Blues singer-songwriter and guitarist Selwyn Birchwood has always described his music as ‘electric swamp funkin’ blues.’ Now, on his seventh release and fifth for Alligator, Birchwood sees fit to make that the title. He ‘owns’ this record more than any of his others as it is a self-produced effort, unlike his past two, where he deferred to Tom Hambridge. Here, he sounds positively unleashed, as wild as we’ve ever heard him. Birchwood proudly states in the promotional materials that he carves a unique path: “You would be hard-pressed to find an album or a band that sounds exactly like mine, and that has and will always be the goal.”
Let’s take a closer look. Birchwood, per usual, plays guitar and lap steel. Longtime collaborator Regi Oliver, who has graced all of…
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Rosendals Garden is yet another chapter in Yelena Eckemoff‘s ongoing historical narrative devoted to people and places both real and imagined. Recorded in 2024 at RMV Studio, Stockholm, Sweden, by engineer Linn Final, with mixing and mastering by Stefano Amerio, the audio is as colorful and detailed as the musicianship and the packaging.
Remarkably, there has never been a sense of hurry in the playing of keyboardist Eckemoff and her two bandmates. During the luxuriously slow build-up of “ABBA Museum,” for instance, there is every indication all three musicians trust their instincts, individually and collectively. The shared intuition is even more apparent on the title song: the structure of the composition is mirrored…
Since forming in 2015, jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements have charted a singular musical course. Their sound marries the fiery liberation poetry of Camae Ayewa (better known as Moor Mother), with exploratory and often improvisational brass from trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and saxophonist Keir Neuringer. Grounding their experimental style are double bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Tcheser Holmes.
The band’s music exists in a space between wild artistic freedom and the righteous anger that defines the lyrics of Moor Mother. Their focus on social and racial justice is written into their DNA. They did after all first come together as part of a Musicians Against Police Brutality event, organised in the wake of the killing of Akai Gurley.
Mark Fell has spent much of his career building castles out of splinters. Or their digital equivalents, anyway: The Sheffield native’s music is an amalgamation of shards, fragments, and slivers of electronic sound sculpted into dazzling arrhythmic bursts. Composed on software platforms like Max/MSP, his pieces are rigorously formalist in nature, their shapes largely determined by the interaction of elements within closed systems. Even in the absence of understanding just what makes his music tick, one intuits the action of inscrutable processes at work, arcane rules generating sequences that unspool at the speed of black MIDI. To listen to Mark Fell often feels like standing in the shadow of the mathematical sublime.
Still, while the effects may be bracing, titles…
How do you move from electronic dance music (or EDM, if you will), with 14 million views for your Boiler Room set, to creating a boundary-pushing label and post-modern classical music that veers into ambient? It might sound perplexing on paper, but for an inventive, classically trained composer/musician, in this case German-Italian pianist/composer David August, it seems a breeze, as his latest album Hymns showcases.
And yes, August also runs 99CHANTS, a label that is supposed to push boundaries between genres, but also art forms.
It seems that Hymns serves as some kind of career deconstruction/reconstruction move for August. Going back to his classical piano training, August moves from prime EDM to…
Lauren Auder‘s journey from Soundcloud uploader to embracing pop sensibilities has been a long one, but by the sound of Whole World As Vigil, it could be one that’s coming to fruition.
Auder has been recording music for over 10 years now, working with the likes of Slowthai and Jeshi and self-publishing a variety of demo songs. This led to a series of EPs, and eventually a support slot with Christine and The Queens. Her debut album The Infinite Spine showed that she was a dab hand at baroque electronics but her second album feels like a massive step forward – a record that finds the sweet spot between industrial grit and arena-sized ambition.
Having apparently started off life as a series of voice notes recorded while walking round…
Arlo Parks has long made a home in vulnerability and poetic lyricism, and on Ambiguous Desire, she doubles down on that instinct with confidence. The album is full of psychedelic textures, punchy basslines, and dreamy vocals that blur together into something hypnotic but anthemic.
While the coherence of the record sometimes lends itself to monotony, the darker sonic undercurrent, coupled with a newly found more intricate and explorative sonority, has a sensation of quiet and dreamlike absorption.
