a nothing / a void is an album of “fragments, detours and half-formed ideas” that coalesce into a whole – even if this is not the composer’s intent. Asher Fusco (St. Catherine’s) is more interested in texture than in form, process than in result; yet the mind’s tendency toward pareidolia places the puzzle pieces together, from frame to interlocking fragment. The album is incredibly homespun, recorded on the banks of the Delaware River, on a porch in Saugerties, New York and at the artist’s home in Brooklyn. In deference to its title, a nothing / a void feels like a solid something, operating as a sonic diary of snapshots and intimate moments, occasionally reminiscent of Philadelphia’s Hour but touching on the pointillist leanings of ’80s micro-electronics as well.
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Caitlin & Brent don’t initially sound like a natural pairing. Singer-songwriter Caitlin Sherman released her debut, sure-to-be-breakthrough album Death to the Damsel in early 2020, just in time for the world to shut down and her career to go sideways. A dark, artsy record between pop and Americana, the album wasn’t fit for its time and didn’t get the attention it warranted.
Brent Amaker has been playing with his band, the Rodeo, for 20 years. He sings with a deep baritone, and it’s hard to tell just how much of the act is tongue-in-cheek. The band plays strong country & western music (heavy on the western), but the whole project has the feel of performance art. Amaker’s greatest strength might lie in merging his authentic country music with…
Ty Segall’s 2016 Emotional Mugger Tour was a blistering assault of psychedelic surrealism. The power derived from the multiple-guitar, six person set-up of Mikal Cronin, King Tuff (Kyle Thomas), Emmett Kelly, and Wand’s Cory Hanson and Evan Burrows. The surrealism came in when Segall donned a baby’s mask, filtering his rock star persona through a shroud of carnivalesque disguise. When the band turned up at Mark Riley’s BBC recording studio, they had already logged 50 shows. It was mayhem — how could it not be? — but finely tuned.
This five song EP revisits the glorious abandon of that mid-teens iteration of Segall’s art. It delivers four songs from Emotional Mugger, plus a rabid but abbreviated run-through of…
Kiss Big is an album about the end of a long-term relationship (classic, really) and the disorienting aftermath of losing the person you built a life around. It explores feeling untethered from them, yourself, who you thought you were and the world. As well as how, with time, everything rearranges and restarts. The cyclical nature of love and endings. The way we keep beginning again, regardless of how we say we won’t.
Ailbhe Reddy is a Dublin-born songwriter whose music captures the quiet intensity of life’s in-between moments. Her third album Kiss Big is a breakup record – but not in the traditional sense. It explores what happens after the fallout: the numbness, the confusion, the brief flashes of clarity. How identity slips, rearranges…
A journey through the musical life of Gary Young, the subject of the SXSW-winning documentary Louder Than You Think and the wild polymath best known as the original drummer for indie royalty Pavement: from early hardcore punk and post-punk recordings to the merry chaos of Hospital, whose ‘Plant Man’ ended up being an improbable MTV favorite.
Original music created by Noah Georgeson and Edward W. Dahl is presented alongside ultra-rare Pavement live tracks and something quite special: a Gary Young-penned oddity that Gary’s old friend Scott ‘Spiral Stairs’ Kannberg turned into a suitably trippy musical track (spiced with some Stephen Malkmus feedback yowls), recorded for the movie shortly before Gary’s passing in August 2023.
Puscifer, one of the music projects helmed by Tool/A Perfect Circle main man Maynard James Keenan, has big plans for 2026, with a new studio album and tour lined up for the months ahead. Titled Normal Isn’t, it is the group’s first record since 2020’s Existential Reckoning.
Written and recorded across Arizona, Los Angeles, and on the road during last year’s Sessanta tour, Normal Isn’t blends the dark electronics and sharp humor Puscifer is known for with a more spontaneous creative process. “From the outset, we had discussed an element of rawness and edge, which guitar brings,” shares Mitchell, who co-produced the album. “We got rid of the guard rails and made the music more aggressive.”
For Keenan, this release represents a new…
Dave’s Picks Volume 57 contains the complete show recorded at the Uptown Theatre in Chicago on February 1, 1978, and also includes some songs from the previous night’s concert.
…The Uptown Theatre, originally a movie palace, opened in 1925. From 1978 to 1981, the Grateful Dead played 17 shows at the Uptown. The January 30 & 31, and February 1, 1978 shows comprised the band’s first concert run at the venue.
