Alloy the band started as a vehicle for Dave Douglas in cahoots with the now passed Roy Campbell Jnr and Baikida Carroll. Douglas was the then greenhorn alongside those masters of free. In this incarnation the roles are reversed, with Douglas the senior to David Adewumi and new kid on the block, Alexandra Ridout. This is austere, disciplined music, perhaps reflecting Douglas’ current mood, where so many of his values, musical and social, must feel under threat.
The first two cuts set the tone: ‘Standing Watch’ is a tight, almost second line blues, resonant of Gary Burton and Carla Bley’s Genuine Tong Funeral, the state of readiness resonating with Rembrandt’s painting The Night Watch. Brennan does the Burton fluid thing while the steadfast…
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On The Hat with the Grin and the Chuckle, his sixth recording as leader of the Tango Project, multi-instrumentalist Ben Thomas once again invites his audience to put on their dancing shoes and sway to Argentina’s unique and emblematic musical genre. In doing so, he affirms that there is far more than one way to tango, eliciting all the warmth and color he possibly can within eight of his luminous and rhythmic compositions.
Besides writing and arranging every number, Thomas plays bandoneon, vibraphone and percussion while leading a sextet whose uncommon makeup includes clarinet, bass, piano and two violins — not what one might envision on a jazz album but well-suited to a session whose raison d’etre is the tango.
Hot on the heels of that ace blink-and-you’ll-miss-it electroacoustic set Turn Liquid Into Dust, Home dissolves Ziúr‘s paradigm yet again. If you’re expecting an extension of 2023’s Hakuna Kulala-released jazz-punk explosion Eyeroll, you’ll be surprised – Ziúr brings back Iceboy Violet and Elvin Brandhi, but that’s really where the similarities end. As the title suggests, it’s an exploration of the meaning of “home”, and for Ziúr that’s Germany, a country she’s had a tense relationship since she was a teenager, obfuscating her connection for years. Singing, sneering and vocalizing over almost every track, she opens up fully, choosing to use English mostly, but also writing lyrics in German for the first time, which is the real revelation. If you’ve been following her material…
Renowned for her formidable and boundary-pushing cello improvisations, including free jazz, improvised noise and experimental electronics, South Korean artist Okkyung Lee is taking a surprising turn with her new album, Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music for Your Mundane Activities. The album marks a significant departure for the composer as she sets aside her cello for the first time to explore the realms of ambient and minimalist music. The lead single, the charmingly titled “good morning, harrison, it’s time to go,” offers a first glimpse into this new, intentionally understated sound world.
For over two decades, Lee has been a towering figure in experimental music, renowned for her creative rigour and emotive depth.
The cover of Riccardo La Foresta’s ZERO, 999… depicts an impossibly tall spiral tower vanishing into the sky, an aptly disorienting visual metaphor for an album that dismantles traditional notions of drumming. Here, drums are not rhythmic anchors but vessels for breath, sustain, and drone — gestural yet devoid of traditional pulse, animated by instability and flux. La Foresta’s practice centers around the drummophone, an instrument of his own invention he began developing in 2015, when he first experimented with blowing air through a cymbal attached to a drum. Forged from a decade of research expanding his process — through live performance, improvisation, and installation — ZERO, 999… is a conceptually focused and compositionally sophisticated…
Performing on various lever and pedal harps, Brazilian composer Marina Mello rethinks the instrument’s logic on her debut album, using guitar pedals, preparations, experimental processes and xenharmonic tuning methods to deviate from tradition.
Another belter from the Buh Records stable, Deságua introduces Zurich-based harpist Mello, whose unconventional approach to her instrument makes the album captivating from beginning to end. Mello teaches the Celtic and concert harp, but doesn’t let her experience prevent her from pushing against tradition, approaching the instrument with her unique “extended technique” to disrupt the stereotypes and expectations that surround it. On opening track…
Kimatika, the 3rd album by the Slovenian audio-visual trio Etceteral, consisting of Boštjan Simon, baritone sax and electronics; Marek Fakuč, drums; and Lina Rica, visuals, is a visceral plunge into the raw undercurrents of futuristic jazz, motoric propulsion, free improv and elastic compositions.
…As often happens with instrumental music, especially jazz-based, the lead is taken by the sax which fills any void left by the absence of vocals. While jazz of a futuristic and improvisatory bent is part of their charm, it is modernised by the presence of motorik rhythms and blasts of techno, all making for an energising concoction. More than on their previous two albums, Kimatika has an emphasis on composition so that while the playing still has a wonderfully freeform feel,..
Shelby Means is one of the great female double bass players in bluegrass music along with the likes of Missy Raines, Vickie Vaughn and Katie Blomarz. She has been a member of Della Mae and held down the bass slot with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway. She is also an accomplished singer-songwriter, and between the two gigs, she played in groups with partner Joel Timmons.
Shelby Means is her first solo album. Of its genesis, she says, “I always knew I wanted my first solo album to be bluegrass.” A quick glance over the credits certainly confirms that with a core band comprising Bryan Sutton (guitar), Sam Bush (mandolin) and Ron Block (banjo), while fiddle duties are shared fairly evenly between fellow Golden Highwaywoman Bronwen..
Born in Augusta, Georgia, in the late 1940s to Polish-Lithuanian immigrants, Daniel Antopolsky may have been a lost immortal, but he is not lost now, and he may become an immortal.
AUK readers may already know the story of the friend of Townes van Zandt, who was the first person to hear ‘Pancho and Lefty‘ as it was being written, who saved van Zandt’s life following a drug overdose and who subsequently left the music scene in the ’70s, travelled the world and settled down on a farm near Bordeaux after meeting his soon-to-be wife, French medical student Sylvia Kirsch. This followed his startling re-emergence in 2015, when his debut album, Sweet Lovin’ Music, was released at the age of 67.
