At 87 years old, Sherman Holmes still has plenty of music left to share. The legendary bassist and singer, best known as a founding member of The Holmes Brothers, has released One Step Ahead of the Blues, an eleven-song collection celebrating nearly seven decades of American roots music.
Released through Nola Blue Records, the album brings Holmes together with producer Andreas Werner and an extraordinary group of collaborators, including The Blind Boys of Alabama, Joan Osborne, Catherine Russell, Amy Helm and Ada Dyer.
It is a project rooted in blues, soul and gospel, but its significance extends beyond the music itself. For Holmes, the album represents another chapter in a remarkable journey through…
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There are collaborations that feel inevitable, as if they had been waiting to happen in some shadowed corner of culture. The union between Italian cinematic funk visionaries Calibro 35 and internationally acclaimed master of noir fiction and New York Times bestselling author James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential, American Tabloid) is undoubtedly one of them.
Drawing from musique concrète, post-punk, free psych, kosmische and of course dub, Valentina Magaletti, Al Wootton and Susumu Mukai’s Holy Tongue surpass themselves on their second album, turning in a set that’s almost completely unmoored from time and space. It’s heady, essential listening FFO The Pop Group, Popol Vuh, Equiknoxx, John T. Gast.
This unusual pairing of two veterans from different genres is a welcome reminder that musicianship speaks a common language regardless of categorical metadata. 
That was fast. No sooner did the quickly recorded (in five days) 
Married couple and self-described “satantic doo-wop” duo Twin Temple have become quite the polarizing act in the months leading up to their 3rd full-length LP. After being dropped from opening slots on Charley Crockett’s tour, they landed gigs opening for Jack White after a whirlwind of opinions about the situation that spread across the internet, and Alexandra & Zachary James have since skyrocketed past their peers in terms of attention. Individuality-wise, one could argue the duo never really had peers to begin with. Twin Temple’s sound lands somewhere between naturally nostalgic and intentionally eerie, using the crackling tension of analog-recording techniques to echo vampiric melodies that flow like honey.
In 2019, Anne Helen Petersen published her widely shared BuzzFeed essay, “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation”. It examined the exhaustion of a generation expected to thrive in every area of life while taking on more debt, enjoying less security, and working harder for increasingly uncertain rewards. Even basic tasks could become insurmountable as the promised returns on all that effort slipped further from view.
The second ECM Reich LP. Three pieces representing three different scales of ensemble. Music for a Large Ensemble (1978), Side A, is Reich’s first major work for genuinely orchestral forces (mallet instruments, brass, strings, voice, around thirty players), a step toward the chamber-orchestra writing that would define the eighties Reich. Octet (1979), Side B opener, scored for two pianos, string quartet, two clarinets and two flutes: more contrapuntal and chamber-music-like than its predecessors. Violin Phase (1967), Side B closer, Shem Guibbory plays all four violin parts (three pre-recorded against one live), the canonical recording of one of the early phase pieces.
The piece in which Reich turned to his Jewish heritage. 
Singer, songwriter, humanitarian, activist, poet, philosopher, artist… as the music legend Labi Siffre prepares to release his first album of new music in 28 years, Demon are making his stellar catalogue available again as vinyl reissues and 3CD sets.
Finnish guitarist/singer/songwriter 
Everyone Says Hi return with their second album 
…features four additional tracks, including brand-new renditions of the classic blues song ‘Nobody Knows the Way I Feel This Morning’ and the traditional jazz standard ‘Ill Wind (You’re Blowing Me No Good).’ Other bonus tracks include a special Village Studios session recording of Washington’s iconic hit ‘What a Difference a Day Made’ and the recently released single ‘Teach Me Tonight.’
Mika Oki’s art installations are all smoke and mirrors, quite literally. Roiling clouds of fog are lit by prismatic lights, while images are variously reflected, distorted, and projected through frames, making doors become mirrors and mirrors become windows. They are more experiential than physical, serving to make reality oddly illusory. They are also a great introduction to 
The Howlers return with their sophomore album Heavy, following on from their debut, What You’ve Got to Lose to Win It All. The opening couple of tracks stay in fairly charted indie-pop territory, with lyrics focused on romantic encounters, relationship trouble, and mistrust, though the group do a good job of keeping it catchy and to the point. That being said, the track ‘Late Nights’ is where some of the lyrics are too on the nose to allow the listener to consider their own impressions of the song; “You never knew love could make you feel sad” is the most pertinent example of this. The Howlers could benefit from some further use of metaphor in their writing process and leave a bit more to the imagination.
There’s a charming spit-and-sawdust quality to Linda’s Head, the new album from 
Released as an exclusive covermount CD with the November 2026 issue of MOJO magazine, 
Paul McCartney’s internationally acclaimed album The Boys of Dungeon Lane receives a Special Edition this October, featuring four additional recordings, including a new version of “Home To Us,” his celebrated duet with Ringo Starr, alongside three brand-new songs.