2025-08 August | SunNeverSetsOnMusic

2025 August Best New Albums

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Essex Honey

BLOOD ORANGE

Released 29 August 2025

RCA Records

*****

A quietly moving elegy shaped by grief, memory, and place, where subtle instrumentation, hushed voices and British melancholy converge in a deeply personal musical landscape.

Devonté Hynes, known to music lovers as Blood Orange, returns with Essex Honey, his first full-length album in six years. Born and raised in Essex, England, Hynes has built a reputation for genre-bending fusions of R&B, indie pop, jazz and experimental soul, collaborating with the likes of Lorde, Caroline Polachek, and Zadie Smith.

His works often balance refined pop sensibility with emotional depth and cultural commentary. With Essex Honey, he turns inward, channeling grief, memory, and place into a richly textured soundscape that both retains his sleek musical identity and bears his most autobiographical imprint yet.

A beautifully melancholic exploration of grief, geography, and the tactile power of memory, Essex Honey is crafted in the wake of his mother's passing and rooted in his Essex upbringing. Hynes translates this loss into resonant music through subtle shifts, sonic fragments, and tonal resonance.

The album navigates abrupt musical juxtapositions with striking emotional precision. The opening number, “Look at You,” offers soft synth clouds that dissolve into plucked guitar echoes and is followed by “Thinking Clean” which embeds a near-dance pulse, only to unravel into cello abstraction.
These textures maintain an elegant tension between cohesion and fragmentation. The piano, more central than in previous recordings, underscores the album’s intimacy—particularly on weighty tracks like “The Last of England,” where mournful vocals dissolve into cluttered breakbeats and strings.
Hynes reunites with a luminous roster of collaborators - Caroline Polachek, Lorde, Daniel Caesar, Mustafa, Zadie Smith, Brendan Yates - yet their presence is quiet, additive, never ostentatious. Lorde’s soaring line in “Mind Loaded”, or Zadie Smith’s poetic cameo in “Vivid Light”, feel like ghostly illuminations rather than flashy cameos.
The result is Essex Honey’s most focused and haunting statement, its late-summer melancholy and pastoral nostalgia elevated by emotional clarity.

This is Blood Orange at his most tender, poignant, and profoundly present.

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Strange Heavens

LINDA MAY HAN OH

Released 22 August 2025

Biophilia Records

****-

A contemporary Super-Trio assembles for a sometimes uncomfortable sonic journey through layers urgency, lyricism and emotion to forge a resonant, improvisational gem.

Linda May Han Oh is a Malaysia-born, Australia-raised bassist and composer based in New York, acclaimed for her virtuosic command of both electric and acoustic bass. A collaborator with giants like Vijay Iyer, Pat Metheny, Geri Allen and Terri Lyne Carrington, she balances jazz tradition with progressive ambition. Her recent solo works "The Glass Hours" (Biophilia Records, 2023) and collaborations such as "Compressions" with Iyer and Sorey (ECM, 2024) reveal a composer unafraid to confront complex social themes through intimate yet daring musical forms.

With Strange Heavens, she returns to the "chordless" trio format for the first time since her debut, reuniting with earlier collaborators, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and drummer Tyshawn Sorey and claiming opportunity for pure, unmediated expression.

Inspired by the adage that we often choose a familiar hell over a strange heaven, the super-trio probes the fragile boundaries between comfort and transformation in a sonic manifesto of quiet resistance.

From the opening track “Portal,” driven by a taut bass motif and the Miles-inspired urgency of Akinmusire's trumpet, the trio traverses tension and release with electrifying empathy. Whether for the meditative lyricism of “Paperbirds” or the expansive warmth of “Folk Song” (to name two of the twelve pieces here), Akinmusire’s trumpet alternates between tremulous, introspective tones and top-end bursts, while Sorey’s drumming ranges from rimshot hush to propulsive rhythmic gestures.

The centrepiece of the album is a suite of four tracks inspired by Australian artist, writer and filmmaker Shaun Tan’s wordless graphic novel The Arrival (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007): “Home”, "Paperbirds", “Folk Song” and "Work Song". As wordless as the graphic novel itself, the suite provides a parallel "voice" to, supplementing the painters visionary narrative with a new layer of emotion and textural richness for the shared imagination of readers and listeners alike.

Covers of Geri Allen’s “Skin” and Melba Liston’s “Just Waiting” close the album, blending the tonal warmth of the album as a whole, with trio's engaging, free-jazz energy.

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Code Deviation

ROBERT GLASPER

Released 22 August 2025

Loma Vista Recordings / Concord Records

*****

A bold experiment in dialogue and deviation, where live-band jazz meets flipped hip-hop reinterpretations in a sonic conversation.

Robert Glasper, a five-time Grammy-winning pianist and genre-agnostic composer, has long blurred the boundaries between jazz, R&B, hip-hop and neo-soul. Rising to prominence through his Black Radio albums, Glasper forged a new hybrid sound deeply rooted in jazz’s harmonic daring and hip-hop’s rhythmic intelligence.

With Code Derivation, the second of his two 2024 releases, here released for the first time outside Apple Music, he masterminds a project that deliberately underscores the genetic ties between jazz and hip-hop, enlisting both his longtime jazz bandmates and beat-making collaborators for a layered musical conversation.

Code Derivation unfolds as a fascinating experiment: each original live-band track is paired with a “flipped” version by a producer, neatly showing two sides of the same musical coin.

On one end, Glasper’s ensemble featuring Walter Smith III, Mike Moreno, Kendrick Scott, Keyon Harrold, Vicente Archer, and Marcus Strickland, delivers taut, expressive jazz in the studio. On the flip, makers like Hi-Tek, Black Milk, Taylor McFerrin, Karriem Riggins and even his son Riley reimagine those tracks, altering texture, mood and momentum.

This dual-structure illuminates the shared DNA of jazz and hip-hop. As Glasper points out: “Jazz is literally in the beginning‐bones of hip-hop... I’m going to do jazz songs that I wrote with my band and I’m going to get dope producers to sample me”.

Standout moments include the contemplative “Say Less,” dynamically transformed by son Riley into a dense, beat-focused groove; and “Madiba,” whose live octet performance ripples into a sharp, head-nodding producer flip.

At its best, Code Derivation thrives on contrast, coherence and conversation. The jazz originals are soulful, grounded and un-showy, while the remixes are skeletal, punchy and rhythmically emancipated. The concept is daring and mostly succeeds, though some flips feel too neat - polished rather than revelatory.

Still, it’s a compelling project that positions Glasper not just as a bridge, but as a bilingual creative fluent in both languages.

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Opening Time

GREG FOAT, JIHAD DARWISH & MOSES BOYD

Released 1 August 2025

Blue Crystal Records

*****

Three of UK jazz’s journeymen combine to deliver a sublime analogue gem, the ebb and flow of which honors timeless, classic trio jazz.

Greg Foat is a prolific and versatile British keyboardist-composer whose work straddles cinematic soul-jazz, ambient and library funk. Bassist Jihad Darwish, a collaborator with musical icons including Sting and Hans Zimmer, brings a disciplined yet expressive low-end sensibility. Drummer Moses Boyd, Mercury Prize nominee and co-founder of the incendiary duo Binker & Moses, represents the new UK jazz vanguard with an electronic edge and rhythmic intelligence. Together, they explore a delicately acoustic, live-recorded space with restrained virtuosity.

Opening Time is among Greg Foat’s most understated recordings - an elegant suite of compositions that feels like a tribute to the possibilities of quietude. Where previous albums leaned into vintage synths or lavish orchestrations, this collaboration opts for purity: a grand piano, upright bass, a stripped kit and three musicians responding intently to the room, to each other and to the silence between notes of Foat's sumptuous compositions. The album loses nothing for this approach - indeed, Foat's collaboration with two younger musicians here shows how his musical leadership, vision and ambition are expanding with maturity and experience.

Foat has never sounded so patient. His melodies are simple but resonant slow-blooms that take their time as they unfold. The opening track, “Her Love Is All I Need,” establishes the tone - melancholy, spacious, gently luminous. Moses reins in his rhythmic firepower to a low flicker, working mostly with brushes and toms, shaping the pieces rather than driving them. On “Skipping Tones” the trio locks into a cascading piano figure that eventually gives way like an unblocking stream, suddenly allowed to flow fast and free. “Redemption” hints at gospel, with its stately chord progression and unhurried emotional arc. Darwish is a revelation, his lines are warm, suppleand melodic, always purposeful. He often functions as a second voice rather than a supporting player, particularly on “Awareness,” where his arco (bowed bass) textures drift like breath over Boyd’s cymbal wash. There’s no showboating here, just carefully weighted expression.

What sets Opening Time apart is not innovation, but balance. In an era obsessed with sonic maximalism, this record is a quiet triumph of restraint: elegant, analogue, human. It evokes the spirit of Bill Evans without ever sounding imitative and confirms Foat’s place as one of the UK’s most intuitive and emotionally literate jazz composers.

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Abel Selaocoe

"Four Spirits" (Live)

ABEL SELAOCOE

AURORA ORCHESTRA, NICHOLAS COLLON

BERNHARD SCHIMPELSBERGER

Released 15 August 2025

Warner Classics / Parlophone Records

*****

In a career-defining synthesis of tradition, identity and performance, Salacoe has devised a concerto that sings and roars, stomps and soars beyond the boundaries of the classical form.

Abel Selaocoe is a South African-born cellist, composer, and vocalist whose work bridges Western classical traditions with African folk idioms and improvisation. Known for his charismatic stage presence, vocal percussive techniques, and collaborations across jazz and world music, he has become one of the most distinctive new voices in contemporary performance. Four Spirits (Live) captures the premiere of Selaocoe’s 2024 concerto for cello and orchestra, performed with the Aurora Orchestra under Nicholas Collon, joined by percussionist Bernhard Schimpelsberger. The work’s architecture reflects Selaocoe’s deep-rooted duality: an instinctive grounding in African rhythms and vocalizations interwoven with the dynamic tension of Western orchestral forces.

