To Check Out 2026

need to give this a few more spins

June 12th

June 26th

With Mountain States, New Mexico-based banjoist and composer Johnny Bell makes a decisive, long-considered turn inward, toward the instrument that has shaped more than two decades of his musical life, and toward a vision of what the banjo can become when freed from its most rigid expectations

June 5th
Cinna Peyghamy unveils debut album fusing Persian tombak and modular synthesis

Syrian-Armenian-American singer and producer KÁRYYN returns with her highly anticipated second album, PHYSICS UNIVERSAL LOVE LANGUAGE (PULL), out via Mute.

KÁRYYN creates music at the intersection of sound, spirit, and physics – sonic worlds that don’t just describe emotion, they conduct it. PHYSICS UNIVERSAL LOVE LANGUAGE exemplifies this, with a title that encapsulates her lifelong endeavour to translate love into systems of energy and truth. At its heart, PULL is a left of center pop album about courage: the courage to collapse, to love, to surrender, and to emerge.

Built from voice, strings, modular synths, and gravitational rhythms tuned to 432Hz, the album incorporates arrangements informed by Armenian and Middle Eastern musical traditions, woven subtly through rhythm and melody. KÁRYYN’s voice remains the centre throughout, shifting between fragility, intensity, and control as the music moves between intimate and expansive states. Executive produced by KÁRYYN and James Ford, the album was co-produced with Hudson Mohawke, with additional production from Jacques Greene, Steve Nalepa, Luca Perry, and Duncan Fuller. String arrangements and performances come from Raven Bush, alongside qanun performances by internationally acclaimed Syrian musician Maya Youssef. The album was mixed by Marta Salogni and mastered by Joker.

favorite musical surprise of the week, hypnotic immersion into deep dream realms, the hazy meeting place between jazz language and ambient structure and fourth world colors. don't miss if you're into Total Blue, Ariel Kalma, Suso Saiz, Wanderwelle, etc

Ash Walker Celebrates 10 Years with Deep Heads on New Album ‘Deep Heads X Ash Walker: The Lost Dubs’

Ash Walker returns to Deep Heads to mark a decade since his debut with the label, delivering a special new album, Deep Heads X Ash Walker: The Lost Dubs.

His journey with Deep Heads began in November 2015 with Augmented 7th, his first studio album that introduced the world to his exceptional sonic craft. He followed this with Echo Chamber, a groundbreaking release that seamlessly blended Jazz, Electronic, and Hip-hop influences, establishing him as a unique musical artist with his masterful recordings presented on Deep Heads.

Our initial Prepared Piano & Percussion Duet Session
was at Duval's in London on Friday, November 7, 2025.
It was raining . . . When we both started to work
on the pieces - that are this album - (a couple weeks later,)
from our Homes is London and Topanga,
it was also raining . . .

gong drone

Gloaming feels genuinely alive. It is intimate without becoming sentimental, cinematic without excess, and emotionally devastating without ever needing to raise its voice. An album of immense subtlety and quiet power, it lingers long after it ends"

As a poet and musician, Joy Harjo channels a creative force she describes as a “vibration of love” to connect countless traditions and artforms, countering the despair and heartache caused by power and hate. Insomnia and Seven Steps to Grace, her debut for Smithsonian Folkways, draws on the long-intertwined rhythms of jazz and poetry, the power of improvisation and self-expression through sound, and the vitality of Native culture and spirituality to spark a chain of vibrational energy to engulf the whole world. Harjo’s voice is bold and direct, supported by producer and bass player esperanza spalding, covering a repertoire that includes a jazz standard, a song written by Harjo’s mother and uncovered by her sister, and many originals that speak to contemporary issues and her life as one of the most celebrated American poets of the last century.

Across an extensive suite of enchanting miniatures, Matthias Kremsreiter and Christian Schoppik present the hypnagogic vision of Taghelle Nacht. Recording under their respective Roudi Vagou and Läuten der Seele aliases, Kremsreiter and Schoppik combine their distinct but equally accomplished instrumental practices into a new collaboration that weaves swooning samples amongst instrumental passages. They lead us through 16 vignettes that revel in the cognitive dissonance and seductive magic of moonlight at midnight.

Both artists have past form within the folds of contemporary experimental electronic music in Germany. Kremsreiter's work as alibikonkret has manifested on DIY tape releases created with a methodical, technically-minded approach. Debuting his Roudi Vagou pseudonym on Taghelle Nacht, he pivots to a more playful, instinctively felt method that allows the compositions to flow with a natural cadence. Schoppik has been a key figure in the celebrated dark-ambient-folk scene, not least as part of the group Brannten Schnüre. His work as Läuten der Seele includes the acclaimed 'water trilogy' of LPs between 2022 and 2024, with a greater emphasis on instrumental, atmospheric production, and a last, stunning collaborative album with Nový Svět’s Jota Solo.

