Bassist Miroslav Vitous made his bones in the late ’60s and early ’70s as both player and composer for the original lineup of Weather Report, not to mention as a major contributor to pianist Chick Corea’s landmark trio album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs. But he’s been a leader on his own albums for ECM since the late seventies, and he’s never rested on any laurels in doing it. Thus Mountain Call, which combines three different sets of players into a remarkable program that threads the needle between jazz and classical musics.
Vitous opens the album with a four-song mini-set featuring duets with late clarinetist Michel Portal that sound like two old friends having a truly interesting conversation – interesting enough that more of its appear throughout…
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…features the original album as well as sessions, B-sides, a live show from the time and a complete disc of demos from Chapel Studios.
Having exorcised enough bile for two bands on their rickety release Interim, The Fall loosen up their attitude, tighten up their delivery, and squeeze out a rocking album that relies heavily on its highlights. Fortunately, there’s plenty, most hitting with the thwack of the “Sparta FC” single or the Light User Syndrome album. “Pacifying Joint” is a punchy exercise in hooks and sheen, “What About Us” is snide Mancabilly of the highest order, and “Blindness” hypnotizes and chugs its way into the Top 25 original Fall tracks ever. Flashiest of the lot has to be a soaring cover of the Move’s hippy anthem “I Can Hear the Grass Grow,”…
Coming from the small-town roots of Leavenworth, Kansas, Melissa Etheridge has become a modern American music icon. Leaving the comforts of home in 1982 to pursue music studies at Berklee College of Music in California in 1982, Etheridge spent several years building her sound before eventually signing on with Island Records in 1986, and making a national breakthrough in 1988 with her self-titled debut and the Grammy-nominated single “Bring Me Some Water.” Bringing an authentic heartland approach to mainstream Rock-n-Roll, Etheridge would continue to find success into the 1990s and truly arrived in the spotlight in 1993 with her pivotal album Yes I Am. With a record that peaked at number 15 on the Billboard 200 and featured hits like “I’m the Only One,” “If I Wanted To”…
It’s been a long journey for Lindsey Jordan, better known as Snail Mail. From the fledging steps that were 2016’s Habit EP, in which a 16-year-old Jordan released more heart, feeling, conviction in song format than the indie genre had seen in many moons. In many ways, she arrived fully formed, surfing to the front of the indie rock genre on a wave of pure honesty and talent for guitar prowess. With the release of 2018’s debut album, Lush, she became one of the most recognizable voices to skate the scene. With the exceptional and expanding follow up that was 2021’s Valentine, it’s hard to believe that it has been close to five years since Jordan last released an album.
Ricochet at its most honest is a stellar reintroduction to the world of Snail Mail,…
The twelfth album from Los Angeles metal veterans Black Label Society has all of the band’s trademarks. Loaded with pummelling riffs, blazing guitar solos, bluesy licks, and a southern rock twang, Engines of Demolition is undeniably heavy without sacrificing hooks or accessibility.
Frontman Zakk Wylde broke into the industry as Ozzy Osbourne’s new guitarist in 1987 and ended up creating some of Ozzy’s best riffs. Fronting his own band, Black Label Society, since 1998, Wylde took with him Ozzy’s penchant for pairing bone-crunching heaviness with beautiful melodies. Black Label Society’s music hits hard, but beneath that heavy exterior lies intricate melodies and Wylde’s soulful voice.
The album opener, “Name in Blood,”…
…John Mellencamp recently announced the Dancing Words tour, a summer trek through America in July and August that’ll focus on hits he’s not played in a while to audiences in outdoor amphitheaters. A few months before that, Cherry Red’s Lemon imprint issue an exciting new compilation that takes things back to the beginning of Mellencamp’s career – under a different name, and with some enticing unreleased material.
American Dream (The Mainman Recordings 1976- 1977) is a 2CD set that’ll feature both albums he recorded for the MCA-distributed Mainman under the somewhat confounding sobriquet “Johnny Cougar.” Chestnut Street Incident (1976) and The Kid Inside (recorded in 1977 but unreleased for five years) will be accompanied by…
Following a three-year studio hiatus and the arrest of their now-former drummer Joe Seiders on child pornography charges, Canadian indie rock supergroup The New Pornographers are returning with their new LP The Former Site Of.
Many musicians have come and gone from the New Pornographers over the past 30 years, but the core lineup of Neko Case, John Collins, Carl Newman, Todd Fancey, and Kathryn Calder remains. They were joined on the album by session drummer Charley Drayton, though Josh Wells will be behind the kit when they tour.
