David Bird‘s Hinterlands serves as the composer’s first true portrait album, bringing together four works written for a range of international commissions and performed by several ensembles deeply committed to contemporary music. Rather than presenting a simple collection of scores, the program unfolds as a cohesive exploration of the relationships between technology, industrial landscapes, and human perception. Without attempting to tell a single narrative, the album creates a unified sonic world in which instrumental and electronic textures become the primary vehicles of expression.
The title work, written for the ensemble lovemusic, opens the album with an unusual combination of flute, clarinet, viola, electric guitar,…
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Norma Winstone is widely considered the grand dame of British jazz. She’s released dozens of albums and lists hundreds of recording credits. Her many collaborations include British jazz musicians Michael Garrick, late former husband John Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, Barbara Thompson, Kit Downes, and Dave Holland.
Gilles Peterson Presents Norma Winstone at Maida Vele is a live-in-studio album, part of the collaboration between BBE and the U.K. DJ. As has been her custom from the very beginning, Winstone surrounds herself with stellar musicians who include her sons Alex Taylor and Leo Taylor on vocals and drums respectively, globally celebrated tuba player Oren Marshall, Polar Bear saxophonist Mark Lockheart, and pianist…
In 2023 Brazilian multi-instrumentalist, arranger and conductor Gaia Wilmer released Folia: The Music of Egberto Gismonti with a 19-piece big band, transforming the composer’s intricate, rhythmically complex piano and guitar pieces into lush, large-ensemble configurations. In 2025, she and cellist Jacques Morelenbaum teamed with a band for Trem Das Cores, recontextualizing Caetano Veloso. Gaia Wilmer’s Large Ensemble appears again on Parabolico: Reflections On Gilberto Gil Vol 1 in collaboration with vocalist Mônica Salmaso who assisted Gaia in choosing the repertoire. The music here offers sensitive orchestrations relying more on lush orchestral textures and rhythmic precision than big band dynamics. Among her participants…
Mount Shrine was César Alexandre, who passed away about five years ago due to complications from COVID. The Yasu Ether Project is a posthumous re-release of an earlier, obscure album that had only limited availability. The album centers on soft, airy drones, strong bass elements, fuzzy static, and field recordings. The latter provide the feel of nature, perhaps haunted forests and meadows full of birdsong, with synth providing a twinge of melancholy. Arpeggiated chords waft, anchored by deep tones.
The feel is melodic though unconventional. While the more experimental side of ambient music can be suffocating or isolating, this effort exhibits a degree of warmth. Not exactly upbeat warmth, but its incorporation of sounds from…
In the digital era, it’s rare to encounter a project as ambitious as this: a triple-LP concept album available as a boxed set, including a book with a short story (in Italian) and 180 illustrations. Un Sequestro Lungo 10,000 Anni is the love child of Samuele Gottardello (Blak Saagan) and Iranian illustrator Majid Bita, the second in a series of Opale Editions by Maple Death Records and Canicola Edizioni.
The concept is dystopian, the illustrations vibrant despite their dual tones, portraying a world overrun by monsters and monstrous humans, a savage police force keeping a terrified and often angry populace at bay. In one scene, a bus rushes headlong toward a gaping maw. The apartments are jammed and often infested; Big Brother…
Released via Transgressive Records, Sparks Live On the Moon, the band’s first full live album, captures Sparks at the very peak of their live powers. The 20-track album recorded at the end of their 2025 tour, in the moon’s Taruntius Crater, comes complete with an introduction and closing narration by Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett.
The songs on the live album cover material from Sparks albums as early as A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing (1972) up to their most recent album Mad! (2025), and it includes a notable songs such as “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us”, “The Number One Song in Heaven” and “When Do I Get to Sing My Way'”.
Louder Than War described the 2025 show as “a hundred minutes of energetic, thrilling…
Most artists will say their music is shaped by their environment, but for London trio Night Tapes, it’s nothing short of fundamental. portals//polarities’ is a deeply immersive journey that travels through the places and sounds of its creation across the globe. From a bubbling swamp in Tallinn, Estonia, to birdsong in Mexico and even a Los Angeles police helicopter, this debut boasts a wildly exploratory soundscape. Made quietly in a shared South London house – where Iiris Vesik, Max Doohan and Sam Richards had to keep volume low to avoid disturbing neighbours – these songs are time capsules of the band’s experiences, both direct and indirect. Take ‘pacifico’ – a trip-hop-tinged nod to a mythical mindset inspired by stories of Mexico’s San Jose del Pacifico, with…
Could there be a more appropriate album title this year? Sunshine, Jungle’s fifth, is one of the words that comes most readily to mind when asked to describe their music.
