Bright Spirit marks the third instalment in a trilogy that began with The Universe Also Collapses (2019) and continued with Unending Ascending (2023). Recorded with long-time collaborator Frank Byng in his South London studio, Bright Spirit sees Gong at their experimental best, more adventurous and more open to the dream than ever.
And dreams are central here. Not just as lyrical imagery, but as a way of thinking – where psychedelia, love, and the thin membrane between worlds feed into the music. The opener, ‘Dream Of Mine’, unfurls like a transmission from the in-between, its mid-section blooming into harmonies and an angular melody that feels like a key turning in a long-awaited lock. Frontman Kavus Torabi describes it as a moment everything…
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Legendary saxophonist Don Dietrich and his powerhouse cellist daughter Camille Dietrich collide in Live Bahdu, a fierce musical union that music critic Byron Coley hails as “sheer wailing sonic pleasure.” Don, an untamed force who has spent over forty years shaping the explosive core of Borbetomagus, unleashes a volatile, lung-shaking roar, an unyielding take no prisoners wall of sound.
Camille answers with her own ferocity, channeling raw, electric intensity through the disciplined edge of her classical training, wielding her cello with the instinctive wildness of someone raised inside the storm of improvisation.
Together, they don’t just play-they engulf. Their sound floods a room, swallowing the air, saturating the senses, and leaving audiences…
Country music fans will tell you, there’s country music, and there’s Texas country music. They are not the same thing. Just because someone’s from the Lone Star state doesn’t make one a Texas country artist. Defining just what Texas music is can be difficult. It is characterized more by what it is not, almost more than what it is (grittier than Nashville production, populated by self-described outlaws, more honky-tonk danceable than ballad driven, etc.).
Because Texas music contains elements of pop (Buddy Holly), rock (ZZ Top), folk (Nanci Griffiths), gospel (Beyoncé), R&B (Leon Bridges), blues (Stevie Ray Vaughn), jazz (Lyle Lovett), ad infinitum, it’s hard to find a unifying principal that binds all of these artists together other…
…Just 24, Natalie Del Carmen has already released two albums, a couple of singles, and an EP. She hails from Los Angeles, where she returned to after gaining a Bachelor’s degree in Music (with a songwriting focus) from the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston.
This explains her talent for wordplay in exploring themes of adulthood, self-discovery, and personal growth, wrapped in a series of glorious tunes. Her debut, Bloodline, was possibly a more simplistic album lyrically (most of which was written when del Carmen was in her teens and much more influenced by ‘pop’ music). That album came out in March 2023 and received a positive reception from critics and fans alike, who noted her voice and her way with a tune. An EP entitled…
French flautist, saxophonist and composer Jocelyn Mienniel presents a cross-cultural collaboration built upon improvisation and self-imposed limits. Bringing together musicians from five continents, Mienniel and company gave themselves just four hours to experiment together around pre-agreed frameworks before performing the results live that same evening.
Delicate kora, flute, voice, strings and tinkling hand bells coalesce on opener ‘Alalake’, which slowly evolves in hypnotic spirals. The upbeat ‘Hojdaren’ skips and dances, underpinned by some beautiful violin, while ‘Zerberb’ pulses with shuffling beats and swirling percussion. ‘Takamba’ evokes the music of the Andes, filtered through a West African lens. This is wonderfully…
With Figures of Glass (Piano Etudes – Edits), Vanessa Wagner offers a renewed listening perspective on Philip Glass’s Piano Etudes, shaping a curated selection of edited versions drawn from her acclaimed recording of the complete cycle. These edits do not alter the substance of the works; rather, they refine the perception of time, revealing the emotional force of the music with renewed clarity.
Conceived in parallel with Figures of Glass, a hybrid project developed as a duo by Vanessa Wagner and Collectif Scale, the release extends a dialogue between piano and light, sound and space. At the heart of a scenographic installation, Vanessa Wagner interprets Glass’s Etudes by exploring the visual imagination embedded…
In the Unknown (I Will Find You) is drummer, composer, and bandleader Willy Rodriguez‘s second album. This set offers a deeply personal odyssey through loss, memory, and spiritual connection. Rodriguez enlisted tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, who endured a similar period of struggle and loss. He also tapped pianist and keyboardist Leo Genovese in a bass-free trio. Spoken word contributions are by Allan Harris, with sound design by Chris Connors.
