French musician Sébastien Roux is an inveterate sonic explorer, utilizing an engineering background in computer signal processing to develop compositions, multi-channel sound installations, radio pieces and site-specific performances. Over the course of the last 20 years, he has released recordings like More Songs and Quatuor which use the individual parts of Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 10” as the basis for an electroacoustic exploration of form and timbre.
Inevitable Music #5 is a sonic translation of Sol Lewitt’s instructions for wall drawings composed for the Dedalus Ensemble while Musiques D’ordinateur is computer music developed from formal investigations into algorithmic procedures. Roux’s most recent release, Les disparitions…
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Sounds the Color of Grounds, the sophomore album by the progressive trio Three-Layer Cake, is full of surprises, oozing a rebellious sense of freedom and energy that is unmistakably the group’s own. The trio consists of adventurous guitarist/banjoist Brandon Seabrook, bassist Mike Watt, and drummer Mike Pride.
The group made its debut in 2021 with Stove Top, recorded remotely as an incendiary response to the pandemic. This new album follows the same approach — with the curious detail that Watt, who lives in California, has never met Seabrook or Pride in person. They plan to get together soon at Pride’s studio in Chester, NY, to record their upcoming third album.
“Deliverdance” channels the punk rock spirit…
Many classical composers have woven jazz into their works — Gershwin, Stravinsky, and Bernstein come to mind — but this solo piano collection of material by Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin (1937–2020) takes the idea to the extreme. Performed with breathtaking verve by British pianist Ophelia Gordon, Kapustin: Between the Lines collapses whatever boundaries exist between the genres when the material, as notated as it is, exudes the boundless exuberance of jazz. That it’s Gordon’s debut album frankly boggles when the technique showcased throughout is so extraordinary. While jazz pianists from Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson to Bill Evans, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock are referenced in the liner notes, Gordon’s dynamic playing…
After Banjophony and Banjophonics comes the latest album from Damien O’Kane and Ron Block, Banjovial. If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice a pattern beginning to emerge. The release features the duo’s blending of Block’s five-string bluegrass banjo and O’Kane’s Irish tenor banjo.
As the title suggests, the result is, well… jovial. These superb musicians sound like they had enormous fun – something reflected not just in the music but in the often-quirky titles of the tracks.
…There are contributions from their world-class band, including Scotland’s leading bassist and Moog player Duncan Lyall and Ireland’s multi-talented guitarist and percussionist Steven Byrnes as well as some incredible guests including Irish button accordion…
Greet, the songwriting project of Matthew Broadley, seems to have a direct line to the weird and the uncanny. Broadley is based in Leeds, a city of half a million people that has developed a reputation for producing musicians with an affinity for desolate and wild landscapes (see also Phil and Layla Legard’s projects, Hawthonn and Xenis Emputae Travelling Band). I Know How to Die is Greet’s debut, and as its title suggests, it is primarily concerned with the darker, doomier corners of traditional music. The album cover’s typeface hints at some kind of pagan darkwave or celtic black metal, and the photography carries the tang of Gallows Pole-style folk horror, and there are elements of all of these things contained within, but the most prominent feature…
There’s a moment on ‘Cruise Ship Designer’, one of the more playful tracks on Dry Cleaning’s third album, where it seems like singer Florence Shaw is finally getting something off her chest, something that might be deeply relevant to the band’s creative process. It’s a declaration that she makes just as the song clangs to a standstill, almost obscured by the grinding guitars: “I make sure there are hidden messages in my work,” she states boldly.
Ever since the London four-piece released their debut EP Sweet Princess in 2019, there has been a temptation to approach Dry Cleaning’s records as a puzzling cryptic crossword or surreal Wordle cut-up, turning each song into a breadcrumb trail (as their distant spoken-word ancestors Slint might have it). “It’s a Tokyo bouncy…
Some musicians get their first glimpse of celebrity, flinch in the glare of the spotlight, and quickly burrow their way back underground. But Duncan Sumpner, you suspect, knew from the beginning that fame – even fame on a very small and grassroots indie level – was not for him.
