…digital release with 7 bonus songs.
Congolese guitarist, composer and singer Dr. Nicolas Kasanda wa Mikalayi, aka Docteur Nico, reigned supreme during the ’60s and ’70s as a key innovator of African rumba.
This three-LP package includes 30 of his songs, from the African Fiesta Sukisa catalogue, featuring hits, never-before-reissued recordings and bonus tracks available digitally via Bandcamp, alongside a 28-page booklet containing expert commentary and previously unpublished photos from the Kasanda family archive.
The music testifies to Dr. Nico’s technical virtuosity and adventurous creative control of the African Fiesta band. A heavy Cuban sway drives songs like ‘A la Savana’, ‘Alto Songo’,…
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Violin is a site of adventure for Darragh Morgan. The Irish violinist performs compositions that unite the instrument’s sweet acoustic timbre with electronics, enhancing and warping its sound. His 2017 record, For Violin and Electronics, first presented this interest through six icy meditations. On For Violin and Electronics II, he follows that experiment with nine more pieces that showcase the versatility of this instrumentation through the eyes of nine different composers.
Uniting strings and electronics isn’t a new concept, but it’s one that continues to offer plenty of leeway for expanding the possible textures and timbres of age-old instruments like the violin. Groundbreaking works like Steve Reich’s Violin Phase, for example, brought the potential of…
Six years after his Grammy-nominated LP5, Sascha Ring – aka Apparat – takes a bold dive into the complexities of life with his sixth studio album.
A Hum of Maybe is detailed, finely crafted, and wonderfully unpredictable. At its core, the record is about love – for himself, his wife, and his daughter – and holding onto it, protecting it, and constantly recalibrating as it is in a constant state of flux. As the title suggests, the songs explore being stuck in between: not a clear yes or no, but A Hum Of Maybe.
Ring elegantly combines the perspectives of an electronic producer and a classical composer, working closely with long-time collaborators Philipp Johann Thimm (cello, piano, guitar) – who also co-wrote and co-produced the record…
…MOJO presents a bespoke CD of rare, live and previously unreleased songs from the mod icons, including storming live versions of ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’ and ‘Tin Soldier’, alternative takes, never-before-released tracks.
October 1965. ‘Whatcha Gonna Do About It’, the debut Small Faces single, is making its way up the UK charts. The four original members, only together for a few months, are learning how to be a band, and how to talk to the music press.
“We admire The Who,” bassist Ronnie Lane tells the NME’s Norrie Drummond, “but we have never tried to copy them in any way. We are Mods and appeal to mods, but that’s about all we have in common with them.”
Then Lane’s bandmate, drummer Kenney Jones…
Labeling any music as spiritual can play as a (fiery) double-edged sword for any artist involved, and if that is your debut full-length album, like is the case with Brooklyn’s multi-media artist AnAkA, and her album Crisis of the Concrete, those edges just might get a bit sharper, and those edges might spew just a bit more fire either way.
Of course, that spiritual element that the artist might be trying to evoke could have more or less openly religious content (less in AnAkA case here), and it can involve a number of musical elements and/or genres, and AnAkA certainly goes that multi-genre route here. Very often, the best music with that spiritual element was done with quite a few jazz elements, and AnAkA certainly doesn’t shy away from bringing them in,…
Editions Mego welcomes KMRU back to the fold. Kin is Nairobi born, Berlin based, sonic wizard Joseph Kamaru’s second release on Editions Mego, following on from the classic 2020 release Peel.
…Kin could be construed as the second child following Peel. The project came out of initial discussions with Peter Rehberg about what a Peel sequel would sound like. Kamaru is quick to clarify that Kin is not that record; “I’ll know when that record will come and when I’ll make it. It’s already happening… or maybe it lives within both of these Mego records”.
Kin was started early 2021 in Nairobi with Kamaru exploring his noisier palette of sounds encompassing distortions reminiscent of the sounds he would muster from in his…
Maara is a silly goose who knows how to switch it up. On her 2023 debut, the Montreal producer wiggled through new age, trip-hop, and ambient meditations delivered in an ASMR whisper. That record’s freakier end played with mystical progressive house reminiscent of Roza Terenzi and D. Tiffany’s work for their Planet Euphorique label — full of squelchy, minor-key melodies, lightly tapped bongos, and galloping basslines. Beyond her albums proper, she’s released a small collection of sapphic bangers with an artist named My Hot Ex, as well as last summer’s single “I Wanna Scissor,” which you can tell was recorded in between inebriated giggles. The tone of Maara’s discography is definitively crunchy, but it’s also more than a little naughty, carrying…
Golden Toad is the solo project of Al Brown, former co-creator of indie-psychers Japanese Television. He’s also made music videos for the likes of UNKLE, Lambrini Girls, Idles, and Deap Vally.