Legendary Malian balafon player Neba Solo and donso n’goni player Benego Diakité’s A Djinn and a Hunter Went Walking—the first in a series of new releases in collaboration with longtime Nonesuch partner Nick Gold, former head of World Circuit Records—is due February 13 on Etoile Audio / Nonesuch. On the album, co-produced by Gold, Ousmane Haïdara, and Sonny Johns, the acoustic instrumentals are complemented by vocals and percussion as well as touches of mellotron, guitar, and strings.

By no means a secret, (and in steady demand,) but certainly in the category of IYKYK, multi-instrumentalist Aaron Shaw is one of Los Angeles’s brightest young Composers, Producers, Arrangers, Band Leaders, and Music Directors. In his Home Studio that he shares with his older Brother, Lawrence (together making up the group Black Nile), Shaw can be found playing Saxophones, Clarinets, Flutes, Keyboards, Drum Machines, and also Engineering Sessions. A frequent fixture at The World Stage in Leimert Park, Shaw has collaborated with everyone from Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Phil Ranelin, Herbie Hancock, and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, to Mary J. Blige, Dave Chapelle, Tyler, The Creator, Anderson .Paak, Nightmares on Wax and many more less well known OG, established, emerging, and underground Artists in the LA Jazz, Hip-Hop, Rap, Electronic, and Experimental Music scenes. Born and raised in Ladera Heights, he cut his teeth at the Fernando Pullum Community Arts Center and the LA County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) before eventually entering the tutelage of Kamasi Washington, who he is featured with in tandem Musical conversation on the entirety of the 2025 release Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople. After years of study, dedication, and gig-work, the path to his first full-length release proved to be a perilous one. And So It Is, out February 13th on Leaving Records, documents the physical, musical, and spiritual transformation thrust upon an already extraordinary talent.

dianekupelian Another devastatingly powerful yet beautiful album by the most interesting instrumental band operating today. Do not miss these guys if they play near you. All the tracks are favorites, but special stand-outs include The Rules of The Game, Clutch, 30 Years of Knowing, and, with its sly reference to Hendrix in its title, Serpent Tongue (Slight Return). This is a band that folks will be talking about decades from now.

A chance meeting in Mexico City set Points of Inaccessibility into motion. When Ibero-American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri crossed paths with Dutch media artist Jaco Schilp at MUTEK in 2024, a conversation about how technology shapes perception revealed an unexpected common ground. Schilp invited Irisarri to a spring 2025 residency at Uncloud, the Utrecht-based collective he co-founded, where Irisarri's sound began to take form amid an environment shaped by Schilp’s visual research.

The Uncloud studio was located inside the former Pieter Baan Centre, a forensic psychiatric prison where suspects of violent crimes were once confined. Its long history of silence and containment shaped the atmosphere in which the project developed. Within this setting, Irisarri coaxed long bowed-guitar tones through a network of pedals and looping systems. The raw gestures thickened into a vaporous and architectural field of sound. Schilp processed the material through a custom point-cloud software patch that produced images in continuous flux. The visuals flickered, dissolved and reformed like memories that resist coherence, functioning as a digital Rorschach that reflected the observer’s own perception.

Austrian jazz ensemble Shake Stew celebrate 10 years with landmark double album TEN ONE TWO; a forward-looking odyssey into their world of improvisation, global influences and collective exploration, with third part of the album TEN THREE released later in 2026.

TEN ONE is a perfect example of everything that’s come before, with bandleader Lukas Kranzelbinder’s compositions, the signature doubled bass lines and trance-like brass textures to driving grooves and extended solo passages that alternate with haunting melodic themes. TEN TWO delves into the energy you can find in their live performances, where there’s limitless improvisation and symbiotic collaborative music making, something only possible after playing for so many years together.

Finn of Tomland Oh my bloody Dub, Deadbeat does not only go really slow but adds field recordings to this epic nice sonic melange too, so what's not to like.
Many many moons ago i had the big honour to do a warm-up DJ-set for this very fine artist at a Strøm Festival afterparty at a beach bar on Amager in Denmark and that was one of those kind of gigs that i never ever thought that i would do after buying his first releases on ~scape, so lucky me.
This is a must have eargasm that comes very highly recommended.

15 years after their debut, Belgrado continue their journey of musical development from the immediacy and directness of their guitar driven post punk sounds all those years ago into an ever evolving musical project which has spanned four LPs ranging from minimal wave and dub influences all the way to this effort which is so heavily influenced by early dance music, and prime beachfront bacchanal. It is as much the cold sounds of Siekiera as it is Cabaret Voltaire bleeding into New Order. Packaged beautifully, hand crafted in an early modernist and constructivist style of artwork depicting the band in workers garb hinting at both the labour and ongoing service of the artist to the audience. This is a relationship they explore, in which the band declares a “celebration of the phenomenon of music as a meeting between people, both in the moment of its creation and in the energy of a live performance.” (Jonah Falco)

On 𝑺𝒚𝒓𝒆𝒏, Gafael’s extensive field recording archive of the waters of northern Wales are iteratively processed into hazy, extended chords. The tactility of crashing waves, trickling streams, and coursing rivers is the foundation of the album, functioning as a hermetic reflection of the physicality of littoral ecology and its emotional resonances, centered on the push/pull of danger and seduction. While the album’s title 𝑺𝒚𝒓𝒆𝒏 alludes to Homeric mythology, it is firmly rooted in Gafael’s wanderings through the austere beauty of Welsh coastline rather than addressing any Hellenic texts directly. Similarly, while the album’s sound gestures towards ‘ambient dub techno’, its sonic atmosphere is decidedly field recording.

