East Two + 7 comprises previously unreleased tracks from one of Sun Ra’s most productive periods: 1972-73. Those two hectic years saw Sun Ra recording numerous albums, staging concerts, teaching at Berkeley, acting in and composing the score for a full-length movie, embarking on a multi-album (though ill-fated) major label deal, and touring the U.S. and Europe.
The title track, “East Two,” is one of two pieces on this album originating at a two-day October 1972 session at Chicago’s Streeterville Studios. That workshop produced two entire albums: Ra’s major label debut, Space Is the Place (issued on Blue Thumb — and not to be confused with the film and soundtrack of the same title), and Discipline 27-II (released on Ra’s own Saturn imprint).
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…featuring 8 new tracks & reworks.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that Rialto’s greatest ambition was to obtain immortality as the answer to a pub quiz question, that being: which band had the longest period between second and third albums? In the case of this band, who fizzled to a couple of minor hits only at the very end of the Britpop era, it’s been 24 years. Nearly a quarter of a century is a long time to be away, only then to be coming back.
Contemporaries Pulp are also releasing a new album after an uncannily similar time between releases, but Jarvis Cocker and co have sporadically toured in between. Rialto have not. Will anyone remember them? Do they start from scratch? And, perhaps most pertinently, why now?
Tucker Zimmerman‘s final studio album, Dream Me a Dream was completed in 2025 as a collaboration between Zimmerman and Big Potato’s own producer Nick Holton, and was due to be announced when news came of the deaths of Tucker and his wife Marie-Claire at their Liège home. After careful consideration, the label decided to go ahead. “Well, because that’s what Tucker was expecting,” they wrote.
…At 84, Zimmerman was not young, and had decades of sporadically released, underheard music behind him, starting with his Tony Visconti-produced 1968 debut, Ten Songs (which David Bowie listed in Vanity Fair in 2003 as an all-time favourite). Zimmerman’s career never flew but he released some superb singer-songwriter…
To his credit, Joe Bonamassa has never been shy about his influences, consistently paying tribute to them in concerts and studio recordings.
From British blues rock icons like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Led Zeppelin, a few acts he covered on 2018s ‘British Blues Explosion Live,’ to reimagining classic soul with singer Beth Hart and helming a stunningly assembled homage to B.B. King, Bonamassa uses his popularity to attract attention to those who played a major role in his musical development.
Longtime fans remember JB’s 2000 major label debut kicked off with a version of Rory Gallagher’s “Cradle Rock,” an early indication of how significant the Irish guitar legend’s music was to him. Bonamassa often cites Gallagher’s…
The Veils have occupied a distinctive place within alternative music for more than two decades, blending literary lyricism with emotionally driven songwriting and an evolving sound. Formed around singer-songwriter Finn Andrews, the band emerged in the early 2000s after Andrews signed to Rough Trade Records at just 16 years old. Since then, The Veils have released eight studio albums, moving between piano-led ballads, expansive rock arrangements, and atmospheric indie soundscapes while maintaining a strong emotional core. Their music frequently explores themes of love, loss, identity, and mortality, delivered through Andrews’ expressive vocals and poetic writing style.
…Andrews’ songwriting often reflects the tradition of classic storytellers who prioritise…
Following up on their expansive 2024 double album Stung!, the Western Australia-based psychedelic rock outfit Pond wanted to tighten things up. The result is the much more focused Terrestrials, a collection of synth-heavy rockers that shine with a neon gleam.
The group – Nick Allbrook, Jay Watson, Joe Ryan, Jamie Terry, and James Ireland entered the studio with three rules: no fuzz pedals, no ballads, and, as they say, “no Pink Floyd shit”. The resulting ten songs are supremely focused on an early-80’s electro-pop sound. The opening “Skyworks” successfully sets the tone for what is to follow as the New Wave-laden synths, tight, revved-up riffs, and drum machine get the dance floor packed in rousing fashion.
Can we get a “WOO-HOO”? For “lost” albums to see the light of day during an artist’s lifetime is something of a rarity. Fortunately, Graham Coxon is very much alive and kicking and has gifted us with his ninth solo LP Castle Park. Recorded in 2011 during the sessions for A+E, it fell by the wayside as Coxon found himself occupied with another Blur reunion tour and album. It was then further buried by his soundtrack work on The End of the Fucking World, his graphic novel and accompanying music for ‘Superstate’, his life as half of The WAEVE with partner Rose Elinor Dougall, and then another roll of the dice with his old Britpop chums for some mega Wembley and festival shows and the sublime ‘Ballad of Darren’.