A schoolteacher from Oughtibridge, a residential village on the outskirts of Sheffield, Sumpner has released a string of records under the name Songs of Green Pheasant without ever quite stepping into the light. The project’s origin story speaks volumes about his elusive approach. A demo that Sumpner sent to Fat Cat in 2002 became a fixture on the label’s office stereo. But when they decided to get in contact to offer him a record deal, the email bounced back, and it took them…
Multiple recordings are available featuring Melbourne guitarist Cam Butler with ensembles of varying sizes — in addition to the eleven solo instrumental albums he’s issued, Butler’s also contributed to other artists’ projects — but there’s something undeniably special about one featuring him alone. In that context, his command of the instrument and associated gear is especially apparent, especially when it’s not put to self-indulgent or egoistic ends but instead used to realize the artistic expression for a given piece. It also allows his singular tone to be heard clearly and for the listener to better appreciate the textures he coaxes from his Gibson Les Paul.
Being an album of unaccompanied pieces, Spirits Flying Home is naturally intimate and…
Príncipe have been championing the music coming out of Lisbon’s suburbs for the better half of two decades. The dominating style has been batida, a mashup of two Angolan rhythms — kuduro and kizomba — bound together by whatever sonic glue a producer sees fit. Following the success of batida’s first wave, an increasing number of producers have begun experimenting with this style of music; despite the label’s best efforts, it’s becoming nearly impossible for them to house this ever-expanding pool of talent.
Não Estragou Nada is Príncipe’s third compilation and, at 37 tracks long, its greatest. It features music spanning two generations of producers: 19-year-old wonderkid Helviofox shares the roster with OG batida and kuduro producer…
There’s some search for definitions needed here. Of course, both OdNu and Ümlaut are monikers, in this case referring to New York artists Michel Mazza and Jeff Düngfelder.
Then we come to Mitochondria Johatsu, the title of their second joint project. Using two separate terms, they seem to want to create a new one – mitochondria are small organelles found in nearly all eukaryotic cells, often referred to as the “powerhouses of the cell” because they generate most of the cell’s energy. On the other hand, johatsu is a Japanese term for people who vanish from their lives without a trace, often to escape shame or stress.
In many ways that combination of terms does seem to define the music Mazza (electric guitar,…
Experimental is a tag that can scare off listeners. Albums with this label can sound like something from the research and development wing of music: abstract, difficult or even weird. At first glance, Friendship Traces by Steven Lambke and Jimmie Kilpatrick looks like one of these records: it’s based around synths, drum samples and a melodica. There’s nary a guitar in sight. But right from the get-go, this duo shows themselves as open-minded, warm, and friendly.
Friendship Traces is a shade under half an hour long and the result of sessions of playing, overdubbing and tape manipulation by two Canadians: Lambke, a Canadian singer and guitarist, and indie musician Kilpatrick, formerly known as Shotgun Jimmie. Both have…
Kris Davis isn’t interested in giving listeners a place to get comfortable, and The Solastalgia Suite makes that clear right away. She wrote the piece out of a growing unease about climate change, and you can hear that tension all over the record.
Across the eight pieces, Davis and Poland’s Lutosławski Quartet keep coming at that feeling from different angles, sometimes leaning into beauty, sometimes into abrasion. The music lives in a modern chamber space that only occasionally brushes up against jazz.
“Interlude” opens the door abruptly. The piano hits with blunt sounding chords, more Bartók than bop, while the strings move in tight unison, growing louder and heavier as they stack on top of each other. One violin breaks out to…
Dave Stryker‘s Blue Fire: The Van Gelder Session features the guitarist performing at one of the most revered venues in recorded jazz, and the chosen setting is anything but incidental. Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s legendary Englewood Cliffs studio in July 2025, the album benefits from the ambiance itself. Its warmth, clarity, and a sense of history, while showcasing a deeply rooted guitar-organ-drums trio that understands groove as both discipline and release. Joined by organist Jared Gold and drummer McClenty Hunter, Stryker delivers a session that is unhurried, soulful, and confidently grounded in the tradition.
The album begins with two Stryker originals: “Van Gelder’s Place,” followed by the title track, “Blue Fire.” These pieces act as both…
One of several recordings issued by the Art Ensemble’s own label and the only one to document the group as a whole, Kabalaba is a live, 1974 performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival by the same augmented band (with the addition of Muhal Richard Abrams) that recorded the superb Fanfare for the Warriors album for Atlantic. While not as heady as that release, Kabalaba offers a typical example of the Art Ensemble’s live concerts from around that time.