This album brings to culmination my many years of performing flamenco music as a singer and a guitarist, infused with my affinity and love for experimental and improvised music. "Lunar" references the Middle East, and the music and the lyrics are emotionally charged reflecting on the suffering of the people of that region as a result of wars and conflicts. - EA

Continuing the group’s deep exploration of Spiritual Jazz and the 60s New Thing - honouring the spirit of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders The album marks their first recording since the passing of ATA guitarist Chris “Earl” Dawkins. Its four tracks trace the band’s collective journey through grief and reflection, standing as both a testament to Chris’s artistry and a tribute to his enduring influence.

A Portal To Here brings the spirit of Alice Coltrane via Alice Roberts on harp, as well as Sun Ra-esque horn sections featuring the cream of Yorkshire reed and brass players, who lift the mood whenever they appear. Percussion, and particularly the celebratory sound of group handclaps, infuse the whole album with emotional intensity, whether that be joy or sorrow.

Follow our new character THE RECALLER on her quest to find THE ALIEN SORCERESS... Set in parallel with our previous album 'Visitations From Enceladus', and blasting you on tumultuous travelings through asteroid ridden space battles, cryogenic freezing chambers, bizarre environments of hyperspace & much more.

Featuring almost 80 minutes of ripping death thrash, blended with our signature blend of progressive and technical metal that flows alongside our conceptual sci-fi adventure story!

From the Guts of Essaira claims space in body and time. It follows the path announced with the single 'Dramla / Xirxe', expanding its tensions and guiding them towards a more layered, conscious expressive form. It is an album to be listened to without respite, allowing the sonic material to dilate.

The tracks move across a punkstrial terrain rich in synths held in constant tension; sharp guitars and industrial rhythms alternate drive with suspension. The vocals, multiple and layered, do not seek centrality but co‑presence: they enter, disappear, pursue one another, dig deep and steer the listening through zones of friction and release.

‘Basic Strategies for Going Out’ shares the two Peel Sessions recorded by Huggy Bear in 1992 and 1993. Eight tracks total, two previously unreleased songs, a revelatory early version of “Her Jazz” and a fanatical gaiety throughout. For a band that so wholeheartedly invested in opposition, the opportunity to go up against the stifled decorum of the BBC pushed Huggy Bear to a nitroglycerin blaze. From the outraged to the rousing to the coy to the hell-bent, ‘Basic Strategies for Going Out’ reveals the extremes reachable by a band at ferocious work.

Tags
classical global hammered dulcimer handpan instrumental jazz world Innsbruck

In these times of anxiety and deprivation, journey to a place of sensual attainment on A Sky So Close, the elegantly erotic new album from producer Eric Hilton.

A Sky So Close delivers classic trip-hop sounds over 12 tracks of pure sensory indulgence. "This record is an atmosphere, a state of mind. I indulge myself by making music that I want to listen to,” says Hilton. "It’s a more solitary record than some of my other work, there is not a big list of guest performers on this one. It’s really like my stream of consciousness.”

Sababa 5 return to their roots on Ça Va Ça Va - a melting pot of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean sounds, layered with psych-soaked guitars, cosmic synths and heavy, driving grooves. A pure dose of party energy and nostalgia from Batov Records’ finest.

Jazz legends Dave Holland and Norma Winstone, together with the versatile London Vocal Project, present Vital Spark—an album featuring a collection of Kenny Wheeler’s final compositions that were sent over time to Pete Churchill and brought to life through patient arrangement, deep listening, and mutual trust.

Vital Spark captures a rare unity between jazz ensemble and choir, revealing a sound that’s both unforced, delicate, reflective and full of Kenny’s character and energy. The music features new lyrics by Norma Winstone, alongside Wheeler’s settings of poems by Stevie Smith, Lewis Carroll, and William Blake. The result is unmistakably Kenny Wheeler: lyrical but unsentimental, harmonically rich yet spacious. For Dave, Norma, and Pete, this project is not a retrospective but a personal, shared act of remembering and reinterpreting, shaped by decades of friendship, collaboration, and quiet reverence for one of the most singular voices in modern music.

This is music with a spacious terrain and a dense atmosphere. Change is slow, but dramatic, each shift meticulously charted to evoke feelings of wonder and anticipation while retaining a sublime sensitivity to how individual sounds relate to the motion of their surroundings. Michelle masterfully abandons narrative, composing in three dimensions. We are left with the ambiguity of the word “might”—the lingering possibility of the energetic rush of the breach, the spill, now at the horizon, now imminent, somehow both at once.

