It’s funny to think that raptor house was literally inspired by dinosaurs. Its jagged synths and speedy 139+ BPM charge were a sonic sketch of Jurassic Park III’s velociraptors. And as you would hope with such a name, it has blazed a trail of devastation across dance floors for over two decades, thanks to its pioneer DJ Baba the Raptor, aka DJ Babatr. In the 2000s, DJ Babatr’s track “Las Lomas” fired up the matinés of Caracas, while “Xtasis,” his collaboration with Nick León, enchanted European and North American clubs in 2020. Root Echoes is his latest offering and includes tracks that date back to the halcyon days of raptor house, plus a couple more recent numbers that weave new flavors into the genre’s tough makeup.
Some of these influences are at odds with…
Latest Entries »
A powerful intergenerational trio emerges on Murasaki, featuring Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet, Marcus Gilmore on drums, and Jakob Bro on guitar.
Recorded at Power Station (formerly Avatar Studios) in New York, this exploratory session unfolded spontaneously-no retakes, no discussions, just a shared musical language rooted in intuition and trust. “It felt as though this music already existed before we started playing,” Bro reflects. Murasaki captures the creative summit of three visionary artists, each pushing beyond the boundaries of form and genre. This marks Wadada Leo Smith’s final European tour appearance, with select live dates in Berlin, Antwerp, Reykjavik and Copenhagen in November.
“…the material is spacious, devoid of any…
With Salt, the ever adventurous Maya Beiser turns her attention to the unnamed biblical figure of Lot’s wife, in the cellist’s eyes “a symbol of all the women who have been punished for remembering, for feeling too much, for refusing to move on … A woman who dared to turn around.” As recounted in “Genesis,” when angels instructed Lot and his family to flee Sodom, his wife “looked back, and she became a pillar of salt” (19:26). While some interpret the event as retribution for the choosing of worldly life over salvation, the greater meaning for Beiser lies in the turning to look, the “instinctual, human act of looking back at what you love, even as it’s being destroyed.”
Issued on the cellist’s Islandia Music Records label, Salt explores such ideas through works…
Kelly Moran is an incredibly versatile performer whose music straddles the categories of ambient, electronic and modern composition. On Don’t Trust Mirrors, she completes a circle, returning to prepared piano and synth after a gorgeous foray into solo piano on last year’s Moves in the Field. But her trajectory is not quite that simple; a pianist at her core, she would often play concerts in the early evening and dance to techno until late in the night. Last fall, Loraine James & Fyn Dobson teased out the club underpinnings of solo piano piece “Superhuman,” and this year, Bibio helps her to revisit “Don’t Trust Mirrors,” which first appeared on last year’s LP and is now the title piece of a new one. It’s exciting to hear tracks transformed in this manner, and both re-imaginings…
You probably know Margaret Glaspy as a songwriter, first and foremost. Over three albums, the one-time Texas Fiddle championship contender and current indie folk rock icon has developed a reputation for sharp guitar work, prickly melodies and lyrical penchant for what NPR’s Ken Tucker calls “complexity that unfurls with deceptive directness.” And yet, she’s also an adept interpreter and an agile collaborator, as this seven-song covers EP demonstrates.
These songs all come from the Americana wing of popular music, not country exactly, but infused with that storytelling sensibility. “The Book of Love,” one of the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, is, perhaps, the most urbane, puncturing sentimentality with sly lines like…
The Lone Canary are Jesse Fox and Heather Camacho, an americana duo from Rockford, Illinois, known for crafting songs that feel worn-in and weathered. Their third album, Dime Store Horses, is a meditation on grief, memory, and resilience. It doesn’t shout; it murmurs, aches, and ultimately endures.