Here we find them once again exploring their soulful side, founders Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland reaffirming their strong bond with vocalist Lydia Kitto, now herself a fully-fledged member of the band. The trio’s second full album together proves an ideal blend of the urban sound Jungle cultivated before her arrival, and the wide-eyed promise that her voice brings to the mix. Press play for sunshine!
Kitto’s carefree approach is deceptive, mind, as there is a good deal of emotion imparted to her singing in tracks like ‘Come Back to Me’,…
Alex Dupree’s Talking to the Dog arrives with the unassuming confidence of a record that trusts language, melody, and lived-in performance to carry equal philosophical weight. The album’s guiding phrase, drawn from Hank Williams’ quip that writing a song is “just talking to the dog,” becomes less a playful anecdote and more a working theory of communication itself. In Dupree’s hands, that idea stretches beyond its homespun origins into something expansive: songwriting as a form of address that may or may not be understood but insists on being spoken anyway.
“New Meaning” opens and sets the tone with understated assurance. Dupree’s voice moves through a warm arrangement shaped by Aaron Stern on bass and Stephen Patterson on…
Singer Bongeziwe Mabandla’s voice, at its highest register, is a singularly plaintive falsetto that articulates so much even before lyrics become a consideration. Over the course of five albums, his voice has increasingly been couched in a synth-heavy, polyglot electro-folk sound, courtesy of producer Tiago Correia-Paulo, who has produced the singer’s last four albums.
This malleable frame accommodates the increasingly bigger venues the artist now plays, while also proving well-suited to radio. And yet, no matter the casing, Bongeziwe’s voice never loses the personability that is its currency. Thanks to its thoughtful sequencing, the album unfolds conceptually in three acts.
To this end, ‘Libambe Lingatshoni’, in which…
Sometimes, all you need is a change. When Nora Stanley, an accomplished saxophonist who has worked with, among others, Beth Orton and The New Pornographers, moved to New York City from Oakland, California, she didn’t know she’d be inspired to write so many songs that she’d release an album of her own. “It’s a very unique and specific experience to live in a city that’s hyper-stimulating,” Stanley says.
Her songs are elegant, poetic, and lush, more of a retreat from the city’s chaos. They act as a way for Stanley to “slow things down and process them.” An experienced collaborator herself, Stanley enlisted a wide range of musicians for her debut album, including Shahzad Ismaily, Benny Bock, and Nate Mendelsohn.
Dent May has released many fine albums, most of which have a sweetly chewy soft rock center and all were made by May himself at the computer. He might have invited over the occasional guest, but otherwise he did everything himself. On 2026’s The Big One, May made the decision to change up his way of making records and went into an actual recording studio. Once there he invited in several of his friends to add instrumentation and vocals to the tracks. The result is the warmest, most expansive record he has made yet. The songs are the usual melange of Nilsson-esque baroque pop, gently percolating disco, and sun-bleached singer/songwriter-style ballads, with none of the power pop that crept into the previous album. It’s a predictably nice batch of tunes that…
In 1957, John Coltrane was still building the foundation of a career that would eventually alter the course of modern music. Having already established himself as a vital member of Miles Davis’s first great quintet, the fully realized artist behind Blue Train, Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, and countless other landmarks had not yet completely emerged. Coltrane, his debut album as a leader for Prestige, captures him at the beginning of that evolution. Coltrane arrived between his work with Davis and his celebrated tenure with Thelonious Monk.
…The album opens with “Bakai,” where the melody feels slightly unsettled before the rhythm section settles into a comfortable groove, creating an interesting push-and-pull between…
The mark that Miles Davis left not only on jazz but also on hip-hop, rock, and funk cannot be overstated. This year marks what would have been the 100th birthday of the jazz legend, and the year-round centennial celebration is seeing multiple reissues from labels. As part of their Original Jazz Classics series, Craft Recordings is releasing Cookin’ with The Miles Davis Quintet featuring all-analog mastering from the original tapes by Cohearent Audio.