His solo debut Unite the Worms happens to be released twenty years after the extinction declaration of the Costa Rican Golden Toad, the last confirmed sighting of which occurred all the way back in 1989. This Golden Toad, however, decided to hole himself up in a garage in the Garden of England last summer and set about concocting a psychedelic passage through shifting time, riding kosmische grooves and electronic festoonery along the way.
You can picture Al Brown, hunched over his guitar, lost in the hammer ons of eighth…
Kaikō is the second album by Treen, a young band of younger improvisers who come from different places in Europe. Despite their youth and spontaneous methods, they have a very particular sound, one that is aware of the music’s history but not burdened by it. You could say that the trio comes from Copenhagen, since that’s where they first convened in 2023, but only one of them lives there. That would be Gintė Preisaitė, a Lithuanian musician who plays electronics in some contexts, but sticks to piano in Treen. Tenor saxophonist Amalie Dahl is Danish, but she lives in Norway. Although she’s currently based in Oslo, she studied in Trondheim and most of her other ensembles include players with Trondheim roots. And drummer Jan Philipp is from…
On 21st December 2025, Swedish post-hardcore stalwarts Refused played their final gig in the group’s hometown of Umeå. A sweaty and teary affair, Refused unleashed a rolling broadside over a brisk 90 minutes, unfurling the entirety of the band’s dedication to weighty and outspoken hardcore in a fierce and conclusive salvo.
As tastefully monochrome images of the band embracing were dragged and dropped onto social pages, you would assume that after thirty-plus years of sonic vitriol the group might sit back for a bit of R&R; a bit of fika maybe? Maybe this would have been the right move considering the sum of their next enterprise: doom metal/free jazz/noise-rock project, Backengrillen.
Comprising Refused’s vocalist Dennis Lyxzén,…
Brisbane’s Ethan “En” Kernaghan returns with his fourth solo album. Recorded at home, this is a lo-fi affair with a 1960’s feel and more than a hint of Eastern mysticism. The music is instantly joyful, and the collection lives up to its title.
Opening with ‘Don’t Be Scared’, we are straight in with a jangly guitar and a call for people to change their perceptions and not be concerned to show peace and love. Kernaghan’s joyous vocals proclaiming “Just a little loving in your heart could do it / I’m your fan / I’ll swing on your ceiling”, which is one of the many clever and humorous lyrics in the set. Unfortunately, not included, but search for the piano version of this online; it gives the song a whole new perspective, not necessarily better, just very interesting.
Arriving two years after Women, which found the quasi-instrumental psych rock combo expanding their nostalgic, style-shifting sound with string arrangements and guest vocals, Pur Jus is so named because it gets back to basics.
Inspired by near constant touring, the album was entirely written, performed, recorded (live in the studio), and mixed by the Bergen, Norway-based trio, using only guitars (Øyvind Blomstrøm), bass (Chris Holm), drums and percussion (Kim Åge Furuhaug), keyboards (Blomstrøm and Holm), and the occasional vocals. The results may be less diverse and dramatic than their predecessors by comparison, but grooves and chill-out feels are still in plentiful supply.
The album kicks things off with a drum fill…
Working with some musical legends and renowned musicians (often both) can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you not only gain specific experience, but it means you have capabilities and are doing something right. On the other hand, when you have to go on your own and present your individually conceived music, it might be a burden if you are not able to come up with something that is at least above average.
That could have possibly been a burden for L.A. vocalist Holly Palmer, whose long list of artists she has worked with includes David Bowie, Gnarls Barkley, Seal, Michael Buble, Billy Preston and Dr. Dre. So far, Palmer has recorded three solo albums, with Metamorphosis being her fourth.
Whatever Palmer, who is also a vocologist…
Leo Chadburn’s Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator is a dream: a deep immersion in another world that is like and unlike our own, described through abandoned landscape, wrecked machines and lost purpose. The dream is here and now, a post-industrial Britain inspired by Chadburn’s East Midlands home town, marked by the closed power stations and coal mines, retreating back to the land and back to the future.
