My World Is the Sun, from Québécois vocalist and songwriter Dominique Fils-Aimé, is introduced by her Haitian mother, Claudette Thomas, singing “Ma Mélodie” from an old ’70s-era cassette. Its placement inspires the entire 15-track set. My World Is the Sun offers lyrics populated by the elements, weather, the sun, and the moon sung in both French and English. Fils-Aimé’s voice lies at the center of 21st century soul, jazz, pop, folk, and blues. The album is nocturnal, warm like a bath, and yet gently mercurial in its subtle abstractions. “Sea of Clouds” opens with the sounds of waves crashing against the shore. Keyboardist David Osei Afrifa offers a dark, subtle synth drone under her vocal, appended by percussion, chimes, and a wordless, chantlike lower-register…
Latest Entries »
Ten thousand years ago, a man died in what would become Somerset. His bones waited in a cave until 1903, when they were discovered and given a name: Cheddar Man. Now he’s the subject of a song by Voka Gentle, who use his story to contemplate what we’re doing to the places where people have lived for millennia. “Let’s say the sea levels rise and we lose north Somerset, which, by the way, is looking increasingly likely…” William J Stokes’s voice is dry, conversational, with the studied neutrality of a local news presenter. Beneath it, the music shuffles and twitches, glassy and off-kilter; post-punk refracted through Laurie Anderson’s deadpan intelligence.
The album circles power from multiple angles: a photoshoot, a Greek tragedy, a preacher…
Isabel Pine has been quietly releasing independent EPs for a while now, and it was high time that a label like Kranky would pick up her new album release, Fables. And it all seems to fall into place, with that quiet description, the album title and cover, telling a bit about what is going on here.
Pine, a classically trained viola and cello artist, has exactly that touch to make that fluid area between modern classical and ambient music work.
It is not just about creating moody soundscapes but make those soundscapes transform obvious instrumental capabilities into music that presents personal emotions in a way that listeners can not only pick up on them, but understand them in a way the artist, in this case Pine, wanted it in the first place.
A quick trip down the streaming rabbit hole to discover that Nathan Fake’s most popular track – by far – is the James Holden remix of “The Sky Was Pink”, which was a ground-shaking banger back in 2004 and remains so to this day. But it seems to have overshadowed Fake’s own output – the original version “The Sky Was Pink” is a distant #2, and after that, there seems to be a drop off. It’s as if people who were expecting more progressive house epics have found the warm and fuzzy electronica of the original version and impulsively decided it’s not for them. Which is a shame because that means the parent album – Drowning in a Sea of Love – remains a hidden gem rather than being heralded from the rooftops for its combination of woozy shoegaze, fizzing…
Athens, Georgia, guitarist Shane Parish isn’t one to shy away from a challenge (he transcribed the whole of Bill Orcutt’s Music for Four Guitars and plays as one of the Orcutt quartet), and his output is always something special, as 2024’s Repertoire, another album demanding some serious arrangement work, demonstrated. However, for his latest album, Autechre Guitar, he takes on the music of English electronic duo Autechre, an outfit known for its unconventional time signatures and experimental approach, which is a tricky task, to say the least.
Seemingly unwilling to disappoint his wife, who is a big fan of Autechre’s music, Shane set out to re-imagine and arrange ten of the band’s songs, all taken from their 1990s output.
…New Year’s Eve 1993, Live at Worcester Centrum captures what was then the biggest headlining concert of the band’s career, and the first in a long line of elaborate NYE shows to come.
Phish had played four New Year’s Eve shows before, but none like this. As the band wrapped the second of three sets with “You Enjoy Myself”, Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, Page McConnell, and Mike Gordon put on wetsuits during the vocal jam. This complemented the aquarium stage set the band used for its four-night New Year’s run through D.C., New Haven, Portland, and Worcester.
To start set three, underwater sound effects accompanied the band as the members “dived” into the aquarium setup and climbed into the giant clam, which snapped shut on them.
On his third Pyroclastic album, banjo and guitar terror Brandon Seabrook delivers a surprise in cohesion and musical expansion. the string slayer, usually revels and shapeshifts between free jazz, noise, prog, hard, and vanguard rock, and avant bluegrass. On Hellbent Daydream, however, a quartet offering produced by David Breskin, is an iconoclastic approach in which modernist chamber music, avant jazz and folk create a hybridized sound that contains all the aforementioned styles in an intense cinematic approach. Seabrook plays guitar and banjo, with bassist Henry Fraser, violinist Erica Dicker and pianist/keyboardist Elias Stemeseder. These seven compositions offer improv alongside uncharacteristic formalism.