Across the whole record, Parks’ vocals are soothing and ambivalent. ‘Get Go’, one of the album’s singles, is definitely the record’s most euphoric moment. Punchy but shimmery, its broadness conjures the feeling of dancing and…
…includes several ‘cuts’ reimagined by friends and collaborators, as well as previously unreleased demo drafts from the original recording sessions.
Those familiar with 2022’s Squeeze might find themselves disillusioned here. Where Sasami’s albums once began with frustrated vocals atop a brash metal backdrop that gets off on rodent torture, they now arrive hosting a succint, full-blown pop record perfectly acceptable for daytime radio, nurtured by a newfound superstar alter-ego. Predictably, she’s shied away from diving too deep into the pop realm up until this point. Immediately upon entry, however, Blood On the Silver Screen makes an effort to blend the barriers separating rock and pop: Sasami wakes us up to her serious ability to excel across both fields.
Scout Gillett’s Tough Touch chronicles the experience of a touring musician and the constant sense of change road life entails.
On this record, Gillett’s powerful vocals and artistic presence is in constant motion, as she adeptly applies stylistic variety over Tough Touch’s ten tracks. We get songs that range from country-flecked folk beaty to spiky blasts of angsty uncertainty. Gillett and company have learned how to manipulate strong emotions and the desire to experience something new and exciting that continuously drives her forward.
“Coney Island,” one of Gillett’s finest songs to date, is a haunting contemplation on youthful innocence and loss. Gillett’s vocals have a bit of a young Emmylou Harris tone here, whereas…
The Beatles are a singularly iconic rock band. While plenty of classic rock groups, like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and, most successfully, Queen, continue to rack up tens of millions of monthly Spotify streams, no other band remains as relevant as the Beatles. Many YouTubers build popular channels by explaining musical theory through their songs or by delving into the supposed mysteries of how their music was created.
That makes it increasingly more challenging to find a new perspective on the group. With a Little Help from My Friends: Covers of the Beatles 1967-1970 may well provide some interesting new points of discussion. Does it make for an equally enjoyable listening experience?
This 3-disc box set from Cherry Red Records…
Nene H’s best work is born from disruption. While her singles and EPs are often flirtatious and infectious, she is at her most compelling when cross examining the kind of upheaval that gives way to self-transformation, fusing electronic music genres with the sounds of her SWANA heritage. Her striking album debut, Ali, followed the passing of her father — a body of work that doubled remarkably as both a haunting rumination on grief and a dancefloor weapon. Second Skin similarly wraps itself around loss, inspired by a recent breakup, but rather than ruminate, as on Ali, here Nene annihilates.
…One need not have experienced a breakup to relate to the music, which pulses with industrial power, especially on standout track…
In 2023, the CalArts centre for contemporary arts, REDCAT, exhibited Lisa Alvarado’s Pulse Meridian Foliation, a multidisciplinary work that consisted of paintings, textiles, murals, photographs and a sound installation.
Pulse Meridian Foliation explored the interconnectedness of geological processes, deep time and the politics of repatriation. Images of the installation show beautifully patterned abstract pieces: double-sided, large-scale textile pieces that hang from the ceiling and startlingly bold designs painted directly onto the gallery walls. The visual aspect of Alvarado’s work owes a debt to her Mexican heritage: aesthetic vibrancy and political astuteness become inseparable.
Alongside her work as a visual artist, Alvarado…
Recorded at night by candlelight in the Temple of La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, Music for Intersecting Planes captures the immediacy of sound in space.
Cellist Leila Bordreuil and organist Kali Malone dubbed the session back in 2021 when they were given access to the Temple of La Tour-de-Peilz, a chapel with two organs that’s just near Lake Geneva. Malone plays organ and sine tones while Bordreuil plays cello and feedback, leaning in to the building’s natural resonance.
As night fell, they lit candles and began to record, letting the natural ambiance from outside (birdsong, church bells) bleed into the air, focusing their performance to bring out the most disquieting resonances.
Sometimes to find your inner self, you have to take respite from the outside world. That’s what alto saxophonist and bandleader Caroline Davis did when she spent a four-week artist residency in northern Wyoming, where she recorded set of tracks in a cabin there, on the fallows. Fallows is unlike anything Davis has ever done before, stepping mostly outside the jazz genre and her jazz persona to follow a muse that’s looks at art and the world it inhabits on natural, spiritual terms.
