Spectralism is a type of composition that is organized by taking as its basis aspects of the harmonic series, or the overtones resulting from a sounding pitch. From the ’70s onward, composers, many of them residing in France or Romania, have looked at spectrograms of sounds to plot out the harmonies that they will deploy over time in a piece. This may sound rarified, but it is also one of the oldest traditions in music. Early humans listened for resonances, particularly in caves, some even using conch shells (brought in from many miles away) to create loud enough sounds to hear lots of reverberating overtones. Throat singers manipulate their voices to sound more than a single pitch at a time. If you have ever heard a bunch of higher sounds…
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It’s tempting to associate the titles of the two Disappearing Collective volumes crafted by Pacific Northwest-based Drew Sullivan under the Slow Dancing Society moniker with the years of their release. The first, appearing in 2020, evokes the image of people withdrawing into their homes fearful of contamination by the spreading virus; the just-released second, on the other hand, suggests a rather more political interpretation in light of the deportation of specific groups within the United States. As it turns out, the title originated from a different place altogether. By way of clarification, Sullivan references a lyric by Matthew Ryan, who sings, “The things we love will one day disappear / First slow, and then so quick.” Such a sentiment dovetails with Sullivan’s own…
Billy Martin, the renowned groove master and founding drummer of Medeski Martin & Wood, has spent decades collaborating with boundary — pushing artists including John Lurie in the Lounge Lizards and John Zorn in his Cobra ensembles, all while exploring instrument design, filmmaking, and visual art. His 2026 project, State Fête, unites him with multi-instrumentalist Matt Glassmeyer and guitarist Jonathan Goldberger in a captivating exploration of live-composed soundscapes — think of it as a sonic state fair where the familiar becomes delightfully warped.
Glassmeyer, recognized for inventive work with Oliver Wood in the group Slow Accordion, the Brooklyn ensemble Hompulon, and a longstanding duo with Jano Rix of the Wood…
Kenny Reichert‘s a terrific guitarist, but the Chicagoan also has a knack for writing catchy tunes and insidious melodies. Look no further than this latest set’s opening number, “Poppy Seed,” whose slinky theme burrows quickly under the skin. On his first live album, recorded in October 2024 before a small but appreciative gathering at the city’s Pro Musica, the guitarist partners with alto saxophonist Lenard Simpson, upright bassist Ethan Philion, and drummer Devin Drobka, reputable players in their own right and much sought after when not leading their own projects. Each excels in a free milieu and helps midwife Reichert’s five originals into being, and a clear impression of group identity forms as the album plays.
Live in Chicago is looser and more open-ended…
On Tone Keepers, Rachel Beetz plays a flute in ways which suggest the action of supernatural entities. For each track, she focuses on exploring a single technique for producing sound from the instrument alongside a ‘discrete’ form of electronic processing. On ‘Gate’, the flute is fed through a noise gate, allowing us to hear rushes of air, thudding keys, occasional squeaks and not much else. The instrument turns into a spectral drum kit, the muting of its musicality reducing the flute down to a gasping, wind-activated machine which moves like gusts of possessed air through a haunted house. On ‘Delay’, we hear more conventional flute music, Beetz taps into the instrument’s folkier history, looping melodic phrases as though the instrument has become a haunted…
The last few years have been a resounding celebration of club music from Latin America and its diaspora. The rise of TraTraTrax. The virality of DJ Ramon Sucesso and DJ K. The dizzying reggaetón, techno, cumbia and electro hybrids from Miami. Critic Shawn Reynaldo has called it a “Latin Music Gold Rush”.
This excitement by punters and the press, however, obfuscates one important fact: Central and South America, plus the Caribbean, has a long, elaborate history of bangers.
These regions have produced some of the best dance music in recent decades, including hardgroove, afterhours techno and Latin house. This has been the argument long pushed by Chile-born, Brazil-based Valesuchi, a staunch…
It has been a while since we last heard of Greg Weeks, seven years to be exact, but the experimental folk solo artist and a founding member of Espers is back and with his latest solo effort, If the Sun Dies proves that he still has something substantial to say with his music.