Opener “Name Dropping is the Lowest Form…
Mojo Presents The Best of 2025 offers a carefully curated snapshot of a year that feels both restless and creatively rich. Compiled by the editors of MOJO, the CD brings together a diverse selection of tracks that reflect the magazine’s long-standing taste for depth, craft, and personality over hype.
Rather than chasing chart trends, the compilation highlights artists who shape the musical conversation in quieter but more lasting ways.
The tracklist moves fluidly between established names and emerging voices, blending indie, rock, folk, soul, and alternative textures into a cohesive listening experience. It plays less like a random playlist and more like a guided tour through the year’s most compelling sounds.
In an age dominated by algorithms…
Electro-noise duo the Yellow Swans formed in Portland, Oregon, in 2001, with the intention of combining punk’s confrontational stance with the aggressively electronic sound of glitch.
Like many other noise artists, Peter Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman self-released several CD-Rs and cassettes of their music, as well as issuing EPs and 7″s on labels like Collective Jyrk and Chronditic Sound.
Despite frequent tours and gigs with artists including Tussle, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Xiu Xiu, and Japanther, the Yellow Swans recorded their debut album in 2003. Bring the Neon War Home was released by Narnack in summer 2004; the duo moved to Oakland, CA, just before the album’s release. The group’s second album…
A record that swaps love language for religious language every few bars should, in theory, settle on one or the other. Petal Rock Black never does, and its refusal to pick is what keeps it from curdling into wellness music or collapsing into a diary entry.
George Clinton starts the title track by reciting a strange devotional poem over silence, “storm-smeared picture,” “rust be the delirious scream,” “dreams a symphony we all soar on,” his voice old and enormous and arriving from no identifiable tradition, and by the time WILLOW enters, she brings a complaint that could have been left on a voicemail: “I don’t know why I have to Be just who you want me to.” Clinton is building a cathedral. She is trying to leave a room. The distance between those two impulses covers most of what this…
Black Sea Dahu crafts music that feels like standing in a storm – raw, exposed, and profoundly alive. Led by Janine Cathrein, whose voice carries sorrow and resilience in the same breath, the Swiss band blurs the lines between folk, pop, and rock, creating a sound that is both vulnerable and ferocious.
Their latest single, One Day Will Be All I Have, stands as a luminous reflection on grief and courage in the aftermath of personal loss. The song opens a space where sorrow and hope intertwine, framed by cinematic, emotionally charged arrangements.
The single sets the tone for the band’s new album, Everything – a record born from grief, speaking to death, self-reckoning, the act of…
The Enemy went straight to number one with their debut LP, We’ll Live and Die in These Towns, in 2007, and their follow-up, Music for the People, reached #2 in 2009. They also enjoyed a run of Top 40 hits during the same period. Supporting acts such as The Rolling Stones, Oasis, and Manic Street Preachers, they left a clear mark on the UK music scene. The trio from Coventry disbanded in 2016, briefly reuniting in 2022 for a run of shows. They now return with their fifth studio album – and first since 2015 – Social Disguises.
After such a lengthy absence, it’s fair to wonder whether The Enemy can still capture the spirit of their earlier releases. “The Boxer” hits with real punch and is easy to imagine as a future live-set staple. There’s a slight weariness…
Combining elements of jam bands and electronic dance rock, Lotus was formed by brothers Jesse Miller (bass/sampler) and Luke Miller (guitar/keyboards), Steve Clemens (drums), Chuck Morris (percussion), and Mike Rempel (guitar) while they were attending Goshen College in Indiana in 1999.
Rise of the Anglerfish explores a dichotomy between light and dark blending live guitar, bass, drums, and keys with warped samples, modular synths, and electronic beats. The result is a wide array of colors and styles unique to Lotus.
As bassist and producer Jesse Miller explained in a statement, the record reflects a dynamic creative period. “We’ve been working on these compositions and recordings for the last two years…
In March 2025, Berlin’s legendary Frannz Club became the setting for an unforgettable night as Mitch Ryder delivered a blistering live performance. That evening now forms the backbone of Songs from the Road, a brand-new live release that captures the raw power, emotion and urgency that have defined Ryder’s career for more than fifty years.
