Trust a man whose ideal compositional form is the palindrome to reckon with this axiom: Everything comes back to where you started, then you start over again. 2023’s American Landscapes, the last record by Dutch lutenist/multi-instrumentalist Jozef Van Wissem and American guitarist/filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, ground their sound down to the essentials of pealing feedback and patiently cycling lute melodies, then let it sprawl, taking up all available space. After that, what can you do but build things back up?
That’s one gambit that they employ on their new LP. The quivering, e-bowed guitar tones that Jarmusch wraps around gradual progress on The Day The Angels Cried opener “Concerning Celestial Hierarchy” blossom like a chorus of…
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“Oak Parks” is an entropic blues, its sweet, heart-tugging hook corroded by murk and echo, the slash and clamor of guitars paced by a slack-gaited drum machine. Fuzzy, sleepy, faintly dissonant vocals slip and slide over the melody.
Consider it an acoustic, home-spun version of Bardo Pond’s most shamanic moments, or a Linda Smith cassette left to warp in the afternoon sun.
This new collaboration between Miranda Spatula and her West Coast sometime bandmate Lila Jarzombek is beautifully, dizzyingly unstrung.
Miranda Spatula is much loved around here for her rough but charming work with The Spatulas. Lila Jarzombek sometimes plays guitar in Spatulas, but her primary project is Nowhere Flower, a low-fi guitar and beat machine ditties.
Like Arya Stark without the training of an assassin, Julia Kugel is a musician with many faces: She leads The Coathangers, Soft Palms, the all-star squad Julia & the Squeezettes, and her own solo project, Julia, Julia. Her ambition is particularly remarkable given that, when I’ve touched base with her over the course of 2025, humility seemed to be her ostensible calling card. And it is on Sugaring a Strawberry, even if she’s releasing it through the seemingly self-focused moniker. Her second album as Julia, Julia magically resolves the inherent contradiction of the trendy term “mindfulness”: How can a practice intended to integrate one’s self with the outside world be reconciled with the fact that it is by definition a selfish exercise?
Let’s clarify: In a modern-day gathering of…
Yes recorded the original version of ‘Fly from Here’ during breaks in touring in 2010 and 2011, during which they enlisted former Yes frontman Trevor Horn as producer. The original received mixed reviews and peaked at No. 30 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 36 on the US Billboard 200.
The alternative version of the album titled Fly from Here – Return Trip features the classic ‘Drama’ era line- up who were reunited in 2018 to create a new version featuring all new vocals from Trevor Horn plus new instrumental parts, alongside a more organic mix highlighting Chris Squire’s unique voice and bass contributions as well as additional parts from Steve Howe and Geoff Downes.
The original album was released on 25 March 2018 during the band’s 50th anniversary tour…
Radiance Opposition is the tenth album by Julie’s Haircut, one of Italy’s most enduring independent musical outfits: a band that has developed a genuine sonic catalogue through the years and which makes a renewal move with this record, their first full length since 2019.
With a title taking inspiration from the I Ching book of divination, and a six piece lineup introducing new singer and songwriter Anna Bassy joining the consolidated team formed by Nicola Caleffi, Luca Giovanardi, Andrea Rovacchi, Andrea Scarfone and Ulisse Tramalloni, Radiance Opposition collates an eight tracks cycle that generates a consistent yet multifaceted musical journey, combining psychedelia, electronica and polyrhythms – all blended together thanks to a syncretic…
Lara Agar and Louis d’Heudières are both from East Anglia and, although neither live there now, it lives loud in their imaginations. Their first release together as Monasunne is a landscape-driven conjuring of the region’s ancient history. Inspired by the lingering Anglo-Saxon presence in Suffolk, they have produced a writhing, expressive soundscape that is equal parts Laura Cannell and M.R. James.
The two are composers and performers. Agar’s experimental composition includes a piece based on the writings of Rachel Carson, an EP (Solstice), and work for dance and visual arts. D’Heudières, based in Hamburg, is a researcher and composer, with an eclectic track record that includes a sound installation on the history of copper…
…With expanded or remastered presentations of Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, Moonraker, Octopussy, Licence to Kill, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day already certifying La-La Land Records as the home of definitive presentations of Bond soundtracks, there’s another one striking hard: 1965’s Thunderball, the fourth film in the series featuring a returning Sean Connery as Ian Fleming’s thrill-a-minute secret agent. Here, Bond squares off against another agent of the terrorist organization SPECTRE – the eyepatch-sporting Emilio Largo – attempting to stop SPECTRE’s plot to set off a pair of atomic bombs they stole.
