Wolfgang Muthspiel and his trio with Scott Colley on bass and Brian Blade on drums (“Together they have something of the empathy of the Bill Evans trio” – Downbeat) goes into its third recording-venture swinging, setting the stage for what may be the group’s most adventurous trio recording with a delicate reading of Keith Jarrett’s “Lisbon Stomp”. Throughout the album however, the Austrian guitarist and his American cohorts turn the spotlight towards Wolfgang’s captivating originals, touching on balladic lyricism (“Pradela”, “Traversia”), subtle folk infusions (“Strumming”, “Flight”), as well as oblique chamber jazz (“Weill You Wait”) and twangy rock and roll (“Roll”). As has become custom, Wolfgang alternates between acoustic and electric guitars fluently and…
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If only one name comes to mind when you think of Ethio-jazz, it’s almost certainly that of Mulatu Astatke. A vibraphone and percussion virtuoso, Mulatu has also been prolific on the keys, releasing records under this stylistic nomenclature since the 1970s. Inspired by Ethiopian melodic modes and the rhythms and instrumentation of Latin and other American jazz traditions, Mulatu studied at Berklee College of Music. Ethio-jazz is as cool now as it was then, if not cooler for the vintage air that surrounds it; even its use in NPR music breaks can’t undermine its radical complexities.
That’s not to say, though, that Ethio-jazz is a genre of the past. That much is clear on Mulatu Plays Mulatu, the newest release from the octogenarian musical giant. He frames it as…
Let’s face it: even Richard D. James has probably lost track of all the aliases he’s forged during his decades-long career. There are the ones we are party to — Aphex Twin, Caustic Window, Polygon Window — and then there are the thousands about which we have undoubtedly been left in the dark.
…Apparently, the electronic music trickster dons his many hats “for a laugh,” as he told Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne in a rare interview back in 2014, “And I might keep doing it, just keep being anonymous and doing different names.” You only need to glance at Aphex Twin’s ridiculous Warp Records bio for living proof that we will likely never know the truth about the smarty pants “fartist” with a silly sense of humor, and one of the most revered, peerless catalogues in the canon.
Since Dublin’s Sprints exploded out the gate with the stunning Letter to Self at the start of last year, they’ve proved a relentless force across the live touring circuit.
Matching their furious off-kilter racket with an equally poignant and powerful performance, their schedule recently climaxed with an early afternoon set at Glastonbury, fittingly pairing their political punk with matching backdrops calling the amped up crowd to action. Time on the road, it seems, has done little to quash their outrage – a time that has also birthed All That Is Over, their second album in two years and one that carries much of the visceral frustration that its forebearer began, rolled out at breakneck speed.
One significant change sees founding guitarist…
Previously, Carmarthenshire-born Cate Le Bon has interspersed recording with learning carpentry in the Lake District and taking pottery classes in Los Angeles. She made mugs for people ordering 2013 album Mug Museum.
Her new album, however, was preceded by the end of a relationship, by heartache and ill health. But if this suggests a tormented record, it’s not there in the music, which is a sweetly meditative expanse, coloured with effects units – a warm bath infused with rare essences of chorus, reverb and perhaps Le Bon’s EarthQuaker Hummingbird pedal, where the product information promises “choppy sawtooth tremolo”.
Opener ‘Jerome’ leads into the reverberant studio-verse of the Cocteau Twins.
Birthed via a Black Country communion which saw Robert Plant and his new, largely unknown bandmates enjoy a lengthy courtship off-radar, Saving Grace feels guileless, almost serendipitous.
What might happen, Plant mused, if he shipped what he’d learned from T Bone Burnett, Alison Krauss et al home and duetted on choice blues, alt-country and folk covers with Brum-born former music teacher, Suzi Dian? Across 10 intimate songs deftly ornamented by guitarists Matt Worley and Tony Kelsey and cellist Barney Morse-Brown, magic happens.
