful now can claim the same with their twentieth album, Steppin’ Out.
Should music academics ever require evidence as to how a singer-songwriter/musician matures and develops over a short period of time, then there could be no better artist to use as a case study than Katie Spencer. Leaving aside an impressive and increasingly formidable catalogue of live work, in respect of her recorded output alone, the journey, from the release of a highly praised debut album, Weather Beaten in 2019, followed by 2022’s The Edge of the Land, which reached Number 14 in the Official Folk Charts, to What Love Is, her third and latest stunning release, provides more than ample material to satisfy any of those abovementioned scholars.
Katie’s musical history has been well-documented, raised by music- loving parents in…
When you think of really top class female singer-songwriters named Williams, the name that does not so often get mentioned is Dar; and yet, she has a very tasty backlog of very good albums, 13 in total dating back to 1990, with a varied mixture of styles, songs with a wide variety of topic (many of them more than just very good) and all sung by one of the sweetest voices around. In addition she has written well-received books, largely drawn from her experiences as a touring artist over many years. In truth she not had the greatest commercial success, but if success is measured by the affection in which she is held by her significant fan base, and the popularity of her live shows, she is certainly successful. She is also highly regarded by some of her peers (and mentors like…
It would be all too easy to reach for cliché and cast Marta Złakowska as muse to the much older and more established Adrian Thaws, aka Tricky. He did, after all — to use another cliché — “pluck her from obscurity,” taking her from small-town hopeful working in bars to international stages in 2017. Ever since then, he has been on a creative hot streak, despite harrowing personal tragedy with the death of his daughter in 2019. But you only have to listen to their work together to understand that there’s way more to it than simple ideas like “artist and muse” or “mentor and protegé.” They’re now on their third-and-a-half album together (Out the Way and When it’s Going Wrong are credited to Marta as main artist with Tricky as producer; Fall to Pieces gets Tricky’s name but with…
Have you been paying attention to Bill Orcutt? For the last dozen-plus years, or since the 2011 release of the splenetic acoustic marvel How the Thing Sings, the San Francisco-based guitarist has been on one of the great creative tears in his chosen instrument’s vaunted history. Whether alone, with a scattered cast of brazen collaborators, or quadrupling his own playing in an astonishing guitar quartet of one, Orcutt has been reshaping the emotional and technical terrain typically associated with instrumental guitar music. He cuts rage with wonder and laces joy with doubt as he splinters melodies and rebuilds them in uncanny new shapes, like a random-number generator that knows exactly what it’s doing. Orcutt’s music sometimes feels like some…
“Care”, the first song on Laveda’s new album, Love, Darla, opens appropriately with gritty feedback noise. It’s a suitable way for this four-piece band to start the record. Originally from Albany, the quartet – Ali Genevich, Jacob Brooks, Dan Carr, and Joe Taroune – have since relocated to Queens, and the gritty urban setting is crucial to their makeup. The thrashing riffs and Genevich’s vocal declarations – “I don’t care, I don’t care” – beautifully evoke a nihilistic New York City punk aesthetic.
Laveda are a band that contains multitudes. The simple groove of the bass line on “Cellphone” evokes the tuneful yet primal feel of vintage Pixies, and the ringing guitars of “Heaven” and the moody “Highway Meditation” are fine examples of dream pop at its finest. While their first…