In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, American mythologist Joseph Campbell uses tales from antiquity to chart the “Hero’s Journey,” the cyclical sequence of departure, initiation, and return which serves as the basis for mythic narrative. While this may ring true in the world of fables, practically speaking, I’ve always found personal journeys to resemble curves rather than circles; soft arcs of change that bend imperceptibly, but eventually, toward resolution. Oakland recording artist sachi’s mirror appears to agree. On her debut album, Talking in a Different Way, she opens a portal to a celestial plane of orchestral, fourth-world trip-hop that embraces patience as a means of evocation and wandering as a way to move on.
Sachi’s mirror is the alias of Shaina Pan,…
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What does it look like when the family business is music? In the case of The Family — a kind of “supergroup” made up of singer-songwriter Dylan LeBlanc and his father James LeBlanc, stepmother Angela Hacker, and stepbrother Bay Simpson — it’s a little messy. On the band’s first album, Delusions of Grandeur, they’re unpacking some of the baggage that splintered them apart and eventually brought them back together to FAME Studios in the LeBlancs’ native Muscle Shoals, Alabama in 2020 to record it. Released by Dylan LeBlanc’s brother-in-law’s Big Black Cow Records, Delusions of Grandeur is a true family affair, one that feels effortless in the ways it shines a light on each member’s individual artistry. LeBlanc’s woozy mysticism, his father’s easy grooves, Hacker’s…
Scarborough-based Phil Hooley is the founder of the alt-country band The Woolgatherers. Everything We’ll Never Need is his third solo album after Provenance (2023) and Songs from the Back Room (2021). He is on vocals and guitar, but has teamed up with a number of top Nashville session players. It is a slight surprise to learn that he is a Yorkshire lad, because this album very much has an American feel. It is laid-back americana with a very nice brew of country, soul, and blues that reminds you of Dave Alvin and Rodney Crowell.
Having said that, the first track, ‘Cowboy Dreaming’, has more than a whiff of the English band Dire Straits, with slide guitar picking to give it a country feel. It is a weird tale of a city-dweller going out to the Wild West to become…
In the mid ’60s, Chess Records released a series of The Real Folk Blues albums that compiled singles from the careers of some of its greatest artists. John Lee Hooker’s The Real Folk Blues differed from many of the other compilations as it featured newly-recorded sessions for the label. These legendary 1966 recordings capture the essence of his signature sound and approach to the blues. Standout tracks include “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” “Stella Mae” and “I’m in the Mood.”
Bring home the sound of America’s greatest blues label in high fidelity with the Chess Records Acoustic Sounds Series. These audiophile reissues of classic albums and compilations from the Chess discography are remastered from the original analog tapes and pressed…
Fondly referred to as “The Rockin’ Chair Album” due to the depiction of a rocking chair on its cover, Howlin’ Wolf by Howlin’ Wolf is rockin’ in more ways than one. This record captures the true sound of the electric blues with a compilation of singles previously released between 1957 and 1961. Featuring the talents of Chess mainstays including Willie Dixon, Hubert Sumlin, Sam Lay, and Jimmy Rogers, the album delivers a powerful sound. Standout tracks include “Little Red Rooster,” “Spoonful,” and “Back Door Man,” among others.
Bring home the sound of America’s greatest blues label in high fidelity with the Chess Records Acoustic Sounds Series. These audiophile reissues of classic albums and compilations from the Chess discography are remastered…
Multi-instrumentalist Adam Scrimshire delivers quietly expansive music on Bring Our Light to Every Corner. A blend of contemporary jazz with other genres like folk, R&B and soul, the project makes a lot of noise for only six tracks in 45 minutes. A cast of various guest musicians sweeps in and out of the album, allowing for a rich variety of sound. Though Scrimshire weaves in these diverse layers with skill, he still manages to keep the larger sonic atmosphere stable — which can be tricky for a musician of any level.
Digging into the artist’s discography reveals a healthy yearning to experiment. His 2024 release Music for Autumn Lovers delves into a stronger video game soundtrack style. A neo-folk attitude reigns there. Songs like “Willow” are all…
A sobriquet that could be applied to the pianist Bill Evans is “the poet of the jazz piano,” as he more than almost any other pianist combined technical mastery with emotional restraint, creating music that feels introspective rather than demonstrative. Every pianist who has ever fallen under Evans’ spell has eventually faced the same dilemma. One choice leads to imitation, while the other leads to finding your own voice, carrying Evans’ influence. Randy Ingram has wisely chosen the latter, and Sound Within: A Celebration of Bill Evans is all the more compelling because of it.