Rodriguez has made an impact across creative music culture serving in Mon Laferte’s Grammy-winning Norma band, playing on Mars Volta’s most recent, eponymous album, and releasing his internationally acclaimed debut, Seeing Sound, in 2024. The music and sounds here…
Chris Forsyth leans into the cool jazz aesthetic of his new ensemble at first, but these long pieces morph, over time, into driving, droning grooves. The trio, What Is Now, is made up of the Philadelphia experimental guitarist plus John Moran and Joey Sullivan, the rhythm section from Bark Culture, a vibraphone-forward cool jazz combo centered around Victor Vieira-Branco.
This EP under review includes three extended, improvised tracks, jazzier than Forsyth’s typical grooves, but only intermittently. The title cut is loosely put together, with glancing connections between instruments largely pursuing their own ends. The longest of these cuts, it is also the least boxed in by time signature. It stirs to life in a rumble of drums, abstract stabs…
Crystalpunk might be Chalk’s debut album, but there is an overwhelming sense of finality that accompanies its arrival. For four years, the sonic identity of the Belfast pair has been in constant evolution, steadily sailing from jagged post-punk towards the haven of dance music. Ever since former film students and housemates Ross Cullen (vocals) and Ben Goddard (multi-instrumentalist) decided to go full-throttle with this project in 2021, that transformation has visibly unfolded across their ‘Conditions’ EP trilogy.
Now, they’ve attempted to unlock its final form on Crystalpunk. Somewhat of a halfway house between Nine Inch Nails, Orbital and Idles – who they are supporting this summer – Chalk are not alone in their mission to unify the dancefloor…
The lyrics for Diagonale des Yeux’s debut album were written in the style of an exquisite corpse game, with members Laurène Exposito and Théo Delaunay taking it in turns to patch together ephemeral thoughts and themes in a mix of French, German, English and Spanish. The bizarre, multilingual stories that emerged match the French duo’s ramshackle, home-recorded sound, which features everything from toybox percussion to farmyard sound effects.
Their whimsical approach is anchored in the outsider pop and post-punk of ’80s Europe, which embraced discordant instrumentation and disaffected vocals. These 12 tracks are charmingly lo-fi, built around rudimentary synth and guitar melodies that often careen into…
Mary Ocher’s leftist politics have always been baked into her art. Her first record was called War Songs, and she has continuously interrogated militarism, capitalism, and nationalism across subsequent works, including her 2017 breakthrough, The West Against the People.
Recently, she’s even taken to performing karaoke-style renditions of some of her new repertoire live to avoid using backing tracks or laptops on stage, something she has described as “a wonderful icebreaker” and a “really, really great opportunity to talk about broader political subjects with the audience.”
In short, Ocher is a multi-hyphenate outsider artist who wraps sharp geopolitical reflections in peerless avant-pop packaging, as her latest…
Everyone who proselytises will eventually tell you that the truth sets you free. On her debut album Buck Wild, Indian (Pune-based) artist Karshni splits herself open: sometimes with a surgeon’s meticulousness, sometimes like a violent, rabid cannibal, utterly disinterested in suturing herself back shut, intent on ravaging the person she once was – all in the service of ‘getting real’, both with herself and her listeners.
In the last eight-odd years that she has been making music, Karshni has developed an indie-darling, melancholia laden sound-bed, then abandoned it, floated across collaborations with her peers, lending her voice to records that span the distance between avant-garde hiphop and shoegaze, and now brought herself…
In the past couple of years, Spanish experimental label Rusia-IDK has released great avant pop for the chronically online: unsettling yet moving beat changes from Ralphie Choo, raucously tender-hearted production by Rusowsky, and some of the most gleefully deranged live visuals in recent memory. With slow songs from the heart and thrashing experiments that deconstruct and glitch flamenco, reggaeton, rap, and breakbeat, the collective has gained a following in Spain’s underground and even rubbed shoulders with its mainstream.
They were bound to drop the bola at some point. Enter MORI, rolling in from stage left. The Madrid-based artist’s doleful piano ballads and lo-fi torch songs were already some of…
Status/Non-Status is the ambitious collective fronted by Anishinaabe musician, artist and community worker Adam Sturgeon. Having started as WHOOP-Szo in 2009, the band changed their name to their current moniker in 2021, but have continued to make grandiose, emotionally-driven indie alt-rock that explores everything from Sturgeon’s Indigeneity and family history, to responsibility, racism and interdependence.