If Goldfinger further codified the formula of…
Composer Thomas Newman is the son of Alfred, brother to David, and cousin to Randy. He is famed for scores to The Shawshank Redemption, among other films, but Of Mice and Men, written in collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet and premiered on stage in 2022, is his first ballet score; the album presents “Music from the Original Ballet.” Viewers of the ballet itself may find the album brings pleasing recollections of it.
The score brings quiet layers of the country-ish sounds one might expect from the book’s California farmland setting, with a fiddle, hambones, and stomps. Those are subtle, and listeners to whom the music is known — if asked to guess its content — might not be able to, but this is actually what is most interesting…
It is now 16 years since the unique voice and performances of UK-based Sudanese-Italian singer Amira Kheir first emerged onto an international stage, and 14 since the release of her debut album View from Somewhere.
Seven years after album Mystic Dance, Kheir returns with a fourth album that celebrates everything vibrant and vital about Sudan. The lyrics on Black Diamonds – in Arabic, English and Italian – explore loss, yearning, the fragile sparkle of love, and offer a poignant, though unspoken, reflection on the ongoing civil war and humanitarian crisis in Sudan. Kheir’s own compositions frame carefully selected classic songs by Sudanese greats, plus a cover of Italian group Matia Bazar’s ‘Ti Sento’, rendered in a classy ’90s-style jazz-soul,…
Cruelty Bacchanal, the second release from guitarist Matt Hollenberg’s group Shardik, is a ferocious statement of intent. Years in the making and issued on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, the album presents a volatile and politically charged fusion of modern classical structure, metal intensity, and free jazz unpredictability.
Hollenberg’s compositions are marked by intricate rhythmic architecture and an uncompromising sonic vision, alternating between explosive virtuosity and dark, layered atmospheres.
Executed with surgical precision and blistering intensity, Hollenberg’s playing veers between soaring lyricism, dense harmonic structures and searing improvisation. The result is a tightly coiled set of compositions that challenge…
This is an accomplished, confident new album from Denver guitarist D. West, who leans more towards the ‘new age’ instrumental guitar stylings of Wiliam Ackerman’s Windham Hill imprint than John Fahey’s American Primitive-defining Takoma.
Rather than the heavily syncopated thumbed technique of Fahey, West’s music often has a playful nature (‘Cult of the Celestial’) and a real sense of technical beauty (‘The Transpacific International Causeway’).
With busy guitar lines showcasing West’s obvious affinity with his instrument and his discovery of the expansive sound of the 12-string, the music often has echoes of Chuck Johnson’s acoustic work, albeit with a tendency towards a free, experimental style in places.
Time felt a little different for Australian indie band Boy & Bear when they were working on their sixth studio album Tripping Over Time. The band got to record in their own studio for the first time, which gave them the freedom to be free of the pressure to perform on costly hired studio time and slow things down, to the extent that the line between writing and recording became blurred and, to quote frontman Dave Hosking, it gave the band a new “experimental spirit”.
Experimental is a keyword to remember with the album, especially if you’re hoping to box it neatly into the – admittedly wide – spectrum that is americana. The title track, for example, feels like a piece of dreamy new wave escapism as Hosking sings that he’s “Wandering ‘round in the sun”…
Following up from the collaboration on Vol.I from 2015, that drew from The Great Irish Songbook, Tony Christie and Ranagri continue the Tradition series where the combo delve into, erm, the Irish traditional library of work. At the time, it might have seemed an unusual collaboration, not so much for Ranagri but more for TC with his legacy of chart bothering hits and anthems known and loved by the masses, that took Cropredy by storm (as did Ranagri’s set) in 2023.
Clearly, the TC&R partnership is proving quite an unexpected success with not only has legs but an obvious mutual appreciation for one another and an affinity with the material. The evidence? Just check the moment in the Whiskey In The Jar video when Tony stands back and simply watches…
Blood Cultures have always thrived in the shadows-anonymous figures cloaked in hoods, channeling psychedelic pop through the haze of Bollywood samples, bedroom electronics, and the uneasy glow of 1970s horror cinema. Now, the project is stepping into an entirely new arena: video games. The group’s fourth studio album also serves as the official soundtrack to Skate Story, the long-anticipated PlayStation title from developer Sam Eng.
