Jazz 625 was a British television show, hosted by trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, that ran from 1964 to 1966 on BBC2; the name comes from the higher-resolution 625-line UHF system that the station employed for broadcast. The show featured a variety of British musicians as well as top American artists such as Art Blakey, Jimmy Giuffre, Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk and the Modern Jazz Quartet. The archives thus hold a treasure trove of mid-60s jazz and, thankfully, the 35 mm film containing many episodes has survived and can be seen at a variety of sites online as well as on DVD. On March 19, 1965, pianist Bill Evans and his trio featuring bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Larry Bunker played an hour-long set for…
Latest Entries »
Pianist Joey Alexander displays a nuanced stylistic maturity on his eighth studio album, 2026’s Celestial Keeper. The follow-up to 2023’s Continuance, Celestial Keeper is Alexander’s first album since moving back to his native Bali, Indonesia. It arrives on the heels of a formative decade for the instrumentalist living in New York and Baltimore, during which time he grew from an 11-year-old jazz wunderkind, to a Grammy winner and leader of his own internationally recognized trio. While he was always a virtuoso, Alexander (who was still just 23 at the time of recording) has only gotten better both as an improviser and conceptualist. He brings all of this experience to bear on Celestial Keeper, a title that evokes the idea of a guardian angel and finds him…
If Irish violinist Darragh Morgan’s latest release is any indication, Northern Irish contemporary music is not just alive and well but thriving. With the violinist partnering with the Ulster Orchestra and conductor David Brophy, the smartly curated Spin presents four fiercely imaginative works for violin and orchestra written expressly for Morgan by long-time collaborators Bill Campbell, Brian Irvine, Ryan Molloy, and Frank Lyons. Northern Irish musical heritage and traditional classical structures are drawn upon, but the music on Spin, all four pieces world premiere recordings, is in no way constrained by geography or the past when the composers present vivid works emblematic of their distinct personalities.
The personnel involved in the project is…
Features the bonus track “Bad Luck Hideaway”.
When you’ve come back as successfully as the Stones did with Hackney Diamonds, what exactly do you do for an encore? Its renewed urgency, communal goodwill and, more importantly, the strongest Stones music in years made it a hard act to follow. The temptation to deliver a straight- forward sequel must have been strong. Indeed, there are superficial links with Foreign Tongues: returning producer Andrew Watt and a clutch of songs begun during those 2023 sessions. But while Hackney Diamonds was about return and resurgence, its successor offers something more nuanced. Above all, the Stones’ 25th studio album carries an unforced pleasure in playing together – striking in a band that might easily…
Sidemen in rock regularly boast a side to them that comes bursting out later in life. Pink Floyd guitarist Snowy White made his presence known on the radio with the wistful “Bird of Paradise,” just as Genesis touring bassist Daryl Stuermer found a new lease of life as Phil Collins’ co-writer on No Jacket Required. Thin Lizzy bandmate Brian Robertson showcased a new layer in his trajectory with the fiery Diamonds and Dirt, now re-packaged as a two-CD deal. While the first disc showcases the 2011 album as it should be, the latter is an entirely new record named The Brian Robertson Album, which is entirely instrumental.
As it happens, the boxset is credited as Diamonds and Dirt, so it might make sense to rate it as one flowing whole. The collection…
The Brazilian brothers Khouri, vocalist and lead guitarist Matheus and bassist/vocalist Thiago Khouri, have obviously listened to every record cut in Liverpool in the early ’60s and absorbed some important lessons regarding brevity, harmony, the proper amount of jangle, and whacking the listener across the chops with a big fat hook. They’ve put those studies to good use in their group Banda AL9, releasing two excellent albums both in Portuguese and English before 2026’s English-only Hey! Hey! We’re Banda AL9. It wouldn’t matter if the record were sung in Martian, anyone with a love for bright and sunny guitar rock that sounds a bunch like, well, almost exactly like, the Beatles when Paul took over and scrubbed any irony or darkness from the final product,…
Attention should definitely be given to the remarkable sound design achieved by ambient-electronic artist Hollan Holmes on The Sanctity of Rust; his maturation as a composer and conceptualist impresses even more, however, and marks the release as a high point in this Texas-based sound sculptor’s career. The sound design first: among the hardware and software listed on the release’s inner sleeve are the Korg MS20 and Oberheim Matrix 12 plus tools such as Native Instruments, Arturia Pigments, and Spectrasonics Omnisphere; custom samples and FM synthesis also played a part in the project’s production. He’s no purist, by the way: Holmes is happy to work acoustic sounds into a composition if the music requires it, which means one shouldn’t…
At the age of 72, “Evil” Graham Lee, the legendary pedal steel pioneer and veteran of the iconic Australian band The Triffids, delivers his first ever album under his own name titled I Think I’m Alone Now. In addition to his work with The Triffids, Graham’s place in ambient history was cemented in 1990 when his evocative pedal steel became the soulful centerpiece of The KLF’s masterpiece, Chill Out (specifically on the highlight “Baltimore to Fair Play”).
