Incorporating field recordings and other organic sounds into a keyboard-heavy atmosphere is nothing new. Still, Ben Dexter Cooley is a master of this genre, and Forager shows him doing it with grace and eloquence. St. Silva is Cooley’s electro-acoustic project, described on his Bandcamp page as a “musician, researcher, and creative technologist”. Forager is a composite of material recorded months before its recontextualization. “Time creates distance,” explains Cooley, “sometimes a healthy distance, between the art and the artist,” shares St. Silva. “This is a document, a marker of where I was during a moment of time and the sounds that inspired me.”
An overwhelming sense of calm envelops the listener immediately, as “And the Catbird Sings”…
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This album presents Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberger Symphoniker in the complete cycle of Bohuslav Martinů‘s six symphonies, recorded at the Bamberg Concert Hall. All six works date from the composer’s American exile and represent his mature compositional voice, and the cycle marks the first complete Martinů symphony set in Deutsche Grammophon’s catalogue, as well as a significant continuation of Hrůša’s long-standing advocacy for the composer both in the concert hall and on record.
The First Symphony establishes the cycle’s interpretive character immediately. The Scherzo is taken at a brisk tempo, but it is the sharpness of articulation and the transparency of the orchestral texture that make the movement…
Martin Newell has been releasing wonderful, distinctly British psych-pop as The Cleaners from Venus since the early ’80s. He’s kind of like the UK’s Robert Pollard or R. Stevie Moore, with a seemingly endless well of earworms, all recorded at home on whatever equipment is at hand. (He’s actually written a book on home recording.)
Beryl & Ruff Go Shopping is the umpteenth Cleaners from Venus album, made on an 8-track Portastudio, and it’s pretty hi-fi as far as their records go.
At this point, Newell’s got a signature sound — jazzy, orchestral pop influenced by The Kinks, The Beatles, and other sunshine psychedelia — and a vocal delivery that leans into the Britishness of it all and is as distinctive as his melodies.
The key track gives the album its title. “Where the Fades Meet” opens with swelling strings, which are swiftly underpinned by groovy, shuffling, percussion. The lyrics are carried by a chorale singing of a “fading signal”, “stillness” and “shadows.” It seems to about what lies in the gaps between the perceivable. The melody has a vaguely eastern Mediterranean lilt. Overall, it leans into evoking an exotica-inclined Rotary Connection – the late-Sixties/early Seventies outfit that was a core influence on acid jazz.
“Where the Fades Meet” is the sixth track on the seventh album – there has also been a compilation – that Andy Dragazis has recorded under his Blue States guise. The first, Nothing Changes Under the Sun, was issued in 2000.
Blurring boundaries, dissolving distance, and creating coherence, Velella, the 4th studio album by the Brisbane, Australia trio East of West exhibits the group’s distinctive style. The trio is led by Bosnian-born composer Goran Gajić (double bass), with Philip Griffin on oud and laouto, and Malindi Morris on percussion. Collectively, these musicians produce a compelling blend of Balkan-influenced rhythms and melodic motifs.
Both the album and its title track derive their name from the species Velella velella (by-the-wind sailor), a colonial aquatic organism, which, like the band itself, is composed of intuitively connected, interdependent individuals. The result is a cornucopia of varied and complex time signatures and rare instrumentation.
Alto saxophonist Mike DiRubbo, an acclaimed artist on the New York City jazz scene for more than three decades, traveled all the way to Vancouver, British Columbia, in October 2025 to record Way Out Northwest with a hand-picked all-Canadian rhythm section: pianist Tilden Webb, bassist Jodi Proznick and drummer Jesse Cahill.