This very first Dead run at the Uptown is infused with bold exploration from the monster first set of classics (“Jack Straw, “Friend of the Devil,” “Me and My Uncle”) with a “Sugaree” reminiscent of May ’77 to close things out, from Bobby’s powerful delivery of “Samson and Delilah,” to the Rhythm Devils’ spacey psychedelic…
John McLaughlin has one of the richest artistic legacies in modern music, not only for his unmatched technique but also for his boundless curiosity. From early masterpieces, Extrapolation and Love Devotion Surrender (with Carlos Santana), to the genre-bending invention of Mahavishnu Orchestra and the blistering acoustic explorations with Al Di Meola and Paco de Lucia, John has always sought the new and transcendent. His work seeks a profound spiritual connection. Now, he has brought his singular vision to the world of film music with his score, Music for Abandoned Heights.
Compositionally, McLaughlin poured his imagination into the film’s script, crafting a rich blend of hot fusion and pensive ballads. He describes his writing process: “In my mind I…
It’s hard to argue with the press release “a mesmerizing solo debut! A contagious exuberance of playing, energetic explosive improvisations, and an openness to jazz tradition and experimentation combine on this album to create an impressive musical statement. “Almost everything he plays affirms his history and culture as a first- generation American, the son of a Panamanian mother and a Dominican father.
Growing up in the Bronx and in Queens during hip hop’s first years – the first jazz he heard were samples – hearing salsa and merengue at home, attending Latino evangelical churches, and – yes – studying classical music at the Harlem School of the Arts shaped Marcelo’s identification as an African Latino with an inclusive sensibility.
Geologist is the nom-de-théâtre of Brian Weitz, whose pursuits have been an active part of the music underground since since he was 15, playing and working in alignment with an organic ensemble of friends that would one day choose to call what they were doing Animal Collective. Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights? migrates from that tradition, containing a number of surprise affects of its own. #1 is that it is the first-ever proper Geologist solo album! For real. Surprise #2 is its pursuit of a musical answer to the not-oft-enuf-ast question: what if, back in the 80s, Ethan James had made a hurdy gurdy album for SST?
Geologist’s affirmative answer to the question begins with another question — Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?.
Lia Braswell’s Rising is forceful and expressive. Each song sounds an individual statement without there being any real sonic outliers (or weak points, for that matter) in the bunch. This makes for an intense listen, but a rich and engaging one too. The musical backbone is a relentless dance rock, mixing the thundering beats and assertive electronics of Pet Shop Boys or the Eurythmics with the breakneck, organic rush of Florence + The Machine and the complex, artful freedom of Wye Oak.
“Out of Sight” belongs to the 1980s, with a thudding, dead-eyed beat, glancing, urgent bleeps, and big burns of synthesizer that curl into a spacious instrumental bridge. “One Too Many” is another for the Less Than Zero crowd with some Duran Duran menace programmed…
Toad the Wet Sprocket has issued some intriguing anthologies over the years, including P.S. (A Toad Retrospective) and In Light Syrup, but it’s arguable that none are so fascinating as Rings: The Acoustic Sessions.
Anyone surprised by the appearance of this unorthodox album hasn’t been following the band closely over the years. Originally emerging in the late ’80s and achieving some measurable success in the next decade before its dissolution, the quartet subsequently regrouped frequently over the ensuing years on both the stage and the studio. A formal reunion in 2010 only reaffirmed the DIY idiosyncrasies the quartet worked so assiduously to establish at the outset of their existence, first independently, then on Columbia Records.
The press release for Pop Ambient 2026, the 26th installment of Kompakt Records’ influential ambient compilations, paraphrases Heraclitus, comparing ambient music to a river: “everything flows, nothing remains.” It’s an apt summation of what makes the Pop Ambient series such a compelling listen, even if it is mostly quiet, unobtrusive and unassuming.
Pop Ambient 2026 leans ever-so-slightly towards the “different” end of the ambient continuum, although you’d have to really lean in to notice. On its surface, Pop Ambient 2026 radiates the same pastoral, vaguely melancholic mood that has made the series such a mainstay for the past quarter-century, but there’s something more, a sense of the human wandering through the garden of machines. Take Segensklang’s “Schauer…
Electric Cowbell Records announces the launch of Richmond Relics, a new archival imprint dedicated to preserving the city’s musical history. Its inaugural release is a newly remastered reissue of FA3574, the sole album from Richmond, Virginia’s legendary supergroup Famous Actors From Out of Town. Originally self-released in 1986 as a limited-edition, cassette-only title, FA3574 was recorded at Floodzone, a repurposed tobacco warehouse studio in Richmond.