Recorded during sessions between Birth of the Cool and Kind of Blue, the quintet recorded enough material to span four albums (Cookin’, Relaxin’, Steamin’, and Workin’). Cookin’ finds Miles Davis leading what many still consider the definitive first great quintet with John Coltrane…
Included in the booklet for The Planned Child is a personal note by its creator, Amsterdam-based Avishai Darash that, while brief, casts an illuminating light on the solo piano pieces presented on the 45-minute release. Conspicuous by its absence, however, is anything bio-related, which is perhaps surprising when his professional background is so varied and extensive. Reviewing the experiences he’s had allows for an enhanced appreciation of the music he created for the release. By his own admission, The Planned Child came together over the past year, but “has been more than sixteen years in the making.” It makes sense, then, to first acquire some impression of what happened in the time leading up to the album’s creation before turning to its contents.
The ’60s gave us many artistic firsts from pop and performance art to psychedelic rock and free jazz to interspecies music-making between humans and whales. From saxophonist Paul Winter’s Common Ground to Judy Collins‘ Whales and Nightingales to pioneering synthesist Bernie Krause’s Ocean Wonders, musicians have engaged in and recorded a call-and-response with these massive sea mammals that has produced some singular sonic wonders and oddities. With his cheekily titled new album, Orcas’ Greatest Hits, Jim Nollman is adding what may be the most varied and expansive chapter to this tiny but intriguing corner of the musical universe.
Nollman is an avant-garde sound artist, guitarist and naturalist whose work stands at…
Since 1964, there have been numerous interpretations of The Beatles’ music. Stax, jazz, classical, Motown, country, Bing Crosby, Laibach, and easy listening have all had a go at Beatles cover albums. Mystic Liverpool: The Beatles’ Psychedelic Psongbook may be the most original, and after 60-some years, that is a huge accomplishment. Jah Wobble and his sons, John T and Charlie Wardle, have collaborated on a dub/drone version of Beatles songs, focusing on their more psychedelic tracks, which makes great sense.
…On paper, this might look like it would not work. The complete opposite is true. The use of traditional Chinese instruments, alongside Wobble’s distinct and trademark bass, creates an unusual yet fascinating take on these songs.
1973 was a pivotal time for Lee “Scratch” Perry, as it was the year he built his fabled Black Ark studio, where he created much of his most celebrated work, and he released Upsetters 14 Dub Blackboard Jungle, often noted as the first full-length dub album. Up until then, he worked as a freelance producer, often recording at King Tubby’s studio. Flashing Echo, part of Doctor Bird’s comprehensive series of Perry’s single productions, compiles one last batch of material before he had fully switched over to recording at Black Ark. During this period, Perry was working with deejays and toasters like Dillinger, I-Roy, and U-Roy as well as singers including Leo Graham, David Isaacs, and Junior Byles. Several of these tracks appeared as singles on Perry’s own Black…
There are inherent pitfalls for a band when they set about recreating a sound from the past with exacting precision. It’s far too easy for their work to sound like a hollow pastiche if they don’t play with undeniable energy or come up with a brilliant batch of songs. On their second album Was It Always This Way, Real Numbers do everything they can to sound exactly like a band who would have recorded for Sarah Records in 1989. Except for when they sound like they wanted to be signed to Creation in 1986. The order of the day is echoing guitar jangle, vocals that express powerful amounts of melancholy, synths that moan like faraway ghosts, and a rhythm section that sound like they studied every move the Cure made in the early ’80s. They have the sound down dead to…
André Cymone is here to let you know that the rumors of funk’s extinction have been greatly exaggerated. He would know. Cymone was not only central to Prince’s sound as the Purple One’s bassist in the early years, he was also a major part of the Minneapolis funk scene even before Prince was crowned. And he’s had an impressive run on his own ever since, including not only some killer solo albums, but production and songwriting for Jody Watley, Adam Ant, and loads of others.
In recent years, though, Cymone’s solo outings have been few and far between, so The Resurrection of Funk works as a welcome reintroduction to the guts and grandeur of his groove kingdom. That there’s more than a passing sonic similarity to Prince in Cymone’s…