As much avuncular vibe-master as Golden God, Plant cedes some lead vocal terrain to Dian (‘Too Far from You’) and Worley (Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Soul of a Man’) while bringing…
After some turbulent late teen years in her former pop punk band, Mixtapes, Maura Weaver needed a break. Months became years and the songs still weren’t coming. It wasn’t until being thrust into personal heartache in 2020 that she began to write songs again and the result was her 2023 solo debut I Was Due For A Heartbreak.
The record was a personal breakthrough for Weaver, characterized by Weaver’s distinctive emotional intelligence, the record was intimate and relatable-filled with quiet moments counterbalanced by big ideas about love, loss, and life. Weaver’s sophomore effort Strange Devotion continues in a similar vein.
Written and recorded over the course of 2024 with longtime collaborator John Hoffman…
When your musical identity changes, are you still you? This is the question faced by Erol Sarp and Lukas Vogel, whose first ten years of recording as Grandbrothers were marked by a singular approach: every sound in their music, direct or indirect, came from a grand piano.
“We Collide,” the first single of their transitional period, sounds less like a shift than an evolution. Amassing a collection of vintage analog synths and drum samples, the duo decided it was time for a change. Thankfully, live audiences responded well to the new sound, from the opening beats (yes, that is a drum!) to the euphoric, club-centered sound. The piano is still there, quickly introduced, but no longer stretched to the limit. If an instrument could exude feelings, one might even say that…
Tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander‘s release, Chicago to New York, is a masterclass in modern hard bop that pays homage to the vibrant musical exchange between two of jazz’s most storied cities. This is not just a geographical nod but a conversation across time and space, framed by a quartet whose cohesion and shared sensibilities transcend geographical lines.
Alexander, one of the most consistent voices of his generation, joins forces with pianist Mike LeDonne, both standard-bearers of the New York scene. From Chicago, drummer George Fludas and bassist Dennis Carroll offer an equally seasoned and sympathetic rhythm team. What’s immediately striking is how organically the group functions. This is no throw-together session or…
This year, 2025, marks the 40th anniversary of the Millennium Jazz Orchestra (MJO). Conductor Joan Reinders was one of the original band members and founders.
Ever since, Millennium Jazz Orchestra recorded 14 albums, and performed with artists like Benny Golson, Kenny Wheeler, Toots Thielemans, New York Voices, Philip Catherin and Ack van Rooyen, including shows at North Sea Jazz and Amsterdam Concertgebouw. 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the Millennium Jazz Orchestra. This is being celebrated with the release of a ‘double digital’ album: Chronology Vol.1 & Chronology Vol.2. In total 20 tracks adding up to almost 140 minutes of big band delight. It comes with a full color booklet containing full track information and inside stories.
…Upon the release of Kaleidoscopic Visions, the second album that Tom Skinner has made under his own name, the drummer-composer will be 45 years-old. Skinner is already in possession of an incredible career — two decades as a key member of London’s jazz community, including co-founding the mighty Sons of Kemet; in-demand collaborator to a who’s-who of famed electronic producers and noted rhythmalists; purveyor of his own left-of-center musical pursuits (see: Hello Skinny); and, most recently, a budding experimental-rock star (see: The Smile).
Off-the-clock, Skinner is a life-long Londoner, husband and father, keeper of poly-generational sonic memories, a soulful creature attuned to old and new relationships.
Returning to the dawn of his career in Manhattan’s crucible of folk, poetry and politics, MOJO explores Dylan’s transformation from wannabe to real deal with the friends and peers who watched it happen.
MOJO CD, The Complete Unknowns , documents a tight-knit scene of uncommon talents – Judy Collins, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, Mimi & Richard Fariña, Fred Neil, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Woody Guthrie, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Mimi & Richard Farina, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Eric Andersen, Carolyn Hester, Odetta and more, as well as Dylan himself – inspiring each other to find new paths into and out of American musical tradition.
It takes a Village to raise a child, goes the old saying; here’s the one that nurtured Bob Dylan so well.