Tags
ambient experimental ambient drone Asheville

Aves de Nahá is the result of an interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge between anthropology, ornithology, and the Lacandon community of Nahá, Chiapas, México. It centers on the aural relationships between the Lacandon people and the birds of their jungle. The work invites us to listen to birds as sentient beings — creatures whose calls and songs announce shifts in weather and time cycles, accompany rituals, and participate in a shared environment where the jungle itself is a living entity and meaning arises from the ongoing interactions among humans, animals, plants, spirits, and gods within it.

the apple tree under the sea, the debut album from breakout alt-pop artist hemlocke springs, marks an exciting new chapter for the singer/songwriter/producer. This is a fever dream of a concept album in which our heroine sets off on a journey of self-discovery—one that requires her to confront the chaos and repression of her past in order to claim the full, liberatory life she once didn’t even know was possible. Throughout the project hemlocke displays her most adventurous songcraft and playful vocals yet, while co-producing the apple tree under the sea with close collaborator BURNS (Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Charli xcx).

Força Maior combines the vital saxophone explorations of Pedro Alves Sousa with the infinitely subtle electronic processing of Pedro Tavares. Sousa (aka Má Estrela) is known for manipulating his woodwind through guitar pedalboards & amplifiers, creating far-from-ordinary sonics rooted in unceasing curiosity. For his part, Tavares (aka funcionário) conjoins video & sound work to create space for the pensive wanderings where memory and imagination interlace.

This is the first widely distributed release for Isabel Pine after a series of self released EP’s and singles on Bandcamp. She studied classical music on viola from the age of 3 through into college, where she was on a path to be a performer in a large ensemble, but eventually left after feeling frustrated and limited in a world that did not provide much of an outlet for individual creativity. But the doors of perception really opened when she moved to British Columbia and was exposed to the raw beauty of the wilderness there.

Quiet Fire is the new album from British producer, musician and Edition Records founder Dave Stapleton – a beat-based jazz record shaped by rhythmically-driven, loop-focused production with the feel of a live band. Centred on Rhodes, bass and drums, the music sits in the space where jazz, instrumental beats and atmospheric electronica meet, drawing on a shared lineage that runs through early Bonobo, Jon Hopkins, Yussef Dayes, BADBADNOTGOOD, Kamaal Williams, Richard Spaven and Alfa Mist. His first album under his own name in over 12 years, Quiet Fire reflects a move towards beat-led writing, loop-based structure and a producer’s mindset rather than a traditional score-driven process.

Synth textures, sampled fragments and understated voices broaden the sound, with guest performances from Nils Petter Molvær (trumpet), Olga Amelchenko (saxophone) and Stuart McCallum (guitar), alongside the core trio of Jon Goode (bass) and Elliot Bennett (drums). Quiet Fire is an album about evolution, adaptation and instinct, marking a clear shift in Stapleton’s approach shaped by years of intensive studio work – including seven albums with the acclaimed Slowly Rolling Camera.

PannionSeer Unhurried and blurred ambient techno that leans towards the ambient end of the formula. I picked up whiffs of SAW2 at points, which is always a good thing in my book—it's desolate and alien while always retaining a deep, cosmic warmth.

"Both / And" is the debut release from WHAT IS NOW, a new collaborative project from Philadelphia guitarist Chris Forsyth (BASIC, Solar Motel Band) featuring double bassist John Moran (Bark Culture, Daniel Villareal Trio) and drummer Joey Sullivan (Florry, Bark Culture).

Together they create spontaneous song forms exploring lyrically ambient moods, repetition, rhythmic interplay, and a mindful leaderless-ness. As suggested by the players’ pedigrees, elements or motorik propulsion, trance jazz, and deconstructed rock moves abound.

"The Philadelphia guitarist swaps his usual Television-indebted questing riffage for 25 minutes of tingly, exploratory improv alongside double bassist John Moran and drummer Joey Sullivan: imagine a scruffier Necks." - Laura Snapes, The Guardian

Magic Tuber Stringband probes the undercurrents of the landscapes around them. Highly skilled players and writers, the trio are leaders within the burgeoning avant composition world utilizing folk instrumentation. Their music appears to weave in and out of the fabric of their surroundings, reflecting their time spent living across the Southeast and studying its regional folk traditions and natural histories. The ensemble continues to stretch the parameters of acoustic instrumental expression with masterful flourishes of dense, textural arrangements, subtle minimalist gestures and deft improvisation. Heavy Water addresses the toll of a nuclear arms plant on the local landscape and the communities that once lived there. It is a musical evocation of destruction and resilience–an embrace of dissonance and tension with moments of transcendence.

June 5th

Alan Bishop's solo persona appears again from his now 15-year-old home of Cairo where it was recorded in and around many other projects over the past few years. And unlike his more recent singer/songwriter material, Malarial Dream drifts closer to latter day Sun City Girls (Mister Lonely/Funeral Mariachi) amidst a melodic Middle Eastern and beyond psych-warped folk setting. Mostly instrumental and, except for two obscure covers, original compositions that feature a cast of extraordinary players: Adham Zidan, Aya Hemeda, Cherif El Masri, and Morgan Mikkelsen (The Invisible Hands), Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi (The Dwarfs of East Agouza), Amelie Legrand, Asher Gamedze, Eyvind Kang, Hana Al Bayaty, Huda Asfour, and Sammy Sayed. LP Limited to 500 copies. Produced by Alvarius B. and Adham Zidan.