The four movements, each representing a distinct “spirit,” move from meditative stillness to ecstatic release. Selaocoe’s cello voice is commanding, often operating as both soloist and griot. He alternates between a sonorous, baroque-like lyricism and raw, percussive bowing that echoes indigenous string traditions. The incorporation of his own vocal lines - sometimes chant, sometimes ululation - expands the concerto’s palette into something communal rather than purely virtuosic. Schimpelsberger’s percussion provides a crucial bridge, emphasizing cyclical, trance-like grooves that anchor the orchestra’s sweeping harmonic expansions.

Aurora Orchestra’s performance is luminous, alive to Selaocoe’s call for elasticity, with passages that lean towards minimalism, jazz-inflected syncopations, and African dance meters. Collon ensures the orchestra doesn’t smother the cello, instead shaping a dialogue that foregrounds ritual and storytelling. The result is a work that challenges the European concerto tradition by reshaping it into a vessel for cultural meeting—part ritual, part celebration, wholly alive.

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Cuntry

CLEO REED

Released 17 July 2025

Cleo Reed

*****

Less an endpoint than an open-ended insistence: the South retold, unsettled and very much alive.

Cleo Reed is an experimental singer, songwriter, and producer from North Carolina who fuses Southern traditions with Afrofuturist textures and cutting-edge digital production. Rooted in gospel and soul but equally informed by electronic music, performance art, and queer aesthetics, Reed interrogates the politics of belonging, identity and land in her work. Her sound is simultaneously intimate and abrasive: gospel harmonies are bent through distortion, trap rhythms collide with ambient washes and her voice alternates between confessional clarity and digitally warped lament.

Cuntry, her most ambitious release to date, pushes the boundaries of narrative songwriting while remaining anchored in cultural memory. It is both a reclamation and a confrontation: a record that reshapes the sound of the American South through the eyes of a queer Black woman refusing erasure. Reed stitches together gospel cadences, electronic distortion and folk fragments, building a sonic language where inheritance is neither static nor unquestioned. The album opens in austerity - “Intro (Dirt)” - her voice grounded in elemental textures, soil and memory as foundation. “Bloodroot” expands into layered gospel harmonies warped by glitch, a metaphor for tradition under interrogation. With “No Home Training,” Reed pivots toward percussive insistence, voicing the defiance of refusing assimilation into Southern respectability.

The album's centrepiece, “Heaven, Maybe,” offers her most vulnerable register: a voice entwined with a synthetic choir and her faith suspended between yearning and doubt.

The second half grows sharper in its critique. “Landlord Song” satirises exploitation with sardonic trap-gospel fusion, while “Queer Folk” subverts a genre historically coded against her, reworking its language into a declaration of tenderness and belonging. The closing track, “Backyard Altar”, gathers the album’s fragments - field recordings, gospel harmonies, electronic smears - into a ritual of reclamation.

Rather than bringing the narrative to resolution, it fades into layered static, a purposeful and allegorical refusal of neat closure.

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Black Spring

SAMORA PINDERHUGHES

Released 18 July 2025

Samora Pinderhughes / Mandatory Music

*****

An urgent sonic manifesto that layers neo-soul, elegy, and collective grace to turn injury into inspiration and resistance into rallying cry.

Samora Pinderhughes is an American pianist, composer, vocalist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work bridges jazz, classical, hip-hop and spoken word, with an unflinching commitment to social justice. A Juilliard-trained musician and current Harvard Ph.D. student, his oeuvre is grounded in activism, addressing mass incarceration, state violence, and community healing through musical forms that are as evocative as they are urgent.

From his celebrated Grief (2022) album to multimedia projects like The Healing Project, Pinderhughes shapes emotionally resonant, politically urgent art that pulses with collective memory and transformative intent.

Black Spring arrives as a mixtape in collaboration with The Healing Project,, commemorating James Baldwin’s (2 Aug. 1924 - 1 Dec. 1987) centenary. Across ten tracks, Pinderhughes fuses emotive piano balladry with modern electronics, neo-soul production and R&B in ways that feel both timeless and radical. The contributions of his New York creative community (Jamila Woods, Marcus Gilmore, Elliott Skinner, and others—bring texture and ground the music in a collective ethos,

This is music of reckoning and resonance. The tracks pulse with rage and remembrance, from the communal uplift of “Hold Fast” (featuring The Healing Project Choir) to the haunting sampling of Lhasa de Sela in “Blood” and the intimate ferocity found in "Am I Human" or “For Those Lost, For Those Taken”.

Rooted in the long tradition of Black cultural resistance the mixtape doesn't shy away from naming its stakes: racial capitalism, police violence, incarceration - but it also insists on gathering, care and imaginative expansion.

Black Spring is a sustained jolt, a sonic manifesto that marries grief, solidarity and defiant hope into a coherent whole.

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The Forgotten Path To Humanity

JOSEPH TAWADROS

Released 1 August 2025

Joseph Tawadros

*****
A minimalist trio in timeless meditation - oud, violin and handpan in close communion, like a journey through ancient landscapes, rich in emotion.

Egypt-born, Australia-raised oud virtuoso and composer Joseph Tawadros AM, an eight-time ARIA Award winner, has released an album every year since 2004, any one of which will draw new fans to his rich, oud-based creative spirit. His new release, The Forgotten Path to Humanity, is another transcendent album, this time featuring the trio of Tawadros with Layth Sidiq ( a Grammy-nominated violinist, composer and educator and current Artistic Director of New York Arabic Orchestra) and percussionist Elyar Pashang on handpan and doholla.

The recording is a meditative exploration of empathy, tradition and sonic universality that unfolds like a spiritual odyssey, weaving the three instruments into an intimate dialogue. Tawadros frames the oud not as a revivalist symbol but as a universal voice, a melodic wanderer and emotional conduit. The violin of Layth Sidiq complements it with lyrical phrasing rooted in Arabic tradition, while Elyar Pashang’s handpan offers minimalist pulses that feel both ancient and hypnotically modern. One needs only to close eyes to be transported, as if to any of the authentic venues where such music is played, across the Levant and the Maghreb.

From the opening tones, the album evokes a sense of communal memory and introspection. Tawadros’ compositions prioritize spaciousness over technical display, creating breathing room that invites listeners into the emotional core of each melody. As Tawadros describes it, "This music feels like a journey through ancient landscapes rich in emotion, blending improvisation and structure in a way that highlights each artist’s unique traditions. “The Forgotten Path to Humanity” evokes a sense of rediscovery and reflection, inviting listeners to reconnect with the essence of what makes us human. The album explores themes of unity, empathy and the timeless connections that transcend cultures and generations. The music is a reminder of the beauty of the shared human experience and the importance of looking inward to find our way forward, together".

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Tether

ANNAHSTASIA

Released 13 June 2025

drink sum wtr

*****

A showcase of luminous vocal control and stripped-back musicianship, elevating intricate folk melodies with an infusion of soul and gospel. Annahstasia displays the precision of a jazz singer and the depth of a classic storyteller in this spellbinding debut album.

Los Angeles‑raised singer-songwriter Annahstasia Enuke blends folk, chamber-pop and soulful expression. Her warm, husky voice seems familiar, perhaps because it sits somewhere between Joan Armatrading’s raw, genre-blending poise and Gray’s heartfelt folk-pop directness, with her own poetic and atmospheric sensibility layered in.

Industry pressures pushed her toward pop early in her carrier, but she wisely pivoted towards authenticity on her two preceding EPs, Revival (2023) and Surface Tension (2024). Tether is an assured debut LP, a deeply personal reclamation of voice and form, driven by her distinctive low-register timbre and emotionally domestic lyricism that now places her ready to move within the firmament of modern folk music.

Produced by Andrew Lappin, Jason Lader and Aaron Liao, the recording emphasises acoustic warmth, breath-controlled pacing and minimal percussion, all of which allows Annahstasia’s voice (and often, Liao’s bass) to set the tempo. Instrumentally, the arrangements feel hand-crafted from analogue instrumentation - piano, guitar, woodwinds, subtle brass, occasional percussion.

Opening track “Be Kind” introduces her precise enunciation and emotional directness, its pauses as deliberate as its chord changes. On “Take Care of Me” and “Unrest,” she navigates vulnerability with poetic restraint; the latter features fingerpicked guitar and woodwinds that breathe like an intimate folk tablea. “Waiting” builds from sparse beginnings into an emotional swell built upon Mellotron and electric guitar, offering tension-release through careful pacing. “Slow,” featuring Obongjayar, unfolds as a cross-cultural lullaby, their voices entwining over dreamlike strings. “All Is. Will Be. As It Was” showcases aja monet’s spoken-word mediation, woven gracefully into the album’s elegiac flow. The closer “Believer” serves as cathartic release, with its gospel harmonies, swelling strings and poetic confrontation of emotional endurance.

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El Viejo Caminante

DINO SALUZZI

JOSE MARIA SALUZZI, JACOB YOUNG

Released 11 July 2025

ECM

*****

At 90, Dino Saluzzi embarks as The Old Wanderer through memory and melody, in a trio where bandoneón, classical and steel guitars converge in elegiac dialogue and elegant reinvention.

Dino Saluzzi, now 90, remains a luminous figure in world jazz, his bandoneón (a type of concertina popular in Argentina and Uruguay, typically in tango ensembles) weaving memory, landscape and lyricism with unfaltering grace.

On El Viejo Caminante (The Old Wanderer), he’s joined by his son, José María Saluzzi (classical guitar) and Norwegian guitarist Jacob Young (steel-string and electric) creating an intimate trio marked by cross-generational dialogue and sonic empathy. Recorded in April 2023 in Buenos Aires, the album spans originals, jazz standards and reinterpretations, subtly blending tango, Argentine folk and jazz.

Saluzzi’s enduring quest for “artistic and human growth” continues to shape his work.