Actually, that seven-year hiatus was not Weeks’ first break from music, since in the first decade of the century he was actively involved with Espers, had a number of solo records, ran a studio and a record label. Yet when the economic crisis hit in 2008, Weeks shut the studio and the record label, recorded no music, devoting his time to teaching and family. At some point, his musical inspirations revived, he decided to re-open both the studio and the record label, with this album…
…You’ve likely heard of Sam Slater as one-fourth of much-celebrated experimental heavies OSMIUM, a supergroup of sorts featuring Hildur Guðnadóttir, Senyawa’s Rully Shabara, and emptyset’s James Ginzburg. And sure, Lunng shares at least a little aesthetic and conceptual DNA with Slater’s more well-known side gig. For a start, both projects seem propelled in part by a compulsion to explore the idea and feeling of metal without really playing metal as such. But where OSMIUM’s thrilling, alien sturm und drang rigorously explores a relentlessly dark palette, Lunng’s proto-dystopic swatch book is much broader and more varied in hue. Slater’s heaviness makes ample room for moments of delicacy and fleeting beauty and vulnerable humanity. Shafts of pink and…
…remastered 40th Anniversary Edition originally recorded and mixed by the lauded British sound engineer Ian Burgess.
One of the first major bands on the Chicago punk scene, the Effigies arrived as first-era punk was being supplanted by hardcore, but their sound reflected little of either. The band was less interested in speed than impact: their songs were simple but intelligently constructed, their lyrics were angry but artful meditations on urban alienation with shout-along choruses, and their performances were muscular and made clever use of dynamics with the guitars grinding and slashing. The Effigies’ influence in the Midwest (especially in their hometown) was significant, and one can hear the faint echo of their early work…
Hard-won sobriety has its advantages, especially when it’s practiced as a couple. For LAPêCHE’s Dave and Krista Holly Diem, clearing their heads has equated to clearing the creative decks, allowing them to explore new sonic vistas with a renewed clarity and focus.
The subversively melodic Autotelic (Tiny Engines) overhauls their rugged Brooklyn DIY aesthetic with lethally precise rhythms and power chords, airtight excursions into ramped-up shoegaze and synth-washed art rock, and shimmery shades of female-fronted college rock. This time, they have ample help from producer Alex Newport (At the Drive-In, Mars Volta), tracking the album in Joshua Tree, California, with guitarists Drew DeMaio and new drummer Colin Brooks (Samiam).
Jessica Pratt sings in a voice as gentle as unspun wool, but her stories feel deeply rooted, like they were born from a collective subconscious to reveal fundamental truths about human longing. Asher White gets at similarly heady ideas: leaving your city to seek reinvention, wondering whether your fate is predetermined. But where Pratt works primarily in the folk tradition, White’s approach is decidedly contemporary, drawing from Palberta and 100 gecs’ internet-laden glitchiness. Her music has the jangling, intentionally constructed commotion of an artist who synthesizes new sounds to understand something essential about the world she lives in.
As timeless as Pratt’s songs have always been, she’s followed a clear evolution since…
The latest volume in Bulbous Monocle’s Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 reissue campaign vaults over the Matador years back to the band’s earliest LP. Tangle was released in 1989, prior to TFUL282’s years of rigorous touring.
It’s a first album; you can hear styles engaged and influences acknowledged in a partially digested manner that differs from their later years, when, if they wanted to sound like something, they just covered the song.
There’s a deep vein of blues and western guitar, most evident on the slow, sinister groove of “Cold Cold Ground,” but also audible on the twangy lead guitar of “Sister Hell” and the languid slide intro to “Choke.” The band works a few Sonic Youth moves into the mix as well, like…
Sometimes a record just lands at exactly the right time. “I think too much, I’m all out of f****s, the world’s on fire, I’m just getting drunk,” sings Ellur on the opening track of her debut album At Home in My Mind.
Later, “God help me now” is the eponymous refrain. Whether it’s a cry for help, a shout of despair or a statement of acceptance is up for debate, but it’s very well tuned with the zeitgeist. This is the sound of an artist truly finding her feet in the world, and echoing that world back to us.
With the first song, the album begins to reveal itself with a careful, hazy charm. A few bars of sonorous synths and muffled bass, then Ellur’s voice remaining in a low register and warmly inflecting her Yorkshire roots. A sudden…
Cumbia is the sound of Latin America, with roots going back to the traditional folk sounds of centuries past, yet save for a select few names, some of the style’s greatest innovators remain virtual unknowns outside of their local area, save for the most dedicated of cumbia obsessives. Luckily for the rest of us, some of those obsessives have seen fit to bring Ranil’s output back into focus, with Analog Africa following up on their 2020 compilation, Ranil Y Su Conjunto Tropical, with an equally infectious collection of long-forgotten works from the Peruvian master.