According to a press release, The Former Site Of features “ten short stories of people at personal and societal extreme.” In a November 2025 exclusive interview with Rolling Stone…
Whatever you think of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, you have to admire Michael Peter Balzary’s efforts to establish an aesthetic hinterland beyond the unit-shifting funk-rock of his regular band. Even at the height of the Chilis’ socks-on-cocks tomfoolery, Flea was telling anyone who’d listen that Gang Of Four were the greatest band who ever lived, acting in indie movies like My Own Private Idaho, investigating Transcendental Meditation and playing lounge jazz with Mike Watt. Since the turn of the millennium, he’s ramped up his extra-curricular activities, forming supergroups with Damon Albarn and Thom Yorke, and guesting with the likes of Patti Smith, Tom Waits and Morrissey.
He’s also gravitated back towards his first instrument – trumpet – and his first musical…
Last time this writer spoke to Courtney Barnett, she dismissed her label’s claims that her third album, 2021’s Things Take Time, Take Time, marked the debut of “Courtney 2.0”, describing it as “just an extension of the same thing I’ve always been doing”. Seismic aesthetic shifts aren’t Barnett’s style; after happening upon her laconic, chugging mode with 2012 debut EP I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris, her vibe has been: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
Even the relative experimentation she undertook on Things Take Time… with Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa has been abandoned here in favour of her trad indie-rock setup. The title feels like an admission: that Barnett is the creature of habit, returning to the familiar.
…includes solo material as well as co-written songs with the Rolling Stones, Faces and Jeff Beck Group with 38 tracks on the CD set including four all-new recordings exclusive to this collection.
Ronnie Wood is celebrating 60+ years in music with a new anthology, comprising solo tracks as well as key cuts from his time playing with the illustrious likes of The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, and Jeff Beck as well as his earliest recordings with The Birds and The Creation. Fearless: The Anthology 1965-2025 kicks off with a pair of recordings from the Middlesex native’s early stints as guitarist for The Birds (“You’re on My Mind”) and The Creation (“The Girls Are Naked”). In 1967, he joined The Jeff Beck Group and kickstarted his career – now as a bassist. Wood first teamed…
Limited edition CD of “Anata” includes exclusive bonus track “Quatro Horizontes”.
In a recent interview with the great Joshua Minsoo Kim, Joshua Chuquimia Crampton explained that, whether in his music, his sibling Chuquimamani-Condori’s, or theirs as Los Thuthanaka, being loud is a part of the physical experience. “You’re supposed to feel the sound,” he elaborated. “It’s not supposed to be painful, but it’s supposed to change you, it’s supposed to make you feel healed in some way.”
…That disruptive power comes alive in Crampton’s universe, too — in the staggering, festering expanse of “Awila,” a 12-minute kullawada dance teeming with awakened guitars and wall-to-wall elementalism. It’s the building, confounding…
Author Philip K. Dick spent his career poking at the porous boundary between reality and illusion, questioning the reliability our perception and memory. Using motifs such as artificial intelligence (AI), mind-altering drugs, simulated realities, and corporate and governmental power, he examined our sense of identity, the nature of truth, and the very essence of reality. Given recent advances in AI as well as ongoing sociopolitical changes, Dick’s work now seems more prescient than ever.
Ubikuitous, yet another thematic compilation from Unexplained Sounds Group, uses experimental ambient and acousmatic music – with a touch of glitch and techno – to explore these concepts. Many of the 14 tracks employ synth-based droning with dark overtones as a core element,…
Magma’s Cosmic Masterpiece: The Absolute Classic Live Album That Redefined Progressive Music Magma’s mythic 1975 live set, captured in full fire at Paris’ Taverne de l’Olympia, returns to mark its 50th anniversary with a stunning new edition. Presented as an exclusive 2LP pressing on translucent blue vinyl and housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, this release honors one of the most powerful live documents in progressive music history. Widely hailed as one of the greatest live albums ever recorded, Live captures the band at their most transcendent, delivering a performance that shattered genre boundaries and redefined the possibilities of rock. The recording radiates raw intensity, precision, and an otherworldly vision that remains unmatched decades later.
It’s taken Sealed records more than five years to put this release together but finally it’s here. The one and only Bikini Mutants. The Bikini Mutants were from Yeovil, Somerset and part of the All the Madmen world. In their short life as a band they recorded two demos at Monitor Studios, Milborne Port in Somerset in 1982.