The album opens with José’s “La Ciudad de los Aires Buenos,” ("The City of Buenos Aires") an interlocking guitar motif that evokes place and memory. Young’s “Quiet March” carries subtle drama, while Saluzzi contributes pieces like “Buenos Aires 1950” and “Mi hijo y Yo” ("My Son and I") poignantly anchored in reflection and familial resonance. Notably, he delivers a solo rendition of the title track, rich with nostalgia and church-like cadences, emphasizing the instrument’s physicality.

The trio navigates standards “My One and Only Love” and “Someday My Prince Will Come” with a spare, lyrical openness that brings surprising intimacy and restraint.

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Behind the Mask

HEIKKI RUOKANGAS & JULIEN TASSIN

Released 29 August 2025

Challenge Records

****-

Two virtuoso guitarists in an acoustic conversation that blends beauty, raw emotion and playful unity with melody, improvisation and tonal abstraction.

Belgian guitarist Julien Tassin is a fiercely inventive voice in European improvised music, blending classical discipline, jazz roots, minimalism, ambient and avant-rock through unique tunings and prepared guitar techniques.

Finnish guitarist Heikki Ruokangas brings a complementary aesthetic rooted in melodic tradition, experimental improvisation, and avant-garde expression, forged through years of work in jazz and noise-informed contexts. Together, they converge on Behind the Mask, an album born of cross-cultural dialogue and a shared quest for spontaneous, emotionally resonant musical conversation.

The album unfolds as an intimate dialogue between two masters of the acoustic guitar, two voices melding into one, as Tassin and Ruokangas, apply their craft in a collaborative terrain where melodic clarity coexists with atonal abstraction.

Recorded during journeys between each others' homelands, the album reflects a union of Nordic restraint and European introspection
Stylistically, the music stretches across a spectrum that encompasses bucolic lyricism (“Armoni”), wistful atmospheres (“Stockholm,” “Hailuoto IV”), raw blues-tinged edges (“Rodeo”) and field recordings of cultural voice (“Canto De Trabalho”).

The title track, “Behind the Mask,” balances Spanish flavours within an abstract arrangement, while “Tobacco Kiss” and “Tyhjyys” layer textured playing with harmonics and measured intensity . The pair's acoustic interplay is remarkable, at times breathlessly synchronized, often pushing at tonal boundaries with a playful, sometimes humorous spirit.

The inclusion of the traditional “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” closes the album on a note of universal warmth and simplicity, a light-hearted finale after visiting more exploratory realms. Behind the Mask crystallizes the duo’s artistic kinship: two cultures, two guitars, one unspoken conversation.

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Mutant

GUEDRA GUEDRA

Released 29 August 2025

Smugglers Way

****-

Exploring themes of identity, Pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism, and decolonization & bridging the musical heritage of the continent with elements of techno, bass music and dub.

Guedra Guedra is the stage name of Moroccan producer Abdellah M. Hassak, a visionary force in contemporary electronic music. His sound fuses analogue synths and drum machines with field recordings from his travels in Morocco, Tanzania, Guinea and other locations as he explores themes of identity, Pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism and decolonization - bridging the musical heritage of the continent with elements of techno, bass music and dub.

Through his music, Hassak aims to “decolonize” music technology and reclaim African sonic forms from reductive Western frameworks.

Opening with “Drift of Drummer”, pulsating rhythms and organic field samples signal a meeting of ancestral groove and electronic futurism. “Paradigm” and “Renegade” carry this ritualistic energy into lounge grooves and fractured techno realms. Subsequently on “Ring of Fire” and “Z”, throbbing bass-lines summon dancefloor momentum, balanced by glowing melodic counterpoints. The haunting “Tamayyurt” channels Amazigh vocal laments, while “Tribes With Flags”, which features Jihan El-Tahri’s poignant spoken-word script, layers cinematic introspection over minimal ambient texture. The album concludes with the reflective “Enlightenment”, closing the journey in contemplative serenity.

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Fade To Black (EP)

CODY CURRIE

Released 29 August 2025

Toy Tonics

****-

Neo-boogie soul infused with refined house sensibilities, lush instrumentation, intimate grooves and warm textures: an elegant recipe for discerning dancefloors.

Cody Currie is a British multi-instrumentalist and producer rooted in London’s neo-soul and deep house scenes. A long-time creative core of the Berlin-based Toy Tonics label, he channels a gifted fluency on bass, guitar, keys, and vocals into sleek, emotional electronic grooves. His sound bridges the warmth of Jamiroquai-inspired funk with the refined electronic aesthetics of Masters at Work and Todd Terje - sophisticated, soulful, and dancefloor-ready.

Fade To Black showcases Currie’s deep musicality built around polished production, instrumental versatility and the subtle ear of a selector.

Opening cuts "Player" and the title track flirt with the synth-funk sheen of the 1980s, filtered through contemporary house elegance. "Rent Free" serves up a tight drum & guitar groove around plush chord progressions with a hazy vocal hook (think a sped-up Michael Franks) , balancing between broken beat textures and dream-soft soul.

"Release My Heart" leans into a looser, jazz-tinged swing, while "Just Like Heaven" brings sunrise serenity, still rootsy, but gentler and more intimate.
While these tracks mine the jazz-disco/acid-jazz revivalist lane they are overlaid with modern club momentum. This release reveals Currie continuing to refine a palette that fuses warmth, bounce, and musicianship in a manner both tasteful and enduring.

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Riddle Riddle: The Prague Sessions

DARREN HEINRICH

LIMOR SMOLDAS, JESSE SIMPSON

Released 22 August 2025

Australian Broadcasting Commission

****-

In Prague, Australian Hammond master Darren Heinrich leads a finely tuned trio through eleven originals, balancing modal fire, soulful grooves, and lyrical ballads in an organ-trio album of rare clarity and depth.

Darren Heinrich is an Australian jazz organist, composer and educator who has builtaan international reputation for his mastery of the Hammond B3. A protégé of Dr. Lonnie Smith and Tony Monaco, he holds the world’s first PhD in Jazz Organ Improvisation and teaches at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His work bridges academic authority with live performance vitality, favouring clarity, groove, and compositional invention.

Heinrich has performed extensively across Australia, Europe and North America, developing close collaborations with Czech guitarist Libor Šmoldas and American drummer Jesse Simpson. His artistry situates the Hammond organ as both historically grounded and vividly contemporary.

Riddle Diddle: The Prague Sessions finds Darren Heinrich in commanding form, consolidating his reputation as a leading contemporary organist. Recorded with Šmoldas and Simpson after extensive live work in Prague, the trio achieves a natural cohesion that animates Heinrich’s eleven originals. The modal drive of the title track, the buoyant waltz "Duplicity", and the groove-heavy "Barrenjoey Boogaloo" showcase stylistic breadth without diluting focus. "Bowen’s Lament" demonstrates Heinrich’s capacity for expressive balladry, while "Blues for Bobby Pierce" nods respectfully to tradition, without imitation.

The recording, mastered by Bob Katz, captures the Hammond’s warmth and detail with admirable precision. Šmoldas and Simpson contribute as full partners, not sidemen, pushing interplay beyond formulaic organ-trio patterns. What distinguishes the album is Heinrich’s refusal to rely on retro tropes: instead, he deploys clear articulation, inventive composition, and rhythmic sophistication to place the Hammond organ firmly in the present tense.

It is both homage and forward stride, a release that confirms Heinrich’s stature not only within Australia but as an international voice of authority on the jazz organ.

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Oren Ambarchi John Berthling, Andreas Werliin - Focus

Ghosted III

OREN AMBARCHI, JOHAN BERTHLING, ANDREAS WERLIIN

Released 29 August 2025

Drag City Inc.

*****

Hypnotic restraint and deep-listening interplay mark the trio’s most distilled, confident and accessible statement yet.

The trio of Australian guitarist and experimentalist Oren Ambarchi, with Swedish rhythm duo of bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin, has been steadily refining a restrained yet propulsive sound world in Ghosted (2022) and Ghosted II (2024), blending jazz improvisation, krautrock minimalism and hypnotic repetition into carefully balanced collective explorations.

Ghosted III advances the trio’s shared language of tension and release, stripping improvisation down to its essentials. Berthling’s bass provides the central spine, laying down repetitive, often circular patterns that lock into deep, trance-like grooves. Werliin’s drumming avoids overt jazz swing in favor of loose but precise patterns that subtly shift the music’s direction. Ambarchi, always attentive to texture, uses guitar less for melody than for coloration, placing single notes, drones or chords with painterly restraint.

The result recalls the space and patience of classic ECM minimalism, but with a rawer, more tactile edge that at times flirts with krautrock’s hypnotic pulse, at others with free improvisation’s spontaneity, yet it never collapses entirely into either camp. Instead, the trio’s tight listening and responsiveness creates music that feels suspended - simultaneously static and in flux.

Compared to earlier Ghosted releases, this third installment feels more settled and confident in its stripped-back vocabulary. Where Ghosted II still sought new textures, III leans into clarity - repetition as meditation, groove as architecture. It rewards close listening and its understated propulsion also makes it curiously accessible for a record so minimal in construction.

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Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople

SAUL WILLIAMS,

CARLOS NINO & FRIENDS

Released 28 August 2025

International Anthem

****-

Under ancient oaks, Saul Williams and Carlos Niño convene a sound ceremony of urgent poetry, ambient pulse, and whispered jazz, for a live recording that marries ecological spirituality with radical sonic fusion.

Saul Williams is an electrifying poet, vocalist, and cultural force whose work channels visceral rhythm and radical rhetoric. Carlos Niño, a percussionist, producer and “cosmic connector,” fuses ambient, jazz, and improvisational soundscapes. Their first recorded collaboration—Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople—marks a new creative confluence. Rooted in long friendship dating back to the late 1990s, this project channels both Williams’s urgent spoken-word intensity and Niño’s texturally driven ensemble direction.