Across the nine tracks in this release, the featured songs are connected to Evans and resonate in meaningful ways, alongside original compositions by Ingram that reflect the pianist’s…
Latin America is a true musical universe – a fusion of countless influences, genres and references layered in endless ways. One undeniable representative of this universe is the Argentine trio Tremor (Leonardo Martinelli, Gerardo Farez and Camilo Carabajal), who first emerged nearly two decades ago on Buenos Aires’ alternative music scene. Now, with a refreshed line-up featuring new member Alex Musatov on violin and synthesizers, they return with Takuy. The word ‘Takuy’ comes from Quechua and carries two meanings: the first is “to mix or combine”, while the second is “to be, to exist, remain”. Both meanings perfectly reflect the spirit of the band. Drawing from electronic music, they blend Creole psychedelia with Argentine folk explorations, enriched by a wide…
Few artists treat genre with the same radical disregard for boundaries as Willow Smith, who has steadily emerged as a singular architect of modern sound by blending disparate styles with striking vocal agility. The sheer momentum of her recent output reveals an artist relentlessly chasing new sonic horizons. Arriving just five months after February’s petal rock black, her eighth solo studio album, The Thread, marks her second full-length project of 2026. This tireless work ethic has fueled a stunningly compressed evolutionary arc. She transitions from the distorted pop-punk rhythms of 2021’s lately i feel EVERYTHING to the intricate jazz-fusion of Empathogen. With The Thread, WILLOW shifts her sights toward the devotional by crafting an ambitious interrogation…
Music ebbs and flows, as MISSIO are only too aware. As a duo, Matthew Brue and David Butler have completed six records together, with Love & Heartbreak being the richest in form and purpose. This project, as an entity, is rich with references to mortality, degradation, and inner turmoil. In terms of it being a sonic experience, Love & Heartbreak is strikingly different from previous MISSIO records; a visceral rollercoaster burning with energy on all sides.
“I will make you beg for self-deprecation,” the singer shouts on “Self Deprecation”, sharp keyboards rattling behind the glass-cut vocal. The amorous affection in “You Are My Love” is alluded to in its melodic counterpoints, a Wagnerian backdrop. The term “tender” is…
The feedback loop between video games and music runs deep. Obviously, there’s music’s enriching influence on games — see the banging, drum & bass sensibility of the Wipeout racing series. Going the other way, the interactive medium’s aesthetics and sensibility have wormed their way into the output of a new generation of artists like Bladee; the Swedish rapper’s records are so jam-packed with deep-lore nuggets and sonic worldbuilding flourishes that they almost feel like video games in and of themselves. As listeners, we don’t just listen: we enter.
That’s the best way to approach cellist and composer Patrick Belaga’s gorgeous new album, Solar Calf, which was conceived as a “soundtrack to his own playable environment.” The record…
The new full-length from Laurie Sara-Smith and Lifeguard’s Asher Case is an experimental, feverish portrayal of physical repetition built from guitars, drum machines, and woodwinds.
…Despite the fact that the first Laurie Duo EP, Early, was bounced between “a Dora the Explorer-sticker-plastered TASCAM 414” and a “very plain desktop computer,” “lo-fi” doesn’t feel like a totally apt description: those songs, especially “Laurie’s Loop 01,” sound like they’re genuinely disintegrating. Day, their full-length debut, is a more fleshed-out forty minutes. On Bandcamp, Case and Sara-Smith refer to the music’s setting as “the little pocket of bygone jazz-age bachelor pad once called Phantom Manor and now called Common Starling” — from The Haunted Mansion…
In July 2024 Kiasmos returned with their second album, II, to critical and fan acclaim. The album took Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen across four continents over the next 18 months, playing to sold-out audiences. Now the duo have entrusted five artists to completely reimagine it, II Reworked is out now.