It’s a natural collision. Eng’s surreal skateboarding odyssey-equal parts myth, motion, and melancholy-finds its mirror in Blood Cultures’ kaleidoscopic sound design. Across previous albums (Happy Birthday, Oh Uncertainty! A Universe Despairs, and LUNO), Blood Cultures…
Osees have released their new live album, Live at the Broad Museum via Deathgod Records. Album captures a dynamic live performance at The Broad museum in Los Angeles. The record features extended tracks that highlight the band’s improvisational energy, including a standout 22-minute jam, “I Got a Lot.” Unlike their tightly structured studio recordings, this album explores krautrock-inspired grooves, hypnotic rhythms, and experimental soundscapes, showcasing the band’s versatility and adventurous live presence.
The album is mixed by frontman John Dwyer and mastered by JJ Golden, emphasizing the raw, immersive quality of the performance. Critics praise it as a document of Osees’ live power, capturing moments of spontaneous creativity…
Consistency and continuity are what make the backbone of Water Damage. The Austin-based psych/drone-rock collective consists of noise rock veterans and experimental musicians from bands like Marriage, Expensive Shit, USA/Mexico, Black Eyes and Swans, some of whom are in their third decade. Water Damage functions more as a commune with variable line-ups from five to eleven people, usually with multiple bassists and drummers. Even though they are often compared to Tony Conrad’s collaboration with German krautrock legends Faust, Outside the Dream Syndicate, their understanding of motorik rhythm comes mainly from later Fugazi albums. That’s why their albums’ titles, like 2022’s Repeater or 2023’s 2 Songs, nod to the post-hardcore band from…
Daniel Lopatin doesn’t score the Safdie brothers’ movies so much as open portals in them. In Good Time and Uncut Gems, his worship of all things kosmische created a peculiar contrast with the images on screen, drenching the brothers’ grainy tales of ’10s debauchery in the aura of an earlier time. Hospital hallways gleam with the same twilit aura of Thief; New York’s diamond district ripples with as much danger as the landscapes of Sorcerer. Lopatin isn’t recreating Blade Runner with his soundtracks as much as Risky Business, pulling us into the subconscious of the Safdies’ manic characters and submerging us in their doomed self-sabotage. When Howard Ratner hits, we don’t just resolve to a major chord — we enter the realm of the angels, with glowy flutes…
To mark the 40th anniversary of their debut album, Laibach and Mute are releasing a special Laibach 40 CD box set. Originally issued in 1985 without the band’s name – as they were banned in Slovenia and Yugoslavia at the time – this legendary first album now appears on a remastered form bearing its originally intended name for the first time.
The box also features historic recordings from Laibach’s formative years. These include the cult live album Ljubljana – Zagreb – Belgrade, capturing their first concerts in 1982 across Yugoslavia, with some tracks originating from early rehearsals held in a practice space wedged between a mortuary, a dissection room, and a madhouse.
Another highlight is M.B. December 21, 1984, documenting a semi-illegal Ljubljana concert…
Alex Hitchcock made his name as an emerging talent in London when he decided to move to New York City to, as he put it, “engage with the music being made here, because as a white British musician playing Black American music, engaging with the context in which that music is made is important.” Letters from Afar is his first shot across the bow from America, putting together a stellar band from the city’s local jazz scene. The songs are all Hitchcock originals, and the band plays the hell out of them. Lex Korten creates hypnotic groves behind the horns, and Harish Raghavan and Jongkuk Kim provide the complex rhythmic background for Hitchcock’s compositions. Having worked with some of the finest young musicians in London, Hitchcock makes good…
Cosán Casta means ‘winding path’, an apt title for this collaboration between fiddle player Aoife Ní Bhriain and pianist Cormac McCarthy. Their musical wanderings have taken them in many directions – classical, jazz, avant-garde – and have now brought them back to Irish traditional music, influenced by what they’ve picked up on the way.
‘A Mháire’ begins with the fiddle alone (Ní Bhriain has a deep interest in J.S. Bach’s works for solo violin), then she bends notes like a piper – and it turns out it’s inspired by a slow air collected from a blind piper called O’Hannigan, a year before the Great Famine. Ní Bhriain’s and McCarthy’s beautiful piece is inflected by that coming tragedy. Sometimes McCarthy’s piano supports the fiddle. In ‘Butterfly’, chords become blooms…