A rare record made in Ucross, Wyoming, Fallows takes advantage of the serenity offered there to create music with a mind freed of clutter. Accordingly, it’s an un-self-conscious set of recordings, made without any consideration of how the public might receive it. Davis comes…
Ulysses Owens Jr. takes the classic hard bop sound and makes it pop with a youthful urgency on 2026’s Around the World with U. The album, which follows 2024’s New Beat, is the New York drummer and Julliard professor’s second with his Generation Y ensemble; a group who takes direct inspiration from the hard-driving style of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Made up of some former students and up-and-coming players, the group here features alto saxophonist Erena Terakubo, trumpeter Anthony Hervey, pianist Tyler Bullock, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura. Pushed ever forward by Owens’ muscular, hard-swinging grooves, they conjure a robust, live-in-studio sound that crackles with the burn-out intensity of a club gig. It’s a vibe they capture from the start on…
Matinee Acoustic Live at the Prince Albert finds Johnny Moped taking an unexpected turn with an acoustic set that, against all expectations, proves both engaging and highly entertaining. The very idea of a Johnny Moped acoustic performance might raise eyebrows among longtime fans, but the results speak for themselves.
Historically known for their chaotic and unpredictable shows, Johnny Moped have, in recent years, evolved into a far tighter and more dependable live act. That doesn’t mean the band have lost their edge—mistakes still happen, but within the Moped universe, they only add to the charm. What truly drives the performance is the same energy and excitement that has always defined them, and it remains fully intact here.
To many in the know, Brian Foote-who cut his teeth raving in Wisconsin-is as synonymous with Chicago label kranky as the albums they’ve released. Foote has worked alongside co-founder Joel Leoschke as a publicist for the label since 2005. But he’s also a label boss in his own right. Inaugurated in 2012, L.A.’s Peak Oil (run by Foote and Brion Brionson) is a home for the kind of “strange and mysterious” heads-down electronic music that grows in dank basements: ambient-adjacent, breaks-friendly, and with the club never too far from its mind. One of the label’s recent “stars” (insofar as an underground group can attain that status) are Brooklyn ambient trio Purelink, who to date have released two albums of critically acclaimed chilled electronica that feel part of a wider return…
Reverence for the organ trio tradition of 1970s soul jazz remains Parlor Greens’ guiding light on sophomore album Emeralds. The trio was founded when Tim Carman-whose heavy blues rock trio, GA-20, releases music through Colemine’s catch-all subsidiary Karma Chief-told Colemine founder Terry Cole about his aspirations for an organ trio after which Cole called up guitarist Jimmy James and organ player Adam Scone. James did a seven-year stint in the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, while Scone played an integral role in the late ’90s soul revival as a member of The Sugarman 3 and as a session player with Daptone. Not only had James and Scone played in organ trios in the past, but they’d previously collaborated on Brooklyn to Brooklin, the 2022 full-length…
Rogue Wave began almost by accident.
In early 2002, faced with the sort of existential crisis unique to the newly unemployed, Zach Rogue decided to take some time off from his home base of San Francisco. He set off with a one-way ticket to New York in March with the intention of recording one or two songs with a friend, in an effort to exorcise his demons both artistically and personally. He came away with both a new lease on life and an album’s worth of material that would later become Rogue Wave’s stunning debut, Out of the Shadow.
At the end of 2002, while preparing the album for self-release, Zach rounded out the band’s lineup with the addition of Pat Spurgeon (drums, keys, samples, vocals) Sonya Westcott (bass, vocals)…
Paul Carrack is releasing a concert album recorded at Royal Albert Hall in London on Oct. 24, 2024, in celebration of 50 years of his first hit, “How Long,” recorded with Ace in 1974.
For One Night Only (Live in London) comprises two halves with Carrack joined by special guests SWR big band and orchestra playing songs from the album Don’t Wait Too Long and the second half featuring Carrack with his own band playing all his big hits. They’re joined on two tracks by a 150-piece choir, Funky Voices.
Dubbed by the BBC as “The Man With the Golden Voice,” Carrack’s breakthrough moment came when he wrote and sang “How Long” from his days with Ace. Paul also enjoyed great success as the voice behind numerous hits for…