…He’s recorded with Robert Forster and Cut Copy. But for nearly a decade, he has used his Bandcamp page as a repository of ongoing experiments, from ascendant longform instrumentals and aleatoric collages to exquisite and tender tributes to late songwriters like John Prine and…
For listeners drawn to the quietly adventurous music of Aldous Harding, Cate Le Bon or Jessica Pratt, Half Truth, by California songwriter Avery Hellman, who performs as Ismay, will feel like a welcome discovery. Folk, americana and indie influences intertwine throughout the album, producing songs that are musically understated yet emotionally rich. These are not songs that announce themselves immediately. Instead, Half Truth rewards patience, revealing carefully observed lyrics and subtle arrangements that slowly gather emotional weight.
The title track introduces one of the album’s central concerns: the difficulty of honest communication. “Half truth I’d like to disappear” becomes both confession and defence, as…
If by looking at the cover for Max Subar’s album, Anything Could Be, you get the impression that you are looking at (and possibly will listen to) a typical singer-songwriter album, you would be both right and wrong.
Right, because yes, this is a singer-songwriter album, and its often sparse, acoustically driven sound is all over the place. Wrong, because there is that often missing element of distinction in such music, and here it goes beyond some inventive arrangement touches that embellish the music. It is in one of the key elements that make singer-songwriter music work – the lyrical content that goes beyond ‘pain in my heart’ style storytelling that graces (or disgraces) so many singer-songwriter albums.
The current popularity of primarily instrumental bands combining funk, blues, R&B and soul can’t be entirely traced to the UK’s New Mastersounds. But there is no question that the recently disbanded quartet’s output, which began in 2000, brought new life and a fresh attitude to a genre that experienced a brief commercial surge in the mid-’60s.
So, it’s no surprise that Pittsburgh’s Norside, who opened dates for the Mastersounds, would look to that quartet to craft their similarly-styled sound. Their second album, Coal &Soul, embodies that, albeit in a trio format. It’s no coincidence they landed on the label that New Mastersounds’ guitarist Eddie Roberts founded.
Credit for this keyboards, guitar and drums…
Pluto in Aquarius is the third album from cellist Janel Leppin‘s Ensemble Volcanic Ash. It follows 2024’s aclaimed To March Is to Love.
Fans of the quintet’s sometimes chaotic weave of formal composition and improvisation are in for something different here. These compositions and arrangements are lower to the ground, more intimate, and spacious even at their most adventurous. The avant chamber group of their first two outings has given way to a rawer, looser approach by these Washington, D.C.-area luminaries that include guitarist Anthony Pirog, bassist Luke Stewart, tenor saxophonist Brian Settles, and drummer Larry Ferguson. Leppin plays cello and the Yamaha CP-70 electric grand piano.
There is tension here, but it’s developmental…
Cellist and composer Janel Leppin returns with Slowly Melting, the simultaneously released solo companion to her Ensemble Volcanic Ash: Pluto in Aquarius set. Leppin plays cello, guitar, bass, a Prophet-Five synth, and piano in compositions, improvisations, and soundscapes for cello. Over eight pieces recorded at The Brink in Richmond, Virginia, and one at Janel’s Room studio, she articulates a genreless space where her own musical obsessions including jazz, chamber music, experimental improvisation, and rock, become a holistic entity greater than the individual parts.
Opener “Zonk” weds plucked cello strings, guitar, droning synth, and distortion; Leppin finds subtle melodies that emerge under the primary theme; spaces and textures wind around…
…Bonus CD featuring 4 extra tracks.