Broadcast live beneath ancient oaks and black walnut trees in Los Angeles’s Coldwater Canyon Park on December 18, 2024, TreePeople unfolds as a ritualistic convergence of voice and environment. From the commanding incantation of “Land Back!” (repeated thrice to open) Saul Williams summons an elemental call to consciousness that resonates with both urgency and reverence.

Comprising five tracks: "Sound then Words", "We would lift our Voice…", "We are calling out in this moment…", The Water is Rising / as we surpass the firing squad…" (with Aja Monet) and "We have work to do… (speaking after the concert)", the album cycles through spoken word, ambient improvisation and collective invocation, all suffused in improvisational jazz and soulful liberation activism.

Niño & Friends deploy instrumentation and arrangement with subtlety and openness. Voices (Williams’s and guest Aja Monet’s) float above drummed pulses, field-air textures and atmospheric ebb and flow. The performance transcends documentation, becoming an eco-spiritual union, where each spoken line and musical gesture reverberates in dialogue with the live forest canopy.

Masterfully captured by the International Anthem label, the recording maintains the organic intimacy of its site-specific genesis while granting clarity and presence.

As both ceremony and album, TreePeople defies genre, fusing environmental activism, collective breath and poetic eruption into one compelling statement.

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Pathos

YUTAKA HIRASAKA

Released 22 August 2025

Keep Your Eyes Open Records

****-

Gentle fragments of guitar reveal a tender heart, unflinching honesty and the strength of his "crumpled heart".

Yutaka Hirasaka is a Japanese guitarist and composer whose music inhabits the borderlands of minimalism, ambient, and jazz. Known for delicate, textural guitar work, he has built a reputation for introspective recordings that translate personal emotion into subtle melodic expression, often using minimal layering to achieve maximum intimacy.

Pathos presents 13 unadorned guitar pieces, each written and performed with a focus on emotional honesty and restraint.

Hirasaka describes the record as “back-to-the-basic,” and that ethos is audible in its economy: most tracks consist of a single guitar line, occasionally doubled, creating a sense of rawness and immediacy. Unlike his more groove-oriented releases with electronic touches, Pathos rejects production flourishes in favor of solitude, space, and vulnerability.

The sequence moves with gentle arcs: “Dusk” and “Lullaby” set a contemplative tone, while “Monad” and “Dream Within A Dream” drift toward impressionism, recalling the spacious poetics of Bill Frisell or Loren Connors. “Empty Bottle” and “Noir” introduce darker inflections, suggesting both weariness and resolve. “Awai” and “Burn To Shine” mark emotional high points, balancing melancholy with resilience.

Hirasaka’s choice to strip away accompaniment risks monotony but instead achieves quiet power: every plucked note carries weight, every pause breathes meaning. The record’s fragility (what he calls “the stagnant and soft parts of my crumpled heart”) becomes its strength, turning private reflection into universal resonance. In its simplicity, Pathos feels like a genuine renewal, not retreat: a deeply personal work with lasting clarity.

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Big Money

JON BATISTE

Released 22 August 2025

Verve Records

****-

An intimate roots journey that lays bare joy, reflection, and the real currency of life - and rare space for Batiste’s voice to breathe unadorned.

Jon Batiste is a Grammy-winning pianist and vocalist whose spirit bridges jazz, gospel, pop, and orchestral landscapes. A consummate improviser and cultural polymath, he surged to broader prominence with his We Are (2021) and World Music Radio (2023), and his stint as House Band leader for The Tonight Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022. With this new release, he continues pushing boundaries with his most intimate and roots-focused statement yet.

On Big Money, Batiste retreats from the theatrical grandeur of his past work and opts for a more intimate, stripped-down palette. Across nine tracks (32 minutes), the spirit of his New Orleans roots - a New Orleans musical dynasty, the Batiste family, that includes Lionel Batiste of the Treme Brass Band, Milton Batiste of the Olympia Brass Band,and Russell Batiste Jr. - looms large. The album's acoustic instrumentation - fiddle, mandolin, gospel-tinged piano - reigns supreme, shaping a presentation that’s modest yet vibrant, both earnest and richly textured

Three standout moments include the humorous duet with Randy Newman on the Doc Pomus standard “Lonely Avenue,” where Newman’s gravelly phrasing confronts Batiste’s velvety voice with bittersweet wit, and the contemplative piano ballad “Maybe,” which pulses with layered chords and existential pause. Opening track, “Lean on My Love,” featuring Andra Day, bubbles with soulful warmth, while the album’s title track, a sing-along featuring the Womack Sisters, delivers both charm and cheek. Elsewhere, tracks like “Pinnacle,” “Do It All Again,” and the reggae-infused “Angels” are infused with Batiste’s genre fluidity and gospel-rooted joyfulness. The album unfolds as a natural expression of Batiste musical identity.

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The Prophet and The Madman

AMI TAF RA

Released 22 August 2025

Brainfeeder

****-
In equal parts performance art, incantation and philosophical inquiry, this uncompromising and powerful improvisation collapses genre boundaries into meditative, sometimes confrontational soundscapes.

Ami Taf Ra is a Moroccan-descended, LA-based singer-songwriter whose artistry unfolds at the intersections of Arabic spiritual traditions (notably Moroccan gnawa), gospel, spiritual jazz, and experimental improvisation. She first discovered her vocal inspiration at age 14, when her mother gave her an album by Lebanese legend Fairuz, igniting a lifelong passion for blending Western jazz sensibilities with Arabic classical lineages.

To pursue this fusion, she studied at the Music School of Amsterdam, where she immersed herself in performance, joined a gospel choir, and collaborated with local bands, cultivating her vocal versatility across genres. At 18, she traveled to Cairo to record her first Arabic song in the same legendary studio where Abdelhalim Hafez recorded, connecting her directly to the region’s rich musical heritage.

Her professional trajectory includes notable international performances across Denmark, Turkey, Morocco and the Netherlands and collaborations with prestigious ensembles like the Dutch Royal Metropole Orchestra at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, even performing live on national television These experiences shaped her expressive range, enabling her to carry ancestral nuance even in higher registers. Using free improvisation, her music tends to collapse genre boundaries into meditative, sometimes confrontational soundscapes.

The Prophet and The Madman (2025) continues a trajectory of crafting music that feels, in equal parts, like performance art, ritual incantation, and philosophical inquiry.

The song cycle unfolds as a dialogue between two archetypes, expressed through shifting musical vocabularies. Taf Ra alternates between whispered prophecy and fractured declamation, delivered over backdrops of heavy drones, minimal percussion, and bursts of free saxophone improvisation. Tracks resist conventional structure, instead moving in long arcs that feel as much like ceremonial invocations as songs. Electronics are used sparingly but effectively: sub-bass pulses and glitch textures bleed in and out, lending the music a contemporary dimension while preserving its ritualistic core.

The improvisational elements lean toward spiritual jazz, echoing Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra, but filtered through a darker, more austere lens. Prominent collaborators include Kamasi Washington (saxophone), Ryan Porter (trombone) and Brandon Coleman (keyboards), among many others. Spoken-word passages (half-poetry, half-testimony) give the album its conceptual backbone, with repeated references to exile, vision, and madness. Rather than offering resolution, Taf Ra builds tension between the prophet’s transcendence and the madman’s chaos, leaving the listener suspended in ambiguity. It is not always an easy listen, as the recording resists comfort and polish, but its intensity and conviction create a strong gravitational pull.

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You're Exaggerating!

PAUL CORNISH

Released 22 August 2025

Blue Note Records

****-

Blue Note’s newest pianist pushes boundaries with a witty yet commanding debut.

Paul Cornish is a Los Angeles–based pianist and composer whose reputation has grown rapidly through collaborations with Herbie Hancock, Joshua Redman, and Terence Blanchard. A Thelonious Monk Institute graduate, he embodies a modern West Coast sound, intellectually rigorous yet soulful. combining classical grounding, contemporary jazz language, and a deep sensitivity to ensemble interplay.

You’re Exaggerating! marks Cornish’s Blue Note debut, situating him among peers reinvigorating the label’s tradition with forward-looking projects. The album brims with restless invention: angular melodies intersect with layered polyrhythms, while Cornish’s touch alternates between crystalline lyricism and sharp-edged dissonance. His trio expands beyond the conventional piano-bass-drums setup, at times incorporating electronics and shifting textures that blur genre boundaries.

The title suggests both humor and intensity, an acknowledgement of jazz’s tendency toward dramatic gestures and Cornish’s willingness to push dynamics to their brink. Tracks unfold with narrative drive: some stretch patiently, as if testing silence, others explode in cascades of clustered harmonies. Cornish never overwhelms his sidemen but creates conversational space, showing a generosity that reflects his grounding as both accompanist and bandleader.

While one hears traces of his mentors, the defining voice here is Cornish’s own - restless, assertive, yet attuned to beauty. The record places him squarely among a generation committed to extending jazz’s vocabulary without losing touch with swing, groove, or melody.

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Acqua Marina

PREFACES

Released 15 August 2025

Raptured & Hisstology

****-

An exploration of the desolate beach clubs along Lebanon's coastline, turns a chance encounter into a lasting musical partnership.

Prefaces is a Lebanese trio made up of long-standing members of Beirut’s independent music scene: Charif Megarbane (Habibi Funk, Cosmic Analog Ensemble, Hisstology Records), Salim Naffah (Alko B), and Pascal Semerdjian (Postcards, SANAM).

With its electric guitar interplays, vibrato action, and galloping rhythms, debut album 'Hippodrome' (Hisstology Records, 2021) introduced Prefaces’ distinctive take on surf rock and Mediterranean guitar music: a rich blend of cultures, genres, and traditions. East and West meet again on Acqua Marina, recorded at Beirut’s Tunefork Studios and co-released by Ruptured and Hisstology Records.