The album features ten original instrumental tracks that capture the group’s kinetic chemistry and their off-kilter blend of late-’70s/early-’80s art rock, jazz, noise, and improvisation. Nearly forty years later, the recordings remain strikingly vibrant. Now fully remastered for vinyl, FA3574…
This is the album that solidified Uriah Heep’s reputation as a master of gothic-inflected heavy metal. From short, sharp rock songs to lengthy, musically dense epics, Demons and Wizards finds Uriah Heep covering all the bases with style and power.
The album’s approach is set with its lead-off track, “The Wizard”: it starts as a simple acoustic tune but soon builds into a stately rocker that surges forth on a Wall of Sound built from thick guitar riffs, churchy organ, and operatic vocal harmonies. Other highlights include “Traveller in Time,” a fantasy-themed rocker built on thick wah-wah guitar riffs, and “Circle of Hands,” a stately power ballad with a gospel-meets-heavy metal feel to it. Demons and Wizards also produced a notable radio hit for the band in “Easy Livin’,” a punchy little rocker…
The third time proved to be the charm for Uriah Heep: on Look at Yourself, the group perfects its fusion of heavy metal power and prog rock majesty, and the result is one of the best albums in the Heep catalog.
The gauntlet is thrown down on the title track, a powerful rocker that layers its relentless hard rock attack with ornate vocal harmonies and quicksilver organ runs before climaxing with a tribal-sounding drum jam. The remainder of Look at Yourself presents an effective blend of gutsy guitar rock and organ-fueled prog excursions. In the rock arena, the gems are “Tears in My Eyes,” a powerful rocker driven by an almost rockabilly-style riff that stops midway for a surprising vocal harmony break supported by smooth wah-wah guitar, and “Love Machine,” a short, punchy slice of hard rock…
On their second album, Uriah Heep jettisons the experiments that weighed down Very ‘Eavy Very ‘Umble and works toward perfecting their blend of heavy metal power and prog rock complexity.
Salisbury tips the band’s style in the prog direction, containing one side of songs and one side dominated by a lengthy and ornate epic-length composition. Highlights on the song-oriented side include “Bird of Prey,” a soaring rocker that blends furious, power chord-fuelled verses with spacy, keyboard-drenched instrumental breaks, and “Lady in Black,” a stylishly arranged tune that builds from a folk-styled acoustic tune into a throbbing rocker full of ghostly harmonies and crunching guitar riffs. The big surprise on this side is “The Park,” a ballad-style song built on a light blend of acoustic…
If a band has been around long enough, they inevitably release a concept album. Fewer, though, are like The Protomen, who for the past two decades have been creating a three-part rock opera saga. The band utilizes characters from the Megaman video game universe to craft an epic story with ’80s-inspired synthwave mixed with guitar rock. It’s been a long time since their last 2009 release, Act II: The Father of Death, so the hype is real. And let’s be clear — we mean tremendously real, so much so that Act III: This City Made Us became one of the highest pre-ordered albums on Bandcamp by the end of 2025. If a high-octane, thrilling ride set to ‘80s rock music with Capcom video game characters doesn’t excite you, it’s reasonable to feel ambivalent…
Following a 2025 Record Store Day Black Friday release, Linda Ronstadt’s The Early Years compilation comes to general retail on 2LP vinyl and single CD. The set from Irving Azoff’s Iconic Artists label brings together 15 songs from Ronstadt’s 1967-1974 Capitol Records period (with some surprising omissions, such as “Desperado”). Selections include “Different Drum,” “Faithless Love,” “You’re No Good,” “Long, Long Time,” and “When Will I Be Loved.”
The Early Years is a stunning new compilation that celebrates the formative era of one of music’s most powerful and pioneering voices — Linda Ronstadt.
Featuring breakout hits like “Different Drum” and the Grammy-nominated “Long, Long Time,” The Early Years traces Ronstadt’s artistic…
Rock ‘n’ roll needs two things to be successful: a biting riff, and a playful groove. It’s what distinguishes The Rolling Stones from The Animals, The Jam from AC/DC and The Stone Roses from Oasis. The responsibility is shared between the lead guitarist and those following in the rhythm section. It’s not enough to rock, you also have to roll. Luckily, Hot Face have got the mixture right on their biting debut Automated Response: a bracing, unabashed thrill ride with as much emphasis on the bass grooves as the power-charged electric guitars. Combine the giddy impishness of Ash’s 1977 and the savage, carnal energy from The Who’s A Quick One, While He’s Away, and this is probably the album you’ll get.
Emotionally coiled guitars cement “Liar”, aided…