Now, in a rare moment of calm, Coxon is…
Bruce Springsteen’s emotionally charged, politically angry, and incredibly moving Land of Hope and Dreams tour pulled into Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on a gorgeous spring night, Thursday, May 14th. The sold-out crowd got to experience The Boss with the full E-Street Band, along with special guest Tom Morello, delivering twenty-seven powerful songs as well as a few from-the-heart speeches from Springsteen.
Bruce began the show with a direct address attacking the corrupt President and his enablers before dropping dramatically into a cover of “War” by Edwin Starr, as the large arena sang along to the iconic tune. The righteous anger continued as the band segued directly into “Born in the USA,” a Vietnam War protest tune that still…
When does jazz become more than a set of tools and techniques, and what is the crucial element that makes it into its own unmistakable form?
Jazz musicians have pushed against the genre since at least the days of the big bands, and Miles Davis’s guitarist Pete Cosey once declared jazz “a dirty word.” Yet the teeming nocturnes of Duke Ellington and the melted grooves of On the Corner are both jazz, despite the misgivings of their creators. On his latest release, Finnish musician Vladislav Delay (born Sasu Ripatti) utilizes the basic equipment of jazz but ends up with something undeniably different.
Delay has been around since the ’90s, operating mostly in various shades of electronic (abstract glitch, collaged house, minimal…
Pianist Helen Sung honors her musical heroes and expands her sonic scope on her first big-band jazz album, 2026’s Oracles. The 2007 Mary Lou Williams Piano Competition winner, Sung has released a string of highly lauded small group dates, each of which found her further deepening her harmonically fluid brand of post-bop. Yet, Sung (who is classically trained) came to jazz relatively late toward the end of earning her undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin. It was during her first year as a member of the inaugural class at what is now known as the Herbie Hancock Institute that she gained fluency, mentored by a cadre of legendary artists, among them Clark Terry, Ron Carter, Jimmy Heath, Wayne Shorter, Barry Harris, Kenny Barron,…
It’s always good to see young guitarists coming through and flying the flag for acoustic instrumental music. Miami-based 21-year-old instrumentalist Conor Moore spent time studying jazz but has seemingly found his nook in the American primitive style guitar genre.
Chamber Music is very much a solo effort and has been recorded with the minimum of fuss and frills; there is a pleasing simplicity to this approach, and it leaves Conor nowhere to hide. Thankfully, he’s good for it, with a pretty solid technique and plenty of creativity. That’s not to say the performances are perfect; the rhythm wavers here and there, and Conor is clearly still carving out his own style, but it’s all charming stuff. The cover of Ali Farka Touré’s and Toumani Diabaté’s…
…The deluxe edition of the album unveils six tracks that were previously only available via a limited-edition boxset at the time.
Like a heavy weather warning, there’s not much you can do once Beth Hart decides she’s coming through. The assumed shorthand for Beth Hart is blues siren, but she’s far more than that, even if this latest album opens with the fiery ‘Savior with a Razor’, which struts in like a cowboy kicking open saloon doors before Slash comes in through the window like Paul Kossoff with a grudge against his Gibson Les Paul.
Very good it is too, and no one would blame you if at that point, a light bulb went off above your head and you thought, ‘I get it; Beth Hart, blues siren’. Because when Hart throws back…
Grammy-nominated Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist Fatoumata Diawara has never lacked conviction, and Massa is her most openly devotional record yet. Working again with Matthieu Chedid (better known as -M-, and the album’s artistic director), it dresses Wassoulou-rooted guitar lines and Bambara melodies in sleek pop colours, albeit sometimes too sleekly.
The opening run feels oddly cautious, and the language of gratitude can tip into a sermon. Yet Diawara’s sincerity is hard to resist. When the machinery loosens, as on ‘Sigui’, where she drops into a darker register, or ‘Fala’, whose Bambara-English plea, ‘Don’t cry’, carries real ache, the album finds a more compelling balance between polish and pulse. ‘Tati Bakary’,…
Turnover have made a habit of shedding their skin with each new record. The Virginia Beach outfit, led by brothers Austin and Casey Getz, came up in an early-2010s emo and pop-punk scene that had long abandoned the mathematics of its Midwest enclave and the theatrics of its biggest stars. Their debut Magnolia basically refused any classification beyond “alternative rock,” a sound hardly built to last. Nevertheless, Turnover garnered enough of a following to whisk fans into the world of dream pop with their 2015 breakout Peripheral Vision, and they’ve only continued to evolve since then, pulling from sunbaked vineyard rock, lazy background music and vocoded disco with varying results. Their sixth album, Down on Earth, looks back on that consensus masterpiece with…
Warner’s 1988 Fleetwood Mac Greatest Hits compilation, which was released at the time to capitalise on the success of Tango in the Night, is being reissued as a deluxe edition.