Where 'Hippodrome' captured the energy of spontaneous collaboration, their sophomore album Acqua Marina, marks the band’s evolution into a more deliberate and unified project; and the album reflects that growth. The songs may have moved from land to sea, but the group’s sound has matured, expanding to include nods to library music, Levantine breaks, and coastal psychedelia.

The types of fish catalogued in the song titles and the wintry, abandoned swimming pool on the cover hint at the themes running through the record: the desolation and coldness of Lebanon’s off-season beach clubs, their concrete walls and vacant spaces roamed only by those waiting for the sun and the crowds to return.

It’s hard not to see these seasonal images as allegory for Lebanon’s prolonged political winter. Yet Acqua Marina overflows with vitality, inspired performances, and the luminosity of serendipitous collaboration; shining much-needed light into our darker seasons.

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Hail To The Thief

(Live Recordings 2003-2009)

RADIOHEAD

Released 13 August 2025

LLLP LLP / XL Recordings

****-

The band's second official live archive delivers superb fidelity and preserves all the angst, precision and daring of the time, yet offers little genuine surprise, in the wake of their subsequent triumphs and collaborations.

"Formed while still schoolmates in Oxfordshire in the mid-1980s, Radiohead became the defining band of their generation, constantly reshaping rock’s boundaries. From the alt-rock beginnings of Pablo Honey (1993) and The Bends (1995), through the spectacular success of OK Computer (1997), to the digital revolution of Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), Radiohead set new artistic standards for recording, performance, and integrity, blending musical precision, experimentation, and political urgency.

Hail To The Thief (Live Recordings 2003–2009), only Radiohead’s second official live album, is a raw chronicle of early 21st-century unrest and the band’s restless transformation. An in-sequence, (almost) reconstruction of the 2003 original studio album - only "Backdrifts" and "A Punchup at a Wedding" are omitted - and drawn from shows across Europe, North America and Japan, the performances sharpen the original's embedded political anxiety, which reflects the then-prevailing political backdrop of the Iraq war and Western democratic malaise.

But some things never change. Live, tracks like “2 + 2 = 5”, “Sit Down. Stand Up” and "Myxomatosis" bristle with urgent menace, their rage heightened by Thom Yorke’s cracked, theatrical phrasing and Jonny Greenwood’s strafing electronics. The songs might well have been written yesterday, but as we are well aware, Radiohead was only just getting started and now seen eclipsed by the ever-developing compositional mastery displayed in In Rainbows (2007), The King of Limbs (2011) and A Moon Shaped Pool (2016) and the numerous side-projects, film scores and collaborations by each of the band's individual members.

However, as one would expect from the official Radiohead archive, the live recording the quality is superb and striking: crisper, more balanced and more dynamic than the countless bootlegs circulating from these tours or the ubiquitous YouTube reels. This clarity gives each layer, from Greenwood’s spidery electronics to Selway’s tensile drumming, the space to unfold.

What this release does not offer, however, is surprise. Fans who have followed the group online will have seen and heard much of this before. Its importance lies less in revelation than in preservation: an official, high-fidelity archive that validates Radiohead’s reputation as peerless live interpreters of their own political theatre.

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What's Going On

Save The Children

BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND

Released 13 August 2025

Transgressive Records

*****

Two Marvin Gaye classics are reprised with soulful restraint, serving again as urgent anthems of grace and clarity for today’s fractured world.

Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Canadian-American singer, composer, and activist, has enjoyed a late-career renaissance as his pioneering works in folk, soul and electronic minimalism have gained recognition from new generations.

Glenn-Copeland now brings his warm baritone and spiritually charged music to reinterpretations of two of Marvin Gaye’s classic songs with urgent relevance for today’s crises.

It's a timely reminder that in 1971, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On reframed soul music as a vehicle for social conscience - confronting war, racism and ecological neglect with compassion and moral clarity.

Glenn-Copeland’s new renditions of “What’s Going On” and “Save The Children” carry that spirit into the fractured present. His website makes explicit the parallels: Gaza, Black Lives Matter and the mounting attacks on trans rights. These re-imaginings are neither nostalgic nor decorative: Glenn-Copeland sings with conviction, his voice weathered but still luminous, drawing authority from lived experience.

The arrangements resist overstatement, placing Glenn’s resonant baritone at the centre, accompanied by restrained but soulful instrumentation. “What’s Going On” retains its character as a searching rhetorical question, but Glenn slows the pace, giving it the feel of a meditative invocation. By contrast, “Save the Children” is stripped of Gaye’s call-and-response framing and emerges as a solemn, plainspoken appeal, Glenn turning the lyrics into a direct moral challenge for our own time.

Glenn doesn’t attempt to replicate Gaye’s fluid phrasing; instead, he leans into gravitas, treating the lyrics as both prophecy and warning.

As with his broader oeuvre, from the meditative Keyboard Fantasies to his later live performances, the guiding principle is community, resilience and truth-telling.

These recordings affirm that Glenn (who recently announced that he has been diagnosed with dementia) remains not just a survivor of eras but a vital cultural voice, extending Gaye’s call for empathy into a world still desperately in need of it.

Molasses

NATALIE SLADE

Released 8 August 2025

BBE Music

****-

Future-soul’s textured grooves meet a luminous soprano in an elegant alignment of voice, craft and emotional clarity.

Sydney's Natalie Slade unfolds Molasses as a second full-length testament to her evolution in future soul. Emerging from her debut Control (2020) which she co-wrote with Hiatus Kaiyote keyboardist Simon Mavin, she now partners with producers Sampology (a pivotal influencer of Australia’s neo-soul and broken-beat revival( and Dan Kye (AKA Jordan Rakei) to craft a richly textured soundscape that feels both intimate and expansive.

Across ten tracks, Slade’s voice weaves through lush string arrangements, gritty beats and melodic warmth, amplified by collaborators The Dieyoungs (Keyboards) and Laneous (guitar). This album reinforces her presence as a soulful storyteller whose work bridges emotional nuance and genre innovation.

Molasses glides through sound like its namesake, slow, rich and enveloping. From the first grooves of "My House" lush keyboard driven atmospheres embrace the listener, as Slade's voice ascends in soprano flights over pulsing broken-beat rhythms and shimmering synths. Meanwhile, her verses cut closer to earth, their rhythmic cadences echoing spoken word and hip-hop in confessional meditations,

The album unfolds with cinematic poise. Tracks such as "The Lesson". "Unquenchable Craving", “Telephone” lean into groove and melody, balancing Slade’s internal-rhyme songwriting with a danceable sway that feels cinematic and alive.

Throughout, Sampology’s production roots each song in a weighty, soulful core while letting Slade’s storytelling, rooted in emotional specificity, glow amid warm strings and fractured rhythm.

Even as the album leans into lushness, it never drifts into complacency. The emotional resonance keeps Molasses on its edge. Slade delivers a focused, richly atmospheric statement - and another high-water mark for Antipodean neo-soul, alongside the likes of Nai Palm, Allysha Joy, Audrey Powne, Kaiit, Mo'Ju, Sampha The Great (it has becom a big list) in whose work poetic storytelling and production sophistication coalesce in slow-burning brilliance.

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The Oracle (IA11 Edition)

ANGEL BAT DAWID

Released 12 August 2025

International Anthem

*****

A landmark of spiritual jazz refreshed: the original’s radical intimacy remains intact supplemented by four newly revealed creative exchanges.

Angel Bat Dawid is a Chicago-based composer, clarinetist, vocalist and improviser whose work bridges spiritual jazz, free improvisation and African diasporic traditions. Her 2019 debut The Oracle, recorded entirely on her phone, became a transformative moment in contemporary jazz, garnering critical acclaim, international festival invitations and cementing her as a voice in the lineage of the AACM. In the years since, she has expanded her output with projects like LIVE (with Tha Brothahood), Transition East, Hush Harbor Mixtape and the monumental Requiem for Jazz. Dawid’s practice is both fiercely individual and deeply collective, grounding experimental forms in historical consciousness and communal storytelling.

The IA11 Edition series from International Anthem celebrates landmark releases in expanded, remastered form, pairing archival insight with new material. For The Oracle (IA11 Edition), the original 2019 album is preserved in full: eight tracks that blurred boundaries between composition and improvisation, field recording and spiritual invocation. The stripped gospel-folk of “Black Family,” the clarinet-and-delay dream of “Impepho,” and the sprawling “Capetown” with drummer Asher Gamedze still feel immediate and radical. Recorded on a phone, the sound is intimate without sacrificing scope, affirming that lo-fi can be epic when the vision is clear.

"Angel's fieldnote approach affirms that the everyday remains a legitimate site of creative production," says percussionist, collaborator, and IARC labelmate Asher Gamedze in his liner notes

These additions broaden the album’s magnificence, reinforcing The Oracle as a influential, living document, rather than a static exhibit.
The expanded edition adds live cuts, reinterpretations and historical nods. “SPACE323 ATL” captures Dawid in raw, cosmic flight. “Eric Dolphy’s Synthetic Formations (Given to Yusef Lateef by Eric Dolphy in 1961)” transforms archival scale studies into clarinet-and-electronics abstraction. Gamedze’s “pickpocket” offers a percussive counter-voice, while “Proverbs 30:4” folds in intergenerational collaborators, deepening the music’s ancestral tether.

These additions broaden the album’s magnificence, reinforcing The Oracle as a influential, living document, rather than a static exhibit.

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Mind Explosion

(50th Anniversary Tour Live)

SHAKTI

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, ZAKIR HUSSAIN, SHANKAR MAHADEVAN , GANESH RAJAGOPALAN, SELVAGANESH VINAYAKRAM

Released 8 August 2025

Abstract Logic

****-

After 50 years of inspirational magic, a vibrant, heartfelt farewell. Here is spiritual fusion in real time, the culmination of Shakti’s transcendent journey, closing the circle with grace and fire.

For an idea or project to remain relevant for 50 years is a remarkable thing and there are few better exemplars of the idea of innovative fusion music than when Shakti emerged a mainstream recording and touring act around 1973. with English guitarist John McLaughlin, Indian violinist L.Shankar, percussionists Zakir Hussain (tabla) and Vikku Vinayakram (ghatam).