There are several percussion interludes and solo horn features interspersed among stronger thematic pieces such as Theme for Sco, which gets an energetic workout here. Roscoe Mitchell produces an especially acerbic solo alto piece, Improvization A2 [sic], all gnarls and bitter…
The past is the only thing that lasts … if you move too fast
Yeah, that’s a line from my song “Deco Dance” (Night Lights) that Lou Reed inspired (note the banana reference in the intro and then look at the banana on the cover of the first Andy Warhol produced Velvet Underground & Nico album) and that I wrote over fifty years ago. And I’m humbled to admit that at that young and dumb age (25 although it did seem old at the time) I had no idea how true that would prove (the past being the only thing that lasts part) or how fast I was moving at the time or the totally crazy idea that I’d be releasing tracks that were recorded all those years ago … now. Visions of the Night 1975-2025 is finally available in it’s enhanced, enchanted…
Few artists so consistently bare their souls with such blunt honestly as Ruston Kelly. Repeatedly he seeks some kind of release from calamitous experiences ranging from addiction to failed relationship only to find himself back in the depths of depression once again. Such candour runs through his three solo studio albums with a bellow of defiance in his 2023 release ‘Weakness’. For this album Kelly introduces what may seem a complete change of direction, namely joy. But Pale Through the Window is neither revelation nor a self-help manual. If Kelly has not exorcised his demons, he can live with them. He can find happiness alongside struggle and what really comes through is a sense of gratitude that he is alive and can experience emotions lighter than relentless darkness.
Between Worlds is the first collaboration between two established members of the New York art and music scene. Leslie Graves’ previous release was 2023’s “Hidden In The Days” while Toby Goodshank is known as a long-standing member of The Moldy Peaches, best known for their song ‘Anyone Else But You’.
The ten tracks here were co-written by the pair and have an ethereal quality that might be described as dreamy or psychedelic. Acoustic guitars and vocals that float above them give an other-worldly feel to the record by these Brooklyn-based artist-musicians.
Goodshank has had a lengthy solo career, recording and self-releasing fourteen albums in a five-year spell and touring Europe several times with…
As the name implies, Fanny were an uncompromising, take no prisoners, no holds barred, rock ‘n’ roll outfit who tried to grab the music business by the scruff of the neck and squeeze it dry in the early to mid 1970’s. The fact that they were women didn’t seem to bother them… but it certainly bother “the business”.
Formed by sisters June (guitar & vocals) and Jean (bass & vocals) Millington in the late 60’s and signing to Reprise Records in 1969 they were joined by Alice de Buhr (drums & vocals) and Nickey Barclay (keyboards & vocals) to record debut, Fanny (1970), and follow ups, Charity Ball (1971), Fanny Hill (1972), and Mothers Pride (1973), before June and Alice jumped ship triggering a move to Casablanca Records in 1974.
…remixed from the original tapes in Nashville, TN by Brad Jones and Robyn Hitchcock at Alex the Great Studios in June 2025.
Robyn Hitchcock is one of England’s most enduring and prolific singer/songwriters, visual artists, guitarists, live performers, and genuine eccentrics. He started his recording career with the Soft Boys, a punk-era band specializing in melodic pop merged with offbeat lyrics. In 1988, he landed his first major U.S. label contract with A&M Records and followed the signing by releasing the ambitious Globe of Frogs (1988)
…Hitchcock’s first foray into U.S. major-label territory disappointed some critics but helped expand his audience beyond the realm of college radio, thanks to the radio-friendly…
In Piers Haggards’ 1971 folk horror classic, Blood on Satan’s Claw, a remote, idyllic rural community has its peace burst into flames when someone unwittingly unearths a deformed skull from a freshly plowed field. Suddenly and with no warning, the town’s previously cloistered innocent youth turn to the dark side, guided by their beautiful, charismatic leader into wanton acts of lust and bloodshed.
On their debut LP, Beck Goldsmith and Jonathan Dix plow a similar furrow, unearthing the magic, the darkness and the light lurking just beneath the surface of the workaday world. Inspired by Max Porter’s folk horror novel Lanny, Underneath the Earth is a stunningly beautiful series of vignettes exploring the natural world,…