The result of their collaboration is a sturdy, swinging slice of contemporary jazz embracing half a dozen of DiRubbo’s eloquent original compositions and others by pianist Hotep Idris Galeta (“Song for My Queen”) and trombonist Steve Davis (“A Star for Chick”). The playlist includes a pair of dedications, to trumpeter Jim Rotondi (“Jimbo”) and pianist Harold Mabern (the closing “One for Mabes”), which are…
An atonal meeting of the minds with David Watson on highland bagpipes and small pipes, and Bill Nace on 5 and 2 string taishōgotos and harmonica. Simply listing the instrumentation should be enough to thin the herd on this blistering full-length platter. But far from being a collection of traditional tunes from their respective motherlands, or some sort of angular take on cultural appropriation, On Bats delivers a sound world situated firmly in the saddle of a shared singular vision. Watson and Nace approach their instruments and compositions with an endurance and intensity that make a false chord growl sound like one-dimensional cartoon fodder.
Similar to his taishōgoto work on the stream of LP’s Nace has released on his Open Mouth…
In 1923, the young French novelist André Malraux trekked through the Cambodian jungle to Angkor, the ruins of the ancient capital city of the Khmer Empire, to steal bas-reliefs from the Banteay Srei temple. He intended to sell the art in London or New York, but was caught and sentenced to three years in prison.
That is, until France’s leading writers, among them future Nobel laureate André Gide, petitioned for his acquittal by arguing that Malraux’s potential as an author was simply too great to squander because of a youthful indiscretion.
This example of cultural colonialism is key to Saphy Vong’s new album as Neo Geodesia, Oknha Stamina. Born to Cambodian parents, Vong grew up in Nancy, France — right near…
Tiarn is a gorgeous sophomore record by Australian ambient-folk producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Hana Stretton. It follows her 2023 debut album Soon, which, like its predecessor, comes alive off the record, existing as a living and breathing tapestry of sound. Where Soon found its focus on the fires and floods of the Australian bush, the latest project casts its gaze on the endless shores of the Pacific Ocean, where Stretton’s boundless textural explorations reflect a world suspended in blue.
Living in isolation near the ocean, overlooking the winter migration of Whales, Stretton would regularly swim for 20 minutes during the ‘blue hour’. Ideas would crystallise into existence as she submerged into icy salt water, and melodies…
Elaine Palmer grew up in an old watermill within an isolated village in rural North Yorkshire, spending much of her life travelling back and forth to family in Phoenix, Arizona. From an early age she immersed herself in music and started writing songs influenced by her surroundings both in the UK and USA, developing a repertoire which blended alt-country, Americana, folk and country rock. Elaine’s distinctive rich and expressive vocal style is characterised by her slightly husky tones, bluesy edge and the strong emotional depth which she carries through in every song she writes and performs. All of these qualities were on full display in Elaine’s most recent album Half Moon Rising which was recorded in San Diego in 2024.
Now Elaine Palmer releases her new album,…
…expanded version features the original 13 tracks alongside live bonus recordings from 1998.
Grunge, however you define it, still dominated the perception of the Seattle music scene following the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain in April 1994. The disparate bands marketed under that reductive banner — most notably Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden — continued to shift millions of records, and you couldn’t toss a Doc Marten into the air without smacking an Eddie Vedder soundalike in the face as dozens of outsiders rode the flannel shirt-tails of those tentpole bands to varying levels of success. Still, more and more cracks began to surface in Seattle’s seemingly monolithic stranglehold on alternative rock. In the same calendar year as Cobain’s…
…Arriving 26 years on from its original 2000 release by the Fuzzbox label, and after a 2003 reissue via Beggars imprint too pure, the album has been newly remastered by Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios.
Sure, the title is ironic. But its aim is good. ‘My Pain And Sadness…’ wields irony as a savage weapon rather than a smug, self-serving joke; this is the sound of McLusky’s kangaroo court convened – a self-appointed culling force, dead set on weeding out cynical three-chord punk fakers by sounding a lot like Sonic Youth re-recording ‘Daydream Nation’ at double speed. In an abbatoir.
Blood, guts, righteous fury – they’re all things the Yanks are currently churning out in factory-line proportions, and at first, it seems…
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,…
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’,…