Arnalds and Rasmussen, together with executive producer Robert Raths, invited long-time friend and composer Alex Somers, producers/multi-instrumentalists duo Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith (aka Disiniblud), and fellow Icelandic composer duo Kjartan Holm and Sin Fang to rework the entire album. The result is a sprawling and shimmering trip back through the record’s melodies, with a dream-like daze more suited…
The Mind Maps series occupies a singular position within the broader ecosystem surrounding The Future Sound of London. Issued in collaboration with Touched Music and available exclusively as physical Compact Disc releases, the series has never behaved like a conventional compilation program. Rather than functioning as a simple showcase of artists, each volume serves as a carefully constructed act of curation, interpretation, and contextual reimagining. Across seven installments, Brian Dougans and Touched Music have gradually established a parallel archive—one in which contemporary electronic music is not merely collected but refracted through the distinctive aesthetic lens of FSOL. Mind Maps 7 may be the clearest realization of that concept thus far.
As We Once Were is the third studio album from twice Welsh Music Prize nominated artist and producer The Anchoress aka Catherine Anne Davies. This new record is the long-awaited follow-up to the UK Top 40 album The Art Of Losing, which received wall-to-wall critical plaudits upon its release in 2021 and scooped up a raft of Album of The Year nods from The Sunday Times, to Prog, to the Mail on Sunday. With Sir Elton John naming it “one of my favourite records of the year” and Caitlin Moran calling it “the inadvertent, beautiful and truthful soundtrack to this moment”, it went on to sell over 10,000 physical copies via the power of word of mouth.
Featuring an all-star cast of guest vocalists, including vocals…
Alli Logout and Margo XS might seem to occupy opposite sides of the cultural spectrum. The former is the frontperson for New Orleans-based electronic post-queercore band Special Interest, a firecracker performer who can channel fury and sexuality onstage like few of their punk peers. The latter is one of pop music’s rising producers, with a 2026 Grammy nomination for her work on Zara Larsson’s girlie-pop juggernaut “Midnight Sun,” and the executive producer of Kim Petras’ most recent album and subsequent club rebrand. Logout and Margo XS have been making grimy, sexy, explosive dance music under the name deBasement since 2024, and on their second EP, HARDBODY, instead of trying to simply fuse the sounds of their respective projects, they’ve…
Milwaukee skramz trio snag. have always had their fingers firmly on the throbbing pulse of the horrors of modern existence. In the past, they wrote songs with titles like “Hydraulic Fracturing Makes the Earth Shudder” and “Capitalism Is a Pyramid Scheme.” They spoke of climate change and the apocalypse in equal measures, letting their anxiety out to scrawl itself in primal screams across their aggressive guitar attack.
On their third full-length album, All the Cages Holding Us Will One Day Turn to Dust, they change this up in a couple of key ways: first, by turning to introspection; second, by playing with their style to keep themselves from being another interchangeable hard emo band. Both work well, and the album shows snag. as a band…
CD 83-track box set tracing the development of indie music from the height of the Britpop explosion in 1995 through its aftershocks to the post-Britpop period in 1999, on the cusp of the new millennium. This box continues the story of indie/Britpop from Cherry Red’s Popscene: From Baggy to Britpop 1989-1994.
…1995 was the year that Britpop exploded into mainstream consciousness due to the infamous Blur vs Oasis chart battle that was even covered on the national News at Ten. Both bands had already scored UK number one albums in 1994 but going head-to-head in the singles chart ensured maximum media coverage. Their success focussed attention on a revolution in music that included acts such as Elastica, Paul Weller,…
When Jerry Joseph and his band, The Jackmormons, released Panther Tracks, Vol. 1, last year, he suggested that there was enough material for probably four records. Here is the second one, Panther Tracks, Vol. 2 (Cavity Search Records). These are fan-favorite songs, rendered in the studio, as Dave Schools of Widespread Panic suggested a few years ago. The second installment of this four-volume series, like the first, went to drummer/producer Steve Drizos, who helmed the recording with the band and guests at The Panther studio in Portland, OR, not losing an ounce of ‘live’ energy in the process. The six original songs, all written at different points in Joseph’s four-decade career, were released as a subscription service for fans through Joseph’s website.
Authenticity, thoughtfulness, and depth inform Minneapolis-based guitarist Zacc Harris‘s sequel to his acclaimed 2017 release American Reverie. While only one of the eight pieces is a Harris original, his fresh interpretations make the covers feel like personal expressions. Stephen Foster might be the composer responsible for “Hard Times,” for instance, yet when performed by the guitarist, bassist Matt Peterson, and drummer Lars-Erik Larson it seems more like a Harris piece than a treatment of another’s material. That many of the songs resonate so powerfully in our current climate factors into the personalized impression they make too. Bob Dylan wrote “I Shall Be Released” and “Masters of War” long ago, but each sounds no less timely when broached through…