Ruin Everything is the fifth studio album Stockholm psychedelic-rock pioneers Les Big Byrd. Since forming in 2011, the four piece have perfected their blend of space rock, hypnotizing psychedelia and disciplined kraut. Fronted by songwriter and producer Jocke Åhlund, Les Big Byrd have toured around the world while building a rabid following, alternating between being one of Sweden's biggest rock bands at home and an underground psych act abroad.

After the experimental and instrumental heavy Diamonds, Rhinestones and Hard Rain (2024), Ruin Everything finds Les Big Byrd returning to a more song-focused setting, reminiscent of their 2018 classic Iran Iraq IKEA. With the band's most adventurous tendencies reined in in favour of a tighter, more focused sound ranging from the dystopian epic "Big Flood" to the full-throttle space rock of "Hökvind", Ruin Everything is Les Big Byrd at their best yet.

June 5th

In the technical sense, every previous album by the radiant and heavy French trio SLIFT has been a fantasia—a composite of genres and forms that allowed the band to improvise, to jam on themes until they seemed to spiral together into space. Their acclaimed third album, 2024’s Ilion, was a sci-fi story built with 10- to 13-minute exploratory escapades, often starting with doom metal or stoner rock before spinning freely into glorious instrumental oblivion. But, in a bit of intentional irony, SLIFT’s fourth album is actually called Fantasia. It’s their leanest and most direct record to date; taken together, its eight songs clock in at less than 50 minutes. It is also their most riveting album yet, a pointed saga about overcoming international upheaval delivered by a band bearing down, not wasting a single second in the process.

Following the jazzy library vibes of 2023’s collaborative Dolphin LP with Greg Foat and Moses Boyd, the venetian maestro Gigi Masin returns to the ambience for which he is renowned, with Movement - his first solo full-length since 2020’s Calypso, and his Sacred Bones Records debut. Fuelled by creative reinvention and rhythmic motion, he moves seamlessly between melancholy electronic notes, technoid robotics, groovy liminal cloudscapes, and fathoms-deep ambient aquatics.

In music, Zoh Amba is always striving for greater proximity to the divine. On Eyes Full, their debut singer-songwriter release and first with Matador, they’ve never come closer. Having already become one of the most exciting saxophonists to emerge from NYC’s avant-garde scene, Amba is now letting their heart guide them back to their first instrument, the guitar, and to their hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee. The music is distinctly, instinctively tied to that place: muddy, loose blues with sweet burnishes of Appalachian folk. It feels like a pure transmission of their soul.

June 5th

Introducing Unna, an invigorating synthesis of dark, ambient atmospheres and intimate, minimal piano. The album marks the inaugural release on Ojas Music, a new imprint from the NY-based high fidelity audio and design studio from artist and audio engineer Devon Turnbull, known for its devotion to analog sound and deep listening.

Drummer/composer Booker Stardrum delivers a new powerful solo album Close-up On The Outside (27th Feb 2026), his first for We Jazz Records. The new record sees Stardrum (also a member of SML and frequent collaborator of Lisel, Photay, Horse Lords, Wendy Eisenberg, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma) doubling down on the earthy tactility of human sound and communication while also exploring rich, electroacoustic landscapes. The album, released on LP and digitally, involves Stardrum’s close collaborators Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Chris Williams, Lester St. Louis, Logan Hone and Michael Coleman.

Pullman is a studio-born acoustic supergroup that emerged from Chicago’s post-rock milieu in the late ’90s, uniting Ken “Bundy K.” Brown (Tortoise/Directions in Music), Curtis Harvey (Rex), Chris Brokaw (Come), and Doug McCombs (Tortoise/Eleventh Dream Day); drummer Tim Barnes later joined, solidifying the group’s core lineup. They debuted on Thrill Jockey with Turnstyles & Junkpiles (1998), a hushed, live-to-2-track collection of interwoven guitars that critics likened to John Fahey, Leo Kottke, and Gastr del Sol. Their follow-up, Viewfinder (2001), expanded the palette with percussion, subtle electric textures, and multi-track layering, while maintaining Pullman’s rustic, cinematic restraint. Across both albums, the band became a touchstone for acoustic, song-adjacent instrumental music: folk in spirit, post-rock in method, and timeless in tone.