The band returns with Big Changes, their first new album in three years; a sprawling, exhilarating and rightfully exhausting record that earns the anticipation. Status/Non-Status have mastered a style that is both fragile and anthemic — a rare and difficult concoction that they gracefully develop and presents with serene bombast.
Morgan Nagler has spent years behind the scenes shaping songs for other artists, quietly building a reputation as a sharp lyricist and collaborator. In addition to fronting Whispertown, Nagler has co-written with artists like Phoebe Bridgers, HAIM, and Kim Deal, and her work on Bridgers’ “Kyoto” even earned a Grammy nomination. With I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It, her first album released under her own name, Nagler steps back into the spotlight with a set of songs that feel personal, honest, direct, and grounded in strong songwriting. Produced by Kyle Thomas (King Tuff), the record blends indie rock, folk, and country touches while keeping the focus squarely on Nagler’s voice and lyrics.
The album opens with “Cradle the Pain,”…
Lolly Lee began her career playing rhythm guitar and providing the vocals for The Mortals and Split the Dark, regionally successful rock bands from the South, throughout the 1980’s. She married and dropped out of the music business whilst raising a family, and followed other pursuits, though continuing to write songs. This is now her second solo album, released following the death of her husband in 2023. The songs and their themes demonstrate this life experience and are told with a vocal that can provide grit in a Lucinda Williams style and a beauty and purity that belies her age, sometimes in the same song.
The opening title song sets out what will be the core of the instrumental players throughout the album, with Lee on acoustic, her producer,…
Emerging out of the Pacific Northwest in 2021 and later relocating to Joshua Tree, California, This Lonesome Paradise is as much a living, breathing product of its hallucinatory high-desert environment as its reverb-rattled noir-Americana is a direct reflection of it. With the new Death Motels, the quartet has taken the next step into the boundless cinematic landscape that’s been teased in its previous work.
…Musically, Death Motels is relentless. Ferocious guitars slash through the silence like blades, low-end bass churns like a storm beneath the earth, and Ray Béchard’s voice hovers somewhere between incantation and confession. Jordin Bordeaux’s spectral voice and Mellotron textures conjure an atmosphere that feels both…
It’s almost unbelievable to think that it’s been seven years since YONAKA released their debut album, considering the Brighton trio have shared two EPs and a mixtape in the time since. But on this second full-length, the band appear to be making a much more definitive statement. A record that – according to vocalist Theresa Jarvis – delves into matters of the heart in all their gory glory (or “the dirty bits and the harsh bits”), Until You’re Satisfied picks up where the grand ambitions of their debut left off, but this time, manages to make a return to the attitude and intrigue of their earlier works. Granted, there are still humongous, widescreen rock moments: take the stadium-sized ‘Eat You Alive’, or ‘Miss Millennial’, which bears the bite of Alanis Morissette’s…
Here’s something the world could always use more of: a lush ambient techno long-player, blushing with chords and rich with nuance, seamlessly sound-designed to reveal a boundless wealth of detail unfurling along the x-axis.
Mammo’s Lateral spreads its feathers across six sides of vinyl, creating a setting where it’s always that purplish time just before dusk — when the shadows are long and a spell seems to settle over the world. The timing is ripe for a record like this: Released on the cusp of daylight saving time, this is the perfect album for the onset of spring, when the lengthening days leave more time to soak up the music’s radiance.
Lateral draws from a rich well of influences, most of them concentrated in the 1990s and…
One of the smaller but more passionately enduring subcultures in the world today is that around slow dance music. The core of its audience is a Gen X crowd, a good number of whom have stuck with club culture since the mid-’90s or earlier, with others who’ve rekindled their love of electronic music in middle age: people whose knees might not be up to stomping to techno for hours, but are still deeply committed to the experience of deep and prolonged immersion in repetitive beats.
Belfast’s Phil Kieran is a key mover and shaker in this scene. Though his career began 25 years ago as a producer and DJ of high energy techno and breakbeat, as a friend and ally of the late Andrew Weatherall, he was a part of the convergent evolution towards the more…