The album opens with ‘Kingdom Come,’ where swirling strings and organ evoke a dust storm rolling in. The lyrics reflect on youthful ideals and spiritual reckoning. “Say a prayer for wayward sons, marching onward to kingdom come.” It sets the tone for an album that’s more confessional than performative. ‘Sins of Our Fathers’ questions whether we can ever escape the weight of inheritance. “Why even bother, when…
For her third album, Nashville-based Kashena Sampson pivots away from her more traditional folk-leaning roots toward a moodier, psychedelic folk-rock sound that gives her music a darker edge and continues to add to her appeal.
You can hear influences as varied as Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux, and Tori Amos woven throughout the nine tracks that make up Ghost of Me. That’s not to say she has completely abandoned her Americana roots; she just managed to find a darker, Gothic side to the genre by employing more synths and reverb to enhance the moodiness, while delving into deeper topics. The change is apparent on the opening title track. Backed by synthesizers, a swelling orchestra, and a lot of reverb, she essentially gives listeners…
Love’s Work is the first instrumental album by NY based songwriter/musician Zachary Cale. With his signature fingerstyle guitar technique at the forefront, the album highlights Cale’s natural sense of melody and movement.
Although referencing the John Fahey / Robbie Basho (et al) Guitar Soli genre, the album encompasses a larger brew of influence. Collaborating with the improvisational prowess of percussionist Jeremy Gustin and bassist Shahzad Ismaily, Cale’s compositions are unconstrained and free flowing, bringing to mind jazz players like drummer Billy Higgins work with Sandy Bull, and the expansive acid-folk of forward thinking roots musicians like Michael Cooper. Even without Cale’s distinctive singing, these tracks are filled…
Leon Vynehall likes to work his thoughts out on tape. The British dance producer’s decade-plus career has anchored itself around densely conceptual releases that are as much a peek into the artist’s headspace — supplemented with novellas, short films, and essay-length creative statements — as they are advancements in his room-filling house music. Even the stripped-down, banger-first mentality of 2021’s Rare, Forever expressed self-conscious concern over the album’s lack of window dressing: Halfway through “Dumbo,” Vynehall paused to ask a question — “Dya know what I mean?” — as though worried that the music wasn’t speaking for itself. With his newest release, In Daytona Yellow, Vynehall turns fully inward, baring a raw, neurotic, and…
Craft Recordings commemorates the 60th anniversary of Joan Baez’s bestselling sixth studio album, Farewell, Angelina, with its first wide vinyl reissue in nearly four decades. A pivotal release in Baez’s catalog, the album blends traditional folk standards with contemporary covers, marking a notable stylistic evolution-including the singer-songwriter’s first use of electric guitar.
Set for release on October 3rd, Farewell, Angelina returns with all-analog mastering by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl (via Fidelity Record Pressing). An old-school style tip-on jacket, meanwhile, replicates the LP’s original cover. Singer, songwriter and activist Joan Baez (b.1941) is one of modern music’s most influential and enduring voices…
Wadada Leo Smith describes his music not as “jazz” but as “creative music.” He rejects the term “improvisation” in favor of “creation.” These specific word choices reflect his unique approach, which is deeply rooted in his early experiences with blues and R&B.
Smith uses the full range of his instrument and plays at his own pace, with a profound understanding of the power of silence and space. For him, space is as important as the notes themselves, allowing the resonance of each sound to linger. His phrasing and melodic ideas carry the emotional and spiritual weight of the blues, a testament to his musical heritage. His style is a synthesis of diverse influences, including African-American, Native American, and…
Mark Kozelek’s Sun Kil Moon has teamed up with the Hungarian band Amoeba for a remarkable cross-continental collaboration simply titled Sun Kil Moon featuring Amoeba. The album was recorded in Hungary throughout 2022 and 2023 and marks Kozelek’s first major international studio partnership in several years.