…Galaxia Tropical is more than just a follow-up; it is a final tribute to a musical titan. Label founder Samy Ben Redjeb recounts a serendipitous 2019 trip where a taxi driver…
Joe Magnarelli‘s Decidedly So strongly reaffirms the enduring virtues of straight-ahead jazz, recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s Studio in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, where these qualities have long been valued. Brought to life in March 2025 before a small but attentive audience, the session benefits from a rare blend of relaxed confidence and deliberate swing that can only come from musicians who know exactly who they are and what they cherish. Joined by trombonist Steve Davis and a top-tier rhythm section of pianist Jeremy Manasia, bassist Clovis Nicolas, and drummer Rodney Green, Magnarelli leads a programme that balances originals and standards with taste, authority, and an effortless sense of joy.
The opening track, Magnarelli’s “D.J.,” features…
This exceptional homage to jazz pianist Bill Evans (1929-1980) honours him in so many ways it’s hard to know where to begin. Pianist Thomas Clausen, bassist Thomas Fonnesbæck, and drummer Karsten Bagge channel the spirit of Evans’ own great trios, from the classic, template-setting iteration with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian to ones involving Marc Johnson and Joe LaBarbera, Chuck Israels and Larry Bunker, and Eddie Gómez and Marty Morell without imitating any one of them. Trumpeter Anders Malta also adds to the release and through his involvement recalls the landmark collaborations between Gil Evans and Miles Davis, and the versatile Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and conductor Jean Thorel help distinguish the release by partnering…
Unlike much of Florian Hecker‘s recent work, such as 2021’s ‘Synopsis Seriation’ or ‘Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera’, his acclaimed PAN-released collaboration with Mark Leckey, there’s no single overarching narrative that binds ‘Natural Selection’. Hecker describes the sprawling, nine-track album as a “constellation of pieces originating from related investigations”, and the clue’s in the title. Ranging from under a minute to over half an hour, these works have been grouped together because they share very specific properties, using correlated modes of synthesis and approaching timbral metamorphosis in a similar way. Pieces that might seem incongruous at first are united not by one concept, but by a cluster of queries that Hecker has been probing diligently…
What does motherhood mean in an age of anxiety and fear? For Maria Papadomanolaki (Dalot), the question became especially salient when she lost her mother and gave birth to her second daughter against the backdrop of the invasion of Ukraine. A year-long, Crete to Hanoi conversation with Nhung Nguyen (Sound Awakener) led to the formation of Ianos, a fitting reference to the god who looks forward and back and from whom January gets its name.
Given the choice between empathy and despair, the two artists prefer the former. Their contributions are so intertwined that one cannot tell where one artist ends and the other begins; the textures feel like an embroidered cloth, passed woman to woman, nation to nation,…
Geography may have a lot to do with why Swirl, the full-length debut album from Flora Hibberd, successfully checks so many boxes. Hibberd is British but currently based in Paris, and Swirl was recorded in, of all places, Eau Claire, Wisconsin. This unique confluence of locations may contribute to the record’s worldly sound and ability to meld various styles and approaches seamlessly while still maintaining a unique voice.
First things first: Hibberd, who sings and plays guitar and keyboards on the record, also wrote all of the songs, and they sound like the result of someone who’s soaked up encyclopedias full of pop, rock, and folk music. The compositions are exquisite, engaging, and mature. With the aid of longtime collaborator Victor Claass…
The Go! Team celebrated 20 years of their debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike with a sold out Roundhouse show in February 2024. Capturing a band still at the height of their powers, this limited edition contains all the kaleidoscopic chaos and energy that make The Go! Team live such a unique experience.
Kicking off the performance with “Panther Dash,” an instrumental track from Thunder, Lightning, Strike, The Go! Team showcased a blend of influences ranging from indie, funk, hip-hop, folk, and mysticism. The track’s glorious trumpets elevated it to a status reminiscent of Beck’s “Sexx Laws.” Following this opener was the iconic “Ladyflash,” the song that introduced the world to The Go! Team. Reflecting on the setlist, one couldn’t…