Guitar virtuoso Julian Lage returns with his 5th Blue Note release, Scenes From Above, the follow-up to the GRAMMY-nominated Speak To Me, which was once again produced by Joe Henry. The album features Lage in a new band with John Medeski on organ and piano, Jorge Roeder on bass, and Kenny Wollesen on drums for a set of new Lage originals that evoke classic guitar/organ soul jazz through the prism of Lage’s signature sound

In the Grove is a companion EP to Patterner, Golden Brown's most recent release on Inner Islands. Like Patterner, In the Grove was inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series. The music on both albums was written and recorded concurrently, but ended up being more songs than I wanted to have on a single album. Through a long period of listening and mulling over album sequences, I selected the songs on In the Grove to make up their own piece of music. Sean Conrad of Inner Islands described it as a slower paced, more nocturnal sibling of Patterner. While the EP does explore some of the darker locales in the world of Earthsea, such as the Court of the Terrenon and the Dry Land, it begins and ends in the safety and shelter of the Immanent Grove. In the Grove features only acoustic and electric guitars, eschewing the keyboard, lap steel, and cello overdubs heard on Patterner. I hope it makes a good soundtrack for reading my favorite books by my favorite author or however you choose to listen.

Tags
experimental hip hip electro folk indie pop Glasgow

For his third new album release for Drag City, Tashi Dorji turns to the electric guitar. After the furious acoustic improvisations that drove the previous two—"Stateless" and "we will be wherever the fires are lit" — it’s easy to imagine an album of his electric guitar improvisations as an encompassingly incendiary essay. Especially when titled low clouds hang, this land is on fire. After all, this is a man capable of tearing up the place with the tactile musical violence of Bill Orcutt and Derek Bailey! And yet, this knowledge serves to set up a greater shock: the album’s disarmingly gentle musical drift.

Barry Walker Jr. is a pedal steel guitarist whose playing is rooted in traditional forms and whose compositions push into entirely new frontiers. Rooted in country and folk traditions, his playing explores minimalism, ambient and spiritual music.

Tags
rock americana singer-songwriter New Orleans

Graze the Bell is a collection of soul-stirring, mesmerizing solo piano pieces, and the most distilled offering of David Moore’s artistry to date. Known for his atmospheric compositions with Bing & Ruth, as well as his collaborations with guitarist Steve Gunn and Cowboy Sadness, this marks Moore’s first widely shared solo piano album. Using the piano to meditatively inquire into the human condition, Graze the Bell is a sanctuary of sound, and an invitation for listeners to meet him in the present moment.

The Soft Pink Truth is Drew Daniel, also of Matmos with his husband M.C. Schmidt. Based in Baltimore where he is a professor in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University, Daniel is acclaimed for his ability to merge highly conceptual material with music rich in feeling. The Soft Pink Truth albums share little stylistically except for an affinity for exquisite arrangements and lush compositions that transform searching questions into full body music. On Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?, The Soft Pink Truth grafts chamber music and electronic music into a beguiling new hybrid, drafting an international cast of collaborators from Turkey, Sweden, Italy, Spain and the United States. On the album, Daniel radically rethinks his approach to crafting music, and the results evoke mid-20th century film soundtracks, diverse traditions of minimalism, and the formal language of pop.

So it’s a pleasure to welcome her to the label with the incredible Tectonic Particles

Entering with her beautifully refined combination of field recordings and tender melodics, the first tracks sets in motion an album of hypnotic and captivating minimalism.

From here we move through intricately woven spaces, musical structures so deftly formed they leave us in awe of Kayla’s unique blend of innate musical understanding and vast technical skill.

Luminous textures fill the expansive worlds, complemented by deeply emotive harmonic progressions that grow and expand - engulfing the listener in cathartic grace and balance.

EVENING, WINDOW is the debut full-length album by Helsinki-based sound artist and ambient composer miska lamberg. Working with intricate field recordings that gather the overlooked moments of daily life—rainfall, distant traffic, animal calls—lamberg threads these textures into compositions that ache with personal memory. On EVENING, WINDOW, the familiar becomes spectral: fragments of sound blur into melody and mood, capturing the stark melancholy of Nordic winters and the soft violence of remembering.

Jo Hirabayashi–the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer behind Canada’s Jo Passed–is very much alive, even though his sophomore album, Away, took eight years to come out. You can’t, or shouldn’t, rush a good thing, and this collection of 11 layered indie rockers is as honest and real as it gets. With his 2018 debut LP Their Prime (Sub Pop) long behind him, Away showcases Hirabayashi at his creative best, and is the culmination of a long and arduous road on which he suffered burnout and anxiety as he scrapped various versions before arriving at its final state. “Away is a process record–about processing, about the process of making music, and the process of navigating one's own psyche,” he notes.

German ambient pioneer Markus Guentner delivers his most emotionally charged work to date. Nearly three decades into his creative output, he explores growth amid adversity to deliver a reflection on resilience through sound.

Markus Guentner unveils his latest work On Brutal Soil, We Grow, a collection of layered ambient soundscapes that navigate the space between adversity and hope. The album stands as a sonic meditation on what it means to be human in a world marked by hardship. We move through emotional wastelands shaped by restriction, alienation, and pressure, where growth seems difficult. And yet: we grow.

A genre-annihilating album transgressing the boundaries of experimental Arabic, electronic, avant-pop, dark ambient, and industrial forms, suspending their influences in a sound that feels adjacent to each yet defined by none. Engaging layālī vocalizations, repurposed regional samples, processed classical instruments, synthesizers, and nonlinear acoustic, analog, and digital rhythms, it opens a sonic language shaped by the sediment of recursive collapse.