DUG is the debut project from Jonny Pickett and Lorkin O’Reilly. The latter moved to New York state from Scotland as a teenager, and he coaxes rather than bellows his lyrics in an accent which recalls other American folkies like Jeffrey Lewis or Iron & Wine.
Opening instrumental ‘Cold Frost’, with its fiddle and drone, sets the mood for an album of folk tunes which sometimes employ woodwind and brass. The title track is as welcoming as you’d expect for a song that describes “a never-ending party in the sky”. It has a stomp-clap beat and call-and-response choruses with gang vocals, while the mention of “ketamine and beer” helps position the album as alt-folk rather than folk of the straight and gentle kind. The similarly…
Marja Ahti’s music rarely commands attention. Depending on the context in which it’s played, whether listening on speakers or headphones, during a time of day bustling with activity or in the dead of night, the Turku, Finland-based Swedish sound artist’s pieces may easily slip into the background and disappear completely beneath the threshold of perception. At the same time, her subtle electroacoustic strokes contain an invitation to listen deeply, leaving behind a trail of found sound, field recordings, synthesizers, amplified objects, and inchoate effects to be assembled into a rewarding sonic narrative.
Ahti’s recent collaboration with kindred sound artist Manja Ristić, Transference on Erstwhile, is a lovely example of this approach: a collage…
Being a driven and prolific writer, making records since the early 1990s, Jeff Tweedy has on occasion enjoyed a song splurge. The Wilco frontman and bandleader is already responsible for no less than three double albums – ’96’s sweeping twin-disc statement Being There, 2022’s genre-corrupting Cruel Country, and 2014’s Sukierae, his literal dadrock LP with son Spencer on drums.
Even so, a triple album is quite the stretch, Twilight Override boldly joining the exalted/dubious company of All Things Must Pass, Sandinista!, Prince’s Emancipation and, more recently, Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me (2010) and Kamasi Washington’s The Epic (2015). Especially in this age of ever-lowering boredom thresholds, it’s a decidedly chin-first artistic statement.
…reissue add eight bonus tracks, including five previously unreleased songs, two demos, and one “single mix.”
“I was working, tried my hardest,” Ryan DeRobertis, aka Skylar Spence, sings on Prom King’s disco-tinged ode to self-love “Can’t You See”. “Slowed some music down and called myself an artist.”
The lyric is a recognizable jab at the musician’s own past, a career built on choppy dance remixes of pop songs labeled as “experimental” or “vaporwave,” collected and stacked up like bricks in a well-supported corner of Bandcamp.
But now DeRobertis has made moves to ground himself. He signed to Carpark Records, ditched his previous corporation-provoking moniker, Saint Pepsi, and started singing himself instead…
In 2023, the UK producer Sammy Virji experienced his first real flash of success. During his viral DJ set at the DJ Mag office, he mixed around 50 garage and bassline tracks in a little over an hour. The raucous set, which, at the time of writing, sits at 2.3 million views, captures the quintessence of Virji’s appeal. As he spun everything from grime VIPs to Ewan McVicar remixes, each track somehow felt bigger than the last. But nothing was more climactic than the moment Flowdan emerged from the crowd, gripping the mic. As the grime MC yelled out the popular hook of the Virji-produced “Shella Verse” — “Pull up dat! Pull up dat!” — Virji, face plastered with his trademark wide and toothy smile, looked like he couldn’t believe how well everything was going.
Imagine being in a coma in 2014 and then waking from it today. The world you arrive in is inarguably not the same one you left. Things are darker, dirtier. The pandemic and global political instability has left the cultural landscape a belligerent, maladjusted wasteland.
Good news, though: that scuzzy garage punk duo from Oxford, Mississippi you were really into has a new album out, appropriately titled Six. They sound just like you remember, too, all fast and low-slung guitar riffs and brutal pounding drums. It’s the audio equivalent of having the time of your life at the dive bar on the corner. Sure, they might not be as fast and fierce as they were in the beginning, but it’s been 11 years, and everyone grows older eventually.