While the audio recordings were captured in Berlin, the accompanying DVD footage was filmed a month earlier in Lindewerra, Thuringia home base of Ruf Records. Two different locations, united in one compelling release, give Songs From The Road both its sonic punch and visual intimacy.
The album brings together electrifying performances of Ryder’s classic repertoire…
Remastered by Mark Beazley.
On The Boy and the Tree, Susumu Yokata continues the trajectory of ambient albums formed by Sakura and Grinning Cat. Like Sakura, The Boy and the Tree is gentle and buoyant, but for the most part Yokata leaves guitars behind for odder instrumentation — plinks, clacks, gurgles, gongs, and bells. The result, especially on tracks like “Live Echo,” sounds like Brian Eno crossed with the ancient and pastoral. “Fairy Link” dances through a dreamy repetition until it floats into even less grounded territory, “Secret Garden” employs hushed, indiscernible vocals that suggest some magical twilight realm, and “Red Swan” finds an exotic, sparkling Middle Eastern groove. “Thread Leads to Heaven,” possibly the best track on…
The Patterns Lost to Air is Marielle V Jakobsons‘ first solo album in a decade, though she’s collaborated with guitarist Chuck Johnson in the duo Saariselka. The album was recorded in a studio she built in Oakland, California, and its sonic palette consists of violin, Fender Rhodes, and Moog Matriarch. It marks Jakobsons’ intentional shift from drone-based music to harmonic composition, utilizing her classical training. The release is a reflection on renewal and loss, informed by a long-term case of the COVID-19 virus. Jakobsons’ music has always sounded warm, immersive, and exquisite, but this is her richest, most melodic, and most sonically detailed work to date.
Opener “Warm Spring” is an inviting blend of rippling synths, chiming Rhodes keys,…
After building momentum over a few years of local shows and an international tour, Hong Kong shoegaze quintet Lucid Express returns with their second album, Instant Comfort. Blurrier and less glossy than their 2021 debut, the new record is situated at the sweet spot of screwed-down dream pop, ethereal vocals draped over lush guitars and synths, with a few tense, discordant edges.
Instant Comfort was recorded in the band’s studio, an island within an island, perched in an industrial district outside central Hong Kong, with views of both skyscrapers and the Chinese border. It’s a sanctuary from the grinding realities of the city, and their music likewise plays like a delicate and immersive retreat, a space that feels temporarily above reality. Vocalist Kim Ho’s…
A lot can change during the fraught time between when a musician finishes recording an album and when it’s released, often months later, per a label’s schedule. For Mirah, everything changed. In the summer of 2018, two weeks before her sixth album, Understanding, came out, the indie rock songwriter lost her beloved father. Four months after that, she gave birth to a son. A year after that, she attempted to resume life as a touring musician, only for the pandemic to nix her plans and intensify her postpartum anxiety.
All this heavy stuff — death, birth, grief, joy, “the whole turn of the earth,” as she sings on “The Beginning of Time” — beats inside the impossibly tender heart of Dedication, Mirah’s first album in seven years, a lifetime of change.
It’s not clear how many albums veteran guitarist and occasional songwriter Duke Robillard has recorded (his publicity cites between 35 and 38, and that’s just from the post-Roomful of Blues years starting in 1985).
But at 77 he is nearing the twilight of a prolific run that hasn’t seen many, if any, misfires in a quest to deliver rollicking rocking, jump blues, rockabilly, and energized jazz to a dedicated and appreciative, if rather cult, audience.
Along the way, Robillard has supported or produced artists as diverse as Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Ronnie Earl, John Hammond, Ruth Brown, Joe Louis Walker and a couple of dozen other talented icons who traverse similar musical territory. It has been an active, colorful, busy livelihood and…
…Vocalist Rae Haas got the idea to name their band MX LONELY because that’s the nickname they gave the shadowy figure that would appear during their bouts of sleep paralysis. The Brooklyn band’s debut full-length All Monsters arrives this Friday, and it’s a comprehensive introduction: The album’s eight songs signal the band’s reverence of ‘80s indie rock, contemporary noise rock, and all the pedal-loving guitar bands they bonded over when they first met in Alcoholics Anonymous just ahead of the pandemic.
With a lot of its lyrics rooted in the Jugnian practice of shadow work — achieving self-acceptance by prodding at the more shameful, suppressed facets of our personalities — All Monsters, like Shelley, argues that monsters are more…