Noisy at times, groovy at times, sometimes punk, sometimes energetic fun, sometimes sombre. Every song here is great. HI HI HA HA showcases It It Anita's strengths, and there sure are a lot of them. Favorite track: Beef Up.

Neue Grafik - composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Fred N'thepe - has steadily built a strong reputation in recent years with releases on labels such as Rhythm Section, 22a, CoOp Presents, and Wolf Music. His sound is a distinctive fusion of jazz, house, and hip hop, infused with his African heritage, Parisian background, and a deep appreciation for London genres like broken beat and grime.

Neue Grafik first made a lasting impression on the community at Total Refreshment Centre (TRC) - the heart of London’s thriving jazz scene - during a spontaneous after-hours jam. Since then, he has collaborated with notable artists including Nubya Garcia, Emma-Jean Thackray, Brother Portrait, Lord Apex and Allysha Joy.

His new album, Rachael, is set for release on January 30. It stands as Neue Grafik’s most ambitious project to date. Developed over the past year, the album explores themes inspired by the character of Rachael from the movie Blade Runner, representing the journey of love in all means, intimate, raw, tough, organic and honest offering a rich, emotional journey that balances lightness with depth - an introspective dive into this artist’s evolving musical identity.

Producer and composer Hannah Peel first worked with percussionist Beibei Wang on Manchester Collective's 2023 album Neon, which included compositions by Peel as well as Lyra Pramuk and Steve Reich. The two artists then performed a fully improvised concert together as part of Peel's artist residency in London. Afterwards, they spent five days improvising and recording at Real World Studios. The result is The Endless Dance, a playful, exploratory record inspired by the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism. The music takes several forms, from atmospheric soundscapes to galloping techno workouts. Wang's spirited percussion and guest musician Hyelim Kim's colorful playing of the daegeum (a large bamboo flute from Korea) bridge Asian traditions and contemporary electronic music. "Wild Geese Arrive" immediately grabs the listener's attention with water percussion splashing against back-and-forth marimba patterns, initially created as a warm-up when Wang didn't know she was being recorded. Augmented by trippy delay effects and gleaming synths, the track takes shape as a sort of spacy, dubby rhythm, set afloat with a delicate wave of daegeum playing. "Awaken the Insects" is a rapid, punchy effort with Wang's multi-tracked voice reciting a Chinese tongue-twister she learned as a child, performing a rhythmic duet with bamboo clappers called kuai ban. "Mantis vs Horse" approximates an imaginary animal race or battle using percolating synths, wooden percussive clopping, temple bells, and insistent kick drums. "Grain Rain" is far more restrained and meditative, with bells, pianos, and ethereal vocals creating an atmosphere along with modular-sounding synths and more patient drumming. The duo return to playful explorations with more overtly techno-ish tracks like "Tiger Sex" and "Offerings to the Beast," which mix stuttering synth effects with a joyous clatter of percussion. "Limit of Heat" is a much softer, more new age-y reflection that still maintains a gleeful spirit due to the unmistakable presence of bubbles. "Thunder Begins to Soften" cleverly creates an audio storm using rolling drums and crackling electronics. The Endless Dance is a truly imaginative recording that embraces tradition as well as technology, and avoids being self-serious, instead favoring joy and free expression.

Second LP of duets by these longtime VHF family staples, here delivering 2 side-long epics of “minimalist” bliss. Both sides feature Daniel on piano and Richard on zither, with rippling waves of sound recalling classics like Charlemagne Palestine’s “Strumming Music” (Dan is a frequent collaborator with C.P.) and Richard’s “Advent.” “Persian Carpets I” is a real-humans performance full of tiny variants in rhythm and attack, rising and falling in intensity – sometimes a rush of sound, sometimes a cloud of soft overtones and phantom notes. “Persian Carpets II” is more spare, with quiet and careful piano alongside Richard’s subdued accompaniment – a gorgeous bath of pointillist sound that rewards close listening. A glorious balm for dark and weird times. Superb, quiet pressing by Smashed in Chicago.

We are thrilled to release our first collaboration with pianist Alexis Marcelo - a mesmerizing solo debut! A contagious exuberance of playing, energetic explosive improvisations, and an openness to jazz tradition and experimentation combine on this album to create an impressive musical statement. "Almost everything he plays affirms his history and culture as a first generation American, the son of a Panamanian mother and a Dominican father. Growing up in the Bronx and in Queens during hip hop's first years - the first jazz he heard were samples - hearing salsa and merengue at home, attending Latino evangelical churches, and - yes - studying classical music at the Harlem School of the Arts shaped Marcelo's identification as an African Latino with an inclusive sensibility(...)Once artists establish a strong identity, they can draw outside the lines, smudge them, even erase them, without diluting or diminishing that identity. That is what Alexis Marcelo has done with Solo Piano", writes Bill Shoemaker in the liner notes.

