To Check Out 2026

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.