The group played music which combined Carnatic music with elements of jazz. In addition to fusing Western (Jazz, Celtic folk, Classical music) and "Eastern" (pentatonic and maqam scale) music, Shakti also represented a fusion in particular of Hindustani and Carnatic music traditions, since Hussain was from Northern India while Shankar and Vikku are from the South. The success of Shakti came at a time when international acts were beginning to penetrate western markets in a meaningful way and remarkably for half a century the group continued expanding this tradition through global performances including the Grammy-winning studio work (This Moment, 2023)
Mind Explosion is Shakti’s final statement, an electrifying, deeply emotional live document recorded during their 2023 50th-anniversary tour.

Curated by John McLaughlin and Selvaganesh Vinayakram (tabla), the album traverses material from their 1976 debut to extended versions of new compositions from This Moment . The six-track set opens with “Kiki,” then weaves through “Giriraj Sudha” and “Lotus Feet,” earlier Shakti staples, reaching “5 in the Morning, 6 in the Afternoon” an 8+ minute stretch characterized by polyrhythmic tension and soaring vibrancy. “Sakhi” and “Shrini’s Dream” close the set with ecstatic momentum and lyrical depth.

What resonates most is the palpable ensemble chemistry. McLaughlin’s guitar (now electric-powered) dialogues with Hussain’s tabla in language deeply shaped by decades of musical brotherhood. The violin and vocal interplay adds texture, culminating in a sound that’s joyous, spiritual and mastery personified. All About Jazz notes a poetic symmetry: Shakti’s catalogue began and ends with live albums, a testament to their essence. The contrast between the acoustic immediacy of 1976 and the electric-synth expansiveness of this final release underscores the group’s evolutionary arc.

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OFFSHORE

NADEEM DIN-GABISI

Released 1 August 2025

Moshi Moshi Records

****-

Krio & English storytelling combined with sporting iconography, including the subversive appropriation of the St. George’s Cross, in this poetic, groove-rich debut.

Nadeem Din-Gabisi is a British–Sierra Leonean multidisciplinary artist, poet, visual creator, filmmaker, and musician whose work interrogates identity, displacement, and heritage through immersive sound and imagery. Emerging via the Steamdown Collective and collaborations with Sampa The Great and Metronomy, he combines lyrical depth with inventive production. OFFSHORE, his debut solo album under the alias “Jack Surname George in the Land of Hope and Glory,” draws on archetypes of the English sporting figure—red-and-white beanies, track suits, caps emblazoned with the St. George’s Cross—deliberately ironic and challenging. By appropriating a symbol often co-opted by the far right, Din-Gabisi reclaims it: forging an allegiance to a nation built on diasporic sacrifice, refracted through both rebellion and belonging. Deeply rooted in diasporic experience, he merges poetic rap, alternative grooves, Krio and English lyricism to create a synesthetic, politically resonant musical language.

From the enigmatic “Intro” through to the climactic “Shade,” the album charts complex terrain, namely Black identity, colonial legacy, emotional diaspora. “Enter Claim” combines saxophone, percussion and defiant vocal hooks to evoke both resistance and affirmation. “B Happy” channels Afro-Salsa warmth while “Chariots” rides a variable-velocity rap flow that delights. “I Land” recalls the swagger of J Hus with hooky melody and steady groove. By contrast, “Icey” brings contemplative cool, while “Libation (Interlude)” showcases compositional restraint with evocative instrumental detail. Mid-album “Pub Lunch” embraces traditional percussion for grounded energy; “Gratis” slips into poetic ire (“Burn the empire, watch it burn”) confronting structural decay.

Setting poetic storytelling against ambivalent sonic backdrops, the album alternates accessible rhythm with political unease. Din-Gabisi’s bilingual lyricism, in Krio and English, amplifies the tension between belonging and dissent. Across its runtime, OFFSHORE avoids tidy resolutions, offering instead an emotionally nuanced response to personal and national belonging.

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When Butterflies Become Unicorns

GRENIQUE, RAHEEM DEVAUGHN

Released 1 August 2025

New Era Soul Records

****-

A '90s Disco queen returns after two decades with a well chosen collaborator and set of quietly feminist, slow-burning, soul-rooted compositions that are brief in duration but long on sensuality.

Former Motown artist Grenique's career seemed to have began and ended with her 1999 debut "Black Butterfly" and it's hit single "Disco", which featured in the Rush Hour movie soundtrack. But now, for her impressive return to the mainstream, after more than two decades out of the spotlight, she has resisted the temptation of a nostalgic or throwback album and instead drops back right into the present. Her vocal prowess may be less dynamic but for all intents is undiminished. As she makes this brave mid-life career move, she brings to mind the likes of Lady Blackbird or bluesmen Robert Finley and Fantastic Negrito. May she match their successes!

In an inspired collaboration with soul music doyen Raheem DeVaughn, Grenique delivers vivid, mature performances that blend the warmth of late-’90s neo-soul with contemporary emotional intelligence. DeVaughn's signature soul productions are however the hero ingredient in this tasty mix: his music wraps itself around Grenique's enticing vocals in a perfect blend that allows Butterflies Become Unicorns to accesses grit, sensuality and spirit across this enjoyable, if brief, eight-song set.

Although slight in duration, the album is nonetheless a complete package, From her first breath, DeVaughn's tasty settings allow Grenique to work: to reclaim her early roots and apply herself to reimagining her position in the post-Motown firmament. Grenique’s voice remains distinctive: a smoky alto with conversational phrasing and a wry, off-center charm. She glides, teases and pivots.

The production is tactile and analogue-leaning, full of dusty Rhodes chords, wah-wah guitar flickers and basslines that slink like they’ve been aged in oak The album is introduced by a short poem, the text of which the gives album its title, but when the beats for opening song "100" kick in, it's down to business. “Purple Flowers” (with Dovonte McCoy) offers vaporous harmonies over gently psychedelic keys. Guests are well chosen and well placed: Bee Boy$oul and 7xvethegenius add texture, while Jeff Bradshaw’s smooth trombone enriches closing track “All the Man.”

What the album lacks in duration, range or dynamic variation, it makes up for in clarity of purpose: a quietly feminist, slow-burning, soul-rooted soundscape that reclaims sensuality without theatrics.

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Comafields / Imaginary Festival

BURIAL

Released 1 August 2025

Hyperdub

****-
Burial continues to haunt the rave medium from a distance, trading rhythm for atmospheres and memory, trading beats for ghostly echoes.

Burial (William Bevan) is a South London producer whose 2000's releases on Hyperdub reshaped electronic music with ghostly, rain-soaked atmospheres and vinyl-crackle textures. His elusive presence and refusal of normal celebrity have made him a cult figure in the mould of a Banksy or MF Doom prior to their exposure to global fame.

The release belongs to a slow trickle of singles over recent years, each shading Burial’s shift from club producer to ambient storyteller.

Since releasing the five-track EP Antidawn (2022), Burial has pursued increasingly ambient, abstract directions, far removed from club orthodoxy, while retaining (indeed, enhancing) his influence and status as an "essential" artist and influencer.

An EP of just two-tracks, (around 23 minutes in all), Comafields / Imaginary Festival extends Burial's publicly-revealed experimentation in this late style - now a mix of ambient, vaporous, narrative-driven sound pieces that have been conjured from distant, liminal states between dream and memory.

Opening track “Comafields” unspools over twelve minutes of hushed drones, environmental sound design and spectral voices. Its musical lineage runs directly from Antidawn and Streetlands (EP) (2022), pushing Burial's artistry further into ethereal soundscape territory, where time seems to stretch, hover and dissolve. The title might suggest otherwise, but the artist's characteristic clicks, pops, vocal samples and synth-beats bring a nervous but compelling energy to the piece.

“Imaginary Festival” flirts with rhythmic revival, and familiar distant echoes: the lurching, off-center feel of 2-step and an underlying pulse driven by deep, rumbling sub-bass and repeated hi-hat ticks. This recalls the Burial of old, but now these fragments are fragile, suspended amid a synthesised musical fog and clouds of distortion that could be a soundtrack for a 19th Century London "pea-souper". This nostalgia is now balanced with compositional restraint, as if rhythm itself has become a memory of a recent rave, rather than an invitation to dance.

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Sonidos

LAUREN HENDERSON

Released 1 August 2025

New Era Soul Records

****-

Transcending cultures, languages and musical traditions, with a velvet voice, rhythmic grace and a crack ensemble.

Lauren Henderson’s Sonidos is a multilingual, multi-stylistic statement of artistic maturity, drawing equally from jazz, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and Latin American bolero traditions, without simply sounding like a tour of influences.

Singing in both Spanish and English, she moves with unforced elegance between idioms. Her phrasing is as much informed by classic jazz stylists (think Carmen McRae and Abbey Lincoln) as it is by the boleristas of Cuba and Mexico. Opener “Abre Tu Corazón” is sensuous and bittersweet, floating over a slow montuno pulse. The title track, “Sonidos,” pairs Henderson’s smoky delivery with understated clave and subtle horn arrangements, never over-arranged yet always harmonically rich. On “La Bruja,” she leans into darker folkloric textures, reviving a Veracruz classic with sultry restraint, while “Water” lets her stretch into more contemporary harmonic territory, propelled by a modern jazz rhythm section that never overplays.

Her stellar backing ensemble comproises the core quartet of Joel Ross (vibrophone), Sullivan Fortner (piano), Dezron Douglas (bass) and Joe Dyson (drums). Veteran Eric Wheeler (bass) joins Fortner to form a duo on four of the fifteen tracks and a trio, with Fortner and Ross on another. Venezuelan Luisito Quintero (drums) extends the core to a quintet on "Soledad". These subtle adjustments of personnel serve the album well, changing mood and intensity, providing nuanced, yet minimal support throughout. The arrangements breathe easily, allowing Henderson’s voice and storytelling to take centre stage. Her control is exquisite, often hovering just above a whisper, but it’s precisely this softness that draws attention.