While I Was Away is, by any measure, an achievement. Hülsmann's command of the group and its ranging musical idioms is not only masterful, it's tender, brave, and uncompromisingly creative.

Paperbark is the ambient project of Jon Mulville, who has been shaping rhythmic and textural soundscapes since 2016. His music is rooted in memory, as a way to process emotional fragments. Guided by time spent in nature and created in response to a culture that often feels lacking empathy, his work aims to create space for reflection.
He has released eight albums, primarily on Seil Records. "Light Behind Me" marks his first CD release and only his second appearance on vinyl.

Ianos takes as its starting point the concept of duality as it is expressed through life and death, endings and beginnings. It marks another milestone collaboration between the artists Nhung Nguyen (aka Sound Awakener) and Maria Papadomanolaki (aka Dalot) who spent most of 2023 exchanging ideas, sculpting, forming and finalising the seven compositions in the album.

"First great album of 2026" - Shopfires

"I'm not qualified to talk about abstract art, but this is cool" - Album Cover is Dead

"Avant-jazz meets post-punk" - New Music Jason

Ishaaq’s latest collection of songs under the banner Ishaaq Aarkistra (a Swedish twist on the Urdu word for “orchestra”) are his most ambitious and expansive to date. They saw him assemble a cast of his favourite musicians in one of the world’s top recording studios, to improvise freely and at length on drums, synth, tabla, flute, pedal steel, and vocals, letting the mood and the spirit guide them. Ishaaq and Haapalainen then painstakingly chopped up and edited the live recordings to create new, deeply layered, textured and immersive compositions, full of pulsing grooves, hip-hop breakbeats, psychedelic soundscapes and positive energy. To make an album this way had been, says Ishaaq, “a dream of mine for a long time… since I learned that Can and Miles Davis and others made some of their strongest music this way”.

REX is a solo cello record written and recorded while I’ve been living in the former home of Rex Brasher, a self-taught painter who created over 1,200 watercolors of North American birds.

Composed for acoustic and electric cello, the record reflects the solitude and intensity that shaped both Brasher’s vision and my own process. REX is not a portrait, but an echo—of a person, a place, and a way of seeing the world.

Haruhi Kobayashi’s life in sound is woven through her new work, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone. Growing up in Tokyo, she was singing from the moment she could speak, played taiko drums as a child, and first released music eight years ago as a teen J-pop singer-songwriter. Pulling at these past threads, she explores the themes of bi-cultural identity, tradition, and existentialism while seeking to liberate sound from preconception. Her work distills experimental pop, classical composition, and avant-garde songwriting through voice, bass, and electronics.

It’s with great pride that we announce this amazing album on Optimo Music from Portland-based duo Natural Magic. It was the final vinyl release that Keith McIvor aka JD Twitch put into production before his untimely departure in late September this year.
Having been a long time lover of everything krautrock, space rock, experimental and psychedelic it seems more than fitting that he leaves us this LP as his parting gift; because this sublime album is all these things wrapped up into one and much more.

On her debut LP ‘Memoria’, songwriter/producer Lilian Mikorey aka PILLBERT contemplates themes of identity and belonging, hardships and heartbreak in her signature blend of bendy folk guitars, field recordings and intimate vocals.

Primordial Mind forms the mysteries and intensity of inner life into eight mandalic instrumentals where Mas Aya and Khôra, artists who share 15 years of music making, orchestrate an inspired, prismatic palette of percussive and melodic sources. Each composition presented stages a vigorous meshwork of colours and textures, contrasting riveting polyrhythms with towering arrangements for flutes, synths, and processed acoustic instruments. Tendencies which the artists trace in their solo practices are amplified, blended, and refracted sublimely in unison, serving as energetic portals to collective awareness.

Canes of Karabakh is a band formed by Stanisław Matys (duduk), Olgierd Dokalski (flugelhorn, SFX), and Paweł Bartnik (electronics). The project's founding stems from the duduk player's specific experience.

Matt Gold and Dustin Laurenzi present Devotional Fade, a collaborative record of electroacoustic rhythmic improvisations – equal parts meditation and dance, released on We Jazz Records, 24th April. Laurenzi and Gold, key collaborators in the Chicago creative scene and with genre spanning artists such as Bill Callahan and Makaya McCraven, step forward here with a major artistic statement, a product of extended improv sessions capturing the duo’s hypnotic interplay. This is the sound of two of Chicago’s most vibrant instrumental voices listening deeply, communing in sound.

Recorded in Laurenzi’s attic studio, Devotional Fade emerged from a series of weekly sessions over the course of a single month. The duo kept the tape rolling continuously each day and selected a number of immersive sonic worlds to present, oscillating between patient, sacred minimalism and wild, dancefloor-worthy combustion.

The pair set two parameters to heighten the sessions’ stakes: editing would be kept to a minimum, and a rule of “no pitched overdubs” was put in place – ensuring that all melodic and harmonic gestures would have to be committed in real time. Laurenzi and Gold held true, only sparingly adding a stray shaker or brush to these already largely complete improvisations. Devotional Fade is imbued with quiet propulsion and ecstatic repetition.