…In addition to the plethora of smash hits like “Rhiannon,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” “Tusk,” “Gypsy,” “Little Lies” and “Everywhere” – as well as the then-new tracks “As Long As You Follow” and “No Questions Asked” – the set now includes a bonus disc of 10 songs from the same era/line-up; three were on certain CD pressings of the original set, and the rest include “Landslide,” “The Chain” and the sole chronological outlier, the live version of “Silver Springs” from 1997 live album The Dance.
In just over a decade between 1975 and 1987,…
As we hurtle toward Skynet, there is more information than we know what to do with. Great swaths of the population bend the knee to those who orchestrate our demise. We live in an Information Age in which very few people seem to be doing any thinking. This creates an opening for false prophets and self-appointed kings.
Such is the overarching theme of Signal Fire, the fourth album from electro-metal smashers Genghis Tron. As on their 2021 comeback record, Dream Weapon, core duo Hamilton Jordan and Michael Sochynsky are joined by Sumac drummer Nick Yacyshyn and the Armed vocalist Tony Wolski. Unlike last time, Kenny Szymanski from the Armed plays bass.
…“I Am All” is Genghis Tron in excelsis,…
Delia Beatriz’s latest as Debit continues her explorations of Latin American rhythm and identity through the lens of club music. The first and most obvious thing to note about Potpourri is that it is bangin’. Following last year’s woozy 90s elegy, Desaceleradas and the dreamy experimental ambient of The Long Count, the carnival of beats on the new album bring a jolt of restless energy. If those previous records drifted through interior spaces of memory and imagination; this one feels crowded and busy, a vortex of motion and ideas.
Marking Debit’s return to NAAFI, the move to the dance floor finds her picking up where her previous SYSTEM EP left off, mixing up guaracha with industrial techno and noise. ‘Referencepoint’ offers a scene-setting introduction:…
The ferny Brutalist cityscape on the cover of Soli City’s Poetics of a New Estate is a fine advertisement for what’s inside: curated Copenhagen vibelessness, shorn of grit but not without a certain numinous quality. Anyone who’s heard the computer-screen fantasias of ML Buch’s Suntub or the mallsoft jazz of MK Velsorf and Aase Nielsen’s Opening Night knows on some level what to expect: spiffy ’80s guitar that twangs and ripples just this side of Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” a conservatory-schooled ear for arrangement, a lack of friction that belies the spookiness rumbling underneath. Less expected are the jarring tonal shifts liable to induce whiplash across its 45 minutes — and which would seem haphazard if every single one of them wasn’t…
In November 2025, trombonist and composer Kalia Vandever released the celebrated quartet offering Another View on Northern Spy. The five-track set was performed by the artist’s quartet that included Mary Halvorson, Kanoa Mendenhall, and Kayvon Gordon. Vandever’s music won attention not only for its quality, but for its difficulty to categorize. While their compositions often utilize modern jazz and vanguard classical music as frameworks for new exploration, Vandever has also worked in pop, classical, and theatrical settings. Mana, her International Anthem debut, relationally returns to the solo framework the artist adopted for 2023’s We Fell in Turn for trombone, voice, and electronics. The seven works here loosely follow that direction, but they expand…
With No Nation But Imagination, British pianist Alexander Hawkins delivers a radical and fascinatingly complex work that may leave listeners wondering how its intertwining layers of piano, synths, harp, flute, drums, turntables, and samples fit together so naturally. Yet Hawkins — already proven capable of leading large ensembles (Togetherness Music) and engaging in adventurous duos with cellist Tomeka Reid, saxophonist Evan Parker, and vocalist Sofia Jernberg — continues to push boundaries, reshaping the language of modern improvised music through another ambitious and experimental undertaking.
“Solo Way Far Gone” opens the album in a restrained glide, its slightly distorted synth waves evoking obscure Sun Ra recordings.