Sonidos is an album of connection—between cultures, languages and musical traditions—bridged by a singular voice that refuses to be boxed in. Henderson doesn’t shout; she draws you in.

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Balm

ILL CONSIDERED

Released 1 August 2025

New Soil

****-

Free jazz, dub and spirit collide in a tightly woven psychedelic meditation.

Ill Considered is a UK-based improvisational jazz collective founded by saxophonist Idris Rahman and drummer Emre Ramazanoglu. Emerging from London’s genre-agnostic jazz scene, the group is known for spontaneous composition, intense grooves

and politically aware energy. Their shifting lineup embraces a DIY ethic and global influences, particularly Afrobeat, dub and spiritual jazz. Their close London peers include The Comet Is Coming, Shabaka Hutchings (solo), Maisha, Sarathy Korwar, Binker & Moses - all of which have featured in Sun Never Sets On Music's reviews in recent times.

Balm marks a welcome return to the studio for Ill Considered, distilling their firebrand live improvisation into nine tightly shaped tracks. Compared to the sprawling chaos of earlier albums, this release exhibits greater compositional clarity without losing the group's urgent spirit. Idris Rahman’s saxophone oscillates between lyrical warmth and turbulent outcry, while Liran Donin’s supple double bass pulses with meditative intensity.

The album lives up to its name: it soothes without sedation, confronts without aggression and flows like a ritual. Opening cut, Blue Dreams sets up swirling tenor sax lines and establishes a low buzzing, meditative groove that expands into Mazar, its dubby bass and flanged percussion evoking Saharan desert mirages. Hibernate is a somnolent drift, its slow swing interrupted by rhythmic stutters and layered textures. Satori builds gradually to a cathartic explosion, showing off the group's patience and fire.

On Lavender and Canna Sutra, Rahman’s sax flutters over spectral electronics and sparse drums. Sage shifts gears with a more propulsive beat and distorted effects that hint at psych-rock, before Rainbow Belts closes with a sense of uplifting serenity, resolving the album’s inward-seeking focus as the tune's processional carries the listener forward.

For a group that released four complete albums in 2024, Balm reflects the continuation and maturation of a prolific musical collective, ever expanding its palette with electronics, synth textures and carefully considered dynamics. This is spiritual music from and for restless minds - exploratory yet subdued and only somewhat comforting. Perhaps incremental in it's scope and ambition, but among their most compositionally cohesive work to date.

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Asleep Above Creatures

MISAKI UMEI

Released 30 July 2025

.plum(est)

****-

An impressive genre-spanning solo debut, that spans ambient jazz, classical nuance and electronic whisper.

Misaki Umei, born in 2002 in Hyōgo, is a Japanese pianist and composer whose musical curiosity defies genre boundaries. A Blue Note Tokyo standout (notably collaborating with Hiromi Uehara), she leads projects spanning jazz trio, classical-inflected structures, pop, ambient and experimental forms. Her debut as a solo artist, Asleep Above Creatures signals the emergence of a vivid creative spirit, acknowledged by Rolling Stone Japan as a “Future (voice) of Music”.

Asleep Above Creatures unfolds as a poetic journey where “memory and imagination drift in suspended tension.”

The compositions shift fluidly through formats - solo piano, quartet, electronic-infused beats, and layering with strings - yet, they remain unified by emotional clarity and structural thoughtfulness. In “Go around in circles,” a nuanced duet with Brazilian Antonio Loureiro, sinuous melodic lines weave into elegantly restrained interplay. “Loops” and “innerjade” evoke ambient meditations, while the string-anchored “刺繍” (Embroidered) quietly evokes childhood landscapes and threadbare memories, crafted with tactile lyricism.

There’s kinetic energy in tracks like “Daydream?”, its effusive electronic percussiveness creating a shimmering surface as dreamlike synths seem to swim and glide like fish in a stream. Freed of it's predecessor's surface tension, the subtle rhythmic keyboards of “Stepping outside” propel the record forward, before "pose-op.3" and "bye" close out the set, equilibrium as fully restored as a Spring morning.

Umei’s self-taught compositional range ensures that, although genre-hopping, everything feels integral, rather than scattered. Produced, composed, and performed entirely by Umei (with the exception of select collaborators), the album reveals her skill for weaving structural depth with emotional subtlety, never showy, always resonant.

Hiroko Kubota's Falon-like cover art also helps sets the album apart.

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Chapter 1: Where Does Happiness Come From?

MADE KUTI

Released 25 July 2025

Made Kuti

****-

Afrobeat heritage infused with soulful modernity: balancing reverence with restraint, Made carves an identity that is exploratory rather than derivative.

Made Kuti, grandson of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti and son of Femi Kuti, carries one of Africa’s most influential musical legacies. Raised in the Kuti family compound, he trained in multiple instruments and studied music in London, aiming to both extend and redefine Afrobeat in his own generational voice.

Chapter 1: Where Does Happiness Come From? positions him at a critical crossroads as his career moves on from a brace of debut albums "Legacy+" and "For(e)ward", bot released in 2021. On one hand, the album honours the polyrhythmic intensity and horn-driven orchestrations of his grandfather’s Afrobeat template. On the other, it introduces a reflective, almost chamber-like clarity that feels more indebted to jazz, soul and modern funk. His arrangements are tightly controlled, sometimes more restrained than Fela’s explosive live chaos or Femi’s urgent political anthems. Instead of the endless groove architecture that defined Afrobeat’s most iconic works, Made often opts for songs shaped by melodic hooks and shorter, more digestible structures.

Lyrically, he leans toward philosophical questioning (“Where does happiness come from?” is a recurring motif) rather than agitprop or blunt protest. This choice sets him apart but also risks smoothing the jagged political edge that gave Afrobeat its global authority.

Still, the record’s lush horn voicings, crisp basslines and Made’s polished multi-instrumentalism suggest a musician intent on charting his own path rather than being a mere custodian of family tradition.

The album does not yet achieve the radical breakthrough of his grandfather’s influence, but it avoids pastiche. As it says on the package, it feels like a promising, refined and searching opening chapter.

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Sure Beats Living

WEVIE STONDER

Released 25 July 2025

Scam Records

****-

A musical / comedy mash-up that might just as well have come out of Rawlinson's End .

Wevie Stonder are the UK’s most persistent reminder that electronic music can be a playground rather than a cathedral. . Since the late ’90s, in the footsteps of Vivian Stanshall, Neil Innes and Bonzo Dog Band, Goodies, Ruttles and Python they’ve blended absurdist humor, collage aesthetics and half-broken beats into an art form.

Sure Beats Living is a title that might imply bare-minimum enthusiasm for existence, but the album over-delivers in its own lopsided way. Stonder’s sonic toolkit includes malfunctioning drum machines, thrift-store field recordings, a kazoo section that sounds unionized and vocal samples resembling motivational tapes spliced by a sleep-deprived surgeon.

The album opens with the whimsical “Magic Trick”, featuring a Scottish voice performing a bewildering conjuring act over glitchy, half-speed beats. “Carpet Squares” follows with a cheeky 1980s-style digital dancehall groove layered under absurdist spoken-word adverts. Later, “Bean Boys of Bulgaria” combines primitive beep-boop synths with a mock-scientific narration, while “Piccolo’s Travels” stretches into a cinematic, slightly lo-fi odyssey of tiny instruments and playful samples. Each track unfolds like a series of miniature sketches, alternating between rhythmic experimentation, surreal comedy, and sonic collage, creating a listening experience that is both unpredictable and curiously cohesive.

Yet there’s method to the nonsense. Beneath the cartoon pratfalls lies a keen sense of pacing and texture: the group knows exactly how long to stretch a gag before pivoting to something almost (dare we say) musical.

By the time the closer arrives, you’re left unsure whether you’ve experienced an album, a comedy sketch or a low-budget séance. And that, frankly, is the point.

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IN.SIGHT

FABIA MANTWILL ORCHESTRA

Released 25 July 2025

GroundUP Music

****-

A cinematic journey through jazz, folk and orchestral soul where finesse meets emotional radiance.

Berlin-based composer, saxophonist, arranger, and conductor Fabia Mantwill leads a Signature Jazz Chamber Orchestra distinguished by its eclectic instrumentation - where strings and harp are integral, not ornamental. A prize-winning arranger (2021 German Jazz Prize), she emerged with her debut EM.PERIENCE (2021) before stepping boldly into large-scale orchestration. IN.SIGHT marks her cinematic and emotionally layered second album, co-composed with Michael League (Snarky Puppy) and Magdalini Giannikou, realized through a seamless blend of jazz, classical, folk, and evocative improvisation with GroundUP Music at its

IN.SIGHT unfolds like a richly textured film score, from the drift of “Satoyama” to the cinematic suspense of “Sleeping Giant” and the misty-stringed beauty of "Fairy Glen", Mantwill’s music feels both intimately grounded and expansively visual.

Her 32-piece ensemble, guided by Jochen Neuffer, is the ideal interpreter of her chiaroscuro compositional style, wielding delicate coloration and rhythmic urgency with equal grace. Each of the stellar soloists sparks transformation: Roosevelt Collier's lap steel ignites “Whirl The Wheel” with soulful techniques veiled in funk; Momi Maiga’s kora on “Circular” offers earthy lyricism woven through jazz interplay; Anat Cohen’s clarinet in “Olhos” provides warmth and narrative clarity; Kurt Rosenwinkel’s electric guitar in “Fairy Glen” soars amid orchestral ripples, guiding the pieces from reflection to revelation.

Above all, what stands out is Mantwill’s orchestral storytelling - eloquent in drama, rich in texture, fearless in its stylistic shifts. Despite the project’s scale, everything feels intuitive rather than over-engineered, as if it emerged from a single artistic pulse.