London trio Mary in the Junkyard cheekily dub their sound “weepy chaos rok”, but they often summon something far more: an intricate magic weaved from vocalist and guitarist Clari Freeman-Taylor’s poetic, observational eye and freewheeling arrangements, equally informed by wiry math-laden contemporaries and elegant classical stylings. After a tireless couple of years and adventures stateside (a two-month tour with Wet Leg included), Mary in the Junkyard have gone from courting Corsica buzz to counting fans in Marina Abramović.
Facing their long-awaited debut upon this new foundation, Role Model Hermit opens self-reflexive: “It is yours babe, you deserve it,” Freeman-Taylor pronounces on ‘Mantra III’,…
Roberto Carlos Lange and Fabi Reyna feel like kindred spirits. Long before they met two summers ago, they were making music — as Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical, respectively — building their names with heart-on-your-sleeve electronic and indie-folk songs that touch on diaspora, longing, and love.
On their collaborative record, Helado Tropical, these two worlds naturally collapse into each other, as the seasoned emotional excavators lean into their shared strengths. The result goes down as easy as mango-champagne sorbet.
These nine songs—or perhaps seven, since “Luna” and “Sol” (another iconic pair) flow seamlessly into and out of the floaty, syncopated standout track “Fluye”—were born from a three-day…
Romance is a funny old game. One minute, you’ll be in the trenches of heartbreak, swearing off love forever. The next, you’re down bad for someone new and do a full 180 into living in a swoony movie in your head.
Suki Waterhouse’s third album, Loveland, captures some of the feelings of that latter experience, mining her relationships and infatuations past and present to build a world you’ll want to immerse yourself in whether you’re coupled up, on the hunt or convinced you’re destined to be alone.
“Picture this, it’s innocent / ‘Cause I haven’t even held your hand yet / Do you know that you’ve been coming up in my dreams?” she asks over the Strokes-y guitars of ‘Almost’, diving into a fantasy that plays out in her head alone.
Mikey Powers has a folk voice 200 years out of time. Not the cute kind you get from bands who bought a banjo and a flannel shirt and called it Appalachia, but the authentic kind, where you can’t tell if the guy singing is having a religious experience or a stroke, due to the song’s conviction. With a full entourage, Powers leads The Powers Ensemble’s debut Kindling.
The first thing you should know about The Powers Ensemble is that it isn’t a “band” in the way your dad might understand it. It’s whoever’s free: mandolin and double bass one week, flugelhorn and bass clarinet the next. Powers’s label, Baltimore’s Shiny Boy Press, bills itself as a genre-fluid “arts collective // pals,” which is the kind of statement that usually raises…
Consider the phrase “in the zone.” Usually, it refers to a state of concentration that enhances productivity. From a musical standpoint, it suggests the locked-in flow that musicians can achieve when riding a juicy groove or digging into a wicked series of riffs. To “zone out,” on the other hand, evokes a blissful state of ethereal detachment in which such things as rhythm and momentum are left behind or transcended.
Colorado trio Prairiewolf operates in both these realms, creating limpid yet propulsive instrumental music that faces the stars while remaining focused on doings on the ground.
For their first two albums, Stefan Beck (guitar), Jeremy Erwin (keys/synths), and Tyler Wilcox (bass) created retro-futuristic lounge music…
Room 40’s J.WLSN returns to Lawrence English’s label flanked by his old mate Liam Keenan with a haze of guitars, synths and samples that evokes the rugged, beautiful landscape of New South Wales.
Wilson and Keenan had been working together at an art museum in Sydney for some time when they finally decided to book a session at a local studio. It didn’t take long either; working with their mutual friend David Akerman, they laid down a set of peaceful longform jams that appeared as they reminisced about different stretches of time in the area where they both grew up. Finding the shared similarities and differences, the music appeared as a soundtrack. On the four-part ‘Teflon Blues’, their hazy recollections buried beneath a fog of blurry instrumentation, while on the generous…
Hot Chip release the reissues of The Warning, Made In The Dark and One Life Stand. The albums are being reissued this year for the first time. The collection is the result of Joe Goddard, Alexis Taylor, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle and Felix Martin’s lifelong friendship and musical chemistry.
Rewind to the year 2006 when British music was enthrall to guitar bands in winklepickers and waistcoats. And then along came Hot Chip’s album The Warning like a kaleidoscopic bolt from the blue and turned a generation of indie fans onto the hedonistic pleasure of repetitive beats. The Warning was a ahead of the zeitgeist, spending 17 weeks in the UK charts and earning a Mercury Prize nomination thanks to tracks like ‘Over & Over’ and ‘Boy From School’.