Let’s Mutate collects these two demos on one LP, along with a 20 page booklet featuring photos, lyrics, reviews, interviews and much more. The band played mostly in Yeovil and the West Country along with the Mob and the Review, and even though they were part of the West Country anarcho scene, the sound was a mix of scratchy post punk and indie pop. Members of the band went on to be in My Bloody Valentine and the Chesterfields.
After 33 years, Guitar Wolf returns to Goner Records, where they started! Way back in 1993, Wolf Rock was released by Goner and immediately, around the world, people enthralled with raw rock n roll and pure Japanese enthusiasm for over-the-top noise realized they had a new band to watch out for.
Many tours, many records, and many eardrums later, Guitar Wolf has returned for the latest, and greatest Guitar Wolf record yet – More Jet. More raw, crunching guitar noise, frantic rhythms, and unpredictable screaming! More head-scratchingly-great song topics! The perfect blend of Link Wray / Ramones / Joan Jett / Cramps sound and attitude mixed with industrial-strength noise.
Led by singer and guitarist Seiji the group’s…
Chicago-born record label International Anthem capped off an entire year of anniversary activities (under the IA11 chrysanthemum banner) with a very special event celebrating the label’s actual eleventh solar return at their new Southside Chicago HQ inside Theaster Gates and Rebuild Foundation’s latest space-based project, The Land School.
The evening featured a performance by Rob Mazurek with Matthew Lux and Mikel Patrick Avery (the ensemble behind Alternate Moon Cycles, the very first album in the IARC catalog, which was originally released December 2nd, 2014), in what Mazurek refers to as “A Polysonic Resonance Field in One Continuous Movement.”
About the performance, Mazurek recalls: “At the invitation of International Anthem, I gathered…
1. The Black Crowes – Cruel Streak
2. Snail Mail – My Maker
3. Andrew Wasylyk – Private Symphony #2
4. Courtney Barnett – Mantis
5. Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection – Rowan Tree
6. Flea – Traffic Lights (feat. Thom Yorke)
7. Bruce Hornsby – Indigo Park
8. Tinariwen – Imidiwan Takyadam
9. Ellie O’Neill – Anna with the Silver Arrow
10. The Long Ryders – Stand a Little Further in…
11. Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Hey Little
12. Memorials – Dropped Down the Well
13. Charlotte Cornfield – Lost Leader
14. Billy Fuller – Rummer
15. The New Pornographers – Ballad of the Last Payphone
1. The Studio 68! & Dani Turner – Funky People
2. The Delines – The Meter Keeps Ticking
3. Altin Gun – Öldürme Beni
4. Bill Callahan – Stepping Out for Air
5. Marielle V Jakobsons – Everything Lost Remains
6. Ulrika Spacek – Picto
7. Iron & Wine – In Your Ocean
8. Cardinals – I Like You
9. Crooked Fingers – Haunted (feat. Sharon Van Etten)
10. KMRU – With Trees Where We Can See
11. Hen Ogledd – Clara
12. The Wave Pictures – The House Painted Blue
13. Buck Meek – Ring of Fire
14. Clémentine March – Lucie
15. Isabel Pine – Fables
The ousting of Bassvictim from Berghain feels like a Biblical prophecy: Of course these electroclash expats, who fucked around and crystallized a fried twee-pop resurgence, would be banished from the Garden of Eden. Just two years ago, Maria Manow and Ike Clateman were heirs apparent to “indie sleaze,” a catch-all whose constraints, musically and aesthetically, boiled down to “kinda Crystal Castles coded.” Here was a photogenic boy-girl duo with two wonderfully wubby albums, a vague air of disaffected cool, and a very active Instagram account. “I’m not joking/I’m being hella serious,” Manow had drawled on “Air on a G String,” their silly-sexy breakout hit. Even with the explicit clarification, the canon they seemed to be entering — sleaze first, sincerity second…
After topping the U.K. dance charts with his first two albums and garnering Brit Award nominations, Barry Can’t Swim presented a volume of the Late Night Tales mix series, showcasing music he’s fond of but wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate for him to drop in a club. While there’s a little of the type of lush, organic house that he produces, much of the mix is more downtempo, often exploring Balearic chillout territory, but also venturing into a few other directions.
Loket’s cosmic trip-hop number “Afternoon at Barenquell” is an early highlight, working up a jazzy groove before clearing out for a lovely string-based coda. Following a short excerpt of Superpitcher’s 20-minute, harp-based chugger “Yves,” a handful of introspective pieces…