Initially released outside of North America in September 2024, the album later arrived on CD and vinyl in October 2024. It blends Sun Kil Moon’s introspective storytelling and spoken-word style with Amoeba’s rich, jazz-infused instrumentation, resulting in one of the most atmospheric and emotionally charged records in Kozelek’s recent catalog. The follow-up, Sun Kil Moon and Amoeba Vol. 2, features eight tracks that stretch…
In 2024, as Pavlov’s Dog celebrated the release of the career-spanning retrospective box set Essential Recordings 1974–2018, the band was already hard at work on a new album of original material. That album, entitled Wonderlust, has now arrived on Ruf Records—a half-century after their debut LP Pampered Menial, with the hit “Julia” briefly making Pavlov’s Dog the darlings of the 1970s progressive rock scene.
“I’m so proud of Wonderlust. Sometimes it just takes a half century to discover the proper lyrics, chords and melodies,” says Pavlov’s Dog lead singer, guitarist and main songwriter, David Surkamp. “Abbie Steiling has created some of our most haunting moments with her breathtaking string arrangements.
The first thing you hear on Later Than You Think isn’t despair — it’s motion.
John Maus doesn’t linger on endings; he arrives with a strange urgency, like someone shaking you awake at 3 a.m. to say, start again. Every synth line, guttural phrase, and abrupt lurch forward carries that insistence. Based in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri, Maus has been quietly refining his craft, and with Later Than You Think, he asserts himself with a clarity and authority that feels both inevitable and surprising.
The opening track, “Because We Built It,” sets the tone immediately. Maus carries the weight of what has been made and what has crumbled, transforming it into something palpable and kinetic. His baritone anchors the chaos,…
It’s 100% ‘Mission Possible’ for Northern Ireland’s indie-power pop legends, Ash. Their ninth studio album, Ad Astra, blasts off in turbocharged style, a blazing follow-up to 2023’s Race the Night, and the band are set to soar into new sonic realms, pushing their sound to new heights and expanding their musical universe.
In the spirit of doing exactly what it says on the tin, or rocket if you are so inclined, Ad Astra lives up to its name, marking the band’s most ambitious and elevated work to date. Of course, it’s not their first rodeo when it comes to their fascination with all things intergalactic, the intriguing world of space has always shaped their sound and inspired their creative vision.
In fact, their debut album, the seminal 1977…
Have you ever stuck your head inside a speaker just to see what it feels like? That’s SCALER’s Endlessly. It’s ugly-beautiful, claustrophobic, and oddly addictive once your ears give in to the ringing. At times it hums like a neon sign at 3am, glowing cold against the silence of a deserted street. At others it comes down like a barricade, as if the band have taken over a derelict building and refused to let go.
SCALER are inseparable from Bristol’s heritage, and Endlessly wears that DNA with pride. The album is heavily inspired by the city’s cornerstones – trip-hop’s brooding atmospherics, drum’n’bass’s precision breakbeats, the noise scene’s corrosive edges, and the experimental pop underground’s knack for reshaping familiar forms. SCALER’s brand of experimental dance…
Atlanta hardcore punks Upchuck had already made two excellent albums full of buzzsaw guitars, pummeling rhythms, and fire-starting vocals before they hit the studio with producer Ty Segall to record their third, and first for Domino. Segall had already worked with them, helping to hone their sound to a fine point and capturing all the wild intensity of their live shows. The combo of the live to tape recording and the band’s vigorous performances help I’m Nice Now to hit even harder than their previous efforts and the increased variety in the songwriting helps give it a boost up and over the hardcore wall to land firmly in top notch rock & roll of any stripe territory.
While the record is stuffed with paint-peeling rockers like “Plastic” and “Kin” where vocalist…
Supergroup Los Cinco Cardones met playing music in Los Cabos, the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula – a location whose cultural diversity and balmy climate both make themselves felt on this debut album. The project unites bandleader Sebastian Maschat, drummer of German group The Whitest Boy Alive, Chicago-born multi-instrumentalist Howard Clifton and Argentinian duo Diego Sole (guitars) and Sebastian Dimarco (bass); the ‘fifth Cardón’ of the quartet’s name appears to be identified as the record itself.
There is certainly a strong sense of some intangible magic at work here, El Quinto Cardón transcending genre and structural conventions throughout: tracks such as…