Chadburn is an acclaimed composer who has released several solo albums, including as Simon Bookish. Sleep… is powered by his narration, words murmured into a microphone like the latest of late night radio: the spirit of Chris Morris’ Blue Jam and Delia Derbyshire’s Inventions for Radio. Around his soft, insistent voice, layers of sound…
Divided by Dusk is a mysterious, otherworldly album that sounds like a folktale and feels like walking into the forest just as the sun is setting, not knowing what wonders may await. Will one encounter enchanting creatures, gypsy caravans, a traveling circus ~ or the simple magic of fox and bear, moonlight and stream?
Inspired by trips to Japan yet informed by her native Poland, Magda Drozd casts her spell with violin, field recordings, electronics and voice, with Japanese flutist Rai Tateishi entering the forest as the sun disappears behind the trees, merging both sonic worlds.
The violin’s opening notes are already reverberant, echoes wafting through the pines, caught in a strange vortex. A hum falls…
Ghanaian singer Lamisi’s Let Us Clap combines a fierce activist message on women’s rights with thumping production that features traditional Ghanaian folk rhythm and electronics.
Two of Ghana’s biggest music names, Lamisi and Wanlov worked on the project once a week for several months, while the buzz surrounding their collaboration grew louder. No wonder: here was an icon of jazz and pop, and an icon of roots and hip‑hop, coming together to create raw, unapologetic music for a young, engaged audience — music that bridges the gap between West African music fans and music fans everywhere.
Lyrics, for the most part, were written in Kusaal, the mother tongue of Lamisi’s Kusasi ethnic group (Wanlov speaks Twi, the language of…
The title As Human carries a multitude of meanings. What is it like to be human, or to pass as human? At what juncture might one lose or gain one’s humanity? The Chicago band calls the title track “a meditation on vulnerability and the small triumphs that come with choosing to feel, even when it hurts.” The Color of Cyan paints with a wide swath of moods, plumbing the depths of human experience and exploring its potential heights.
Eduardo Cintron’s striking cover image is available separately on t-shirts and linoleum block prints; the vinyl is offered in red-and-white variants. The rich red hues prompt the listener to imagine lifeblood flowing and spilled, even before the record is spun. (For those who are curious, cyan was incorporated into the cover art…
It’s all blurring together. Ambient is emo now. Rap sounds like harsh noise. Drum’n’bass is basically bedroom pop. And Ben Bondy, who until now has primarily dealt in disorientingly dubby ambient music, has emerged with something resembling a singer/songwriter album, but not quite. Bondy, a New York/Berlin-based producer who’s made a name as part of the latter’s cozy Kwia collective, has built a sprawling body of work across a number of labels representing the bleary haze of the left-field electronic underground. West Mineral Ltd., 3XL, Motion Ward, Quiet Time — if they deal in grainy, dissociative soundscapes, Bondy has probably released something for them. Across his scattered releases and DJ sets, Bondy’s demonstrated a voracious, shapeshifting…
On Julia, his fifth studio album, acclaimed Icelandic folktronica musician Ásgeir steps outside of his comfort zone and eschews his father’s voice. The poetry of Einar Georg Einarsson and Júlíus Aðalsteinn Róbertsson, a friend, had provided the lyrics — sometimes via translators — of Ásgeir’s previous compositions. Now, at 33, he’s standing on his own.
It’s evident from tracks such as “Quiet Life” that Ásgeir can be a capable lyricist. “Stare into the water/ See myself swimming in the sky/ Every part of me comes to light,” it begins. It’s a song that could be about a romantic partner or a parent: “I’ve been tossed around by every wind/ Trying to fit into what you want me to be.” Far from lacking poetry, Ásgeir seems to have…
Does 50 minutes of heady and chaotic free jazz appeal to you? Good. James McKain, Damon Smith, and Weasel Walter are here to help.
Recorded late last year, …seeing the way the mole tunnels… consists of wailing and screeching sax from McKain, scrapes, harmonics, and percussive strikes on the double bass from Smith, and Walter’s signature punk / prog improv. The trio moves at such a frenetic pace that even the downtempo passages are restless, textural, and full of ideas.
McKain extracts gritty textures and flutters from the lower register saxes, which couples well with Walter’s mix of blast beats, rolls, and fills. Indeed, all three musicians could be thought of as soloing collectively in a fashion that is curiously complementary. Harmonic and melodic…