And now comes Ballad of the Stable Boy,…
Tuxis Giant return with their fifth album, You Won’t Remember This, an understated celebration of the fleeting moments – some magical, others awkward or terrifying – that make life precious.
The Boston/NYC group’s Bandcamp bio simply says “sometimes quiet / sometimes loud”. Most of the 13 tracks on their new LP fall into the first category, and the longest clocks in at just over three and a half minutes.
While calmness and brevity may risk coming off as uninspired, frontperson Matt O’Connor and co. ensure the record has the honesty and the emotional depth that render their restraint deeply affecting and, contrary to what the album title would have you believe, memorable.
That self-effacing line may be interpreted as…
Pittsburgh-based songwriter André Costello released his first album in 2011, and in the intervening years, has clocked up a significant catalogue of music.
Falling into the bracket of indie folk and rock, he has an understated vocal style, half-whispered and half-sung. It provides a gentle, sinuous way of encouraging his music into the subconscious.
Rocky Mountain Low (subtle nod to John Denver, there) is Costello’s latest release, and it feels like he has worked hard on a record that encapsulates the best of his vision. The audiophiles among you will be pleased to note it was recorded to tape, and certainly the sound is rich, warm and natural, and also pleasingly uncluttered. Crafted over six years with producer Anthony LaMarca,…
…includes new tracks and live recordings, bringing the total tracklist to 21 songs.
Despite overwhelming critical praise for his 2022 debut, and tours with Noah Kahan – one of the biggest names in modern folk – and counting Zach Bryan as one of his earliest fans, the thought of pulling together the follow-up filled Jack Van Cleaf with dread. While he should have been brimming with confidence having experienced so much success shortly after graduating from college, the reality was quite different.
“I was shell-shocked,” he recalls. “I’d spent my whole life being told what to do every single day, and I always dreamed about growing up to be my own boss. Then graduation came, and I got what I wanted… but I realized I had no idea how…
Rocío Márquez is an established singer, experimentalist and PhD graduate intent on refracting flamenco through a 21st-century lens. Steeped in over three decades worth of performing, recording and reframing the genre, she flounces, skirts swishing, along a fine line between respecting tradition and innovating in ways that have flamenco purists pausing mid-palmas. An electric guitar wig out? A spot of Shakespearian word play? “¿Y por que no?”, figures Márquez, whose clutch of albums include the acclaimed Firmamento (2017), Visto en el Jueves (2019), and Tercer Cielo (2022) – she has also worked on film soundtracks and collaborated with Uruguayan musician Jorge Drexler and famed Spanish musician Kiko Veneno.
Solo recordings, at least when they feature instruments other than piano or guitar, can be a challenge even for the most committed jazz listeners. The excitement generated by the dialogue of multiple instrumentalists is, of course, missing, and even the most talented artists can have trouble sustaining one’s interest for an entire album. Such releases can be rather rewarding, however, when the musician in question has either astonishing technique or compelling emotional substance — or both, as is evident on multi-instrumentalist Ned Rothenberg‘s Looms and Legends, his first solo recording since 2012’s World of Odd Harmonics. The album can certainly be appreciated for its technical brilliance — no surprise to anyone who has followed Rothenberg’s long…
Early in his recording career, pianist Vijay Iyer formed his most compelling group, Fieldwork. The initial album release, Your Life Flashes (2002) broke new ground and put down the roots from which everything Iyer has created in 20-plus years has grown and flourished.
Iyer’s recording career began in 1995 with Memorophilia. The ensuing 30 years have seen more than a score of albums from the pianist in a leadership role as well as dozens in a sideman stints. His three previous Fieldwork outings include the previously mentioned Your Life Flashes, as well as Simultaneous Progress (2005) and Door (2007), all on the Pi Recordings label.
Then Fieldwork went fallow, until the disc at hand, 2025’s Thereupon, emerged.
Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis and their leader Jaan-Eik Tulve have established themselves among the leading interpreters of Arvo Pärt’s music over a quarter-century of close collaboration with the composer – a relationship that builds on the almost half a century long artistic partnership between Pärt and producer Manfred Eicher. Of the ensemble’s ECM New Series recording The Deer’s Cry, the BBC Music Magazine wrote that “the level of artistry necessary to achieve the kind of living, breathing performance given here by Vox Clamantis is a rarity … This grippingly authentic and superbly sung collection may now be the finest single-disc introduction to Pärt’s music.”
And I heard a voice, recorded in Haapsalu Cathedral, Estonia, and released as Arvo Pärt…
Arvo Pärt is perhaps the most frequently performed contemporary composer, and part of the reason for that is the flexibility of his music. Not only do his works stand up to his own rearrangements into various forms, but his music holds up when performed by many kinds of singers and instrumentalists, even by amateur choirs, although it requires a certain technical tautness. Thus, with a performance by the historically oriented Concerto Copenhagen, one might object that Pärt was not a Baroque composer, but what is done on this performance by conductor Tõnu Kaljuste and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir does not break any boundaries. The Concerto Copenhagen strings avoid vibrato and have clear attacks that stand up to the vast atmosphere…
Moving Images invites the audience to explore the deep connections between sound and imagery, encouraging an introspective journey where the boundaries blur between classical music, cinematic storytelling, and mental imagery. Spanning sombre chamber pieces, ominous yet hopeful and hypnotic ambiances, soft solo piano interludes, poetic and playful flutes, to tension-laced cinematic strings and synths, Emil Friis‘ latest work transcends the conventional album release. The project expands into a collaboration with a group of filmmakers, exploring how music and film intertwine to provoke our interpretation, the sound we experience and our internal narratives.
Each track is paired with a corresponding film, with the filmmakers — including Kevin Brooks,…