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Châteaux Faibles

ALICE

Released 25 July 2025

Les Disques Bongo Joe

****-

A lush and unruly patchwork of fragile harmonies, fractured folk, and experimental textures, this record reveals vulnerability as a stubborn form of strength for our unsettled present.

Alice is a Swiss trio consisting of Yvonne and Lisa Harder (mother and daughter) alongside Sarah André, a formation that immediately lends their music a rare intergenerational texture. Their work has always gravitated toward liminal spaces: where folk tradition brushes against the avant-garde, where the fragile becomes resilient, and where voices shimmer between intimacy and strangeness. With roots in community workshops, improvised spaces, and restless travel across Europe, Alice have cultivated a sound that is as socially embedded as it is aesthetically exploratory. They are storytellers of delicate resistance, crafting songs that feel both domestic and otherworldly.

Châteaux Faibles is less a straightforward collection of songs than a quilt of poetic fragments stitched into a living, breathing fabric. Across twenty tracks, Alice spin delicate French lyricism into a soundworld of unsettling beauty: choral harmonies swell and fracture, synths flicker like distant lights, and scraps of musique concrète are woven through acoustic textures. The album thrives on contrast, its melodies as vulnerable as they are stubborn, revealing fragility not as weakness but as a mode of endurance. What emerges is a music of thresholds: lullabies that shade into lamentations, folk tales refracted through apocalyptic echoes.

Unlike so much “experimental folk,” Châteaux Faibles does not retreat into abstraction; instead, it insists on the concrete weight of lived experience - bars, trains, workshops, agricultural fairs - allowing humor, tenderness, and quiet defiance to coexist. It is a work that dares to be messy and abundant, but within its sprawl lies a rare cohesion: a testament to collective voice in uncertain times.

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Letters To Self 寫情書

YINGTUITIVE

Released 25 July 2025

Third Place Records

****-

A haunting, tender debut whose ambient-electronic soundscapes, suffused with emotional resonance and cultural nuance, linger long after the final note.

yingtuitive is the music alias of Singapore-born, London-based producer and classically trained pianist Hannah Chia. Blending Southeast Asian traditions - gamelan textures, field recordings, ambient electronics - and diasporic perspectives, her debut album weaves personal storytelling into ambient-electronic soundscapes that are suffused with emotional resonance and cultural nuance.

Framed as a “sonic diary,” the album gently maps the tension between memory, identity and belonging. Across eight original compositions (and two remixes), the shimmer of gamelan-inspired percussion fuses with field recordings from Singapore and the UK, improvised piano passages, fragmented film samples and subtle, glitchy flourishes. This ambient music is purposeful and alive, solitary yet vivid.

The album opens with the subtle interplay of elements in "sun, drench", an ethereal, operatic vocal line soaring high above looped bass tones, sonic pops and vocal samples of conversation, evoking the dawn chorus of a lush tropical garden. “Blue”, the album's longest piece, follows. Mesmerizing and claustrophobic, it's gamelan-like keyboard stylings are drenched in thick reverb as it enfolds mantra-like, develops and dissolves. Although musically abstract, it uncannily manifests the memory of a Balinese village. "Braided Cords" and “Do U Forget a Feeling?” set new moods as their fluttering, asymmetrical beats ebb and flow, expanding the album’s emotional reach. The mood shifts again with the hyper-percussive quirkiness of "Citrine" and futuristic "Exhibition", the latter anchoring the mid-album with the contrast of highly melodic effects and penetrating bass. A final pair of songs, "moonstorm" and "pandan" complete the album's eight song suite of originals. Together they create a period of serene retreat from the intensity of a hitherto busy soundscape. Like many of the songs that come before them on the album, these sparkle with chimes and gongs, infusing the music with an identifiably Asian tonality, that is offset by the mellow electronica. The album concludes with remixes of "blue" and "braided chords" by Seoul-based Leftfield Ambient producers and DJ duo Salamanda and Chicago producer, DJ and sound artist Tristan Arp, respectively.

Letters To Self 寫情書 is significant not only as a debut release, but for the emergence of a unique musical voice, gliding between cultural languages with honesty, vulnerability and quiet authority. On the basis of her intelligent and tasteful approach with this album, yingtuitive's options for future musical progression are practically infinite - from ethno-ambient to experimental-electronica and all stops between.

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Rituals Volume 01

SOMEWHERE SOUL

(VARIOUS ARTISTS)

Released 25 July 2025

RE:WARM

****-

A twenty-four hour template formed from a genre-spanning mix of rhythm, soul and global groove - all curated as both sonic diary and cultural beacon.

Curated by DJ Josh Mason-Quinn under his Somewhere Soul banner, this debut compilation brings together new and emerging artists across the underground jazz, soul, house and global electronic music spectrum. The album is both a document of his 24-hour listening rituals and a celebration of community-rooted, genre-defying UK music culture.

Designed as a full-day journey from the morning serenity to nocturnal freedom, Somewhere Soul Vol. 1 is a lovingly sequenced, double-gatefold statement of intent.

The compilation kicks off with radiant AM cuts like Koji The Planet Stoned Plus’s dreamy “Lagoon” and the textured percussion and harmonies of Amy Gadiaga’s “Everything I Do,” setting a gentle but emotionally rich tone.

Afternoon shifts bring broken beat and soulful energy, such as Ebi Soda’s kinetic “Yoshi Orange” and gruff-yet-playful vocals from Ni Maxine, whose “What I Need” sounds like a basement jazz bar hooked into London’s house scene.

The twilight section invites retreat: XOA’s atmospheric grooves and Bella Brown’s hushed soul feel reflective yet still rhythmically charged.

And as midnight hits, the tempo surges and we are treated to hear Shunaji’s hip-house hybrid “Portals” or O’Flynn & Frazer Ray’s euphoric “Saturn.”

Rather than sticking to a single genre, the compilation moves fluidly, aided by smooth transitions and a democratic mix of veterans and newcomers. Mason-Quinn’s curation reflects both record shop curiosity and clubland intuition.

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Let God Sort Em Out

CLIPSE

PUSHA T, MALICE

Released 11 July 2025

Clipse / Roc Nation

****-

A sober, spiritually tinged forceceful return; sharp in lyricism, reverent in tone and polished to a modern shine.

Clipse, the legendary hip-hop duo from Virginia Beach, Virginia, consists of brothers Gene "Malice" Thornton and Terrence "Pusha T" Thornton. Formed in 1994, Clipse gained prominence with their debut album "Lord Willin'" in 2002, produced by Pharrell Williams. Known for their gritty lyricism and vivid storytelling, the duo has been a cornerstone of hip-hop, influencing a generation of artists. After a hiatus, they reunited in 2025 with their fourth studio album, "Let God Sort Em Out," showcasing their enduring talent and relevance in the rap game 1 2 3.
"Let God Sort Em Out" marks Clipse's triumphant return after a 16-year hiatus. Produced entirely by Pharrell Williams, the album is a masterclass in lyrical prowess and production excellence.

The opening track, "The Birds Don't Sing," sets a poignant tone with its heartfelt tribute to the brothers' late parents, blending melancholic piano chords with John Legend's soulful chorus. The album seamlessly transitions to the hard-hitting "Chains & Whips," featuring a fiery verse from Kendrick Lamar. Tracks like "P.O.V." with Tyler, The Creator, and "All Things Considered" with The-Dream, showcase Clipse's ability to balance introspection with streetwise bravado. Pharrell's production shines throughout, from the haunting "So Be It" to the hypnotic "E.B.I.T.D.A.". "Let God Sort Em Out" is a testament to Clipse's enduring legacy, blending their signature style with contemporary influences to create a compelling and cohesive album.

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Rosewater Crocodile

COUSIN TONY'S NEW FIREBIRD

Released 10 July 2025

Double Dummer

****-

80s gloss meets heartfelt piano-led pop that shimmers with a uniquely Melbourne accent.

Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird are a Melbourne-based indie-pop collective with a story book name and a reputation for blending heartfelt songwriting with eclectic textures and a taste for retro stylings. Led by the irrepressibly inventive Lachlan Rose, the band have built a reputation for lush arrangements and a theatrical sensibility, equally at home in intimate ballads and widescreen anthems (or both, together).

The band's fourth album, Rosewater Crocodile is a coming-of-age collection that drenched in 1980s inflection that bends that decade’s palette of reverb-heavy snares, gleaming synths, elastic basslines as a prism for their own melodic instincts. Rose’s piano and voice remain the album’s emotional anchors, giving the record an intimate, singer-songwriter core even as choruses expand into neon-lit crescendos. This is an album suffused with the sleek, sunlit warmth of 1980s sophisti-pop from the likes of Talk Talk, ABC, The Blue Nile and Roxy Music, yet reinterpreted with earnestness rather than irony. Their off-kilter approach to story telling through joyous music parallels the great "My Friend The Chocolate Cake".

Opening track, “Rosewater,” welcomes listeners into its verdant world via piano, brass, flute, and layered vocal harmonies, establishing the album’s dreamy tone.

The band describe "Jane Bear" as "an ode to a treasured friend who, though no longer with us, still roams the jungle in dreams" that owes much to Phil Collins’ original soundtrack to Disney’s Tarzan.

“Mercury Rising” revives the glossy, funky stylings of late-period Talking Heads or INXS, as Rose’s idiosyncratic vocal phrasing balances between swagger and sensitivity.

Other highlights include “Flee the Cage” (which features cascading Bruce Hornsby-style piano flourishes), “My Ghost & Its Crawling”, a brooding, cinematic piece that pairs falsetto intimacy with introspective lyricism and the pair of songs that bookend the album "Rosewater" ("an invitation to a cruise down a bubbling river of rosewater. The banks are rustling with shadows and strange flutes and nothing is quite what it seems. Keep your limbs inside the boat at all times".) and "Crocodile ("a song of departure, a song of arrival and a song of becoming and farewell to all the lurking predators, friendly beasts and oozing habitats we met along the way of making this album").

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